Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Fucking Faith-Based Initiative

by tristero

I’d like to briefly weigh in on the hullabaloo over David Kuo .

From what I can tell, in all the publicity over Kuo’s book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, no one seems to have asked what I think is the only interesting question: Does David Kuo believe that the US government actually should have an Office of Faith Based Initiatives?

This interview with Kuo in Salon is typical. He discusses how much contempt some in the Bush administration have for christianist loonies, as if the Bush administration doesn’t contain a large number of religious nuts – Jerry Boykin comes instantly to mind, as does the former AG, John “Crisco Johnny” Ashcroft for whom Kuo once worked. Well, I’m as interested in hearing more stories about the hypocrisy and corruption of the Bush administration as the next American, but the larger issue, whether any administration, has, or should have, the right to dole out my hard-earned money to religious groups, is finessed.

To make it clear, there should be no office of faith-based initiatives. The very idea is digustingly offensive. To say so does not make me a “secularist” as many of the devout understand how important such a wall is to their faith. I am merely being an American. A wall of separation between church and state was clearly established by the Founders and over the years, that wall has been determined, quite rightly, to mean that no religion can be privileged by the US government. And that means giving ’em money or other special breaks.

Kuo’s basic point appears to be that faith-based initiatives would be great, provided he was in control of it, or some other incorruptible evangelical. No, it wouldn’t. It is simply un-American, a direct violation of the Constitution and American traditions.

Amy Sullivan is upset that in discussing all this, Democrats have been shooting themselves in the foot by framing the issue in such a way as to alienate potential evangelicals. I’ll grant that, to a small extent, she may have a point. It is quite possible to heap scads of contempt on scum like Pat Robertson while not inadvertently offending the genuinely religious. And, while I strongly disagree with Sullivan’s specific criticism – she apparently doesn’t seem to grasp how insane and revolting it is, to the many of the devout of all faiths, for anyone to claim Jews will burn in hell because they won’t accept Christ,; furthermore, her characterization of what o’Donnell said is totally inacurrate – in principle, it never hurts to gain insight into how to do so in an effective manner.

But she is avoiding the elephant in the room. Democrats need to remind evangelicals that it is in their interest to examine the roots of their involvement in the politics of this country. Back then, it was the ancestors of the modern evangelicals who were among the most fervent advocates of church/state separation. That said, let’s get real. Given that there is lots of what Samuel Beckett quaintly called “filth” up for grabs (ie, money), getting the evangelicals to eschew religious welfare will not be easy. Nevertheless, this is the argument that must be addressed. And the delicate sensibilities of evangelicals who get offended when people object to them telling their flocks that Jews will burn in hell is a minor matter.*

The extent to which the wall of separation has been battered and the enormous effort it will take to repair it is just one example of the damage the Bush administration has caused to the very foundation of this country’s system of politics. This is not simply about “under God” in the Pledge of the Allegiance (which imo, is bad enough), but about a system in which Muslims are being taxed to give money to Buddhist temples, Christians are taxed to fund Jewish synagogues, atheists are forced to fund churches, and pious worshippers of all faiths are coerced into giving money to cynical political operatives like Colson, Robertson, and Dobson.

Since Kuo appears to have no problems with establishing state-sponsored religion or religions, I wonder whether his book has much importance beyond the gossip stage. Yes, it’s nice to have more confirmation that Rove, et al, are hypocrites, and to have some insight into the details of the splits in the Bush administration. But Kuo doesn’t seem to grasp the enormous risks of his position. He says, “Invoking God’s name to get anything can be a very dangerous thing spiritually.” That may be so, but what is certain is taht the founders well understood that the state funding of religion is a dangerous thing, especially for religions. And the Democrats’ task – hell, it’s also the Republicans’ task as well, if they really are as American as they claim to be – is to find a way to say that in a compelling, modern rhetoric.

To call for such rhetoric is the exact opposite of a call for discussion of religion to be off-limits for politicians. Yes, Democrats must discuss religion. To avoid it is to fall into exactly the trap that many of us, including Digby and myself, have been warning Democrats against. When you avoid a subject, you enable the Republicans to define it, and when the avoided subject has in any way, shape or form to do with values, you are a goddamn fool.

Yes, talk about religion and belief. A lot. And be smart about it.

(h/t to Karl Rove who came up with the title for this post.)

Special note to newer readers: It is impossible to tell from what I ‘ve written here what my religious beliefs are or are not. Do not assume that I am either an atheist, an agnostic, or a person of deep faith. My personal beliefs, whatever they may be, are private. Support of church/state separation makes me an American, but says absolutely nothing about my belief in God, or lack of such a belief.

