Did He Say "Militant Secularist" Like it Was a Bad Thing?

Militant secular "ascendency" has "brought with it immense suffering," William Barr said in a startling speech at Notre Dame. https://t.co/QJGZLothM9

— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) October 12, 2019

He sure did. I don't quite appreciate the value of a religious-freedom message that needs to exclude people of no religion, but I understand it in the same sense that I understand the use of the term "Judeo-Christian" to be inclusive of "People of the Book" regarding the Old and New Testaments of the Bible (to a certain degree)but to leave Muslims out of the coalition of Abrahamic faith altogether (because--brown? or maybe--exotic to Barr's reckoning?) and to also omit the equally vibrant Western traditions of people who philosophically rejected faith. Basically, this speech, even if I have not seen the whole text, rankles me in the way that Pat Buchanan's culture war speech did over 25 years ago (but more so, as he is in an actual position of power at a critical juncture for this country). I see it as rhetoric that singles out me as the problem in need of fixing, and we have seen in history where being the "problem" is a fatal diagnosis. But I do have this question from his speech that I can easily answer:

“Among the militant secularists are many so-called progressives, but where is the progress?” he asked. “We are told we are living in a post-Christian era, but what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system?”

I do not, as a "militant secularist" (I guess, as a practicing democracy-loving atheist) believe that we are living in a post-Christian era, except in the chronological sense that Christ seems to have lived some time before us. Christians certainly still exist. The text they read from still exists. The morality of Christ in the Book of Matthew is still instructive to even faithless secularists who profess progressivism.

What has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? Well, if you are one William Barr--partisanship and the notion that a unitary executive, however dodgy in his capacity, should rule over persons because ordained by electoral fate. Apparently. If you are me, the supposedly not Judeo-Christian secular militant (who nonetheless has drawn deep from that well, like a Samaritan of good will) you would hope that what follows from rote understanding of religion would be dialogue, moral testing, an appreciation that all humans should be treated as equal under the law of either God or mankind (or such laws are capricious and unworthy), and a cessation of blind faith in the divine right of earthly kings as revealed through a clearly jiggered legal system made to benefit top dogs as if they were tin pot gods.

Where Barr speaks the words "freedom to live according to one's faith", I can read the lines "to use one's faith as a cudgel against other people's ability to do so."

I do not find this point of view salutary or fit in the highest lawman for a diverse people. He reckons those of us of the inappropriate level of faith an "enemy" to the public good--but I have seen in his public duties where he has pardoned and exculpated the lawless deeds of an only nominally Christian president. How should I look at his rebuke of law-abiding faithless progressives, in his slavish toadyism to a tyrant of appalling lawlessness and nominal Christianity?

I can suppose he means none of it. I can assume he has blinders and lives in a delusion. He is either a liar or a mad idiot. But in neither situation is he a fit arbiter of law, so long as he does not appreciate it should fall on all equally without fear or favor.

He's pious, but poor in moral strength, for good would even be good without God to make it good, if God were logical and words meant things. Barr flings words about. What they mean is no good to those of us of religious minorities, or who oppose the would-be monarch he's become a dependent of.

Raif Badawi Has Received the Sakharan Prize

Raif Badawi, the Saudi Arabian blogger who still faces serious injury for the kind of speech I take for granted every day, has been awarded the Sakharan Prize, named for the Russian nuclear physicist who became a human rights activist. If Saudi Arabia, a petrostate on the brink because of lowered oil prices that might not economically be able to survive the next ten years because they can not produce wheat in their climate and they can not eat oil, wanted to show goodwill to the outside world, the kind they don't get from killing Yemeni civilians, why, I think it might be very nice of them to consider pardoning Raif Badawi.

It would be only a start. But it would be a noble start. Continuing to punish Badawi is not a proof of the strength of Saudi Arabia, but of its weakness. They punish bloggers because they are not strong enough to deal with what questions are raised, or what activists might be aroused. Reacting to the individual who points this out and not the questions he raises, is a sure sign of a failure to be communicated to. This should hand SA its Royal Ass eventually. But for now, were they just to let Badawi go, they might at least earn a little good will from one of their sometime allies?

How do they not see this gesture as a positive one? Free Raif! You have nothing to lose but some of your horrible human rights reputation!

Rick Santorum and his Grimy Oxymoron

Regarding the recent SCOTUS decision re: marriage equality, Senator Rick Santorum, as is his wont, could not be silent, and issued a bit of word-salad:

“Roe v. Wade is the cancer that is eating away at the body of American freedom and we’re turning into this oligarchy of judges who can impose their will on the American public,” Santorum said. “This is so troubling on so many levels. You have the abuse of the court and really robbing us of our republic. You have the abuse of the First Amendment and imposing their religious doctrine — You can say, ‘What do you mean, religious?’ Their sexual orthodoxy, let’s call it that, their morality — on the rest of this country and the destructive element of that. And then finally the destructive element being the impact on the nuclear family. I’ve been warning about all of these things and they’ve all come together in this one suit.”

