faith in America

Atrios asks why the Faith in America roundtable on Meet the Press has no women. A good question. We might also ask why, at a time when "religious faith" in the US may well be falling, there's no one on the panel representing the third largest "religious" group in our nation, no religion specified:

the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001; their proportion has grown from just eight percent of the total in 1990 to over fourteen percent in 2001

I don't consider myself aggressively antitheistic. People believe what they need to believe. If you read media accounts of social trends, however, it would be hard to avoid the impression that we were living through a great religious revival, a time when "traditional values" were coming to define our country, a time when the values of the Right would come to define our nation. This survey doesn't bear that out. If anything, it suggests that during the same time that religion has come to dominate the public sphere, more and more Americans have found it wanting.

This isn't paradoxical. If the power of religious faith were truly growing in this country, religious leaders would have a harder time convincing the faithful that their way of life is under attack. If "traditional values" were truly ascendent, there would be no need for a Traditional Values Coalition.

The Meet the Press preview reads

From the moral issues surrounding the story of Terry Schiavo to religious diplomacy in the Middle East, faith permeates the people and the politics of the United States of America. Sunday's show will bring together prominent leaders from some of the nation's largest religions to discuss the complex and profound role of Faith in America

Given the actual trends, shouldn't a roundtable on faith ask why faith is losing ground? Isn't the real question why faith permeates the politics of our country at the same time that it's less relevant than ever to its people?

wow

According to Bill Bennett, executives have a duty to ignore the courts if their view of the Constitution doesn't match his, and the only recourse if he does so is impeachment. It's an interesting theory, which would seem to require that Bush police every medical facility to prevent abortions.

balkanization of cyberspace

Jack Balkin asks whether blogs encourage balkanization. I am liberal by almost any measure. I was introduced to blogs reading a conservative blog (The Volokh Conspiracy). I found it an interesting portal into the conservative worldview a view I cannot comprehend, even though I grew up surrounded by it. Most conservative sites were so busy deriding other views and attacking their adherents that I saw little reason to visit. Why should I visit a site that exists primarily to hurl insults in my direction?

Over time, my interest in even the better conservative sites waned. The analyses presented (when analyses were presented) typically proceeded from assumptions I didn't share. Attempts to find common ground with the more thoughtful posters were usually rebuffed with restatements of disagreement. I grew tired of the seeing the same memes, tired of being informed of pressing issues I didn't care much about, tired of being insulted.

Today, I read liberal blogs almost exclusively. I don't know this has made more isolated than before. If anything, the conservative blogs I have read have hardened my attitude towards conservatism. At its best, it seems more heartless today than before I read what conservatives have to say. At its worst, it seems more selfish, dangerous, fanatical, and juvenile. If I hold less hope today that out country can find a common vision, it fell from my hands while watching the acts of conservatives in power and seeing admiration in the words of even their wisest supporters.

For shame

From the SF Chronicle, on the vote to limit debate:

Democrats Yes

Biden, Del.; Byrd, W.Va.; Carper, Del.; Conrad, N.D.; Johnson, S.D.; Kohl, Wis.; Landrieu, La.; Lieberman, Conn.; Lincoln, Ark.; Nelson, Fla.; Nelson, Neb.; Pryor, Ark.; Salazar, Colo.; Stabenow, Mich.

From the final vote:

Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Bayh (D-IN), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Yea
Bingaman (D-NM), Yea
Byrd (D-WV), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Conrad (D-ND), Yea
Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Johnson (D-SD), Yea
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Landrieu (D-LA), Yea
Lincoln (D-AR), Yea
Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Salazar (D-CO), Yea
Stabenow (D-MI), Yea

The Republicans, of course, have no shame. Modern conservatives don't believe in it.

hawking on the corner

Down on the corner, Jonah complains about the hypocritical lefties that dare to suggest that those who support the war should volunteer. When he wrote

No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice.

he left out his most compelling reasons. He now asks where all the lefties lined up for Afghanistan, then goes on to write

Look, in the age of the all-volunteer military, and in a country which prides itself on civilian control of that military, there is no shame in not signing up. Or even if there is shame, it's personal not political. We have, by my rough estimate, some 70 million men of military age. Should they all join-up the moment they agree the military should do something dangerous? I favor aggressive law enforcement at home, does this mean I should become a cop? Of course not.

