Sunday, April 30, 2006


Weekly Parsha Blogging

I guess I've been lax, so the title cannot be read in the sense of blogging weekly on the subject but in the sense of blogging on a (usually "last") week's parsha.

Anyway -- normally the Haftarah reading for M'tzora (whether or not the reading is combined with Tzaria) is II Kings 7:3-20. Since it was Rosh Chodesh yesterday, however, we read from (Deutero or Tritero?) Isaiah 66:1-22.

Many people find it hard to talk about the parts of Leviticus read around this time of year, these parts being obsessed with impurity and disease and find them somehow to be the opposite of the Ethical Monotheism the mantle of which we claim for our faith. The solution for the preacher, however, is to look to the Prophetic reading to understand how the purity code, far from being a primative appendix to a modern religion is really part and parcel of that religious mode. Y'all know I am wont to argue how Leviticus as a whole is misinterpreted by many, but this parsha, more than any, really points the way to understanding what Leviticus really is about.

This last week, the Torah portion read dealt with, among other things, "leprosy" (not Hansen's disease but some other disease: my pet theory is that what is referred to by the Torah is something akin to Yaws/Syphillis that normally would be transmitted sexually but could readily mutate into a pathogen highly contageous by aerosal (hence the association with gossip) exposure or direct contact. But that is somewhat besides the point, as I have argued, judging by the "origin story" for the tribe of Levi that we get from J/E, this tribe is disposed of land, not because it is holy, but because Levi had sinned. It would seem that the Levites, though priestly, were also outcasts -- a combination found, for example, in the Osu of the Ibo people. As worship in ancient Israel/Judea centralized, the priestly clans became less outcast and some eventually became (in the period of the Second Temple) promenant and powerful. Their code was thus one that sought to redifine the role of the priest/physician, who was in ancient times considered unclean due to his role in diagnosing and treating "unclean" diseases, into a role of great respect (indeed, in Rabbinic Judaism, visiting the sick is not something that makes you unclean but is one of the Talmudic "10 commandments"). But like all such transformative codes, there is a need to define a new "outcast" group to replace the old one not to mention Nietzsche's observation about dragon fighters: yet, the important lesson from Leviticus is not that some people are "impure" but that

(1) by adjustment of our actions, even the most "impure" among us can, like the Levites, transform themselves and their station in life from being "impure" to being "holy". Perhaps this is the lesson of why contact with holy substances (e.g. during childbirth, menstration -- to connect with the concept of the month -- or touching the Torah) causes one to be impure -- to demonstrate an important truth (that impurity can lead to holiness) by making people act out the converse: treating them as impure when they have contacted that which is holy. Indeed, the difference between "impure" and "holy" in the Hebraic mindset is not that much: the word used for holy, kiddush, literally means set apart -- which is what you do with that which is impure. The holiness code is obsessed with the impure, not out of prurience or purely a desire to maintain an out-group, but because impurity and holiness are inextracably linked by the notion of separateness (which itself can be a synonym for severalness: which links to the next point about diversity ...)


(2) it is precisely those who, by being impure, are on the borderline regions of society who are most able to save society as a whole. This is the lesson of the Haftarah portion we would have read had it not been Rosh Chodesh -- the story of how it was the lepers that save Samaria from starvation following a siege. This is a lesson also taught by the example of Jesus but which too many so-called Christians seem to have forgotten. At the very least, all in a society, even the least and "impure" of society are needed for society to function and, more importantly, to face challenges in which it is the "last" who might be the "first" to figure out how to meet a challenge. This is also the real lesson of "evolution" -- not that the fittest survive, but that what makes a person fit can change with the blink of an eye and hence diversity in "fitness" is important. Indeed, the real fear of evolution comes from those who politically embrace "social Darwinism" -- the reason they fear "evolution" is not because it teaches "survival of the fittest" but because it, like Leviticus which seeks to set up a redistributive society in which not only the fit can survive but everyone can because it is often those on the borders of society who might prove to be society's saviours when conditions change, embraces diversity of fitness. It's like the old dispute between the essentialists and the nominalists: to an "Intelligent Design" supporter what is important is the essence of God's design. But to an evolutionist, like to P and D and probably J and E as well, what is interesting and important is diversity: it is not the first who remain first but the last who may in the future become the first ... so we must maintain a society in which all can flourish, because you never know who or which subculture will be our salvation in the future -- (to conect to the Haftarah portion actually read yesterday) as invisioned by Isaiah.


I am sure this can be polished more -- but it's my blog and I can ramble if I want to ...


