Today I read Rod Dreher <a href=”http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/11/peter-maurin-and-the-culture-o.html”>comments</a> on Freddie de Boer’s <a href=”http://lhote.blogspot.com/2008/11/economic-conservatism-and-american.html”>piece about conservatism and the American Dream.</a>  Immediately I was reminded of a conversation my wife and I had about the infrastructure of communities, and how we had built away our sense of neighborhood in America, and replaced it with a consumer culture ever-wired together by new technologies, which have both the power to congregate us and disband us depending on how we use them.

Dreher writes:
<blockquote>What Freddie’s post brings to mind is how our permissive, hedonistic culture hurts the poor and the working class the most. You don’t have to believe in God to understand social psychology, and how important it is for people who don’t have much of anything to live by a code that encourages thrift, modesty and self-restraint — because they have so very much to lose if they don’t. We have created a society in which it’s hard for people to develop the habits of the heart that help them achieve — well, if you don’t like the word <em>goodness</em>, how about <em>health</em>, or <em>sustainability</em>? Put another way, the way we’re living, and the culture of consumption we’ve created, both are unsustainable, because they depend on a distortion of human nature. As we are learning, and shall learn.</blockquote>

The more I read Dreher’s work on “Crunchy Conservatives”, the more I like what I see.  My wife and I have been mulling over this concept of the “American Dream” and how out of control it’s gotten.  The notion of an “ownership society” is all well and good, but when it becomes a “finance your boat and your five flat-screen TV’s with the future value of your home that you haven’t even paid off yet” society, then I think obviously things have gotten a bit out of hand.

We have become a nation without restraint, fed at the trough of greed and materialism, told we are worthless unless we are all CEO’s, unless we are all driving the best cars and watching our nightly shows on the biggest, flattest , most colorful screens available.  We are taught to emulate pop-stars and business executives rather than poets and heroes–unless, of course, those poets are rappers, or those heroes are only heroes of the Will Smith variety–fictional and easily categorized.

We have lost our sense of community and locality, and replaced it with a need to buy more, be more, and in a sense strive to transcend our humanity through artificial gains, through that promise of an American Dream which has grown ever shallower in the face of unbridled consumerism.

In society there are levels of structural units, building blocks, beginning first with the individual and ending up with the Federal Government or the National cultural scene (as in Hollywood, cable tv, etc.)  In between these stages are many smaller structures.  Perhaps most importantly we have the family unit.  Then there is the extended family; the neighborhood; the section of town; the town; the county; the State; the region; and so on into ever expanding levels of society.  In a global world, the scope becomes truly vast.

What has happened, first with the advent of the interstate system, and the build up of the suburbs, and now with the internet and mass communication, is a sort of systemic disassociation from the smaller structural pieces–family, neighborhood, locality.

We now prefer to listen to national hits on our radios when, at least in my home town, there are easily a dozen very talented bands and as many more solo musicians far more interesting and unique.  I can’t find a station that plays a single of their songs.  We skip local theatre in favor of big action movies, and could name fifty movie stars before we could conjure up a single local actor.

We ignore local politics in favor of the big, flashy national elections, even though in an ideal world, the election of our mayor or sheriff would have at least as much of a personal impact on our daily lives as the election of our next President.

What all of this leads to is a culture of easy promises which manifests into a population overwhelmed with high-interest debt, run-away levels of depression, and rampant materialism.  We trade in tradition and values for the rat-race.  Money, we are told, and fame are surest ways to be successful–and in some sense, it’s very hard to argue with this.  Some measure of financial success is completely necessary.  So is there a balance to strike?

I have the option to work overtime at my job, and make a great deal more money.  When I do this I am able to spend a great deal more, but I’m tired, busy, and a far worse companion.  In a sense, I view this overtime work as a tax increase on my time rather than an income potential.  If I could cut my spending, I wouldn’t have to raise this time tax.  It would no longer be necessary.  If I could live more frugally, I could spend more time pursuing my goals, and hanging out with my family.  But to do this, I can’t borrow endlessly.  I have to cut spending.  Plain and simple.  I have to set limits.

Our culture says otherwise.  The actions of our spend-all Government say otherwise.  The constant barrage of ads and materialist assaults on our sense of self say otherwise.  After 9/11 the salve with which we were supposed to treat our wounded nation was the simple, no-sacrifice act of shopping.  We weren’t asked to go give back to our country.  No indeed, the best way to do this was to go spend our money at Sears and Best Buy.

We no longer sit on our front porch for entertainment, hollering back and forth with the neighbors, or trading stories in our front lawns.  Most people don’t even have a front porch.  We no longer walk to the corner market.  Most people don’t even have a corner market, and the big superstore is too far away or at least it certainly seems too far away in our towns built for cars and not people.

This is what I like about the Crunchy Con movement and the New Urbanist movement, and how I see them becoming entangled.  They both evoke the spirit of neotraditionalism.  I just think change should emerge in a grassroots, community-first way, and that some of the most basic ways I believe we can change this culture of consumption is through an investment in our infrastructure, building cities that are once again friendly to the pedestrian and the neighborhood, rather than commuter islands built for the benefit of the oil and auto and construction industries.  Let’s create communities we can once again be a part of.  That’s real America–and it’s an idea, not a geographic location, or the arbitrary colors red or blue on a map.
There is no easy way to escape a consumer-driven society.  But it’s about time conservatives started talking about it.

“The thing to remember about fathers is, they’re men. A girl has to keep it in mind: They are dragon–seekers, bent on improbable rescues. Scratch any father, you find someone chock–full of qualms and romantic terrors, believing change is a threat - like your first shoes with heels on, like your first bicycle it took such months to get. “

– Phyllis Mcginley

Change

A funny thing happened on the way to the changing room last night at Target. My wife had two pairs of jeans she wanted to try on. We were there with my one and a half year old daughter, and had spent the first half of our little outing chasing her up and down aisles of talking Elmo dolls and motion-activated cats; toy kitchens with more features than our real one; and games and gadgets so varied it becomes downright dizzying after a while.