What is not private, as many longtime readers know, is my public support and enormous respect for the practice of all faiths, or for the right not to practice any faith at all. What also is not private is my thorough contempt for political operatives who try to deflect criticism by hiding behind the skirts of their priests. They are the ones contemptuous of religious faith, not I, they are the blasphemers, not I, and I see no reason to tolerate their hypocrisy.

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*The sensibilities of bigoted evangelicals may be a minor concern but what is not, obviously, is that such anti-semitic bullshit is being fobbed off by Robertson and others as mainstream Christian belief.

The First Lemming Over A Cliff Is No Leader, Frank

by tristero

I’m a longtime Rich fan, actually from the moment he stopped being a theater reviewer. [UPDATE: However, I’ve always been appalled by his anti-Gore remarks. (ht, Eric in comments.)] But this is simply idiotic:

Call him arrogant or misguided or foolish, this president has been a leader. He had a controversial agenda – enacting big tax cuts, privatizing Social Security, waging “pre-emptive” war, packing the courts with judges who support his elisions of constitutional rights- and he didn’t fudge it. He didn’t care if half the country despised him along the way.

Say whatever you want about George W. Bush, but he is a leader only in the same way that the 9/11 hijackers were brave.

When the term is used in modern American political discourse, “leader” does not have the standard generalized meaning of “a person in authority” regardless of whether they are good or bad. When Americans use the term “leader” in reference to their own politics, they are not talking about Kim Jong Il or Vladimir Lenin. Americans are invoking the imagery of great American political and cultural leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Coltrane.

First and foremost, a leader persuades others, by proposing sensible ideas in an honest and convincing rhetorical voice.

A leader is NOT someone who doesn’t care “if half the country despised him along the way.”* A leader is NOT someone who hides a tyrannical agenda under the skirts of priests and behind cheesy bromides like “compassionate conservatism.” A leader is NOT someone who does exactly as s/he pleases.

Bush does not persuade, he does what he wants, and if anybody stands in the way, he ignores or blackmails them. His ideas are not sensible, but nuts. He is thoroughly dishonest and his inability to articulate even the simplest ideas is a national embarassment.

In addition, a leader recognizes when a given course of action, especially one that he himself endorsed, is failing. A leader takes responisiblity for failures as well as successes. Bush, of course, is notorious both for following his delusions until they lead into total fiasco and for simply refusing to recognize that he ever made a single mistake.

In American public discourse, rightly or wrongly, words like “leader” and “brave” are typically descriptive of people with positive virtues. Mahatma Gandhi was a leader. Idi Amin was not. The students in Tiananmen Square were brave, the man who assasinated Rabin was not.

By drawing a direct comparison between Bush and the 9/11 hijackers, am I saying that Bush is a religious fanatic in the grip of dangerous narcissistic delusions of grandeur and who has no regard for the death of innocents?

You bet I am. And that is not what Americans mean by a leader, Mr. Rich.

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*Ah, you say, but what about Coltrane? Surely he didn’t care if he was despised when he went into “free” jazz, did he?

On the contrary, like every other professional musician, he most certaInly did care about his audience. At the same time that some of his more adventuresome music was recorded, Coltrane laid down an exquisite, and deliberately commerical, recording of ballads. The release of some of his most challenging music was alternated, surely with his knowledge and assent, with less “out” recordings. True, his later style was consistent in concert, and led to considerable anger. But Coltrane was dismayed by it, and concerned. He was on a constant search for more tunes like “My Favorite Things,” which had nearly universal recognition but also the kind of musical structure that inspired his bolder experimentation. It goes without saying, contra Adorno, that none of this detracts one iota from the incredibly original and genuinely awe-inspiring example of musical integrity Coltrane set for the rest of us.

When musicians treat the audience with apparent disdain, for example Miles Davis, it is always a pose. They know full well the marketing advantage of being considered so “pure” and so “attuned to their muse that they even turn their back on the audience.” Back in the 1960’s, we went to Mothers of Invention concerts because Zappa would greet us with “Hi, boys and girls” or even “Hi, pigs” in kind of a collusion with his disdain. Yes, the rest of his audience was ignorant buffoons, but we were different. We knew who Varese was. We could follow his experimentation in improvised polymeters. In other words, Zappa’s disdain for the great unwashed was a deliberate tactic to rope in the kinds of fans that were influential trendsetters in the 60’s, by appealing to their sense of alienation and our desire to seen as special individuals who stood out from the crowd of conformist. Later on, of course, as his audience grew far beyond the original cognoscenti, Frank literally changed his tune. JAP’s, closeted rough-sex gays, hypocritical politicians – all became targets of Zappa’s acid contempt. But it’s hard to find examples, if any, of Zappa insulting actual ticket-buyers to his concerts en masse, as part a routine shtick, which he did, at least at every concert I saw or heard about, in the late 60’s/early 70’s.