Promised Observation from my Trip Down South: Maybe not as Bobo-esque as Promised

... but still generalizing based on a very limitted experience:

it seems to me that the South has become quite integrated in a way you don't see so much even up North. True, in the Soul Food place where I had dinner on my way down here, I was the only white person and in the BBQ place where I stopped for lunch (both places had very yummy food), there was a disturbing confederate theme and absense of people of color, but in general things seem, at least on the surface, pretty integrated. You even see a number of what seem to be interracial couples: it's amazing how what was punishable not too many years ago is now accepted. I wonder if it will be the same with gay marriage in the next generation?

Still, I cannot help but wonder whether racism has really gone away here or whether it is just sublimated. Instead of hating African-Americans, do red-state conservatives sincerely not hate them but instead hate "those urban welfare cheats" and have a clear image in their mind of who "those people" are? Like many things about the modern conservative movement, this mindset was presented in the character of Archie Bunker (a New Yorker, remember) who was admittedly bigoted but who could honestly say "some of my best friends are Jews/Blacks/etc." The question I have is why the punditocracy feels we Dems. need to get the Archie Bunker vote (and the related "Reagan Democrat" vote back) to succeed electorally: is this the mentality to which we Dems. really want to appeal?

Another thought about the South: to the extent that the workhorse of Southern Novelists, the Southern eccentric really exists, this may be evidence not of a society tolerant of non-conformity but, as per Lind's observations on Texas in particular and the South in general, of a society that stresses conformity. Someone who would be considered just a standard deviation away from the norm and accepted as such in the North may be accepted in the South, but only so long as he has the label of "eccentric" if not the more clinical and extreme label of "mentally imbalanced, poor thing".

Friday, April 28, 2006


Conservatives are the New Liberals?

I was rereading one of my old P.J. O'Rourke books I "found" as I was unpacking my stuff. I must confess I find his work quite funny, and, while I do not know his actual stance on the Bush administration, much of what he says certainly could be used to criticize the Bush administration from a conservative point of view (indeed, he criticized similar tendencies within the Reagan administration from such a point of view).

But what struck me this time was his condemnation of "liberals" in his opening remarks to his book Give War a Chance (ya gotta give O'Rourke credit: he has the courage to admit to being a chickenhawk, which makes him not so chicken after all?). Certainly the kind of liberal he criticizes never did represent the mainstream of liberalism and even he avers that he is not referring, e.g. to "Big Government Democrats". But such liberals in the 1970s and 1980s and into the 1990s certainly did exist and they did and still loom large in both the public's and more importantly the media's imagination of who and what liberals are (indeed, to the extent that there are liberals in the media, they are precisely the evildoers O'Rourke complains about) -- and correcting these misperceptions about liberalism is key to the future success of liberalism in American politics and the Democrats (as being the "liberal" party as, no matter how DLC we go, the Republicans will always be the party of conservativism and hence of non-liberalism).

But I have drifted from what struck me: what struck me is how much of O'Rourke's criticism of a kind of activist liberal position applies to the modern "conservative" movement. Just change a few specific positions and you have exactly the kind of whiny, complaining about persecution where none exists, etc., modal personality of who passes for a conservative now-adays. Of course, there was always this strain in the conservativism (and even O'Rourke seems aware of it and complains about it, though he does not always link it to his bete noir image of liberalism), and hence many conservative imaginings of liberals as such hippy-dippy, inadvertant evil-doers (cf. the discussions of "perversity" and "futility" in The Rhetoric of Reaction) have always been, to a large degree, projection. On the other hand, it seems that, in the past, there were many conservatives (e.g. my late great-grandparents) who were not whiny but whose conservativism was particularly anti-whiny and not projective about whining, but now all such conservatives have either died, became liberals (like my dad) or have went along into WATB conservativism. What happened to real conservativism? When did conservativism become so much the parody of liberalism that conservatives were up in arms against? And is this the triumph of those who project too much or a matter of people who are wont to slay dragons becoming dragons themselves?

Not that I am praying for the return of paleo-conservativism. Far from it. If neo-conservativism is like WWI era Prussian militarism (and the parallels are eery), then I need not say what I fear in a return to paleo-conservativism. Indeed, the obvious ease in which the failure of neo-conservativism can and will be labeled as a failure of a parody of a certain kind of liberalism (and we all know for what "liberal" is a code word) makes me worry especially about what a resurgent real conservativism will look like.