In any case, my wife was ready to try said jeans on and suggested that we accompany her into one of the well-marked family dressing rooms.

“Uhm, I can’t let you do that,” the girl at the dressing room counter said, just as I was about to follow my wife into the dressing room, my 17 month old daughter held in a very obvious manner in my arms. It wasn’t as though we were two hormone-ridden teenagers, sneaking into the changing room to have a little fun.

And regardless, I imagine teenagers these days have many better places than public dressing rooms. We certainly did in my day…

There was a moment of silence as both our faces, I’m sure, took on expressions of surprise, indignation, perhaps even a touch of confusion. My daughter yawned. I’m sure that hint of anger blossomed on my wife’s face before my own, though we were all tired, at the tail end of our daughter’s umpteenth cold and what feels like decades of teething and nights cut into slivers shards of sleep. Indeed, sleep has taken on a new definition almost–has become some withered descendant of the glorious thing it once was. It wasn’t as though this little incursion into our normal shopping experience actually angered either of us. But it was annoying.

The girl stared back at us, and I pointed at the little icon of a man, a woman, and a child plastered in white and red to the changing room door and said “Then what does this mean? Isn’t this a family changing room?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t let you in there.”

“Why?” my wife asked.

“I’ve never heard that before,” I said. “We’ve been here a thousand times.” This may or may not have been an exaggeration. It certainly felt accurate at the time.

There was a moment of self-doubt. The girl’s face clouded over. She was younger than us. I imagine we both looked tired, too serious, perhaps a little intimidating. I had a particularly disheveled look to me, I know. I need a haircut. Sunday isn’t my best day.

“Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. Nevermind.”

At which point, I admit, I felt an odd mixture of guilt and disdain. I’m sure she was only doing her job–perhaps she was new–but then again, how hard can it be? There was a sign not two feet from where she sat that said “Family Changing Rooms.”

In any case, somewhat baffled, we entered the changing room and discovered to nobody’s surprise that neither pair of jeans was the right pair. Clothes shopping, it has been said, was the inspiration for Goldilocks.

Time

One thing I’ve noticed about having a family, or having a daughter now as opposed to being a childless married couple, is that not only is work more important and necessary now, but coming home from work is far, far better.

Nothing beats your toddler screaming “Daddy!” and running into the kitchen when you arrive, eager to show you a myriad things which she has names for only decipherable to herself and her mother. I mean it. Nothing in this glorious world compares.

There are the early mornings, too. The weariness. The effort and confusion. How can she be awake and so happy and energetic at 5:30 in the morning? How is this possible after waking up three times over the course of the evening? It’s not possible. It’s a dream…

But over a bowl of cheerios, her sippy cup, my black tea or black coffee, I know that there is a time for sleeping in and a time for being awake. I know that this time in our lives will pass so quickly it will be little more than a dream someday. I know this because it already is passing this quickly. I feel helpless against it, and that is because I am helpless. Every phrase ever written about the passage of time is a cliche, and every one is true.

God

And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

(Matthew 18:2-6 ESV)

I think it is a blessing indeed to be a father. I would not trade it for all the world…

That there is a conflict existing between the Jewish state of Israel and its neighbors is a known fact throughout the world. From there, however, explaining the conflict further and exploring its roots requires a certain amount of nuance. Most casual observers may equate the conflict over religious differences between two monotheistic faiths or even a dispute over real estate. In large part they would be right. However, there is something more profound just under the surface. What fuels this incredible conflict is something far more tangible than religious disputes and closed borders. What gives the region the awesome force of power to take up arms for their cause generation after generation comes from the concept of ethnonationalism.

Ethnonationalism, or ethnic nationalism, may sound like the latest academic buzzword; but, in fact, ethnonationalism is hardly a new concept. It has been around since humans first developed the sense of kinship, language, tribalism, tradition, religion, cosmopolitans, nation states and so forth. It produces the sources for human spirit and enmity. Ethnonatioalism brought forth Manifest Destiny, the U.S. Civil War, WWI and WWII (which was fueled by extreme ethnonationalism in National Socialism ideology) and centuries long continental and world dominance by the nation states of Europe. The list could literally go on and on. It’s based off a narrow list of identities that fuels the societal belief behind a particular cause. It’s often strong, unwilling to compromise, and lasting. Those in the modern era that may find such an archaic premise troubling, intellectually and morally, haven’t paid attention to how the world has been shaped by ethnonationalism. Take America, our modern thinking polity often times belittles the ideas of ethnic nationalism or a particular national identity. We often pride ourselves as an “open” society where numerous ethnicities live in relative peace.

Social scientist go to great lengths to explain the enduring qualities of a culture, usually described as Western, that is inviting making it easier for different nationalities regardless of racial or religious origins to assimilate. They label this as liberal or civic nationalism. However, the fact that ethnonationalism already won out in North America over a century ago and continues to shape the identity of this country is rarely considered. Jerry Z. Muller (2008) says in his Foreign Affairs article, Us and Them, “The liberal view has competed with and often lost out to a different view, that of ethnonationalism. The core of ethnonatioinalist idea is that nations are defined by a shared heritage, which usually includes a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry.” (p. 20) Over the course of a couple of centuries, migration by a disproportionate amount of white Protestants from Northern-Europe and England brought with them a culture, traditions, laws and language. They, and their subsequent ancestors (that even include us), tamed, created and shaped the U.S. and as a result, the competition between civilizations in North America has been over for nearly 200 years.

Through conquest and industry, ethnonationalism in America reigned supreme and it has been by those standards that others have assimilated and adopted. If the societal equilibrium were to shift away from this because of mass migration or, a separate demographic explosion, it’s not all that unlikely that competing cultures here in the U.S. could rekindle the flames of ethnonationalism.