[Edited slightly after original posting]

Marriage Made In Hell

by digby

Wake up before you watch this. Or, if you can’t wake up, watch this. It will wake you up.

Those poor Americans fighting in Iraq seem like decent guys who are doing a thankless task. But if you were an Iraqi you’d hate their guts. They are not only invaders and armed occupiers, they all have to wear that body armor that makes them look like gigantic robots. They seem as alien as it is humanly possible to be. And they are.

Some don’t even understand human nature —like the one soldier who says the Iraqis are “too lazy” to stand up so we can stand down. Man, how many times have I heard certain Americans say that about people who refuse to cooperate in their own debasement? Ask some old timers in the south about that.

h/t Dover Bitch

Praying For A Terrorist Attack

by digby

Fred Barnes is disappointed that the North Korean test wasn’t bigger:

The problem here is that national security isn’t the leading campaign issue. And saying it should be won’t make it so. What’s needed is an event–a big event–to crystallize the issue in a way that highlights Republican strength and Democratic weakness. It was two events–the foiled British terrorist plot and the need to comply with a Supreme Court decision on handling captured terrorists–that led to the Republican mini-rally in September.

Of course there’s little time left for a major event to occur. The North Korean bomb test wasn’t big enough to change the course of the campaign. So Republicans may have to rely on their two remaining assets: They have more money than the Democrats and a voter turnout operation second to none.

Is that really ok now? Republicans are now allowed to openly wish for some sort of national security “event” that would be big enough to change the course of an election? A dirty bomb in NFL stadium maybe? That would shake things up. How about an assassination? That’d get everybody’s attention.

Heck, if they can’t get themselves a crisis, I guess they’;ll just have to depend on making an argument to the American people and letting them decide on the basis of the republican record. It hardly seems fair, does it?

They really have no boundries these days do they?

Link via Arthur Silber.

While you’re over there, take a moment to read some of Arthur’s writings these past few weeks. Here’s a taste:

We proceed steadily down the road to hell, and all the mechanisms for a full dictatorship are now in place — and our media act as if nothing has changed. Oh, there’s some dispute about what it all means, but that’s just the normal difference of opinion. And a few people appear to be deeply worried, but they’re just those “extremists” and “leftist loons” who come around to annoy us well-balanced “centrists” every now and then.

And I still continue to hear some especially dull-witted defenders of the administration use the long-discredited argument: “But do you know anyone who’s been ‘disappeared,’ who’s been taken away in the middle of the night and never heard from again? Do you know anyone else who knows someone like that? Of course not! See, we’re still a free country! You’re just a nut!” I dealt with that one here. These people wouldn’t know a principle if it announced itself in one-syllable words and then stabbed them in the gut — which, by the way, it has now done.

Don’t look for the meaning of national and world events in our major media. You’ll never find it, because it isn’t there. But our leading “reporters” and “journalists” will still have their phone calls answered by the powerful who use the media to trumpet their personalized propaganda, and they’ll still be invited to the “right” parties. Everybody’s happy.

Except for all the rest of us.

Yep.

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Rising Hysteria

by digby

CNN cable news has become “the publicist for an enemy propaganda film” by broadcasting a tape showing an insurgent sniper apparently killing an American soldier, said the chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee here Friday.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., called for the Pentagon to oust immediately any CNN reporter embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq.

“I think Americans like to think we’re all in this together,” Hunter said. “The average American Marine or soldier has concluded after seeing that film that CNN is not on their side.”

CNN said its decision to show the brief tape was motivated by a desire to show the public the growing threat insurgent snipers pose to U.S. troops.

“Whether or not you agree with us in this case, our goal, as always, is to present the unvarnished truth as best we can,” wrote CNN producer David Doss in a blog on the network’s Web site.

Tony Snow, President Bush’s press secretary, said the insurgents were hoping to “break the will of the American people” by slipping the tape to CNN.

[…]

Snow, at his regular news briefing in Washington, said the video was misleading because it made it appear that Americans were “sitting ducks” and the insurgents were winning. In fact, the insurgents “are dying in much greater numbers and suffering much greater damage,” he said.

Tony needs a rest. And Duncan Hunter needs a lobotomy.