I'm sure it's possible to engage in more self-serving, delusional sophistry, but most people would have to work at it.

In the age of an all-volunteer army, only those who volunteer are ever at risk for being sent to war. This makes support for war cheap. It's easy to say a price is worth paying when it's paid by someone else. When we had a draft, supporting a war carried a risk. Now it carries none. To Jonah, this somehow makes supporting the war without actually volunteering more acceptable. I think that's backwards.

The question isn't, as he puts it, 70 million men (apparently women of military age aren't worthy of service) should sign-up, but whether they should volunteer to do so. The military couldn't and wouldn't accept all 70 million into service. The department of defense only employs 1.4M people. That's less than 2% of the population of military age (unlike Jonah, I include women in the tally...the last time I looked, they were part of the force). Even if everyone volunteered, they wouldn't all be needed or accepted. One needn't be a soldier to support the war, but those who support it should accept the risk. Half of our citizens support the war, but of the 100M or so of military age, only 1.4M support it enough to put their own lives on the line. It's always easier to risk someone else's life.

He asks why lefties weren't lining up to fight in Afghanistan, a war they supported. Perhaps more should have done so, but it was also a very different war, one fought by proxy, using a small number of highly trained special forces. I doubt that many who joined after 9/11 made it to Afghanistan during the war. We'll never know whether lefties would have volunteered for a more protracted struggle in Afghanistan, because we didn't have one.

Iraq is a bit different. We've been there a while. It looks like we'll stay a while longer. Our presence is severly stressing the military. Recruiting is becoming a challenge. In Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, the military needs people. But even though the public approves of the war when polled, less than 2% of those of military age have volunteered. The cause is important enough for other people to die for, but typically not important enough for people to put themselves at risk.

Jonah writes that there is no shame in that, no shame in requiring someone else to risk their lives for you in a cause where you would not risk your own, and that if there is any shame, it is a private matter not a political one. He's simply wrong. Military service in time of war is not merely a job. Those who promote wars bear responsibility for those who suffer and die. Those who promote wars in which they themselves are unwilling to fight should be ashamed, and it is hard for me to take seriously those who lack the conscience even to recognize that.

Perhaps he has to argue that. To argue otherwise would be to argue that those who would not volunteer should oppose the war. It that view became widely accepted, how long could we sustain the war? If everyone went home tonight and asked themselves whether they would risk their own lives in this fight, and those who answered no began campaigning for its end, how long would it last?

Oddly enough, it turns out that those 35 and older aren't eligible for enlistment. In Jonah's case, merely standing on that might beg the question of why he didn't volunteer earlier, but it's a pretty good reason for not volunteering today. What he's written since only makes him look incapable of clear moral thought.

There's a question I haven't heard discussed much. It seems pretty clear that those who support the war have some moral obligation to volunteer, but what about those who oppose the war, does opposition to the war remove that obligation? It doesn't seem to me that it does. People are still dying, and they're still doing it in our stead. It seems clear that passive opposition isn't enough. On the other hand, it seems clear that someone who spends every waking moment seeking a way to end the war has met their moral obligation. I'm not capable of drawing a clear line between those two points.

In any case, I'm in no position to judge. I'm 45. I never faced that choice.

dollars backed by pyramids

Brad Delong writes that only the "substantial decline in the stock market in the near future" scenario is likely. By near future, of course, he must mean "before private accounts start to invest," because if it were to happen after that point, private accounts would take the loss rather than receiving the gain.

One problem with that hypothesis is that the stock market is the expectation of funds from private accounts is likely to push the market up, not down. If we give the market a fresh source of investment to chase shares, it's likely to push prices up and help sustain them, at least until retirees begin to pull as much money out of the stock market as they're putting in.

Isn't there a technical term for investments supported by new investors rather than underlying financial strength? If we should worry about the effects on a bond-supported portfolio (the Social Security Trust Fund) when cash flow turns negative, shouldn't we be more worried about the effect of the same cash flow reversal when the assets in the portfolio are set by the market?

asking questions

A week ago, I asked whether the election in Iraq had changed anything, and then went on to wonder about the fact that none of the usual suspects thought the question worth asking. Matt is now asking (taking his lead from Knight-Ridder. Now that it's safe and the Republicans have had their moment of blue-fingered solidarity, maybe more will do so (apologies in advance for those who have when I wasn't watching).

same-sex marriage, polygamy, and incest

Over at Balkinization, Professor Balkin writes about the legal theories under which same-sex marriage could be declared legal. One of the theories is

The ban on same sex marriage violates a fundamental due process right to marry.