Ethnonationalism is a strong force in Arab nations. Mainly because of their history, good and bad, and their religion. The modern Arab nationalist/extremist suffers from insecurities, and an inferiority complex. Added to that is a long laundry list of grievances and jealousies suffered by the West. While their history involves Defensive Developmentalism, government incompetence and loose and feuding confederations of tribes, all in which brought on a steady decline of social, military and political capital. Their nemesis in the West represents the antithesis to their situation. Europe’s high sense of identity and righteousness led to a global pursuit of riches, conquest, glory and dominance at the expense of the Middle East. When that episode in their history ran its course, American dominance picked up where Europe left off.

But to get to the point that allowed Western-European dominance and manipulation in the Middle East something binding and energetic was needed in the region. It came in the form of strong nation-states that were emerging in Western Europe. The competition between the competing powers in Europe during the 1500s – 1800s laid the way for increased economic and military expansion. Economic prosperity and ethnic nationalism requires literacy and education to promote communication and common beliefs. What developed from this was set of competing nation states that were very defined, educated and ethically charged, and the results were explosive. Consequently, the Middle East endured centuries of economic and political incursion through colonization by a Western civilization that far outpaced them in almost all aspects of life, and continues even today. Nothing in the daily lives of Arabs pass without a Western imprint on it. From music, to movies, commercial goods and technologies, all are a product of Western civilization. For many Arabs that even means the very country they live in was created or influenced by Western powers.

These are all things that most Arabs are aware of and resent. This, of course, plays heavily on their physic. And herein lies the reason for conflicts, ethnonationalism and the clash between West and Middle-east vs. Israel.If ethnonationalism gives reason to fight along borders or within a region, then hatred, distrust, jealousy and indifference with the Christian West give Arab-Muslims an overarching global cause.Samuel P. Huntington (1996) refers to this movement in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (p. 255). It is the overriding force in today’s global politics and particularly in the Middle East. All observable differences have to be considered and accepted as major contributors to the conflict such as different language, religion, culture, etc. However, Western dominance and Diktat runs an equally strong course through the life of the Arab world. In the view of most Arab-Muslim nationalist, Israel’s existence in former Palestine offers a daily reminder of Western dominance and the inadequacies of the Arab world. Jewish Israel is a spur literally in the side of Islam.

Considering Israel’s size and population great wealth, technology, and medical advances provide a standard of living that far exceeds most Arab countries.What’s more, it is the region’s premier military power and has been tested numerous times, in which resulted in embarrassing and disastrous defeats for Arab-Muslim nations. It’s no wonder that the creation and existence of Israel is first on the list of grievances.

Balfour Agreement, Zionism and Hezbollah

The ending of WWI brought the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and with it a great vacuum to fill. The British Empire still had important interest in the region. Palestine stood out strategically because it served as a land bridge from Egypt to India and offered security to the Suez Canal protecting the sea road to India and elsewhere throughout the Empire. Britain, under Lloyd George devised away to bring Palestine under its sphere and serve as an ally in the Mid East. He distrusted the Arabs in Palestine and possible German interference in the region; therefore, pushed the idea of mass Jewish resettlement in the ancient land. David Fromkin (1989) in his book A Peace to End All Peace supports the idea. “There were also those who were worried about allowing the Germans and Turks to retain control of an area whose vital importance had been underscored by the Prime Minister. The assistant secretaries of the War Cabinet , Leo Amery and Mark Sykes, worried that in the postwar world the Ottoman Empire might fall completely in the clutches of Germany. Were that to happen, the road to India would be in enemy hands – a threat the British Empire could avert only by ejecting the Turks and Germans, and taking into British hands the southern perimeter of the Ottoman domains.” (p. 276)

These factors plus Biblical romanticism, Woodrow Wilson’s high-minded and heavy-handed international views, and a growing surge of Zionism led to the Balfour agreement the prelude to the British mandate that created modern day Israel.Zionism was growing in importance in Europe as well as in America. It was fueled from Jewish suffering and centuries of persecution in just about whatever land they settled. Before the end of WWI, they began to be gripped by the idea returning to their ancestral homeland in Palestine as the “Land of Israel”. The idea that they could set up a Jewish government based on self-determination and structured on Western democracy, led to a nostalgic frenzy. Backed by the British government, fear of anti-Semitism and, later the holocaust, migration was encouraged to create a modern Jewish state.

With them they brought valuable trades in medicine, law, education, commerce and a Western sense of culture that previously was absent from the area. All of this was promptly greeted with a revolt from the indigenous Arabs of the region. The areas under control by Arabs were cleansed of Jews and the areas controlled by Jews forced Arabs out to the surrounding Arab countries. During the ensuing years, violence against Jews in Arab countries forced another round of migration to Israel. Jerry Muller (2008) writes about the impact in the region upon the establishment of the Jewish state and Jewish migration. “Some 750,000 Arabs left, primarily for the surrounding Arab countries, andthe remaining 150,000 constituted only about a sixth of the population of thenew Jewish State. In the years afterward, nationalist-inspired violence against Jews in Arab countries propelled almost all of the more than 500,000 Jews there to leave their lands of origin and immigrate to Israel.” (p. 29)

The seeds for ethnonationlsim and true clash between West and Islam were being planted.Hezbollah is a byproduct from the creation of the Jewish sate and Zionism. Though founded only in 1982 out of reaction from the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the group itself is hardly a new concept. Its history goes back as far as Arab-Muslim nationalism/Islamism does and can be seen as a microcosm of Arab/Islamic sentiment towards Israel and Western backing. The force itself acts as troops in the trench on the front line fighting against Western incursion and Zionism. Also, it gives an outlet for uneducated and unemployed young men to serve a cause greater than their lowly existence can muster. Furthermore, Hezbollah gives the Muslim world a chance to cheer and feel a source of pride as it repeatedly thumbs its nose at Israel and, by extension, engages in a proxy war with the West. Naturally, they receive high popularity in Southern Lebanon and support from regional powers like Syria and Iran.

