Pelosi takes a Baath; Bush says it's dirty

Today President Bush had harsh words for Speaker Pelosi, currently visiting the Assad government in Syria. It seems that in Bush's estimation a visit from a high-ranking--though not all that powerful--representative of the US government is likely to make the Baathists in Syria believe that they are part of the main-stream of nations. I suppose it didn't do that when we rendered suspects to Syria for questioning.
Bush is right to point out that Syria is a a "state sponsor of terrorism", but in the real world we deal with Russia, another such state sponsor of terror and a recently-avowed practitioner of assassinations in foreign countries. We also deal with the Saudis, the funders of Wahhabi and Salafi mosques around the world. And, seriously, it's probably a little late to be washing our hands of Syria after we've used their intelligence services over the last five years.

Mateo says knock you out. I'm gonna knock you out.

Just time for another Mateo pic. And, just for comparison and so I can have a picture that I can use as my profile pic, here's what he looked like way back in June when we got him.

I write the lectures that make the young girls cry

I rarely have any effect, emotional or otherwise, on women. And, I'm pretty sure that apart from remembering the rare bon mot or joke, few but the most curious students are affected very deeply or lastingly by my teaching. But yesterday I was able to make one of my female students cry. I've only ever had students cry before when they were going through a personal or familial crisis or when I had caught them cheating. Yesterday, it was the philosophical enterprise itself that brought the tears.
It's springtime and while young men's fancies turn to love, older philosopher's lectures turn to the existence and nature of God. I had asked my students to think of reasons that they might give to a non-believer to convince him that God existed. Alternatively, they could think of reasons to give a believer that God did not exist. As is often the case, almost no one actually put in the intellectual work to think about these issues. So, when I asked at the beginning of class what reasons they could give, only one student volunteered anything. And what she volunteered was, "Faith and testimony".
I took that and worked with it, trying to elicit the difference between faith-based and non-faith-based beliefs. I talked about how I might believe that there is a chair in front of me because I sensed it. How others who didn't share this belief would necessarily be mistaken. How our faith-based evidence for God seems not to be like this. I was not aiming to dissuade anyone from belief. I was, instead, moving us toward a discussion of what other, mutually agreeable, reasons we might be able to give, reasons that would go beyond mere inner states of the individual.
And, the tears began. You see, the very idea of questioning our reasons for belief in God was so upsetting to my student that it caused an emotional outburst, a combination of anger and sadness and unbelief at the way I was leading us to the doorstep of blasphemy. There are some things, she told me, that you just don't question. And, she knew, she knew that God exists.
Now, I am sympathetic to religious belief. Depending on how it's set out, I might even be a believer--one thing too much philosophy does is confuse us about what belief means--but I am also a believer in the idea that we have to earn our beliefs.
My student claimed in the midst of her tears that she thought that everyone ought to believe in the Spirit, a God who was equally available to all, whether they see Him as incarnate in Jesus or having His mouthpiece as Muhammad or Baha'u'llah or Zoroaster or Mary Baker Eddy or whomever. That's a mighty fine thought. But there is dangerous and frightening disconnect between this feeling and the emotional resistance to all questioning that underlies her response to a philosophical investigation of God.
The emotional, angry, sad, incredulous response to the idea that anyone would even question God's existence is the same response that members of al-Qaeda have to those who question the Quran or Muhammad's prophet-hood or those who dare to honor the members of his family, as the Shiites do. It's the same response that leads to inter-religious conflict all over the world and always have. And, it's evidence that the beliefs that one holds so dear aren't really very strong after all. Skepticism about chairs never bothers me, because give me whatever arguments for their non-existence you want--and there are a lot of philosophical arguments out there--I will still believe that there are chairs. If believers of my student's type were equally convinced of the existence of God--if they just knew--they'd have nothing to fear from exploring those beliefs.

