“I want to be very clear. Focus on the Family is focussed on destroying families who have gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered family members, and it has to end.”
Well worth a look: Sneak preview of the 2006 documentary.
“I want to be very clear. Focus on the Family is focussed on destroying families who have gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered family members, and it has to end.”
Well worth a look: Sneak preview of the 2006 documentary.
The New York TImes has a great article about the much neglected theme of the old school conservatism, wary of mass culture, and how it’s been poached by those who only *dress* like they were wary of mass culture:
Meanwhile the actual lifestyle choices, like living in New Canaan and sending your children to boarding school, lost none of their charm. But I believe that living that way became more of a conscious choice than it had been. If nothing else, the preppy lifestyle got expensive: private school tuition, handsome real estate, a couple of club memberships and you’re deep into millionaire country. You don’t just happen, these days, to make or have that kind of money.
Preppies had money, but not necessarily a lot, and they wanted to hang onto what was there, to turn it over to the next generation. Hence their often-overlooked cheapness; in preppy precincts of Connecticut in the 1970’s a pair of Lucite salad tongs was a perfectly respectable wedding present. Their curious wardrobes were formed by the same instincts: Madras jackets might and did go out of mainstream fashion but that was no reason to stop wearing them.
We’re All Preppies Now, by Carol McD Wallace, Published October 24, 2005
The New York TImes has a great article about the much neglected theme of the old school conservatism, wary of mass culture, and how it’s been poached by those who only *dress* like they were wary of mass culture:
Meanwhile the actual lifestyle choices, like living in New Canaan and sending your children to boarding school, lost none of their charm. But I believe that living that way became more of a conscious choice than it had been. If nothing else, the preppy lifestyle got expensive: private school tuition, handsome real estate, a couple of club memberships and you’re deep into millionaire country. You don’t just happen, these days, to make or have that kind of money.
Preppies had money, but not necessarily a lot, and they wanted to hang onto what was there, to turn it over to the next generation. Hence their often-overlooked cheapness; in preppy precincts of Connecticut in the 1970’s a pair of Lucite salad tongs was a perfectly respectable wedding present. Their curious wardrobes were formed by the same instincts: Madras jackets might and did go out of mainstream fashion but that was no reason to stop wearing them.
We’re All Preppies Now, by Carol McD Wallace, Published October 24, 2005
At the Values Conference, David Hollinger spoke brilliantly about how mainstream Protestants have always been willing to learn from and work with the ethical arguments of secularists. Which is to say, we’re okay with them. We’ve always been okay with them. But are they okay with us?
Giles Fraser argues in this week’s Guardian that secular fundamentalists are in a time warp:
Part of the problem is that many born-again atheists remain trapped in a 19th-century time warp, reheating the standard refutations of religious belief based on a form of rationalism that harks back to an era of fob-watches and long sideburns.
I think he packs the punch exactly where it belongs. There *is* a lot of resentment out there among secularists in America. How many folks here have been lumped in with the Religious Right by their own fellow-progressive secularist friends? How many liberal friends do we know who roll their eyes at us, say, “Oh, my friend, you’re so intelligent, how do you believe this God crap?”
Fraser goes straight for the real problem here: who’s more liable to succumb to institutional group-think in any form, the Christian or the atheist; Fraser wants to deny atheists the claim to being necessarily less encumbered of tradition.
“Of course spiritualism is important, but organized religion? It breeds hierarchy, and they tell you *how* to believe, and they allow for corruption.” As indeed do universities, and do all governments, and all human organizations in general. Some religions are capable of imagining change and creating dialogue. But the spiritualist acting as a single agent barely employs his spiritual life to political and social reality at all: only when discussing how our beliefs inform our view of society — of what is precious, what worth protecting, and at what cost — do we get at a motive and a means for real social change.
Arguments against Christianity as necessarily about group-think insist that we shouldn’t take our beliefs into public. Many of my secularist friends conceive of any public discussion of faith as a slippery slope leading directly into mandatory school prayer, forced creationist curricula, restricted freedoms for Jews and Catholics, arbitrary wars on foreign countries, and federally-mandated skirt-lengths. I suppose redneck religion, the so-called religion of Ashcrofts and Robertsons, would reshape the public sphere in its own image. Enlightened Protestantism has a far higher calling: it means engaging the human rights and social justice ideals we share with secular humanism.