Ethnonationalism, and all the defining and clashing identities that come with it contributed to the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict in 2006. However, something much greater and far reaching was at play.What actually is taking place is the Islamic world’s attempt to do away with the status-quo of Western interference in the region. Israel represents Western dominance and arrogance; therefore, the conflict is one entirely between the West and Islam, with Israel as the battlefront. The West, and America being its standard bearer, represents an image of unimaginable power and wealth — with God like powers that is able to topple governments as well as prop them up. With that comes an arrogance and a global swagger coupled with high minded policies of inclusion, tolerance and the persuasion of Western universal values and systems. While promoting these ideals, the West (mainly the U.S.) sometimes bomb and invade Muslim countries while at the same time preaching restraint, praising human rights, and acting as a global hawk for weapons proliferation. This creates resentment and assertiveness from the Muslim world and sets the path for extremism. The populace adopts an antagonistic attitude and governments begin to cooperate to undermine American-Western aims, as was the case with the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah conflict.

History is always present and the events of the past leaves the residual necessary to fuel the ongoing pattern of conflict between the West and Islam. There is a source of pride and romanticism that exist in the Muslim world. Muslim dominance was absolute in the Middle East and North Africa by the 8th century. The Arabic armies fought off Christian advances into the Holy Land and by the 13th century the Ottomans were a “world” power that caused Europe to quake. This era was the high-water mark of Muslim dominance and exertion in worldly affairs. From the 16th century on the West, powered by organized nation-states, gained every conceivable advantage over the Ottomans and other Empires in the Middle East.

By the 20th century almost the entire Middle East was under the sphere of Western control. Huntington (1996) writes, “By 1920 only four Muslim countries – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Afghanistan – remained independent of some form of non-Muslim rule.”(p. 210). Considering all of this, that groups like Hezbollah draws support is hardly amazing. These Islamic groups play up Islamic romanticism and fuel the imagination of a time when Islam and its principles ran supreme. It glorifies an explosive culture, a growing population and draws out on the fundamental differences that exist between Christianity and Islam especially in a time when the American-Western way of life is so heavily promoted and seductive to Middle Eastern culture. It gives a growing population of youth a chance to be a part of a grand cause and an opportunity to advance socially.

More importantly, Islam has showed a propensity for violence and absolutism and with the Western creation of Jewish Israel sitting squarely and defiantly on their land only brings the volatile culture to a boil. Samuel Huntington (1996) states, “Intense antagonisms and violent conflicts are pervasive between local Muslim and non-Muslim peoples.” And again he states supported by a list of evidence. “In the early 1990s Muslims were engaged in more intergroup violence than were non-Muslims, and two-thirds to three-quarters of intercivilazational wars were between Muslims and non-Muslims” (pp. 256, 257, 258).

Conclusion

The ideological, cultural, religious and deeply historical differences between the Islamic/fundamentalist Middle East and the Christian/secular West are likely to continue. A growing younger Muslim population who tend to be more conservative and are likely to be more fundamental will only add to an assertive culture with an absolutist faith. Larger numbers of immigrants from the Middle East to Europe and America will further create antagonisms between the cultures as tensions and conflicts take place elsewhere. Islamic states like Iran who is showing the willingness to assert their power regionally may also prove to be a destabilizing influence.

Israel was created during an age of ethnonationalism and many of its citizens and leaders are still influenced by it. The country and its government was born from 20th century style of European nationalism and still carries with it the policies and sentiment that helped to shape it. Therefore, it is unlikely, at least in the foreseeable future, that Israeli will make any substantial concessions to Muslim demands. As the regional military power, backed by the U.S., Israel will continue to defend itself from threats and protect its interest in the region.

If the Middle East can become stabilized economically during this century, many of the disenchanted youth can find opportunity socially and through education, and not through radical Islamic groups. As opportunities increase and standard of living goes up so will the fortunes of the region. However, radicalism and resentment seems to be the only social/political outlet and current source for Arab-Muslim thinking.

References and Bibliography

Ferguson, N. (2006). The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. New York: Penguin Books.

Fromkin, D. (1989).A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. New York: Avon Books

Huntington, S. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & amp; and; Schuster.

Muller, J. (2008). The Clash of Peoples: Us and Them. Foreign Affairs, 87 (2) , 18-35.

UPDATE: Brought to you by George Soros

As anyone familiar with my writing knows, I’m a hawk.  I believe in America as a world power that, when needed, should use its military might to protect the downtrodden, those suffering genocide, or to stop a country harboring terrorists.  I would support an invasion of Iran if all else failed.  However, I do think we need to truly exhaust all resources prior to bomb, bomb, bombing that country. After all, its citizenry is very pro-American.

But I’m not down with Holy War.  I’m not interested in casting out demons or witches, or putting a Pentacostal Evangelical who makes Bush look agnostic at the helm of this government.  It’s crazy, people.

Won’t this play right into the extremists’ hands?  Electing another evangelical, end-times Christian into office while in the midst of two wars in or near the Holy Land?  I don’t imagine that Israeli’s are feeling too comfortable with this choice either, though they may be as nervous about an Obama Presidency.

Personally, I think we’ve reached critical mass with this.  There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with religious people in Government.  It’s just that Palin is so over-the-top religious.  Zealots, even well-meaning ones, are dangerous when put in positions of power.

~by Phillip Pullman

When I heard that my novel The Golden Compass (the name in the USA of Northern Lights) appeared in the top five of the American Library Association’s list of 2007’s most challenged books, my immediate and ignoble response was glee. Firstly, I had obviously annoyed a lot of censorious people, and secondly, any ban would provoke interested readers to move from the library, where they couldn’t get hold of my novel, to the bookshops, where they could. That, after all, was exactly what happened when a group called the Catholic League decided to object to the film of The Golden Compass when it was released at the end of last year. The box office suffered, but the book sales went up – a long way up, to my gratification.