Still, I do wonder what happened to the conservative movement and why.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006


Photo Phun

Above are some photos (slightly modified in a hopefully artistic manner with PhotoShop) took (and modified) last summer 'round my parents' place when I was visiting. I just found the CD that had them when I was unpacking.

On the second image, somehow the color balance isn't quite what it was in PhotoShop, but it's still interesting if a little less "realistic"

Tuesday, April 25, 2006


Standard Operating Procedure

Is it my feverishly paranoid imagination or do Bush's proposals really do nothing to actually help increase the supply of oil and/or keep the cost down?

If I really wanted to increase the supply of oil, I would certainly not first think of ending subsidies for trying to find the stuff (however ineffective those subsidies might be -- they might still be doing something). On the other hand, taxing and hence discouraging windfall profits (a.k.a., back in the day when a person could become President [Truman] for investigating such things rather than being labeled as un-American, profiteering -- this is, as Bush & CO like to remind us whenever they try to make an end-run around the Constitution, a time of "war"), sounds like it might be a good idea.

Certainly, I believe that Bush is as dedicated to rooting out price-gougers as he was to rooting out leakers in his administration. Since he's not fired himself (nor hired any plumbers ... hehehe), I suspect neither is he really going to go all Harry Truman on price-gougers.

Monday, April 24, 2006


Isn't it ironic, don't you think?

Somehow I remembered a response to my redated "Inner Essentialist" post: I was labeled an "Epicurean" by a commentor. Now, it has occurred to me the (perhaps unintended) irony in this: a post in which I confess to some form of Essentialism gets me labeled an Epicurean?

What a world!


Bobo-esque raving possibly to come, but now for a few words from my Inner Essentialist

(1) I am finding almost all of the "necessities" in life here in Tallahassee FL (and even some nice things like decent quality Southern Italian dry red wine for more reasonable prices) that I've found in NJ: but they have neither Chock Full O' Nuts NYC roast nor Powers Irish whiskey: how do they expect me to have a decent Irish Coffee here? They also don't seem to have Onyx Reserve cigars. At least they have Dominican rum (though it's hard to find, and I've only found Brugel so far, not the more expensive, but worth it, Barcelo).

(2) I think in some ways, Taylor and Harrowgate Yorkshire Gold tea is even more the essential tea than their Scottish Breakfast. Still, my Outer Nominalist (what a thing to call even an aspect of yourself -- anyway, it was a toss-up between that and "Outer Kantian", which may be even funnier if less in opposition to "Inner Essentialist") prefers Scottish Breakfast if he can find it (actually considering we're talking about things Scottish, "Outer Nominalist" might be the more funny choice after all). Now the question is: what is the essentially musky tea, e.g. used for iced tea? I'm thinking maybe something that isn't even tea per se: raspberry leaf tea ... see? essentialism can be quite misleading of a mindset! (there goes my Outer Nominalist again ...)

Friday, April 21, 2006


In FL Now

I am now in FL.

Over the coming week, I will post some Bobo-esque generalizations on Red-State-land based on my trip down here along I95 if I have a chance to do so.

Monday, April 17, 2006


A Word from your Resident Mathemagician

To all non-procrastinators and worse, people in denial about being procrastinators:

those of us who procrastinate not only do it out of laziness, due to goofing off and out of a deep seated psychological flaw that causes us to hate change and completion and want to delay it as long as possible -- we also realize that doing everything at once, at the last minute saves time even if it does drive a person insane after a while.

Think about it. If you do some things ahead of time -- you have to take time and/or resources to save intermediate results and/or redo stuff. E.g. when you are moving (as I am), if you label boxes and then have to move them back, you take more time than if you label them just before you're ready to pack and/or load them. Sure, it might make things more sane to take the extra time and then even with duplicating effort taking a little less time on "the big day", but it is still a cost. There is no such thing as a free lunch. There is an economy of scale in terms of not having to figure out where to put, e.g., labeled boxes, or to take time to restow them. Doing things ahead of time has the opportunity cost of missing out on the economy of doing things on a larger scale, e.g. all at once at the last minute.

I wonder what the Freakonomics folks have to say about procrastination? Do they have this defense for it?