But secular humanism isn’t enough to promote social change, at least in my own personal experience. Secular humanism leads me to think that I should be amassing power and money, cashing in my education in the most utilitarian fashion. For me, at least, only my religious calling tells me that the face of injustice and poverty is so bleak, that riches and powerful are so damaging to the soul, that I personally must make a choice to pursue social change, right now, instead, because I can’t bear to live in a world where the divide between rich and poor grows monthly, where healthcare is prohibitively expensive for the majority of people in the most developed nation in the world, where unjust wars and unspeakable torture proliferate with federal consent. That’s real faith translated into politics: it comes of a religious and political dialogue with intelligence, faith, and the deepest values I have. It’s a far cry from the same thing as telling other people that they can’t hold hands in public.
Fraser is downright amused by the secularists who think that theirs is the radical and rebellious position:
The joke is that many who were converted at university via Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene think of themselves as agents of some subversive counterculturalism. This is ridiculous to Da Vinci Code proportions. Contemporary atheism is mainstream stuff. As John Updike put it: “Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position.”
In our day, the true revolutionaries and visionaries are those who are willing to imagine a better future, even in the midst of this bleak, polluted, corrupt, power-driven world. It’s not hard to complain, but it’s hard to imagine how to get out.
A task of such proportions requires us to imagine such a thing as a human soul, worthy of recognition and protection; it also requires imagining a kind of institution, which whatever its frailties, is capable of driving political and social change. To be a progressive Christian is to be truly countercultural, truly prophetic, truly political, and truly involved.
The secularist can wait — he can look for the utilitarian path to change, he can work through official channels or protest with his friends, waving signs and hoping someone will pay attention. The progressive Christian has a divine mandate to accomplish social and political change *now* — to reach out to individuals, to argue with the media, to work through the vote, to lecture, to write, to do everything in his power to accomplish justice and social responsibility. The life of the soul is too precious to wait.
At the Values Conference, David Hollinger spoke brilliantly about how mainstream Protestants have always been willing to learn from and work with the ethical arguments of secularists. Which is to say, we’re okay with them. We’ve always been okay with them. But are they okay with us?
Giles Fraser argues in this week’s Guardian that secular fundamentalists are in a time warp:
Part of the problem is that many born-again atheists remain trapped in a 19th-century time warp, reheating the standard refutations of religious belief based on a form of rationalism that harks back to an era of fob-watches and long sideburns.
I think he packs the punch exactly where it belongs. There *is* a lot of resentment out there among secularists in America. How many folks here have been lumped in with the Religious Right by their own fellow-progressive secularist friends? How many liberal friends do we know who roll their eyes at us, say, “Oh, my friend, you’re so intelligent, how do you believe this God crap?”
Fraser goes straight for the real problem here: who’s more liable to succumb to institutional group-think in any form, the Christian or the atheist; Fraser wants to deny atheists the claim to being necessarily less encumbered of tradition.
“Of course spiritualism is important, but organized religion? It breeds hierarchy, and they tell you *how* to believe, and they allow for corruption.” As indeed do universities, and do all governments, and all human organizations in general. Some religions are capable of imagining change and creating dialogue. But the spiritualist acting as a single agent barely employs his spiritual life to political and social reality at all: only when discussing how our beliefs inform our view of society — of what is precious, what worth protecting, and at what cost — do we get at a motive and a means for real social change.
Arguments against Christianity as necessarily about group-think insist that we shouldn’t take our beliefs into public. Many of my secularist friends conceive of any public discussion of faith as a slippery slope leading directly into mandatory school prayer, forced creationist curricula, restricted freedoms for Jews and Catholics, arbitrary wars on foreign countries, and federally-mandated skirt-lengths. I suppose redneck religion, the so-called religion of Ashcrofts and Robertsons, would reshape the public sphere in its own image. Enlightened Protestantism has a far higher calling: it means engaging the human rights and social justice ideals we share with secular humanism.
But secular humanism isn’t enough to promote social change, at least in my own personal experience. Secular humanism leads me to think that I should be amassing power and money, cashing in my education in the most utilitarian fashion. For me, at least, only my religious calling tells me that the face of injustice and poverty is so bleak, that riches and powerful are so damaging to the soul, that I personally must make a choice to pursue social change, right now, instead, because I can’t bear to live in a world where the divide between rich and poor grows monthly, where healthcare is prohibitively expensive for the majority of people in the most developed nation in the world, where unjust wars and unspeakable torture proliferate with federal consent. That’s real faith translated into politics: it comes of a religious and political dialogue with intelligence, faith, and the deepest values I have. It’s a far cry from the same thing as telling other people that they can’t hold hands in public.