Because they never learn. The inevitable result of trying to ban something – book, film, play, pop song, whatever – is that far more people want to get hold of it than would ever have done if it were left alone. Why don’t the censors realise this?

In the case of The Golden Compass, the reason the book was challenged is listed as “Religious Viewpoint”, a reason that appears in connection with only one other book in the top five, a picture book called And Tango Makes Three. This is based on the true story of a pair of male penguins in New York’s Central Park Zoo, who for a time formed a couple and hatched the egg of a mixed-sex couple who were unable to hatch two at once. This, if you can believe it, was challenged for six different reasons: “Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group.”

Religious Viewpoint? Penguins?

I hope the authors have done very well out of the increased sales they’ll have enjoyed, but this kind of thing only invites the rest of the world to consider the American public demented.

In fact, when it comes to banning books, religion is the worst reason of the lot. Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed. The rank stench of oppression wafts from every authoritarian church, chapel, temple, mosque, or synagogue – from every place of worship where the priests have the power to meddle in the social and intellectual lives of their flocks, from every presidential palace or prime ministerial office where civil leaders have to pander to religious ones.

My basic objection to religion is not that it isn’t true; I like plenty of things that aren’t true. It’s that religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.

The organization originally alleged as hacking into Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account, known as “Anonymous,” has been identified as a “left wing group” by Caleb Howe (the group was videotaped staging some unusual protests at this year’s Republican National Convention).

There’s some question, however, as to the ideological identification of “Anonymous” as a leftist protest organization.
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The Telegraph reports:

Five sharia courts have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester and Nuneaton, Warwickshire. The government has quietly sanctioned that their rulings are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court. Previously, the rulings were not binding and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

Lawyers have issued grave warnings about the dangers of a dual legal system and the disclosure drew criticism from Opposition leaders.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “If it is true that these tribunals are passing binding decisions in the areas of family and criminal law, I would like to know which courts are enforcing them because I would consider such action unlawful. British law is absolute and must remain so.”

This is frightening, though I imagine quite a lot more alarming to UK citizens than to Americans like myself.

In unrelated news, comedian Sabina Guzzanti is facing up to five years in an Italian prison for insulting the Pope:

Addressing a Rome rally in July, Sabrina Guzzanti warmed up with a few gags about Silvio Berlusconi — her favourite target for her biting impressions — before moving on to some unrepeatable jokes about Mara Carfagna, the Equal Opportunities Minister and one-time topless model.

But then she got religion, and after warning everyone that within 20 years Italian teachers would be vetted and chosen by the Vatican, she got to the punchline: “But then, within 20 years the Pope will be where he ought to be — in Hell, tormented by great big poofter devils, and very active ones, not passive ones.”

The joke may have gone done well with her crowd on the Piazza Navona in Rome, but not with Italian prosecutors. She is facing prosecution for “offending the honour of the sacred and inviolable person” of Benedict XVI.

Well, with no offense meant to any Catholics who may be reading this, to hell with the Pope.  Or, rather, to hell with the Italian political establishment who would jail a commedian and suppress free speech in order to somehow woo the good graces of his Papal Majesty.

Sarah Palin with the troops

I just watched the first installment of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s interview with Charles Gibson, on ABC’s World News Tonight.

Palin gave a confident, intelligent interview. She appeared cool, calm, and perfectly comfortable responding to Gibson’s line of questioning.

Yet, the emerging meme on the left is that Palin was “stumped” on the Bush Doctrine. Granted, Palin seemed to search for a response, but if that’s what Palin’s critics want to focus on, so be it.

The greater significance of Palin’s talk is the way the Alaska Governor offered a ringing confirmation of the basic, underlying ideals that have guided not just the Bush administration’s forward policy of preemptive defense and democracy promotion, but that of America’s foreign policy tradition historically. This came at Palin’s response on the question of God’s will:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee, netwmd.com

All for fear of offending Muslims, we have “a quiet wave of self-censorship and cultural cowardice sweeping Western art circles:” A novel (The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones) is pulled before it even got published; the “BBC has dropped a big-budget docu-drama, The London Bombers;” “the BBC hospital soap Casualty chang[ed] Muslim terrorists into animal rights activists;” and, the “Royal Court Theatre cancel[ed] an adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.” To this sorry list, I would add all the U.S. and Canadian newspapers who refused to publish the Danish Mohammad cartoons, because the editors were cowering under their desks. I turn readers’ attention to an op-ed by Mick Hume for the Sunday Times

Just the impassioned prose of the author — the sheer quality — should be enough to scream “WAKE-UP CALL” to the West:

… The threat to freedom here does not come from a few Islamic radicals, but from the invertebrate liberals of the cultural establishment who have so lost faith in themselves that they will surrender their freedoms before anybody starts a fight. The mere suggestion of causing offence to some mob of imagined stereotypes is enough to have them scurrying for a bomb shelter, their creative imaginations blowing up small protests into the threat of a big culture war. Of course, such pre-emptive grovelling only encourages any zealot with a blog to demand even more censorship.

Who needs book burners if “offensive” books are not allowed to be published in the first place? Why bother to protest against provocative plays if the theatres will turn the lights off for you beforehand? There is no need even for a polite exchange on Points of View if the controversial programmes never get made.

The quality or lack of it in the self-censored works is not the issue here. That associate professor from Texas condemned the novel about Muhammad’s wife as “soft porn”. But so what if it was? Free expression should mean freedom for what others see as filth, too. If there are artists childishly causing offence for its own sake, feel free to ignore them, but not to gag them.