Inside Baseball

I guess maybe only the Conservative Jews amongst my readership (hi both of you ;) ) may care about this, but my $0.02 on the new Chancellor of JTS is that the school is trying to punt on the hot-button issues of the day (as someone I know put it "a lot of heated discussion at the recent Rabbinical Assembly meeting in Mexico City revolved around the hottest of all the hot-button issues facing the Conservative/Masorti movement ... [wait for it ] ... g ... overnance" what were you thinking? not that there's anything wrong with that -- er, I guess that's what the movement is trying to figure out, eh?): by having a non-Rabbi at the helm, whatever he says on whatever would automatically not have any Rabbinal authority ... since our movement's "head of state" in the US is the Chancellor, JTS essentially has said that it refuses to say anything authoritative about anything hot-button. Fair enough, I guess, they are not really supposed to be the arbiter of our movement's interpretation of Halacha --but still: what would Shakespeare (who sounds better in the original Yiddish) say?

You know though -- what is the greatest kashe facing Conservative Judaism, though. If we are the "Conservative Movement", how come so many of us are liberal Democrats?

OK -- I know that one's old ...

Tuesday, April 11, 2006


Time to Put on Our Tinfoil Hats Again

I still don't believe that the Iran-lovers (from Iran-Contra to their deposing of Saddam Hussein) of the Bush administration will turn on the country they secretly love and of which they are trying to turn this country into a Christian version (Iran is, after all, a democracy of sorts) -- although many in BushCO also helped to arm Iraq and look what they did to that country.

Still ... I wonder: Sy Hersch has been right about so much government malfeasance, it would be no surprise if Bush & CO really want to discredit him. Remember how they likely were involved in leaking Bush's records to the CBS folks and then laid the groundwork for a fake scandal about those documents so that all criticisms of Bush's (lack of) war record would come under suspicion? Maybe they are doing the same thing with Sy Hersch: they want to discredit him, so they have fed him a false story about invading Iran: when the story turns out to be false, he will be roundly criticized throughout the news-media for being "wild-eyed" even though he most of the time has been, alas, right with his previous "wild-eyed" accusations.

Or at least that is what I would like to believe: imagine how horrible an invasion of Iran would be (the occupation would likely be smoother than that in Iraq as there is more political unity and tradition of democratic governance in Iran -- a tradition we undermined when we instilled the Shah -- around which to build a new government). Or maybe the alternative is worse: why would Bush & CO want so badly to discredit Sy Hersch that they are willing to risk egging Iran on to develop nukes that much sooner (unless someone's profiting from the Iranian program ... hmmm ...).

Or maybe my tinfoil hat is just on too tight again?


un-Scientific Scientism

We see it amongst the proponents of "Intelligent Design" and it was endemic in the Enlightenment. But I know I've noticed it elsewhere.

But now I remember where: my very own Conservative Movement. It was, when you think about it, predicated on a Scientism which made sense from about 1600-1920. Now we know better ... as does the Conservative Jewish movement (not to be confused with Jewish conservatives).

But one interesting aspect of the Conservative movement, even after it drifted away from Scientism but still with a residue of the Scienticistic heritage you'd expect from a movement that began as "Scientific Judaism", was it's vehemence in opposition to the idea that the Torah and large parts of the rest of the Hebrew Bible came from 4 (rather than One) sources. As far as the Orthodox were and are concerned, this is a non-issue ... even if a Modern Orthodox person might aver that the Bible is not the literal Word of God, it is at least, to the Orthodox, a vital lie and pragmatic truth that the Bible is a Divinely writ document. As far as the Reform and even Reconstructionist movements were and are concerned, the authorship of the Bible is also a non-issue as the Bible is taken as an inspiring or (in the Deuteronomic tradition) ethnically unifying (respectively) document regardless of who or Who actually wrote it.

But for the Conservative movement, the Bible's authorship was an issue -- so, like "Intelligent Design" proponants who feel that any explanation must be scientific to be valid and hence feel the need to modify science so that it provides them the explanation of life they want (it's almost Cartesian, isn't it? after all, ol' Rene started reasoning ex nihilo and magically came up with the common sense of his day -- which shows 17th century common sense explains the entire universe in an absolutely true and complete manner, eh?), certain Conservative Jews felt the need to use whatever "scientific" evidence and thinking they could muster to disprove the 4 author theory.

Now, of course (compare the latest Conservative Chumashim with earlier ones), the movement has embraced the multiple sources theory like no other movement in Judaism (no other movement really cares) -- and, while reports of the imminent demise of the Conservative movement are always being made, the movement always seems to survive.

So I guess it goes to show that, in some spheres, scientism is really quite vain when you feel it is so necessary to be scientific that you twist science to be a slave to your prejudices, like the earlier eugenicists? Is scientism an example of a "dispute not for the sake of heaven" then? (perhaps, given the Talmudic example of a dispute not for the sake of heaven, I should have saved this blog entry for Parshas Korach?)