Blaming the media for their screw-ups is the right’s longtime favorite sport, but this is bordering on hysterical:

Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., who joined Hunter and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in sending a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, called the film “nothing short of a terrorist snuff film.”

The Republicans continue to think that if they don’t show the coffins coming back (or even acknowledge that soldiers are dying) that people can be conned into believing that we are winning their war. In our continuing revival of Vietnam: The Musical, Tony’s even bringing back the Westmorland body counts.

For some reason it’s not working. perhaps it might just be because now that the fog of 9/11 has lifted, people look at George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and see them for the losers they always were. Once the fans are over you they won’t buy tickets to your show again.

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Piercing The Veil

by digby

This debate as to whether women in Britain should wear the full veil brings up some very interesting questions that I’d be interested in hearing people discuss.

In my opinion, the veil is a relic of another time (as are catholic nun’s habits) that represents archaic, repressive notions of women’s “modesty.” But who the hell am I to tell perfectly free Muslim women in the west, who choose to wear it under no cultural obligation or coercion, that they shouldn’t?

The argument is that it’s a mode of dress that sows division in society, but that’s just crap. They could have said the same thing about punks in the 70’s. In fact, they did. But what makes this one odd is that the conformists are arguing against a form of dress that in its normal melieu is a form of forced conformity. That certainly does indicate that wearing the veil in England is a matter of political rebellion as much as a religious statement. And that, of course, brings up all kinds of things that make people nervous.

What do you think?

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Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

by digby

I am watching something so bizarre on Fox news right now I hardly know how to describe it. Sean Hannity and Dennis Miller are frothing at the mouth and jerking each other off in front of a big carnival at the Arizona State Fair. (Colmes is holding their coats, I guess.) Miller just shouted “we will be fighting this war for the rest of our lives!” People cheered wildly while the ferris wheel went round and round in the backround.

I have only had one small beer, I swear.

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Family Values

by digby

This is an incredibly effective ad for Claire McCaskill in Missouri. I urge you to watch it.

Michael J. Fox was a member of the family for many years in this country. He still looks pretty much like he always did — boyish and charming. But he’s suffering from Parkinsons disease and it’s clearly taking its toll. In this ad he asks the people of Missouri to support McCaskill because she is in favor of stem cell research and Jim Talent isn’t. Essentially, he’s asking people to value the promise of curing the horrible disease that has him in its clutches or value a clump of cells in a petrie dish.

As I look at all these issues that have come to the forefront in the last few years, I’m struck by how dumb it is to let the Republicans claim the mantle of values and morality. People who believe that torture is ok or that it’s better to let blastocysts be thrown away rather than use them to save living breathing human beings are immoral. If they want to play politics on that field, I say bring it on.

Update: Correntewire has more on the Stem Cell Research and Cures Amendment in Missouri.

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Liberal Intolerance Of Intolerance

by digby

Pastordan defends himself quite well from a typically obtuse criticism from Amy Sullivan in The New Republic and I’ll let him speak for himself. But I have to wonder where she gets the idea that liberals are so blinded by their belief that Bush and Rove have been building a theocracy that they can’t see that Kuo’s book presents an opportunity to drive a wedge between the evangelicals and the GOP? I never thought that Bush was a serious theologian, only that he was willing to do whatever he could get away with to keep the evangelicals happy. Nothing in Kuo’s book undermines that theory. In fact, it validates it.

Rove is a cynical political operative and Bush is an idiot whose only religious commitment is to the idea that he was anointed by God to follow his “instincts” (which amounts to running the country by coin flipping.) I honestly don’t know anyone who thinks the big money boys of the Republican Party give a damn about religion except to the extent it brings them votes.

What we did believe is that the religious right wants to build a theocracy and that seems indisputable to me. Of course they do. And because they are an enormously valuable consituency they are managing to incrementally blur the lines between church and state and pass laws of a theocratic nature or that conflict with progressive values. (Like this one, where employees of religious groups have far fewer rights in the workplace than others.) I’m not sure what is controversial about that.

As far as the idea of taking advantage of the developing schism between the Christian right and the GOP, I’m all for it. I think we should point out Republican hypocrisy on these issues every chance we get and as far as I can tell, the liberal bloggers and op-ed writers and progressive radio she ctiticizes have been scathing on this topic.

(It’s true that we are a little more than two weeks away from a seminal election so there is quite naturally a rather diffuse critique of the Republicans going on right now. It’s a little unfair to compare it to the earlier revelations by Paul O’neil or even the Woodward book, which is about the biggest issue in the campaign and it’s written by the official court hagiographer.)