Pre-emptive grovelling, encouraged from the top down by our illiberal authorities, is bad for the arts and for society. The arts can only flourish in a climate of cultural anarchy rather than compulsion and conformity. The attempt to limit what can be said must have a chilling effect, encouraging other writers and artists to pull in their horns.

Such self-censorship is also dangerous for those who don’t much care about high culture. There is indeed a lesson from the Satanic Verses controversy, but not the one often cited. The dominant response to that clash of cultures was to try to bury it beneath worthy multicultural claptrap about celebrating difference. After more than 15 years of such attempts to suppress honest debate, the tensions festering beneath the surface exploded on the London transport system. As one female Muslim writer critical of the decision not to publish The Jewel of Medina says: “The series of events that torpedoed this novel are a window into how quickly fear stunts intelligent discourse about the Muslim world.” …

~by Jillian Becker

I am a convinced law-and-order conservative, an eagerly practicing capitalist, an ideological libertarian. I accept enthusiastically the whole package of US Republican Party policy and sentiment - pro-America, pro-victory in Iraq, pro-gun, anti-abortion (with sensible reservations), pro-death penalty, pro-tax cuts, pro-smaller government, pro-spreading democracy and freedom throughout the world, pro-Israel, anti-welfare - all except one of its usual ingredients: belief in God. I do not accept God.

Quite simply, I cannot believe in God. I am old, past my three score years and ten, and decade upon decade I have read and listened, and there cannot be much that is old or new, famous, terse, verbose, smart, innocent, insidious, widely published or commonly uttered, learnedly debated or popularly discussed on the subject of God that I have not read or heard.

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“There is exactly the same degree of possibility and likelihood of the existence of the Christian God as there is of the existence of the Homeric God.” - Bertrand Russell

Few if any people in the world today would put faith in the Gods presented in the epic poem The Iliad of ancient Greece. Most Christians and Muslims would treat such theistic claims as humorous folly akin to a child believing in the tooth fairy. The majority of Atheists would concur with the addendum that Abrahamic Monotheism is as equally daft.

The above notion was part of the reason I became an Atheist at the age of seventeen. My parents had provided a solid foundation of religious belief in the assumption that it would be a bedrock from which to either continue to build or reject when I was old enough to choose. Both my parents were agnostics but each held great interest in all the religions of the world, past and present. I was baptised Roman Catholic shortly after birth and would later go through my first Holy Confession and Communions, as well as attending an all boys Roman Catholic Prep School where prayers were said twice daily.

As a child, I strangely never questioned the existence of God and took for granted the religious teachings as truth. I did the same with Father Christmas who in many ways was more magical and endearing than Jesus Christ. It could be said that the terrible revelation about the non-existence of the bearded man in red shook the foundations of my religious core just a little too much, thereby weakening the essence of ‘belief’ for the aftershocks of later contemplation and study. If one highly regarded invisible charachter was fiction, then what about the rest?

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‘The burden in proving God doesn’t exist does not lie at my door; it’s up believers to prove he does’ writes one atheist commentator. Though I wish I had a compelling personal journey which produced my atheism, I don’t. While I agree the burden lies with the believers, I will nevertheless try and justify my personal stance. I feel uneasy about the distinctions made between atheism and antitheism. For me, if you’re a non-believer, it’s natural that a part of you is hostile towards religion. Quite like I believe a rejection of ‘religious humanism’ inevitably produces support for ‘secular humanism’.

Though there were once theories supporting the existence of God, evolutionary theory drastically challenged arguments such as the world was six thousand years old and was created in six days. It was shown dinosaurs were millions of years old, yet religious leaders still dogmatically claimed they existed several thousand years ago. I choose however, to place my faith (pardon the expression) in science and empiricism. I dismiss design arguments that pre-suppose the complexity of the world inevitably means there must be some omnipotent, intelligent creator.

My atheism however, is not just a response to the scientific counter argument – though this alone should provide sufficient justification. Whilst I believe religion can promote desirable values in society, such as liberty, equality, toleration and mutual respect for one another (which would rule me out as an antitheist), I also believe it can drastically undermine these notions (which would make me an antitheist). Societies must contain universal values, free from all religious interference. I deplore the way religion is used in politics – even in liberal democracies.

In Britain, we are thankfully not confronted by this problem, but the US for example, is. Presidential candidates since Carter have attempted to use their beliefs for political gain. Though faith ought to be personal and private, it is too often public and political. In Western societies, religion in politics produces the inaccurate belief that in order to be conservative you must be religious. Just because supporting retributive justice and individual responsibility for example, have a religious basis, faith is not a pre-requisite in marking GOP on your ballot paper. This is reminiscent of the assumption you cannot be conservative, yet liberal towards cultural issues such as abortion and gay rights.

Although religion in Western politics is undesirable, the effects are generally benign and does not lead to an abuse of the values mentioned above. It’s in authoritarian theocracies where the dividing line between the church and state evaporates. Yet this necessary division shouldn’t be perceived only as a Western value. Theocracies abuse not only the rights of domestic citizens but constitute a threat to world peace.

Whilst I don’t intend to tar all believers with the same extremist brush, I associate religious beliefs as a fundamental cause of political and cultural radicalism in societies. And when I say ‘religion’, I mean all major faiths, as radicalism transcends inter-faith differences. For example, it may be evangelical Christians in the US carrying out attacks on abortion clinics on behalf of the pro-life movement, or Islamists blowing up fellow citizens and killing infidels in the name of Allah.

I deplore the attempt by clerical preachers to proselytize and indoctrinate young impressionable individuals into dogmatic ways of thinking before they understand the ideas. Equally sickening is when preachers deliberately obfuscate their beliefs making them inaccessible to non-believers, in an attempt to legitimize their radicalism. It is refreshing that many ultimately reject the beliefs forced upon them. For example, the Dutch politician and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoke out against authoritarian Islamic practices, and the author Ed Hussain, experienced Islamism first hand as a member of extremist Islamist groups in Britain, before rejecting their fundamentalist teachings.