Anyway, my (well not mine ... I cannot claim originality for this just because I don't know whom to cite) $0.02 about those four sources and what they were getting at:

E: compiling and alluding to myth, legend and history to explain how it was in the Northern Kingdom that the two tribes without natural resources, Ephraim and Manashe, controlled everything (e.g. by reference to Joseph, etc.) -- of course, we (as likely could P and D, if they had the terminology to do so) could explain this in terms of what naturally happens when groups follow their comparative advantage: those groups without a particular comparative advantage don't get stuck with merely providing resources according to their comparative advantage. As such a "just so" story, the E source is inherently conservative and really justifies unfairness

J: compiling and alluding to myth, legend and history to explain how it was the hicks of the Southern Kingdom managed to outlast their more urbane Northern neighbors (e.g. by reference to the role of Judah) ... as such a conservative source justifying rural -- in particular herder -- values, etc. (does the story of Cain and Abel really come from this source?).

P: the Priestly code -- justifies the elevation, of what appears (again c.f. the legend of Joseph) to have been a tribe of outcast priests/physicians (the latter of course are unclean as they work with disease all day ...) akin to the Osu of the Ibos, to a position of promanence as a tribal society became centralized into a single (later two) Kingdoms. A large part of the justification was based on redirecting notions of who was considered icky and what considered abominable from hereditory states to changeable behaviors. P has gotten a bad wrap based on mis-interpretations of for what it stands ... it really is not about restricting who is "clean" but about making sure everyone can be part of society, including the poor and outcast. P really is akin to the Republican party (with its property give away programs, etc.) of the 1850s and 1860s. Of course, like the Republican party's conservativism changed in the 1870s and again in the 1960s, the priestly party changed by the time they became the Sadduccees (btw -- one perspective on 1st century CE anti-Pharasaic sentiment is that when the Sadduccees behaved in a certain way politically, they were maybe morally outrageous, but they were not hypocrites -- but like Democrats who say one thing and do another, when Pharasees were hypocrites, they were going against their own proclaimed morality: remember it is not merely a double standard to say IOKIYAR -- the Republicans, e.g., never claim government can be anything other than corrupt, so why is it so wrong of them to be corrupt in government?) into a rather reactionary and corporatist element -- but they started out actually pretty reasonable, at least for their time.

D: a group of mainly upper-class, connected folks (think of people like the Roosevelts) who, following in the footsteps of earlier Prophets, sincerely wanted to maintain the Hebrew culture and ethnos even after the inevitable fall of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel ... as others have pointed out, what they did was create a new culture: what became Judaism.

I guess "Ezra" is a prototype of the redactors who put most of the Hebrew Bible together from these and other (e.g. non-Deuteronomic prophetic) sources?

Monday, April 10, 2006


Shabbos HaGadol

The Haftarah from last Shabbos was from Malachi: continuing with the theme of Leviticus being not about regulating sex but regulating how you get to use your property (with the regulations on the use of your body being a metaphor for the more important regulations on property usage, zoning rights -- zoning rites? ;) , etc. -- I guess, in this way, Leviticus also supports the pro-choice position: it views one's body as one's own property no less or more than one's land), this Prophetic portion also emphasizes the role of wealth redistribution in the ideal theocracy it envisions for the Messianic age.

Interestingly, Shabbos HaGadol falls around tax time. Perhaps those so-called Christians who are a little too obsessed with keeping the gummint's hands off their money not only need to remember to "Render unto Caesar" but also remember that wealth redistribution is a divine command.

Of course as Garry Wills pointed out in Sunday's times, Jesus was actually pretty close to Nietzsche in many ways ... and ... well, I forgot the point I wanted to make here. Anyway -- read Wills' opinion piece. I am curious -- given that the Christian Bible

Well, one point I wanted to make on the subject of Malachi: much has been made of the Christian reorganization of the Hebrew Bible into the "Old Testament" with them ending it with Malachi rather than the Priestly/Official history of the Jewish State that are the books of Chronicles.

But why did the Rabbis end our Bible with Chronicles? It's almost Pythonesque: the Hebrew Bible is a warts and all account of the Jewish people from before we even existed to the time of the Persian empire, including the warts and all Prophetic/Deuteronomic account of the history of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel in the books of Kings (which is the warts and all account in Judges? Prophetic, Deuteronomic??? Oddly the Deuteronomic account of the conquest of Israel in Joshua is a triumphalist propaganda piece -- or maybe not so oddly given the goal of ethnic preservation of the Deuteronomists -- compared with the account in Judges). Yet, at the end of it all, there is the whitewashed account given in Chronicles -- "move along, nothing to see here". What were the Rabbis doing in ending the Hebrew Bible with this, after already spilling the beans on what the "real" history was?