Sullivan is convinced that liberals are so hostile to religion that we refuse to see that religious people are in the process of rejecting the Republican party. I welcome that if it happens and I’m delighted to see that some conservative religious leaders are looking at issues other than abortion and gay marriage,like Darfur and poverty and global warming, which are areas upon which we can agree and work together:

Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., pastor of Hope Christian Church, a 3,000-member congregation in Lanham, was among the signers of the Darfur appeal. He said he knows that some evangelicals are concerned that their clout will diminish if they take on too many issues. But, like Combs, he pointed to the need to address subjects that matter to young Christians.

“I think you could call this a PR problem, because young people who are very involved in their churches understand the passion for these two issues,” he said, referring to abortion and same-sex marriage, “but in the culture at large we can come across as wild-eyed bigots to some because we have only emphasized these things.”

Broadening the agenda, “not to 99 things but to five or six core things,” such as fighting poverty and providing aid to Africa, “helps improve our image and more accurately reflects the full panoply of our beliefs,” Jackson said. “It’s hard to say that those two things — abortion and gay marriage — are the only things God had in mind in the Bible.”

I am not sanguine, however, that we will crack the Republican hold on the conservative evangelicals and make them want to vote for us. They are after all,conservatives.

To some evangelicals, however, the new issues are less clear than the old ones, which have led evangelicals to vote overwhelmingly Republican in recent elections.

“I definitely don’t like the widening of the agenda, because it muddies the water,” said the Rev. Michael Haseltine, pastor of the 2,000-member Maranatha Assembly of God Church in Forest Lake, Minn.

“Be good stewards of the environment? Sure, but how? These tree-huggers and anti-hunters think it’s terrible to kill animals. Oppose poverty? Sure, but what’s the best way to do it? We can’t solve everybody’s problems for them,” he said. “Family and life issues — abortion, sexuality — they’re much more clear from the biblical standpoint.”

I am happy to allow evangelical Christians to fight this out. And I’ll be happy to make common cause with them on poverty and global warming and the death penalty. (I gratefully welcome them to that thankless cause as a matter of fact.) But we aren’t going to agree on abortion or gay marriage and I can live with that. The question is if they can. If they look at the panoply of issues as followers of Jesus Christ, I feel quite confident they will find that they can easily vote for the Democratic party. If they decide that “abortion and sexuality” trump everything else then so be it. It’s up to them.

That won’t be enough for Sullivan of course:

Lawrence O’Donnell–former Democratic Senate aide and the resident liberal commentator at msnbc–dropped the ball. “I think the good news here is that people working in the White House think that Pat Robertson is nuts,” he said. “They should. Pat Robertson is nuts.” It seemed a little off-message–after all, this was a politically embarrassing book for the Bushies, and here O’Donnell was praising them. True, Robertson does regularly spout off truly nutty and dangerous statements (his call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez; his prayer for the death of liberal Supreme Court justices; his belief that UPC symbols are the Mark of the Beast as foretold in Revelation). But what rankled O’Donnell the most was Robertson’s “insane” belief that Jews are going to burn in hell. “

While most of them would put it more delicately than Robertson, it is an article of faith for millions and millions of evangelicals that the only way into heaven is through belief in Jesus Christ. (The good reverend has also said he believes Methodists will burn in hell, but that’s not really the point.) By condemning and mocking that doctrine, O’Donnell managed an impressive feat. He took Robertson, a figure widely disliked and discredited throughout the evangelical community, and found a way to criticize him that would also insult and alienate evangelicals. Congratulations, Lawrence O’Donnell–you’re the new poster-boy for secular liberal intolerance.

I can’t help but wonder if Sullivan would find O’Donnell so “intolerant” if he were Jewish? (And yes, the fact that Robertson thinks Methodists are also going to burn in hell is exactly the point.) Sullivan believes that in order to appeal to evangelicals we must not only study their theology in detail so as to understand why they follow some lunatic like Pat Robertson but we are supposed to be tolerant of what would be called racist or religiously intolerant statements from anyone else because they believe it derives from the Bible. Oy.

This is why strictly secular government is the only way to go. When it becomes a sign of religious intolerance to object publicly to a political and religious leader’s statement that “Jews are going to burn in hell,” we are in real trouble.

But then, we are in trouble on this subject in so many different ways:

The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.

“He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country,” said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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Treasure Trove

by tristero

About half of the complete work of Charles Darwin is online, with everything expected to be available, by 2009. ‘Course, it’s easier to read them on paper, but for searching, and for special things, this is just incredibly fantastic. Includes transcriptions of some of the notebooks as well!

ht, Lindsay Beyerstein.