My defintion of ‘radicalism’ is not exclusive to terror attacks upon individuals and non-believers; or the proselytizing of hate preachers. The abuse of those individuals who are part of the faith also constitutes radicalism, whether this be the oppression of women through forced marriages, polygamous cults, or the female adulterers and homosexuals who are stoned to death. These primitive practices are detrimental not only to Western socieities, but all societies throughout the world. And, just because these illiberal semi-feudal practices are viewed as ‘tradition’, this doesn’t justify their existence.

The final reason I renounce faith is due to the historical link between religious beliefs and war. Men have always gone to war over their faith; the Crusades being the most apt historical example. Contemporarily, we see evidence of religious conflicts dividing people and countries. Again this trascends faiths, whether it be Islamic Jihad on infidels, Protestants versus Catholics in Northern Ireland, Sunnis versus Shi’ites in Iraq, Hindus versus Muslims in Pakistan, or Jews versus Muslims in Israel.

I recognize these disputes can be perceived as political as much as religious, but the significance of religion cannot be underestimated. Iran may disagree with Israel’s right to exist politically, but their belief originates because Israel is a Jewish nation. When different faiths and sub-sections claim their tenets are absolute and that they have a spiritual right to territorites, war is inevitable. One need only look at Jerusalem to illustrate this – a sacred holy site for Christians, Jews and Muslims. As one commentator puts it, religion represents ‘a threat to human survival’. It’s not that religion necessarily equals violence, terror, and war, but that the latter often has unavoidable roots in the former.

As mentioned, for me, being a non-believer and being hostile towards religion are mutually exclusive. Athiests must in some form be antitheists. If they weren’t they would have no logical reason not to believe. Voltaire said ‘If God did not exist, he would have to be invented’. For me, man created God, not the other way round.

All non-believers should say Amen to that.

TEHRAN — A man wrapped in a shawl stood at the door.

“This is Jesus,” said another man.

Jesus sat and peeled an orange as his companion, Nader Talebzadeh, began to speak, precisely, so as not to be misunderstood on a matter so sensitive. The Iranian director’s new film is based on the Islamic version of the life of Jesus, depicting the man Christians believe to be the messiah and son of God as a tormented Judean prophet foretelling the coming of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim faith.

One might imagine such a tale may not screen well in the red states of America. The film, nearly 10 years in the making, draws on the Koran and the putative Gospel of Barnabas, considered by many Western scholars a medieval fable. The premise of “Jesus, the Spirit of God” is that Jesus was compassionate and performed miracles, but was not crucified or resurrected from the dead. The message implies that Christianity, a faith of 2 billion people and the core of much Western philosophy, is based on a falsehood.

“I pray for Christians. They’ve been misled. They will realize one day the true story,” said Talebzadeh, whose film has been screened at international film festivals and is being marketed for wider release.

“People might use this film as a strategy to further demonize Iran,” he said. “They may succeed. But I hope once you see that the focus of the film is sacred, it will overwhelm. No one would have imagined that an Iranian would make a film to glorify Jesus.”

Not to mention an Iranian who supports President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and believes 9/11 was partly a U.S. government conspiracy. “Someone masterminded something,” he said. “And this is the cause for a lot of evil America is doing in this part of the world.”

There is another irony. The actor who plays Jesus, Ahmad Soleimani-Nia, once was a soldier in the Iranian army and later a welder for Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, which the Bush administration accuses of pursuing nuclear weapons. Such footnotes don’t seem odd when talking with Talebzadeh, who has kept Nia in Jesus character — flowing hair, beard, mystic pose — for seven years because he never knows when he might shoot new sequences for the film.

“Jesus, the Spirit of God” comes out of Iran at a time of hostile rhetoric between Washington and Tehran and a divide between Islam and the West that has produced jihad websites, DVDs on the apocalypse, editorial cartoons lampooning Muhammad and a recent Osama bin Laden tape condemning Pope Benedict XVI for a “new crusade” against Islam.

Religion has long been at the heart of tensions between East and West, but it is being swept into a wider cultural war played out on the Internet, film and satellite TV in which icons and sacred texts have been attacked and manipulated. A new Dutch film by a right-wing politician, who compares the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” depicts Islam as a violent faith. In response, a Saudi blogger posted a video suggesting that the Bible could be read as a document for war.

Talebzadeh knows that his Jesus walks on volatile terrain; one wonders, given the tenor of the times, how many fatwas would be issued if a Western director made a film suggesting that Muhammad, whose depiction is forbidden under Islamic tradition, was someone other than the prophet.

“There is so much wrong with this man’s understanding of Jesus and Christianity,” wrote an incensed Christian blogger, referring to Talebzadeh in a conversation about the film that is unfolding in cyberspace. “It’s another piece of Satanic propaganda intended to accomplish no meaningful purpose in this world.”

The rough, choppily edited $5-million film, condensed from a 1,000-minute-long series that will soon air on Iranian TV, reveres Jesus as a blessed prophet speaking parables and moving through soft light and angelic chants amid a ruckus of zealots and conspiring Pharisees. The narrative and dialogue are attributed to Islamic teachings and Jesus’ disciple Barnabas, whose gospel the director said was hidden by church authorities so as not to undermine the established Christian faith.

Scholars believe that the gospel, not included in the canon of the early Catholic Church, was written by others centuries later and ascribed to Barnabas. It overlaps with the stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but it does not present Jesus as the son of God. Barnabas’ tale resonates with Muslims who believe that it supports the Koran’s teaching that Jesus, though born of a virgin, was not divine, but one of the last great prophets. Talebzadeh’s film shows Jesus ascending to heaven before Roman soldiers come for him; Judas, the disciple who betrays him, is transformed into the likeness of Jesus and crucified. According to Islamic traditions, Jesus is alive and will return to defeat evil.

