The historical origins of atheism

Damon Linker has a thoughtful piece in TNR about how the militant atheists Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris are really heirs to an illiberal tradition of atheism that owes more to the French Revolution and Emma Goldman than it does to Socrates and Camus. His argument is articulate and convincing. It's also boring. Moderate justifications for secularism just aren't as entertaining as, say, Hitch's comparison of America during Christmastime to North Korea. Perhaps the audience for the polemicists is smaller, but it's also laughing a lot harder.

What's wrong with renting?

I probably shouldn't comment on the sub-prime loan crisis, since the economics of it are over my head, but this whiny Prospect article about the crisis's "conservative origins" reminded me again of the following question: Are the majority of the homeowners who defaulted on their mortgages really that deserving of our sympathy? (As opposed to, say, the homeless or the working poor?) I'd like to know how many were actual victims of predatory lending versus how many were just short-sighted and greedy. Should the government really be in the business of of bailing out people who idiotically believed that the values of their homes would go up forever?

Seems to me like the real problem is the ideology of "ownership" that keeps being smacked over our heads as an essential aspect of the American Dream. People have weird emotional issues when it comes to home ownership that they don't have with other kinds of financial investments. What should be a very simple calculus of deciding whether to rent or own is complicated by our being brainwashed to believe that you haven't made it until you own your own home. I remember reading "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" when I was little (in a failed attempt by my parents to foster some financial acuity in me) and the only thing I remember is the advice not to fall into the home ownership trap; rather, one should rent and put one's money into investments that will generate better returns. Granted, renting is inherently unstable, but moving seems like a minor cost compared to foreclosure. Maybe instead of regulating banks and poorly-informed consumers the federal government should issue a copy of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" to everyone at birth.

FairTax and Scientology

Conservative economist Bruce Bartlett details the fascinating genesis of the FairTax (the plan endorsed by Mike Huckabee and many of the GOP candidates that would eliminate income taxes and create a flat 23% sales tax on everything): apparently, FairTax was originally devised as a strategy by Scientologists to destroy the IRS, which until 1993 refused to recognize them as a church for tax purposes.

I didn't realize that Scientologists are currently recognized by the government as a church. They must be excited about Mitt Romney's candidacy--it's really opening doors for a Tom Cruise run in 2016...

The end of human rights

The US government refuses to say that the waterboarding of an American national by a foreign government contravenes the Geneva Conventions--signaling a real problem for human rights advocates, from an interest convergence perspective. There have always been two rationales for the US's commitment to the Geneva Conventions: the "purist" justification, in which human rights are universalist norms that trump everything else; and the "pragmatic" justification, in which the US's adherence to human rights norms triggers reciprocity by other countries to protect American citizens (in particular, American soldiers and POWs.) This is the reason you see Human Rights Watch and many representatives of the US military on the same side of the torture question. But the Bush Administration is now signaling its unwillingness to accept even the pragmatic reasons not to torture, which means a wholesale weakening of the edifice upon which the human rights system was built.

Of course, more to the point, it's pretty difficult for the administration to hold to this line and continue to argue that we are somehow better than our enemies.

Heartwarming holiday story

'Tis the season... the New York Post reports on a Muslim saving some Jews from being pummeled on the subway by a group of thugs, one of whom was sporting a tattoo of Christ on his arm. The attack apparently happened after the group wished the Jews "Merry Christmas," and the Jews responded with "Happy Hanukkah." The best part of the story comes at the end--the Post quotes one of the attackers, who will soon begin serving time for a previous hate crime committed several months ago:

"I'm trying to stay out of trouble," he said. "When I get out, I want to go into the military."

Off to that wife-beating place in the sky...

Best Ike Turner kicking-the-bucket headline ever.

Women aren't funny

Meghan O'Rourke has an exceedingly dumb analysis of Knocked Up, prompted by co-star Katherine Heigl's thought-provoking comment that the movie was "a little sexist," because it painted "the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight," while the men were portrayed as "lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys." O'Rourke basically reinforces the notion that women are humorless and uptight in her deconstruction of the funniest scene in the movie, in which Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen are shrooming in a Vegas hotel room, and Rudd, after a long monologue about what he fears in his marriage, suddenly sticks his fist in his mouth and says wonderingly, "It tastes like a rainbow!":

It is hard not to read his statement as a metaphor for the film's ambivalent view of the message "women" are trying to render unto "men": that a caring, sharing domestic life is a "rainbow" men are crazy not to accept wholesale. Poor Pete's dilemma, the tension he is trying to drive at, is that he can't swallow the rainbow (so to speak) however much he tries—and has made his wife into a disappointed micromanager in the process.

Um, or it's a hilariously accurate description of something someone would say after they've eaten mushrooms. It was obviously a non-sequitur comic moment designed to lighten the serious tone of the speech that had just gone before. Maybe if female Slate writers did more mushrooms and less third-rate grad student cultural criticism, we women wouldn't have the reputation of always sucking the fun out of the room.

Everyone hearts Huckabee...

Okay I'm back to blogging. After all, if Mahmoud Ahmadenijad can find time to post every week, so can I.

Today's thought: Mike Huckabee's meteoric rise towards the Republican nomination should be of concern. Not just because he clearly hasn't done his homework, saying things like "we ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is," (yes, eliminating all energy use in the United States by 2017 is pretty bold), but because HAS EVERYONE FORGOTTEN what happened the last time a folksy, charming, evangelical Christian, big-government social conservative southern Governor who was nice to illegal immigrants and sounded like a moron on policy ran for president?