A few reasons I won't be seeing 300

1. Sparta, contrary to the image apparently being presented in 300, was not a bastion of freedom. The Spartans, like the other Greeks involved in the Persian wars were fighting for freedom from Persian domination. Only in a time like ours could we think that there is no difference between freedom from foreign domination and freedom for one’s citizens. But, even more than other Greek city-states, Sparta was a society that relied on the slave labor of a huge population of agricultural workers, the helots. Now, the helots were really more like serfs than slaves, but in the period here being depicted, the helots were pretty much without rights, so far that they could be killed with impunity during one period of the year; the youth of Sparta were actually encouraged to kill them as a show of courage and virility.
2. Even for the Spartans themselves, there was nothing that we would think of as freedom. They might have been fighting for freedom from foreign domination, but within the city, its citizens lived a fully regimented life, directed towards one and only one thing: military prowess. Children were taken from their parents and raised in huge boarding schools in which they were trained from youth to be better soldiers. Abuse of younger students by the elders was encouraged as reinforcing discipline and hierarchy.
3. Though the hero of 300 is fighting, apparently, for love, family and friendship were frowned upon in classical Sparta. Filial, fraternal, friendly and erotic love all took away from love for the city.
4. Women were, arguably, better treated in Sparta than in some other Greek city-states. But this was because they had to be able and ready to defend the city during the long periods when all the Spartan men were away on military maneuvers. Because Sparta was so militaristic, unlike other Greek cities, it did not use a subset of its population as an army, all men were the army and they were at war all the time. Thus, women were valued for their manly qualities. This is at least one of the reasons—together with the educational traditions of Sparta—that a bride dressed as a soldier and not as a woman on her marital night.
5. The trailers for 300 picture the Persians as a dark and swarthy (and motley) crew. It’s true that the Persians were a mixed empire, the first cosmopolitan society in some respects, and one in which various different ethnic groups were pretty much allowed to govern themselves and worship in their own ways. It was not for nothing that the Israelites looked upon Cyrus as a savior from their other enemies. It was good to be a part of this empire. However, one of the most common aspersions cast upon the real Persians by the ancient Greeks, for instance by Xenophon in the Anabasis, was that they were light-skinned. That’s right, the Greeks looked down on the Persians because they weren’t swarthy enough. That was because they thought that the Persians spent too much time indoors and thus were too effeminate.

6. If we were going to look at a culture and society to admire, it would be the Persians, not the Spartans. The Persians didn’t care so much about your ethnicity or your religion or your language; the Greeks thought that only Greeks really mattered and if you didn’t speak Greek you were a barbarian—literally a person whose language sounds like bar-bar-bar-bar. For what it’s worth, even all the ancient Greeks, except for the Spartans, knew that being a Spartan wasn’t a good thing.
7. Of all recent societies, Spartan society resembled nothing so much as the Third Reich. And, that’s not really an overstatement.
8. If I want to watch gay porn in which everyone pretends that they aren’t really into dudes, there are other outlets.

On plans for surges

Rep John Boehmer (R-Ohio) echoed the thoughts (or party line) of many Republican Senators and Representatives yesterday in the House debate regarding the President's plan for a surge. He repeated the chestnut that it just wasn't fair to pass a resolution against a plan that hasn't been tried. Now, I think that there might be good reasons not to pass a non-binding resolution of this sort. For instance, it shows a singular lack of the courage of the Democrats' convictions and an attempt to have it both ways. But to complain that we shouldn't reject a plan that hasn't been tried because it hasn't been tried ranks among the most confused arguments that there could be. Presumably, one cannot try out all possible plans. One must choose one in particular. In order to do this, one must reject a multitude of plans that have not been tried. In fact, trying some of them forestalls trying others of them. The only time it makes sense to reject a plan is precisely before you have tried to put it into effect. If you wait until you have executed it, it isn't a plan anymore.
It could be that Boehmer and others are just claiming that we ought to give the President and his plan the benefit of the doubt. But, of course, his plans for this war haven't exactly been sterling.
So that leaves him to fall back on that other old nut of an argument, that if we were to withdraw we would be giving al-Qaeda exactly what they want. It seems that we already did this when we invaded--we removed a secular albeit evil ruler and opened the way for sectarian violence of exactly the sort that al-Qaeda desires in the region.
Is it in their interest that we leave? Or is it in their interest that we come more and more to look like a long-term occupier of Iraq? Should every decision we take always rely on a consideration of what the many dispersed leaders of al-Qaeda may think is in their interest? I don't know. What I do know is that, in spite of the Pottery Barn rule, sometimes things you break can't be fixed, or at least not very easily.

On legitimate authority and immorality

Haggard Pronounced ‘Completely Heterosexual'

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: February 6, 2007

Filed at 9:59 a.m. ET

DENVER (AP) -- One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is ''completely heterosexual.''

Haggard also said his sexual contact with men was limited to the former male prostitute who came forward with sexual allegations, the Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur told The Denver Post for a story in Tuesday's edition.

''He is completely heterosexual,'' Ralph said. ''That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing.''

Ralph said the board spoke with people close to Haggard while investigating his claim that his only extramarital sexual contact happened with Mike Jones. The board found no evidence to the contrary.

''If we're going to be proved wrong, somebody else is going to come forward, and that usually happens really quickly,'' he said. ''We're into this thing over 90 days and it hasn't happened.''