Fraser is downright amused by the secularists who think that theirs is the radical and rebellious position:
The joke is that many who were converted at university via Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene think of themselves as agents of some subversive counterculturalism. This is ridiculous to Da Vinci Code proportions. Contemporary atheism is mainstream stuff. As John Updike put it: “Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position.”
In our day, the true revolutionaries and visionaries are those who are willing to imagine a better future, even in the midst of this bleak, polluted, corrupt, power-driven world. It’s not hard to complain, but it’s hard to imagine how to get out.
A task of such proportions requires us to imagine such a thing as a human soul, worthy of recognition and protection; it also requires imagining a kind of institution, which whatever its frailties, is capable of driving political and social change. To be a progressive Christian is to be truly countercultural, truly prophetic, truly political, and truly involved.
The secularist can wait — he can look for the utilitarian path to change, he can work through official channels or protest with his friends, waving signs and hoping someone will pay attention. The progressive Christian has a divine mandate to accomplish social and political change *now* — to reach out to individuals, to argue with the media, to work through the vote, to lecture, to write, to do everything in his power to accomplish justice and social responsibility. The life of the soul is too precious to wait.
So much more needs to be said about how the American open-air revival turned into the theatrical collective worship typified by architecture stolen from football stadiums and gated communities. Witold Rybczynski presents An Anatomy of Megachurches - The new look for places of worship.
So much more needs to be said about how the American open-air revival turned into the theatrical collective worship typified by architecture stolen from football stadiums and gated communities. Witold Rybczynski presents An Anatomy of Megachurches - The new look for places of worship.
Remember how the White House was filming its own news, with actors as reporters and scripts pre-drafted by Republicans in office?
A couple of months ago this issue disappeared from mainstream debate after popular outcry and representatives’ promises to assiduously pursue the issue.
But several revisions of the bill in question later, Fake News is back to stay. No one reports on the failure of regulatory bills but the radical media clearinghouse, AlterNet.
From now forward, the White House feeds reports to reporters, White House stagings end up on your TV screen:
The bill clears the way for TV news operations to continue using snippets of government-produced VNRs for [video footage] in their own stories, as they do currently, leaving the issue of how to identify the material up to station news personnel.
Dianne Farsetta, AlterNet: MediaCulture: A Fake End to Fake News
Remember how the White House was filming its own news, with actors as reporters and scripts pre-drafted by Republicans in office?
A couple of months ago this issue disappeared from mainstream debate after popular outcry and representatives’ promises to assiduously pursue the issue.
But several revisions of the bill in question later, Fake News is back to stay. No one reports on the failure of regulatory bills but the radical media clearinghouse, AlterNet.
From now forward, the White House feeds reports to reporters, White House stagings end up on your TV screen:
The bill clears the way for TV news operations to continue using snippets of government-produced VNRs for [video footage] in their own stories, as they do currently, leaving the issue of how to identify the material up to station news personnel.
Dianne Farsetta, AlterNet: MediaCulture: A Fake End to Fake News
Two years ago or so when I was doing privacy law in the history of urban planning, my friend and fellow Berkeley graduate student David Molnar was feeding me with death-doom scenarios in which everything you carried — from groceries to library books to *passports* — could be read at a distance outside your house by any passer-by equipped with a radar.
Think you don’t care about whether strangers can access your information? Think your life is an open book? Go read some privacy law history. It starts to be a big deal when somebody takes out a lawsuit or a fatwa against you.
Anyway, the American government is now on the side of the lawsuits, fatwas, and creepy stalkers, says Molnar:
In regulations published Tuesday, the State Department claims it has addressed privacy concerns. The chipped passports ‘will not permit ‘tracking’ of individuals,’ the department said. ‘It will only permit governmental authorities to know that an individual has arrived at a port of entry–which governmental authorities already know from presentation of non-electronic passports–with greater assurance that the person who presents the passport is the legitimate holder of the passport.’
In a recent paper (PDF here), RSA Laboratories’ Ari Juels, and University of California’s David Molnar and David Wagner, warned that the design of the encryption keys is insufficiently secure. They said that the use of a “single fixed key” for the lifetime of the e-passport creates a vulnerability.
Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache, Passports to get RFID chip implants | CNET News.com
Two years ago or so when I was doing privacy law in the history of urban planning, my friend and fellow Berkeley graduate student David Molnar was feeding me with death-doom scenarios in which everything you carried — from groceries to library books to *passports* — could be read at a distance outside your house by any passer-by equipped with a radar.