And why do the Christians end the Hebrew Bible with Malachi. True -- it does promise a Messianic age in which parents and children are reconciled. But this goes against what Jesus said about bringing strife between parents and children. I ask my Christian readership: what is Jesus saying then? Is he saying he's not Elijah (whom Malachi promises will promote the reconcilliation) but rather the Messiah -- or is he disagreeing with Malachi?

So many questions -- so little time to blog through them, to borrow a few phrases and mix them up.


Watch as, right before your eyes, I turn into Andy Rooney

Every-so-often, the powers that be in NYC do things to make life miserable for us "bridge and tunnel" people under the guise of "we don't want people driving into Manhattan". If they are really sincere, why don't they do somethings to help those of us who commute between Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island and NJ to be able to go around Manhattan: lowering the toll at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge; figuring out what the deal with the Staten Island Expressway congestion is; getting NJ better public transportation besides NJ transit whose main mission (and an admirable one) seems to be getting people to/from NYC and not around within NJ? And as to those of us driving into Manhattan -- a lot of us have babies in tow: if they want us to take public transport, they need to make it feasible for us to come with strollers, etc.

Why do the news media allow the administration to get away with the Friday news dump? You'd think the media would decide, if only out of anger and self-defense, "hey ... the admin. appointing someone who considers us terrorists if we do our job is newsworthy enough that we can print it in Sunday's news instead of just allowing them to get away with it being only printed on Sat." ... it isn't the admin's fault they have their Friday news dump. Who can blame them? It's the media's fault for letting the admin get away with it instead of just putting the Friday news in the Sunday as well as the Sat. paper.

I may have ended my hail avoidence streak. Walking home from shul last Sat., the raindrops got mighty big and then became frozen. It seems to have been more than mere sleet, but maybe not full-blown hail: was it "snail"? I guess, alluding to chubby rain, it was chubby sleet? Speaking of which, the local Chinese restaurant where I grew up was, soon after I left, remodeled. It remained, under new ownership, a Chinese restaurant, but now has the decor and vibe of MindHead.

I do not get people from the "Judeo-Christian" tradition who want to make any and all abortions illegal. I understand (though I disagree with) making "abortion as a form of birth control" illegal (so long as alternatives are provided), but in the case of health and/or life? Doesn't the Hebrew Bible say "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and a life for a life"? Those who, through "legislative malpractice" make it illegal for a woman to obtain an abortion if she has an eptopic pregnancy should be afflicted with pain in kind; those who make it illegal for a woman to have an abortion if her life is in danger should be put to death -- that's Biblical morality. And didn't Jesus say "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"? Those who would force a woman to give up her health or life ought to be so forced themselves: actually, when you think about it "do unto others" and "an eye for an eye" are the same morality, aren't they?

Of course, there is the whole practical aspect of legislating morality. Part of the problem with the American Taliban and their ilk, e.g., in El Salvador, is that they come from "moral" traditions in which morality and law are really supposed to be distinct ("render unto Caesar" as Wills points out is a statement of militant secularism) and in which neither moral nor human law are really considered possible to truly follow -- so there is no thought about "sure I think abortion is evil, but how do I practically enforce this morality as a law" -- and you get a disaster like what's happening in El Salvador or what happened in the US pre-Roe v. Wade. Morality and especially law has to be pragmatic: it's even in the Torah (the whole thing about "choose life" the pro-lifers like to quote, besides being an obviously pro-choice statement, is a statement of pragmatism). Those who would try to have laws otherwise are just risking undermining the whole ediface of respect for law.

What's the deal with those who keep decrying "politics" in the very aspects of governance in which our system considers politicization of everything to be a bullwork against tyranny ("ambition must be made to counteract ambition") even as those same people are silently politicizing things which really ought not to be politicized (e.g. funding only those scientific endevours -- lucky for me my work is in that category -- that will allow big pharma to make money while not funding those endevous -- unlucky for my brother his work is in this category -- that might, e.g., show how disastrous our pillaging of the environment and atmosphere is)? Politics has its place -- to blame a Congresscriter for being political rather than celebrating her doing her job is simply un-American: as is to undermine science by politicization. Of course, these are the same people who complain whenever the subject of class is brought up even as they are slyly waging a class war themselves on all but the super-rich ...

