Absolute Zero

Glenn Greenwald has a fine column on freedom of speech at the Guardian today; the Blogger Formerly Known as Ioz addresses some some important issues that Greenwald didn't take into account, notably the totalitarian nature of corporations.  I could add to the discussion, but not tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.

Let's Drink to the Salt of the Earth

I should write about the Susan G. Komen Foundation debacle, especially since RWA1 weighed in about it on Facebook today, but for now this could be a teaser.

IOZ wrote a post today mocking a David Brooks column about poverty or something, and quoted these poignant lines from it:

Let's say there is a 14-year-old girl who, for perfectly understandable reasons, wants to experience the love and sense of purpose that go with motherhood, rather than stay in school in the hopes of someday earning a middle-class wage.

The first thought that popped into my mind was: wait a minute -- isn't that what a good conservative thinks a fourteen-year-old girl should want, and would want if the feminazis hadn't gotten to her? Of course a good conservative won't think that a fourteen-year-old should try to be a mother unless she's married; if she isn't, she should offer up her baby for adoption to some wonderful childless couple that is just waiting for it to be born so that they can be fulfilled with that love and sense of purpose that go with motherhood. And fatherhood. Why should she even be interested in earning a middle-class wage? Her husband will do that, while she stays at home with the children.

My second thought was that a high-school education is highly unlikely to get her a job that will pay her a living wage, let alone middle-class one. Ditto for a bachelor's degree in most fields. That was true even before the 2008 crash, for those who are delicately known as "inner-city" or "at-risk" kids. And my third thought is that there's a good chance that fourteen-year-old girl knows it.

I was taken slightly aback when I clicked through to Brooks's column, because at first blush he said some arguably good things.

You have no idea what factors have caused her to make this decision, and you have no way of knowing what will dissuade her. But you want her, from morning until night, to be enveloped by a thick ecosystem of positive influences. You want lefty social justice groups, righty evangelical groups, Muslim groups, sports clubs, government social workers, Boys and Girls Clubs and a hundred other diverse institutions. If you surround her with a different culture and a web of relationships, maybe she will absorb new habits of thought, find a sense of belonging and change her path.

To build this thick ecosystem, you have to include religious institutions and you have to give them broad leeway. Religious faith is quirky, and doesn’t always conform to contemporary norms. But faith motivates people to serve. Faith turns lives around. You want to do everything possible to give these faithful servants room and support so they can improve the spiritual, economic and social ecology in poor neighborhoods.

None of these will do the fourteen-year-old girls of America any good if there are aren't enough middle-class jobs waiting for them at the end of their long march. And again, some of those religious institutions, which as Brooks cautiously concedes don't "always conform to contemporary norms" but it's okay because "faith motivates people to serve", will not encourage young girls to get on the career track.

Besides, the frame of the column gives it away: Obama, being a "technocrat," has abolished vouchers in the District of Columbia, and is forcing "Catholic social service providers to support contraception and other practices that violate their creed," like letting adulteresses and fornicators and homosexuals to work for them." This is "demoralizing"; it will cause "the faithful to distrust government, to segregate themselves from bureaucratic overreach, to pull inward." Vouchers are not popular with voters or the public generally, though of course they are popular with "religious institutions" that like to divert public funds into their coffers; ditto for refusing to include contraception in their employees' health plans -- in fact, most Catholics favor including contraception in Catholic employees' health plans, which isn't that surprising since most American Catholics use contraception themselves. (Notice that in this BBC report, "US Catholics angry at contraception rule" mainly seems to refer to Bill Donohue of the Catholic League and "key bishops," not the laity. Once again we're seeing a small band of ideologues at the top trying to impose their dogmas on the overwhelming majority of the public.)

So don't imagine that Brooks gives a damn about that notional fourteen-year-old girl. "[Y]ou have to include religious institutions and you have to give them broad leeway." Obama hasn't done anything to exclude religious institutions or to narrow their leeway. The American system gives religion a great deal of freedom, but that doesn't necessitate subsidizing them with taxpayers' money to operate their programs, especially when they run roughshod over their workers and congregations. We've seen this kind of chutzpah before, in Bush's (and later Obama's) support for "faith-based" charities: they want our tax dollars, and they want it with no strings attached. But that's not how the world works, nor should it.