He calls this theory weak because of the difficulty in establishing a compelling state interest that allows same-sez marriage but disallows even more controversial practices such as polygamy and incest. This strikes me as a potentially strong political argument for finding a different legal basis, but a remarkably weak legal argument. If the arguments against legal polygamy and incest are indeed so weak that they aren't compelling, why should they be banned? If the arguments are grounded in mere prejudice and "tradition," shouldn't they be legal? Shouldn't the presumption in a free society be that conduct of free individuals should not be limited without good reason?

Suppose the right to same-sex marriage were affirmed on the basis of a fundamental right to marry, and suppose against all expectation that such a ruling were affirmed by the US Supreme Court to be the law of the land. According to the statistical abstract of the US, there are 925,000 working lawyers and judges in this country, and many more legal amateurs who'd be interested in making sure that polygamy and incest don't become legal. If none of them could find a compelling legal basis for the bans, what does that say about the reasons such practices are banned?

a future without allies

From the first paragraph of a New Yorker story on the US Marine rescue mission to Sumatra

Sea Power 21, the Navy’s broad plan to respond to the post-9/11 era of small wars and uncertain alliances, is a military policy for a day when America might find itself without allies.

I suppose I should find it reassuring that an Administration that seems bent on alienating allies is planning for the day when we have none left, but the notion that our nation's defense might leave us without allies in the near or distant future, that such a path could possibly make us safe, is deeply and profoundly foolish. The fact that the Administration is making detailed plans for the results of its own foolishness only strengthens my impression that we have many dark years ahead of us.

a bit slow on the uptake

This has been coming for months, and I only realized today that the date for the Iraqi election was driven by the need for an applause line in tomorrow's SOTU. It was pushed back as far as possible in hopes that the security situation would improve, but there was a hard deadline. The election had to go forward, and it had to be this weekend. I'm glad only 40 paid with their lives.

I wondered this morning why the story of Sunni non-participation was so hard to find, then I wandered around some of my usual haunts and discovered that they weren't talking about it either. Kleiman has nothing to say. Josh Marshall is uncharacteristically silent. Atrios has nothing to say. Kevin Drum takes note of it, but only to (unintentionally) understate the amount of Sunni marginalization likely to result when the 7% of representatives they'll get in the assembly aren't the ones they'd have choosen had they voted. The silence is eerie, if not stunning. I guess they all have more important things to talk about.

below the fold

I spent a busy day yesterday not watching the news. This morning, the Chronicle's headline read, "Big Turnout Buoys Hopes." President Bush says the vote shows his policies are paying off. Etc. "Wonder what's happening today," I think to myself and access cnn.com. "Historic," "Large turnout." Etc. Wonder what the rest of the world thinks. In an otherwise triumphant Australian article, I find this:

Polls were largely deserted all day in many cities of the Sunni Triangle north and west of the capital, particularly Fallujah, Ramadi and Beiji.

In Baghdad's mainly Sunni Arab area of Azamiyah, the neighborhood's four polling centers did not open at all, residents said.

A low Sunni turnout could undermine the new government that will emerge from the vote and worsen tensions among the country's ethnic, religious and cultural groups.

Wasn't the lack of Sunni arab cooperation the problem leading into the election? Is the fact that the Kurds and Shia went to the polls the least bit surprising? Does it tell us anything new about what's likely to happen next?

thank you, senator feinstein

Thank you for opposing the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales. I never thought I would live to see the day when the United States claimed the right to torture under national and international law. I never thought I would have to go abroad with images of Abu Ghraib following my passport around the world. I never thought my fellow citizens would legitimize torture be reelecting those who fostered and condoned it. It is scant comfort but still relief that my Senator voted against a man who played (and no doubt continues to play) a pivotal role in one of the darker chapters in nation's history.

but don't call it discrimination

I know it's not an original observation, but when cultural guardians like Mary Gallagher extol the virtues of marriage, citing evidence like

Adults, too, benefit from healthy and stable marriages. They tend to live longer, healthier lives and are more affluent. Married mothers suffer from considerably lower rates of depression than their single counterparts. Like a good education, a good marriage is a real asset. Married men earn between 10 and 40 percent more than similar single men, and married couples accumulate substantially more wealth. By the time they’re ready to retire, married couples have, on average, assets worth two and a half times as much as their single counterparts. (The figure for married couples is $410,000, compared with $167,000 for those who never married and $154,000 for divorced individuals...)

doesn't it undercut the argument that depriving gays of the right to marry isn't discriminatory? Wouldn't it do so in a just legal or political system? Isn't the undeniable message, "We don't like you, and we're quite happy to hurt you to get our way."