I have more gripes (I guess I am so busy, I'm griping a lot) ... I'll type them here as I remember them and I have the time.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006


"But it's the same with us, Harry."

As I was listening to NPR this morning and hearing them talk about the justice system or lack thereof in Afghanistan, as soon as they referred to how bad it was that criminal suspects were locked in prison for months before they went in front of a judge, this line from The Meaning of Life was all I could think of.

For now at least, so long as the President doesn't wake up in a snit, found out your name and declare you a suspected-terrorist/enemy-combatant, you do get to go in front of a judge -- but it is now officially the position of the executive branch that the President makes that decision. Like the Protestant fellow in this particular sketch, somehow, even as we claim ourselves to be a beacon of democracy and justice in the world, our system of justice and Constitutional law operates on a purely "I could, if I wanted" have a justice system. And like the wife in that sketch, some of us wonder, how are "they" who don't have "systems of justice" any different than we who do have such a system but who have decided we don't have to us it. We claim to be enlightened leaders, but are we really? And how does that help our "war on terror" if we don't take the lead in any meaningful manner?

Yet, those of us who raise these questions are considered un-American and morally relevent for claiming equivalence between America and "those people"? I would say that those who want to abandon American principles, not those who maybe go a bit overboard in worrying whether "we" are no different than "them" are the real un-American, morally relativistic folks!

Meanwhile, people still will say things regarding the Iraq war as "well, it turns out the President knew full well Iraq didn't have WMDs but he used that threat to sell the war anyway ... which means he is a ... deliberate misleader". Why cannot people just call things like they are and call Pres. Bush a liar? After all, they happily called Clinton a liar. And we were at war then too. Lest people forget, back in the 1990s, Clinton and his people had their pants on fire regarding terrorism -- they were trying to fight that war, and the Republicans were shouting "wag the dog" at every step. Of course "after 9/11 everything's different"(TM). But my question is: why has the American electorate (albeit with some disenfranchisement help from the likes of Harris, Blackwell and Diebold) rewarded the party for which it took 9/11 for them to realize terrorism's a threat even as they now claim the need to agressively preempt terroists threats (all talk) though the other party was adressing the issue beforehand (all walk)?

I guess though, given the results of the 1984 election (the ever competent Mondale lost in a landslide to the Actor President), we shouldn't be surprised that the American people prefer someone who talks the talk and who is all hat and no cattle to someone who actually walks the walk but sticks his foot in his mouth when trying to talk the talk or who is just not so good on TV. Of course, I am sure my Republican friends would cite the 1960 election as well. Fair enough, eh?

Monday, April 03, 2006


Please Write Letters

I notice that Senators tend to ignore letters from out of state folks.

So if any of you reading this are from Arizona or South Carolina consider writing your Senator.

Ask John McCain:

Given your comments regarding the veracity of what Caroll said under duress and your new-found attachment to Christianity, will you now urge censure for the administration until they unequivicably renounce torture (and even the outsourcing thereof): after all torture should be morally abhorrent to Christians (after all Jesus was tortured for being a terrorist) and you have indicated that statements made under duress are often simply untrue -- so what can torturous interrogations actually allow us to learn from suspected terrorists anyway? So why don't you show some of that much ballyhooed straight-talking of yours and move to, e.g., censure the adminstration?

Ask Lindsay Graham:

In questioning the appropriateness of Sen. Feingold's censure resolution, you wonder, for example, whether Congress would have been appropriate if it were to try to stop Truman from firing MacAurther? If you like Truman so much, would you care to comment on the appropriateness of Truman conducting Congressional hearings, in a time of war, which were often critical of the administration, to prevent war profiteering? It was these hearings (and back then political grandstanding by Congresscritters was considered quite appropriate -- as it was the express intent of the Founders that Congresscitters would check the power of the President, if only for political reasons, and thus ensure democracy -- you know, that whole "ambition must be made to check ambition" bit) that brought Truman to national promanence. If you are joining in the Truman adulation train, you must admit the appropriateness of Congressional oversight of the executive branch, even in a time of war, must you not?

And speaking of Harry:

Give 'em Hell Senator Reid! Tell the truth and make 'em think they're in hell -- join up with Feingold, Boxer and Harkin and do your job and ensure the Senate as a whole does it's job and check and balance the President for once. Show the 'Murkin people the Democrats are not going to surrender to the Bully at Home (Bush & CO) and maybe they'll finally trust us to be tough with the Bullies Abroad (the terrorists).