Squandering Our Sanctimony

The Great and Powerful IOZ has been back from self-imposed exile for a few weeks now, but not (in my not-so-humble opinion) exactly on stride. His comment today on the conviction of American backpackers for espionage in Iran was pretty good, though:

Well, Hillary Clinton is disappointed, proving once more that while the poor Persians must make do with the Ghazal, our greatest, infinitely variable native poetic form is sanctimony. It is most likely that these poor nincompoops are exactly the Lonely Planet backpacker assjockeys that they claim to be, and yet for a country that runs several very public infinite interment camps, a country in possession of some of the world's more insane border controls, a country in which a number of internal states have passed hysterical papieren-bitte laws to counter the grave threat of Mexican hedge trimming to go deploring other nations for arresting illegal border-crossers is a bit rich.

We've Got to Do Something, the Latest Implementation

My friend the ambivalent Obama supporter phoned me tonight, and we talked about various things. The first thing on his mind was the current war in Libya, and he wanted to know what I thought should be done there. I had to admit that I didn't have a good answer, but I was sure what shouldn't be done there, namely firing cruise missiles and aerial bombing.

After we got off the phone I found this discussion by IOZ, which was more than usually serious and thoughtful -- snark is his usual mode of choice, but every so often he does something like this.

First, what Libyans? The Libyans in the West, centered on Tripoli, who seem politically and tribally loyal to the extant regime, or the Libyans in the East, centered on Benghazi, whose own "leadership," as it has so far coalesced into something only marginally less objectionable than Qaddafi's government--indeed, has coalesced around former figures from Qaddafi's government? Even a cursory examination of the news reveals the paucity of the pro-intervention line, which would have a dictatorial government on one side and a benighted people on the other, the latter begging for our assistance. Well, no, in reality, there is an existing government on one side and a rival power on the other, and the "intervention", whatever supposed humanitarian garb it wears, is alliance with one side in a civil war. ...

And, as the playground taunt reminds us, with what army? The one "protecting" the Afghan people from the Taliban? Yes, it is true that generalized disapproval of Western power is sometimes a poor position from which to argue, but the opposite argument is more damnable still: I mean, under what specific circumstances can Western bombs bring peaceful solutions on terms acceptable to all sides? Under no circumstances. So while it may be morally correct for a hypothetical power with capacities far in excess of and motives far less questionable than those possessed by the actual West to intervene in a hypothetical conflict in which there are no dubious, hazy conditions of relative morality and relative good, in the practical, actual world, none of this obtains, and what you have, as per usual, is the US and its allies lobbing cruise missiles into a country without reason or planning; just another brutal exercise of DOING SOMETHING because the roots of our narcissism drink from a deep well of insecurity that requires we constantly blow shit up lest we admit to human limitations.

I also learned that there has been another leak of precious American secrets by a so-called "journalistic" group called the Associated Press -- in wartime yet! The anonymous culprit is a "senior U.S. defense official [who] revealed the contents of the intelligence report on condition of anonymity because it was classified secret." As Glenn Greenwald asks, "Will the guilty party be charged with a capital crime and be held in solitary confinement near a cell occupied by Bradley Manning? Only time will tell."

Believing In Them Just Encourages Them

From Monsieur l'IOZ, one of the few other atheists on the Intertoobz I can read anymore without (most of the time) nausea:

As for the argument from popularity, an odd conceit of a man plainly much-steeped in democracy, that Truth proceeds from the number of voters pulling the Yes lever, it would certainly dismay the early Christians scratching their little fishies in the sand. It did remind me of a good story the rabbi at my parents' synagogue told when I recently joined them at services for my brother's Yahrtzeit. Two orthodox rebbeim are debating the coming of the Moshiach. The first says, "I believe we must study Torah and observe the laws and traditions of our ancestors and not think too much of worldly things, for after all, when the Moshiach comes, many worldly things will pass away."

The second rebbe says, "I agree, we must read Torah and observe the laws and traditions, but should we not also work and pray for a better world for ourselves and our children and grandchildren? For after all, we do not know when the Moshiach will come. We do not even know if the Moshiach will come!"

"My friend!" cries the first rebbe. "How can you say such a thing? Does not Hashem promise that our Moshiach will come? Do you doubt the word of the Lord?"

"Hmmm," muses the first Rebbe. "Perhaps, perhaps."

"Aha!" the first rebbe calls out. "Then you do not believe in God!"

"Oh," the second replies. "Nonsense. I am a Jew. I believe in God. I just don't trust him."