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POPSObama's Fair Tax Mr. Warren, a man of the cloth, has done us a great service by asking the candidates to answer a pretty secular question: What kind of income makes an American "rich"? Maybe in the more secular setting of an upcoming debate, one of our nonpastor moderators could ask the candidates the moral question: What specific rate of individual taxation would it take for the rich to be paying their fair share?
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POPSSaudi Arabia bans sale of dogs, cats in capital This reminds me of the old joke, "Why do Baptists disapprove of sex? It could lead to dancing." This is an example of religious governance leading to interference in what should be totally secular areas of life. Of course we in the west pamper and coddle our pets, and often react with revulsion at the notion that there are places in the world where dogs are food animals. It's slightly more understandable in the case of dogs, because Islam considers them unclean, but that doesn't explain the ban on cats as well. The story about the Chinese emperor who cut the sleeve from a priceless robe rather than disturb his sleeping kitten has also been told about Mohammed. The article also fails to explain why the law applies only to men. If they realized that by allowing women to own pets, they have a privelege men don't, the entire fabric of Saudi society could come unraveled.
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POPSHumanism Grows in Scotland A large growth int he number of humanist weddings in Scotland could be another indicator of people's turning away from superstition and myth and towards a philosophy embrassing life.
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POPSWhy I am a Catholic Democrat The greatest benefit to true conservatism in the US would be a strong and intellectually honest liberal movement. Folks speak of conservatives and liberals, but the decades since Reagan have been dominated by party politics, not by ideology. The battle has merely been over which party controls the spoils. The GOP is as bereft of conservative conviction as is the Dems of liberal sincerity. The best thing that could happen to this nation would be for a Goldwater or Reagan to be pitted against a JFK or FDR. Only through such a clash and resolution would the nation once again gain her focus.
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POPSHow Karadzic stirred global Islamic terror
After the Dayton Accords, which in 1995 brought an end to the fighting - and to Karadzic's career - foreign mujahideen were meant to leave. But having obtained Bosnian citizenship, most eluded the requirement. Under US pressure, some of the most suspect were later removed, but many have stayed. Islamist hopes of a quick conversion of Bosnia's Muslims to extremism have so far been frustrated. But the conditions exist for it. Huge sums of Saudi money have financed the building of new mosques, many of whose future imams are receiving training abroad, subject to radicalising Wahhabist influences. Within Bosnia, a network of foreign-based Islamic relief and educational foundations, charities and NGOs operates in the social space left by ineffective, corrupt government. Elsewhere, these have proved conducive for Islamist extremism and al-Qaeda. In any case, it is not necessary for most Bosnian Muslims to radicalise in order for Bosnia to become a base or gateway for terrorists.
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POPSReligion Out of Govt Our government is designed to operate without regard to religion. Unfortunately, many have not figured that out yet.
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POPSNo-no to Atheists Our friends across the pond seem to suffer the same sort of religious bigotry that we have here in the States. Of course, I suppose the question could be asked why employees are surfing the net instead of working but that's for another clip.
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POPSThe clash of Tocquevillians and Gramscians "While economic Marxism appears to be dead, the Hegelian variety articulated by Gramsci and others has not only survived the fall of the Berlin Wall, but also gone on to challenge the American republic at the level of its most cherished ideas. For more than two centuries America has been an "exceptional" nation, one whose restless entrepreneurial dynamism has been tempered by patriotism and a strong religious-cultural core. The ultimate triumph of Gramscianism would mean the end of this very "exceptionalism." America would at last become Europeanized: statist, thoroughly secular, post-patriotic, and concerned with group hierarchies and group rights in which the idea of equality before the law as traditionally understood by Americans would finally be abandoned. Beneath the surface of our seemingly placid times, the ideological, political, and historical stakes are enormous."
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POPSPhotographs and Meditations on Death We are well used to reflections on individual mortality - it is the shaping force in the narrative of our existence. It emerges in childhood as a baffling fact, re-emerges possibly in adolescence as a tragic reality which all around us appear to be denying, then perhaps fades in busy middle life, to return, say, in a sudden premonitory bout of insomnia. One of the supreme secular meditations on death is Larkin's "Aubade": ... The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. We confront our mortality in private conversations, in the familiar consolations of religion - "That vast moth-eaten musical brocade," thought Larkin, "Created to pretend we never die."
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POPSHere We Go Again This somewhat disappointing position by Obama may be simple politics or it may be a sign of increasing involvement by religious organizations in government. Already we've seen the problems this can cause, mainly in the realm of churches to discriminate according to religion. If the rumors are true, churches will be able to discriminate in hiring if "certain conditions are met". I can't help but wonder if this is a ploy to garner the "evangelical" vote. Of course this still doesn't make McCain any more disirrable as a candidate.
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