Think you don’t care about whether strangers can access your information? Think your life is an open book? Go read some privacy law history. It starts to be a big deal when somebody takes out a lawsuit or a fatwa against you.
Anyway, the American government is now on the side of the lawsuits, fatwas, and creepy stalkers, says Molnar:
In regulations published Tuesday, the State Department claims it has addressed privacy concerns. The chipped passports ‘will not permit ‘tracking’ of individuals,’ the department said. ‘It will only permit governmental authorities to know that an individual has arrived at a port of entry–which governmental authorities already know from presentation of non-electronic passports–with greater assurance that the person who presents the passport is the legitimate holder of the passport.’
In a recent paper (PDF here), RSA Laboratories’ Ari Juels, and University of California’s David Molnar and David Wagner, warned that the design of the encryption keys is insufficiently secure. They said that the use of a “single fixed key” for the lifetime of the e-passport creates a vulnerability.
Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache, Passports to get RFID chip implants | CNET News.com
Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.
I remind the reader of the Progressive Era assumption that in the age of the large corporation, the State is the only institution powerful enough to protect the individual.
No individual, family, or private institution can protect life, freedom, and property by apprehending criminals, trying them before a court of law, and incarcerating them.
Nor can individuals and institutions, by themselves, enforce contracts, or fight terrorism, or negotiate and sign treaties with foreign governments, and the like.
These are responsibilities to which only the state can attend.
The Founders wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to define precisely government’s limited, specific role in securing individual rights, and how government should carry out that very important role.
Steve Forbes, The Moral Basis of a Free Society, Policy Review, 1997
Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.
I remind the reader of the Progressive Era assumption that in the age of the large corporation, the State is the only institution powerful enough to protect the individual.
No individual, family, or private institution can protect life, freedom, and property by apprehending criminals, trying them before a court of law, and incarcerating them.
Nor can individuals and institutions, by themselves, enforce contracts, or fight terrorism, or negotiate and sign treaties with foreign governments, and the like.
These are responsibilities to which only the state can attend.
The Founders wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to define precisely government’s limited, specific role in securing individual rights, and how government should carry out that very important role.
Steve Forbes, The Moral Basis of a Free Society, Policy Review, 1997
At Alternet, Susan J. Douglas writes that Democrats have missed a key opportunity to react Hurricane Katrina:
Hurricane Katrina not only changed things for the Republicans–it changed things for Democrats too. Katrina exposed the nation’s continuing failures to combat poverty and racism; it exhumed, from the ’70s, awareness of the country’s energy dependency and profligacy; it showed that we can move people in and out of a Big Ten football game more efficiently than out of the path of a storm; it showed that you actually need a functioning federal government; and it revealed our contempt for the elderly and the sick. (Indeed, we desperately need an 80-year-old rapper to proclaim ‘George Bush hates old people.’)
…Pelosi and the lugubrious Reid are reportedly meeting with mayors and governors to develop a strategy for 2006. But where are the meetings with actual people? Where is Howard Dean’s barnstorming of the country, with town meetings everywhere, to get a reality check on the passion of the people?
Talking to my friend Christopher this weekend, he blames an “age evolution” in the Democratic Party: the same people running the party who lost eight years ago; the same solutions, the same numb wait-and-see attitude. The only thing that could invigorate more of a reaction, more of a take-advantage-of-the-moment attitude, would be a wholesale rebellion by young Dems in their 20s and 30s — exactly what the Clintonistas accomplished in the early 90s. Which begs the question: who are those young Dems, and do they have the guts it takes to do so?
A woman in the audience at the National Cathedral conference, herself a longtime appointee of the State Department, commented in tears that our panels of outspoken Christian progressive Democrats were the first young leaders of substance she’d seen in the last decade.
I got a chill thinking about her remark in hindsight, because I thought I knew exactly the phenomenon she referred to. Indeed, our panels had courageous young activists and writers pulled from the corners of civilization like San Francisco or Philadelphia where one makes friends. They’re also more impassioned and willing to speak from personal trials by far than your average graduate of the Institute of Politics or Harvard Crimson.
I wonder if we’ve manufactured a generation of leaders too confident in traditional avenues of power, too accustomed to stiff ways of speaking, to work that revolution from within. In which case it will be an awfully long ride till we get a Democrat in the White House. And then the vanguard of courageous peace-and-justice activists on the Party’s fringe has a bigger task in front of it than it knows.