“Barnabas is a missing link the world is not ready to accept. It’s a piece of literature we should look into,” said Talebzadeh, a man with a graying beard who sat in his office the other day before a bowl of fruit.

Draped in a shawl and legs crossed as if in meditation, Nia-as-Jesus lingered behind Talebzadeh looking very much like a 1970s rock star. He was quiet, serene, a former welder with a thespian calling drifting between the Koran and the New Testament. He had never acted before, but his light skin and angular features mixed with Middle East repose conjured an aura of Western aesthetics and Eastern spirituality.

“I’ve never been able to resolve why I am so drawn to Jesus,” said Nia, a Muslim born in the western mountains of Iran near Iraqi Kurdistan. “It goes back to when I was a boy of 7 or 8. I saw a painting of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ and I identified with Jesus. He has always been with me. In my neighborhood, with my long hair and beard, I am known as Jesus.”

Talebzadeh grew up in Iran under the reign of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. In 1970, he moved to the United States, where he says he studied at American University in Washington, D.C., and Columbia University in New York. He witnessed a convulsive American decade of antiwar protests over Vietnam and the resignation of Richard Nixon.

For much of that time, Iran was a U.S. ally. That changed in 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led an Islamic revolution that toppled the shah and resulted in 52 Americans being held hostage for 444 days.

“I returned to Iran feeling there was a huge misunderstanding in the West about my country,” he said. “Iran was being demonized.”

Talebzadeh directed a number of documentaries on themes such as the Bosnian conflict and the Iran-Iraq war. In 1999, he began filming “Jesus, the Spirit of God,” which grew out of a passion that began decades earlier when he attended a school in Tehran with Christians and continued over his fascination with the purported writings of Barnabas.

“If there’s one thing in my life I wanted to do, this film is it,” said the director, whose Jesus movie won an interfaith dialogue award at the 2007 Religion Today Film Festival in Italy. “I didn’t say Jesus wasn’t crucified, God did. It’s in the Koran. . . . The film is made with faith. I tried to do it as beautifully as I could.”

He added that he hoped his 35-millimeter film would start a conversation between religions: “In the 21st century, the arts and the media have to create an area for more cordial discussions between faiths at a time when information is moving in the blink of an eye. . . . We should be joining people together, not giving distortion and misunderstanding. We have to say, ‘Have you looked at this door to know the truth about Jesus?’ ”

Some Americans have peeked through Talebzadeh’s door. He showed the movie to four audiences in the United States, and it was recently screened at the Philadelphia Film Festival. He said many people were open-minded and intrigued by the historical and religious questions it raised.

“The truth has a whole, different vibration to it,” he said. “If you enhance it with artistry, you can create a discussion.”

Not according to the website of the Worldwide Church of God in Fairfield, Calif.: “Attempts by the Iranians or anyone else who try to deny that Jesus Christ is the true messiah will ultimately fail. The Holy Bible confirms the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth in numerous ways, and no amount of filmmaking or lecturing or rhetoric to the contrary can defeat that fact.”

Nia-as-Jesus finished his orange. Talebzadeh, whose office was warm in the afternoon sun, kept talking about the film, about divinity, about how to capture truth.

He turned in his chair toward Jesus, and was still, after all these years, amazed at the likeness, the highlighted hair, eyes of fervor. He joked that he had been searching for his lead character for a long time when his assistant director spotted Nia on the street one day and said, “I found your Jesus.”

~from The LA Times

I just have to add that the preview for this movie looks so incredibly cheesy–I just laughed and laughed when I saw it.  Too bad Mel Gibson isn’t a Muslim–he could do this concept justice.  Oh my, oh my.

Seriously.

The debate over evolution has been going on ever since the concept was first devised by Darwin–even Darwin struggled with the idea of evolution, because it challenged his belief in God, and he was a deeply faithful man. Indeed, one of the reasons Darwin didn’t publish his Origin of Species was because of its contradiction with Christian beliefs.

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Christianity is a difficult subject for me on many levels.  I find it hard, for many reasons, to utterly abandon any notion of Christianity in my life–I am not a Christian, true, but Christianity’s roots are still very much a part of me.  I was raised Christian, and not in a fierce or fanatical way, but in a very deep way.  I think my recent study of Judaism has brought up many things in me regarding Christianity and Jesus.

For one, reading the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, the Torah, and so forth–I realize what the New Testament brought to the concept of God, at least for me.  The Old Testament is rather hard and cold–the Torah, though it is celebrated by the Jewish people in ways I have yet to understand, can be a very Commanding book, and very authoritative in a truly impersonal way.  Jesus and the Gospels brought a “closeness” and a warmth that the Old Testament doesn’t have, at least to me.  Of course, this warmth I speak of has also been used to create war and hate, but the uses of a Holy Text and the intentions of one are often very much at odds.

I find myself still trapped, perhaps, in the notion that the Old Testament just leads naturally to the New Testament–this is very ingrained in me, and while I have considered converting to Judaism because I admire so much the Jewish people, the intellectualism inherent in their culture and faith, I believe that this deeply rooted sense of the truth of Gospels will be hard for to shake–perhaps too hard.  The other problem I’ve felt lately with Judaism, is while they do not believe in Hell, there is still the notion of the “chosen” people.  And I think as a convert, I’d never really be considered “one of the group” as it were, and least not in the way I would want.  So there’s another form of exclusivity that turns me off–not Hell, but rather Life in general.  As much as I admire the Jewish people, I think I would always feel like an outsider–even if I was a well-liked, well-treated outsider.

So back to Christianity–I guess as I explore my spirituality I don’t want to limit the outcome.  I could never experience Christianity the way my parents do, or the way I once did as a child.  But there are good examples of Christians whose practices and belief appeal to me.  My mother-in-law is a good example.  Hers is a very personal, inward sort of faith.  I like that.  That’s o