Haggard resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals last year after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced. He was also forced out from the 14,000 New Life Church that he founded years ago in his basement after Jones alleged Haggard paid him for sex and sometimes used methamphetamine when they were together. Haggard, who is married, has publicly admitted to ''sexual immorality.''

Haggard said in an e-mail Sunday, his first communication in three months to church members, that he and his wife, Gayle, plan to pursue master's degrees in psychology. The e-mail said the family hasn't decided where to move but that they were considering Missouri and Iowa.

Another oversight board member, the Rev. Mike Ware of Westminster, said the group recommended the move out of town and the Haggards agreed.

''This is a good place for Ted,'' Ware said. ''It's hard to heal in Colorado Springs right now. It's like an open wound. He needs to get somewhere he can get the wound healed.''

It was also the oversight board that strongly urged Haggard to go into secular work.

We are definitely lucky to live in a world where a self-selected board of experts in--well, I'm not sure what they are experts in, because among evangelicals there isn't always any real educational requirement for the ministry--who can state unequivocally that Ted Haggard is not only a heterosexual but a complete one. Now, honestly, I don't much care what Haggard does in the privacy of his or his escort's bedroom, but there's more than just forgiveness or rehabilitation going on here.

The argument of the ministerial board is that Haggard didn't have sex with anyone other than just this one escort--with whom he also used crystal meth--and, since there was only the one partner, he isn't really a homosexual.

They believe that they know there couldn't have been any others, since no one else has come forward. It does seem pretty likely, though, that Haggard would have tried to pick discreet partners. Presumably, he used an escort because he hoped for discretion. So, it is not unreasonable to assume that if he had sex with any other men, it was probably with other escorts who are more bound by their sense of professional discretion or with other men, for instance married men, who themselves might have something to lose. My first point, then, is that the experts have no evidence that Haggard wasn't much more sexually active than he claims.

Since there were not other partners, according to the experts, they can be assured that he wasn't really homosexual. I suppose that by this reasoning, monogamous married couples are not really heterosexual, since there is just the one partner. Without a pattern of behavior, we don't have enough to show that they are really heterosexual.

The strategy, of course, is to say that Haggard just committed an act of sexual immorality. In other words, there is no such thing as a homosexual--a person who is naturally or intrinsically attracted to members of the same sex--there are only homosexual acts. And, like Haggard, if we would all just become right with God, we would be rid of the immorality and the non-existent orientation that drives us to it. We aren't supposed to ask ourselves why it is that Haggard, when he strayed, hired a male escort and not a female one. I suppose it was just a throw of the dice.

God help whoever ends up receiving psychological counseling from either of the Haggards.

It may be too easy, but ....

Everyone has an opinion about American Idol or at least it is the hope of Fox and Fremantle Productions that everyone will, but at the risk of being just another among many, I'll add a bit.

After my evening class this Tuesday, I went home to eat some dinner and watch some mindless entertainment. When I got home the second night (Seattle) of American Idol was on and, as I watched, I couldn't help but agree with something I believe David Brooks wrote in the New York Times last year during the beginning of that season's search for the next pop star--Taylor Hicks, really? The fact that so many of us can enjoy the show, particularly in its opening weeks, reflects quite badly on our characters.

To laugh as someone who not only lacks talent and lies outside most people's perception of beauty and is unfortunate enough not to be aware of either of these facts about himself is insulted and called names by a "big time music producer" who himself has mostly produced what philosophers of music call crap, is really sad. Of course, we might be taking the side of the others at the judges' table who waited until he left the room to laugh at him--assuming I guess that he doesn't own a television. There is a long history of comedy getting its points by portraying the high and mighty getting their comeuppance by being shown exactly that they were neither high nor mighty to begin with or by being brought low to the level of the rest of us or below. In fact, many people conjecture that this was one of the modes of comedy that Aristotle was interested in.

But American Idol gets its points in a much lower, nastier way. We laugh at people who probably don't have a lot going for them in the first place, but who quite mistakenly believe that they have musical talent; more specifically, we laugh at them being ridiculed for having had this mistaken belief. We laugh at the low being brought lower in so many cases.

Of course, for those contestants who are most clearly of lower mental aptitude, the judges do show mercy, usually just telling them that music isn't the right career choice for them or that the competition isn't the right one for their skills. But this moment of humanity seems little more than calculated to demonstrate that the inhumanity in the rest of the program is just good fun.

There's just something about the whole performance that makes me ask myself, "What kind of person am I or would I have to be that I could enjoy this?" The answer is not a pleasant one.