Again, I know there's nothing new or original here. It's just that if you asked those questions of Ms. Gallagher, she'd deny the obvious implications, go home and sleep quite comfortably, and rise the next morning refreshed, ready to fight the perverts without a second thought.

you follow the leader you have

While perusing Paul Krugman's bad novel, I was taken back to the days right after 9/11, when I watched the country fall into place behind the President and his approval ratings soar. He hadn't done anything. The attack took place on his watch. He reacted to it in the crudest possible manner, elevating those who attacked us to avatars of evil, not merely criminals but worthy adversaries in a war between good and evil. His actions made no sense to me then, they make no more sense to me now.

But he was (and is) the President. If he's not up to the task, where are we? Is it really surprising that people would find it harder to distrust a leader in a crisis than to trust one? Is it really surprising that after the price we've paid to follow this path, people would be loathe to change course, to admit that this path is the wrong one, that we have paid this price in vain?

Iokiyar. The alternative might be too much to bear.

torture and partisanship

Andrew Sullivanwonders whether Kerry thought

the consequences of seeming to criticize the conduct of troops would be more of an electoral liability than holding a president accountable for enabling the torture of innocents

and fears he may have been right. If his review is any gauge, those fears are justified. Two paragraphs before, he characterizes those who "made the most fuss" this way:

dedicated opponents of the war in the first place...eager to use this scandal to promote their agendas.

If Sullivan can't avoid characterizations like this in an article critical of the administration and its torture record, can there be any doubt how Kerry criticism on this subject would have been judged?

Sarbanes-Oxley and business practices

Mark Kleiman asks why the WSJ would complain about Sarbanes-Oxley, which he characterizes as making "it just a little harder for corporate managers to steal from their stockholders." Sarbanes-Oxley is much more than that. It (and similar measures) have created entire new categories of computer products to meet record-keeping requirements. Companies are starting to store several years of e-mail in write-only devices, with near instantaneous recall. Many functions that used to be distributed are being centralized to increase control and ensure that business practices are uniform and compliant. People are making the kinds of defensive decisions blamed for increasing medical costs. Compliance costs small companies more (it's expensive just to maintain the expertise necessary to comply).

Are these changes rational reactions to SOA? I don't know. The number of actual prosecutions is small, and I don't know whether the actions being taken in the name of compliance are either necessary or sufficient. The overhead may indeed be justified, given the costs of a business system without integrity. The reactions are real, however. It's a bit glib to say that it's only effect is to make it a little harder for a few greedy rich managers to steal.

it's easy to say no when you're never asked

Jeffrey invites and how can I refuse?

I swear that I have never taken money -- neither directly nor indirectly -- from any political campaign or government agency -- whether federal, state, or local -- in exchange for any service performed in my job as a journalist (or commentator, or blogger, or whatever you think I should be called).

I feel pretty safe taking this oath, and in saying that the likelihood of temptation is remote. This would be a much harder oath for most to take:

I swear that I have never chosen my public positions or based my judgments of the world around on expectations of future gain or position.

I don't think I've done that, but the mind is a powerful engine for rationalization.

dishonest government

Dishonest government can't be good, but apparently once you know how things work, it becomes a little hard to see why, beyond kindergarten-level morality. It never seemed that hard to me. An informed populace is the foundation of democracy, and officials who lie to the public show a corrosive contempt for democracy itself. Being more of an insider, Matt digs deeper and finds a more serious problem: that officials who've lost credibility will have a harder time acting in the future, when action might be critically necessary.

This is an odd argument in any number of ways.

