Category: religion and politics

Church and State should be separate in the body politic, but never in individuals.

ID as nominal philosophy

LA Times reports on a California lawsuit concerning “Intelligent Design.”

Since Intelligent Design as a science was universally shut down, the idea this time is to nominally call Intelligent Design “Philosophy of Design” while teaching it as a science or religion course. It’s a lot like a long car trip with your older brother in reverse: you agree upon a line you cannot cross and then he puts his finger over, then his arm over, an escalates until you start fighting again. Amusing stuff.Continue reading →

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Another war lost

It is sad that I have to resort to foreign outlets to be able to read a writeup of Iraq’s elections that is free of pundit sound-bites. That sadness is a different and deeper sort when I read the Independent’s analysis of the Iraqi election.

The neo-con justification for the Iraq War has always been to create a Reganesque “City on the Hill” for the Middle East and cause a reverse domino effect. Many of the brightest minds on the right were willing to sacrifice any means to create that end, even if it meant lying to us.

Though I worried this might be a March of Folly, I hoped I would be wrong. We put America on the path of an empire and all trajectory of all empires contains the fall of it. Maybe those who actually didn’t just use poly sci to fill a humanities elective would prove me to be naïve, for how could one college quarter of game theory compare to a lifetime of agenda setting?Continue reading →

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sub rosa

In a NYT editorial concerning America’s use of not-so-clever redefining the word “torture” to deny that America uses “extraordinary rendition” and similar tactics to cause de-facto torture:

But that doesn’t make it any less disturbing that the United States government seems to have lost its ability to distinguish between acts that may occur sub rosa in some exceptional, critical situations and the basic rules of proper international behavior.

Sub rosa means “pledged to secrecy” and is a Latin phrase (literally “under the rose”) which is a Middle Age practice that referenced a Greek myth I had not heard of.1

I first looked up the word when I wondered why SubRosaSoft, a Mac software company, got their name.

In any case, it’s a cool word. Also notice that the title of the editorial: “Secretary Rice’s Rendition” is a play on the double-meaning of the word rendition. I wasn’t aware of the legal meaning until this year—I can only guess as to how that word managed the tortuous path from its dramatic origin to the strange meaning today.

1 If Harpocrates is Horus, son of Isis (Egyptian Aphrodite) wouldn’t that imply that he is Eros or at least Eros’s brother. Why would Aphrodite give Eros a rose to give him directly? Me am confused!
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Relationships and Politics

A friend of mine went out on a date with a SUV-driving, Fox News-watching conservative Republican. I wonder if he shouts at his television set or gets angry when people impugn his man?

I made the mistake of commenting:

Reminds me of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm which I never saw because the last time I had television was when a room mate would watch Fox News on it. With a name like “GB”, I guess his political leanings are understandable. Does he go by his middle initial, “W”?

My brother once told me that he thought young Republicans were pathetic because as you got older you can always get more conservative—I blew that idea out of the water by getting more liberal…

You should’ve taken a picture of him for posterity before his species becomes extinct.

Bad Terry, never comment your political leanings on someone else’s blog! Bad! Bad!Continue reading →

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What I’m having for Thanksgiving

If anything should be indicative of a my right-wing gen-x background, it should be this simple fact: I did cross-ex debate in high school. One result of that is my Thanksgiving meal: a burger at Jack-In-The-Box.

The University of Pittsburgh tournament is held on Thanksgiving weekend. This is not a big deal normally for a Pittsburgher such as myself, except that for those last three years in high school, my family shared Thanksgiving with my relatives in Chester, New Jersey. I have nothing to show for this except a bad junk food Thanksgiving habit.Continue reading →

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The two wings of American political discourse

I was reading the latest two entries in the Letters To The New York Times blog written by someone under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout and I was struck again by how well-written they are. While the articles have the very liberal bent, most such left-wing blogs have too much MacBethian defeatism that is missing here. The precision of language and the ability to “stay the course” during the entire essay puts my random meanderings to shame. I wish I could write so well.

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Perfecting Watergate

Comparisons of how the Bush Administration is the the worst part of Nixon’s Watergate are like a bad hooker—cheap and easy.

The “paper of record” has an interesting article about the RNC front-organization, Progress for America. Basically, this group is heavily funded to rubber stamp anything that comes out of the White House—promoting John Robert’s nomination within 7 minutes, Harriet Meiers within 11 minutes, and having Sam Alito’s promotion ready before it was even announced. It’s very easy when half of your “grass roots” funds come from the same top 15 multimillion dollar donors as the President, your board consists of former Bush campaign aides, and your employees are part of the revolving door of Republican lobbyists. They have a term for that stuff in the tech world.

It’s called Astroturfing (as in “fake grassroots”).

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Judging character

I know I implied I would not link TimesSelect, but this gem from Paul Krugman deserves special mention.

This article is a great introspective on limitations of our ability to judge character (“thin-slicing” in Blink-speak). It makes a great case on how our judgement of character can easily be manipulated by a personal impression created under the right frame. If you aren’t interested in politics, you should read that article for the implications it has on business relationships and interviews and stop reading this one.

Here is what I want to talk about:

Let’s be frank: the Bush administration has made brilliant use of journalistic careerism. Those who wrote puff pieces about Mr. Bush and those around him have been rewarded with career-boosting access. Those who raised questions about his character found themselves under personal attack from the administration’s proxies. (Yes, I’m speaking in part from experience.)

That is an amazing quote.
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