Sending "Mexed Messages"

I thought Bush & CO were against sending "mexed messages" to "terrists". But I guess they are OK with sending mixed messages to the Iraqi people and their nascent democratic government.

According to Bush & CO, the Iraqis should get their act together already and form a government. But they have managed to form something resembling a government: but Bush & CO don't like the government they've formed, so they are putting roadblocks in front of the new Iraqi government!

Regarding that government, I don't blame Bush & CO: I wouldn't like that government either. But it is predictable that, unless other constraints -- constraints, Constitutional rights and all of that, that domestically Bush and the Religious Right are working hard to undo -- were put in place, the plurality would try to establish its own tyranny after being oppressed so long. So for Bush & CO to be mad at the Iraqis for not having a government when the reason they don't have a government is that Bush & CO are rejecting whatever government the Iraqis have tried to form on their own, following the very rhetoric of what Bush & CO are proposing for our country is just utterly ridiculous!

And people wonder why "they" hate us?

Sunday, April 02, 2006


Beginning the Book of Leviticus

This past week was the beginning of the reading from the Book of Leviticus in the Jewish yearly/three-yearly cycle of Torah readings.

I thought I would remind y'all of my words on the subject regarding, in part, what Levitical morality is and is not. I would also like to remind people of the subject of the quality of judgment as an ideology: remember the debate as to whether the judgment of Bush & CO or their ideology is worse? My answer to this is that bad judgment is part of their ideology (earlier follow up).

So what is the connection between all of these posts?

A critical aspect of any legal system is the interpretation of laws: i.e., judgment done by judges. This is explicitly stated in Deuteronomy and was, in general, a key concern of the D-school (as they intended to create a living culture based on common laws and mores) and their Rabbinic successors.

OTOH, most of those who want to establish "Biblical law" in this country, including "Levitical law" regarding sexual mores, really are not, as a matter of principle, interested in legal interpretations and judgment -- even as they want to establish "God's law", they somehow believe that law can never be adequately followed by man, so they have no motivation to ensure the law is followable: e.g., that, once the law is implimented, it doesn't result in everyone just being thrown in jail.

Consider the following situation. Suppose the legislature decided, in its infinite wisdom, to make sleeping on the side of your road a crime (e.g. to discourage vagrancy). Suppose you are stuck for hours in traffic and decide to pull over (when it is safe) to take a nap so you are safe to drive once the traffic clears. Now, if you are arrested and tried under the new law, you could explain to the judge (if not the arresting officer) the situation -- you either would have had to drive unsafely or break the law -- and the judge, using judgment would hopefully throw the case out (if not to rule the law as null and void until an exception for tired drivers could be worked in). However, the judge's ruling, would have to involve certain notions about judgment -- e.g. that some laws and principles (not driving while half-asleep) are more important than others in certain situations.

This is what Rabbis do all the time and have done throughout history -- intepreted the Law of Torah in order that people can actually live under this law. And some would argue that, e.g., if Hillel could be lauded for the Prosbul, then we can even, in seeming contradiction to Leviticus, have gay marriage in our religion and still be in concordance (and some, like me, would argue we must have gay marriage to be in concordance) with God's law. This is not, however, the position of many who want to institute "Biblical law" in this country: to them, in the situation described above, the only response the judge could have would be to throw his hands in the air and say "well, you're going to jail ... if you would have driven tired and hit someone, you'd go to jail -- but we don't expect anything else: it is futile to even think you could live under the law and not transgress it severely. fortunately, I'll send my son to jail for you in your place, so long as you have the proper system of beliefs": for a judge to do anything else would be "activist" (hence the right's dislike of "activist" judges -- it goes against their view of "morality" for a judge to actually try to make law work!).

Forget about how bizarre of a legal system that would be. What kind of moral system is that? What kind of system of values cannot tell you which values are more important? What kind of system of values surrenders when faced with the complexities of life? How is such a system that has such absolute and un-comparable values in which nothing is ok any different than moral relativism in which everything is ok?

And yet people with such "moral systems" are the one's our society (or at least our media) claim are the guardians of our morality?

Leviticus may be full of arcane laws and statutes, but at least there is an Oral Tradition that explains how we can live with them. Those who would cherry-pick all the fun, sexual stuff from that book (and ignore the important stuff about land use) all the while denying the importance of interpretation in any legal system, have no legitimate claim to wanting to legislate morality.

So why do these people who don't, at some level take their own morality seriously, get their "morality" taken so seriously by the media, one political party and people who want another political party to win more "religious" votes?

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