The Bush administration had demonstrated its belief that policy was more important than truth long before Iraq, indeed long before Bush took office. When the administration laid out its case for Iraq, many people (including myself) concluded it was deceptive. Generally speaking, such judgments were written off precisely because they were informed by judgments of Bush and his people, because they were based partly on a well-founded distrust of the administration, a distrust the administration had already earned. Is there any reason to believe the next time will be any different? One can argue whether 51% is a mandate, but one cannot deny that support for Bush is greater now than it was four years ago or that his institutional base is stronger now than it was two years ago.

In any case, if dishonesty were to curb the ability of dishonest leaders to act, wouldn't that be a good thing? Isn't dishonest
leadership itself so grave that it could only be trumped by the most profound external crisis, and wouldn't such a crisis generate its own political base? The public reaction after 9/11 certainly suggests that it would. The frightening thing today isn't that the prevarications of the Bush administration have weakened its support, but that they have not. If Bush is limited today, it's due to an overextended military, not a weakened political base.

It's not hard to understand why dishonest leadership is bad for the nation. It is hard to understand why insiders struggle to explain it. It is hard to understand why those who watch officials lie every day remain easy to deceive, why they struggle to find realpolitik reasons to explain why such dishonesty is, in fact, bad, and why they characterize the obvious answer--that dishonesty leadership corrupts our society--as kindergarten-level morality.

I know I'm being harsh on Matt. He has chronicled many of the known deceptions. He knows they're important. It bothers me, however, that he sees a possible weakening of Bush as the most compelling basis for criticizing his past actions.

feudal religions

Religion and I parted ways before I was ten. The reasons aren't that
important. I think there were too many contradictions, too many
inconsistencies, but whatever the reason, once I stopped believing,
nothing about the creeds I know inspired new belief.

My wife is Catholic, and I accompany her to mass when asked. Every
so often, something strikes me in ways it hasn't before. Christmas
Eve it was "Dominum." I've heard "Lord" my entire life, but it was
just a word, just how people talked in prayers. When I heard
Dominum, I had visions of lords, serfs, and vassals, and realized
that's what everyone heard for hundreds of years and maybe what everyone
who wasn't born in a democracy hears today.

God as King, as King of Kings, is a profoundly different vision
than God as Love. When I hear, "What would Jesus Do?" I think of
turning the other cheek. A king is first and foremost a leader of
war, embodying authority, demanding obedience. A king is responsible
only for his subjects and punishes disloyalty with death. From
someone with such a conception of Christianity, "What would Jesus
do?" would sound different. At least to me.

And when I look at today's evangelical movement, at the people
following the Rose Parade saturday morning with bullhorns, at Brother
Jed in the Quad warning of the "Lake of Fie-uh!!" at President Bush
with his Crusade, I can't help thinking that they worship a king,
not a man of peace.

The odd thing (to me) is that I see Protestantism, particularly
as seen in the sects that migrated here, as a reaction against
such attitudes, away from a feudal notion of religion and toward
more personal relationships and the American Revolution as a
continuation of the same process. When today's evangelicals strive to
put God back in government, they may be installing the God our
forefathers moved here to escape.

tsunami

I often find myself at a loss for words at times like this. The gap between what I want to say and what I can say is simply too large, and everything I try comes out trite and empty. I try to find perspective, but I can't.

The most destructive part of a hurricane is the storm surge, but it's effects are concentrated in the eye. The tsunami was vast. If a typical storm surge is 30 miles wide, this was like the storm surge of 30-60 cat 4-5 hurricanes hitting at once, without warning.

Three years ago, 3000 people died and it changed everything. As I write this, 155,000 are known dead. Some are taking the time to write about the benefits the tragedy will have for the local economy. I hope this will change something, that the world will build something better from this.

This is harder, though. There's no enemy to attack. There's no clear defense (warning systems are nice, but hurricane evacuations take hours and all the isolated communities would still be isolated). I haven't heard anyone stand up and say, "Today, we are all Indonesians. We are Sumatrans." Is that because the horror wasn't on live TV, because it happened someplace we care less about, or because it lacked the evil of human agency?

Could we build a Coast Guard Disaster Relief service with global reach, to respond to disasters of global scale? Could we support one, even though it might only be needed once a century? We spend trillions on defense, even though we've only been attacked twice in the last hundred years and those attacks were of much smaller scale. Could we invest in tsunami/flood/storm shelters in limited-access coastal areas? Would such shelters be an extravagance in poor communities where people struggle to feed themselves from day-to-day?