Santorum went on to chide fellow Republicans who want to “move on” following the court’s ruling: “What is it about losing our republic, losing our First Amendment and losing the family that’s not worth fighting about?”

This is of a piece with his notions about a "secular theocracy" and he's not alone in using this idea--Mike Huckabee has used the same concept. But it's a very curious idea--secularism implies that no God is involved in a proceeding--so how could any part of government that is secular, also be a theocracy? I guess a sophisticated argument could go into how secularism places the onus for law upon materialism, and that those laws then become the ritual (the must-do's) of the secularist, making government the de facto "God" of the Godless. In a democracy, where the people elect the lawmakers who make our laws--"Vox populi vox dei."  (which is the radical concept lurking behind our American notions abut equality and "consent of the governed"). I'll admit, I like the US Constitution better than I like religion. I know who made it. But I do not worship my government, because I know people are people, and they have limits. Our government might be as good as it can be, but will often fall shades short of fully ethical and moral. It isn't to be worshipped--it is to be dealt with. That is a significant distinction.

Playing catch-up--

I've felt next-to-useless this past week and missed covering some interesting things.

Here they go:

This is Cynthia Dunbar, whose prayer is not either a self-important lecture that is more or less pronouncing exactly the outcome she wants in the Texas curriculum exchange in the name of her very particular god:





Much of the really silly things in the Texas curriculum passed, although the youngsters will be spared the nonsense of referring to the "slave trade" by the positively deceitful "triangular trade" and the motion to refer to the current president by his full name-- "Barack Hussein Obama" was curtailed for being, well the kind of thing it was. But the kids will still get more Reagan, Gingrich and Schlafly than they probably need. And be lied to about the separation of church and state.

Oh! And regarding church and state separation and Gingrich, here is some Gingrich being really obnoxious and probably trying to sell his new book to the dwindling number of Glenn Beck fans:



Ignore his pathos for the patriots at Valley Forge--what's his deal with "secular"? What's wrong with this country being secular? Religious values don't really by definition have a place in our political discourse--because the Constitution does not allow for any particular creed dominating the discourse. The government should not favor any particular creed, and there should be no litmus tests deciding who can hold political office. It's not like anyone anywhere said that people holding office need to be "undecided" as far as religion goes--or else we'd have an overwhelmingly atheist/agnostic contingent in government. We absolutely have people of faith representing us in government. It's just that people of various faiths or no-faith aren't to be discriminated against by government services. So the person who isn't Judeo-Christian isn't supposed to be confronted by a Ten Commandments plaque in a courtroom to let him know he is somehow a heathen who might be judged differently. Or a child of no-faith isn't supposed to perform a religious act in praying or singing words that are a lie to his or her non-belief in a public school.

Why doesn't Gingrich, who is not stupid, understand that "secular" is not a slur, but actually, neutral? Or is it that he'd rather see secular as a slur, to suck up to the religious? Hmm.

(I'd go into why "socialist" isn't a slur either, because any government is, to some extent, "socializing" from the very second a tax is levied in the very broadest sense of what governments do, but since I think the casual reader lighting upon my blog like a lady bug lighting upon a tomato plant at least knows that much, I won't press the point. In other words, Newt takes too much for granted that his listeners are stupider than him. And if any of his hearers were actually cleverer than him, he'd be well and truly f***ed? No?)

And BP finally--we get to see the damage, or as Brit Hume I think rhetorically put it--"Where is the oil?"

Oh, there it is:



BP put a pipe down there that they are a little proud of because it is siphoning off 5,000 gallons barrels a day from the leak--which is exactly the amount they originally said the gusher was putting out a day. And yet, it seems like so much more than they originally said is actually getting out. It's like several Exxon Valdezes by now. Or any number of BP's very own Prudhoe Bays. I truly wish they knew how to cap this nasty mess.

And as for what the White House is doing--what does anyone suggest--taking over BP? Offering a bundle of government-backed assistance? That would be so much socialism! Oh stop! Why wouldn't the people at BP who decided they knew where and how deep to drill and what the risks were entirely soak up the responsibility? Those are just the risks of capitalism, right? To bail out BP from such a disaster is....a moral hazard.

No?

Maybe with so much ecology at stake, this a very high-risk poker game for the Administration to play. I understand, of course. I just regret the stakes, and think the American south and the fragile swamps and wetlands and the pretty islands down there, and the bird sanctuaries and so much attractive beach to play on, in other words, a swath of irreplaceably valuable real estate, is at stake--

But I want people who depend on real estate and tourism to get mad. I want the fishermen and their friends to get mad. I want scientists who treasure our biodiversity to get mad. I want everyone to be a little mad, a lot. Mad enough to change the rules. Mad enough that this doesn't happen again.