April 2009 Archives

Here's a shocker: a new Pew poll finds that Christians support torture more than non-believers do. What's more, Evangelicals are more pro-torture than white mainline Protestants and white non-Hispanic Catholics -- but that Catholics and Evangelicals are more pro-torture than average Americans.

And get this: the more often you go to church, the more pro-torture you're likely to be!

What on earth are these Christians hearing at church?! Very sad indeed.

UPDATE: Mercy! This thread attracted gobs of comments overnight. Having read through most of them, I wish to associate myself with this one from Jon W., commenting on the various remarks:

I'm sorry, but I'm getting just a little nauseous, here. I don't like defending the Evangelical church. I'm a Wheaton grad who became Catholic because the Evangelicals drifted about like chihuahuas in a dinghy and were philosophically and doctrinally unserious, but, holy cow: stop the self-righteous moral masturbation already.

Yeah, the Evangelicals have drunk some serious Republican Kool-Aid and are currently thrashing around as the cyanide works its way out of their system, but you do notice, don't you, that their moral stands are generally opposite those of the cultural powers-that-be, and all your moral stands are completely in accordance with the cultural powers-that-be?

They Evangelicals are some of the only ones holding a traditional moral line on so many issues, and they're constantly being told that their views are patriarchal, retrogressive, racist, homophobic, bigoted, oppressive, repressive, and just, plain, gob-smackingly dumb.

But they are! you protest. The ancient orders and traditional ways of life were nothing but one long record of whips and chains and wicked, abusive fathers and hateful, spiteful mothers and now we have achieved the magical Liberal fairyland of goodness.

Bull. The Evangelicals are trying to defend ways of life that nurtured millions of people for thousands of years and take seriously a moral order that produced great men and women, great art, solid, loving people devoted to Christ, to God, and to the just and right. And the Republicans were the only party that didn't spit in their faces every chance they got. (Only sometimes.) Is it any wonder they feel a loyalty?

It's stupid. I agree. The Evangelicals have enabled one of the most disastrous presidential administrations ever and are seriously implicated in some very unserious positions towards markets, capitalism, and apparently torture, too. But if hyper-social-individualists with an antipathy towards Western Christian civilization and a need to be "revolutionaries" were not continually trying to take a steaming crap on everything Evangelicals have always held dear they might find Evangelicals giving them an ear when they tried to explain to the Evangelicals that their traditional ways of taking care of the poor were inadequate (if indeed they were), or that they needed to treat prisoners as true subjects of human rights.

This is making me sick. Try taking a moral position that's not rubber-stamped by either the university or the Academy (AMPAS), and see how you like it.

Yesterday I reported that The Dallas Morning News has ended its religion beat coverage. That was based on information from a newsroom source involved in the decision, but I am told that it was not fully accurate. A metro editor tells me that the newspaper has not had two full-time religion reporters for "quite some time," so this isn't a new thing. Secondly, I am told, when there are big religion stories, the newspaper will continue to turn to reporters with expertise in religion, reporters who are now covering other beats, to report and write about those stories.

Now, the entire federal government of Mexico is closing down, except for essential services, over the flu pandemic -- and the government there is urging all businesses to close for now. Think about that -- the government of a great and vast nation, temporarily shuttered because of disease, and left trying to shut the economy down to save lives.

What's happening there is an important example for the rest of us over what could happen if a flu pandemic of similar gravity struck the US. Four years ago, when avian flu hit the media's radar, Laurie Garrett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has done a lot of work on disease and disease response, said that Americans really have no idea how seriously disrupted daily life would become. Well, look to our south, folks. There you have it. Little government, little commerce, little public life, everybody bunkered down in fear.

Garrett once told our editorial board that President Bush kicked the US government into high gear to get ready for mass bioterrorism after the 2001 anthrax attacks. That, and the avian flu scare of 2005-2006 are why we're in much better shape to handle a serious pandemic flu outbreak than we otherwise would be. For some reason, it looks like we'll escape the bad stuff this time, Deo gratias. But as you watch and (I hope) pray for Mexico and the Mexican people, understand that we will one day be facing the same thing. Virus hunter Nathan Wolfe says:

Economist David Goldman at First Things says our failure to reproduce enough children to sustain our society will make us poorer. Excerpts:

Life is sacred for its own sake. It is not an instrument to provide us with fatter IRAs or better real-estate values. But it is fair to point out that wealth depends ultimately on the natural order of human life. Failing to rear a new generation in sufficient numbers to replace the present one violates that order, and it has consequences for wealth, among many other things. Americans who rejected the mild yoke of family responsibility in pursuit of atavistic enjoyment will find at last that this is not to be theirs, either.

It will be painful for conservatives to admit that things were not well with America under the Republican watch, at least not at the family level. From 1954 to 1970, for example, half or more of households contained two parents and one or more children under the age of eighteen. In fact as well as in popular culture, the two-parent nuclear family formed the normative American household. By 1981, when Ronald Reagan took office, two-parent households had fallen to just over two-fifths of the total. Today, less than a third of American households constitute a two-parent nuclear family with children.

What could we do to promote natalism at the policy level? Goldman suggests:

Numerous proposals for family-friendly tax policy are in circulation, including recent suggestions by Ramesh Ponnuru, Ross Douthat, and Reihan Salam. The core of a family-oriented economic program might include the following measures:

• Cut taxes on families. The personal exemption introduced with the Second World War's Victory Tax was $624, reflecting the cost of "food and a little more." In today's dollars that would be about $7,600, while the current personal exemption stands at only $3,650. The personal exemption should be raised to $8,000 simply to restore the real value of the deduction, and the full personal exemption should apply to children.

• Shift part of the burden of social insurance to the childless. For most taxpayers, social-insurance deductions are almost as great a burden as income tax. Families that bring up children contribute to the future tax base; families that do not get a free ride. The base rate for social security and Medicare deductions should rise, with a significant exemption for families with children, so that a disproportionate share of the burden falls on the childless.

• Make child-related expenses tax deductible. Tuition and health care are the key expenses here with which parents need help.

• Change the immigration laws. The United States needs highly skilled, productive individuals in their prime years for earning and family formation.

We delude ourselves when we imagine that a few hundred dollars of tax incentives will persuade individuals to form families or keep them together. A generation of Americans has grown up with the belief that the traditional family is merely one lifestyle choice among many.

[snip]

Without life, there is no wealth; without families, there is no economic future. The value of future income streams traded in capital markets will fall in accordance with our impoverished demography. We cannot pursue the acquisition of wealth and the provision of upward mobility except through the reconquest of the American polity on behalf of the American family.

Philip Longman has covered this ground before, from a secular liberal point of view. Last November, Longman and his New America Foundation colleague David Gray proposed a new pro-family "social contract" (PDF form here) to address the same problems David Goldman identifies. Excerpt:

So says the Decider's right-hand man, who accuses Obama of "outsourcing his presidency." Excerpt:

Another emphasis in the Obama 100 days talking points is that the president is a decisive leader. However, Mr. Obama is enormously deferential to Democrats in Congress and has outsourced formulation of key policies to them. He appears largely ambivalent about the contents of important legislation, satisfied to simply sign someone else's bill.

To which Alex Massie replies:

But of course Rove sees Obama's alleged reluctance to subvert the constitution as a problem, not a blessed relief. That shouldn't be a great surprise, I suppose, given that Rove approves of the sprawling, modern White House in which the President is supposed to be an elected Priest-King and Comforter-in-Chief.

Well now. If Obama really is a wuss who won't stand up to Congress, what do you call a president who pretends to agree with laws Congress passed, but kept his fingers crossed when he signed them?