Nicholas Kristof writing from Hebron

I was going to refrain from posting more NYT links, but I read this immediately after seeing John Hagee on television preaching about how much God loves the state of Israel. I've always found Evangelical Zionism more than a little strange, but I wonder what causes the blind approval of anything the Israeli state does. Is it ignorance of the social and political realities in the Middle East, or does ideological commitment outweigh the facts? And would that ideology be religious ("God's chosen people") cynically political (condemning Israel's imperialism would indict the US) or some mix of the two? Is it a perverted reaction to the terrors of 20th century antisemitism and the Shoah? I ask because the motivation that lies behind this uncritical support of Israel determines how (and even whether) we can profitably engage with Evangelicals about Israel's human rights record (a damning history that we, as Americans, have funded economically and supported politically for decades). Any thoughts?

Kristof's piece:

The Two Israels

A sample:
"It is here in the Palestinian territories that you see the worst side of Israel: Jewish settlers stealing land from Palestinians (almost one-third of settlement land is actually privately owned by Palestinians); Palestinian women giving birth at checkpoints because Israeli soldiers won’t let them through (four documented cases last year); the diversion of water from Palestinians. (Israelis get almost five times as much water per capita as Palestinians.)

Yet it is also here that you see the very best side of Israel. Israeli human rights groups relentlessly stand up for Palestinians. Israeli women volunteer at checkpoints to help Palestinians through. Israeli courts periodically rule in favor of Palestinians. Israeli scholars have published research that undermines their own nation’s mythologies. Many Israeli journalists have been fair-minded toward Palestinians in a way that Arab journalists have rarely reciprocated.

All told, the most persuasive indictments of Israeli actions come from Israelis themselves. This scrupulous honesty and fairness toward Israel’s historic enemies is a triumph of humanity.

In short, there are many Israels. When American presidential candidates compete this year to be “pro-Israeli,” let’s hope that they clarify that the one they support is not the oppressor that lets settlers steal land and club women but the one that is a paragon of justice, decency, fairness — and peace."

Politics and Food?

Beyond the demonization of a good cup of coffee.

What's for Dinner?

Here's a taste: "In last summer’s polling, the latest available, Mrs. Clinton scored high among voters who also had favorable views of McDonalds, Wal-Mart and Starbucks."

And why don't republicans like her...?

Politics: Too Funny to Resist

By now, most of you have probably seen the Obama YouTube video that was viewed over a million times before Super Tuesday: "Yes We Can."



Now, a new one has surfaced that gives the same sort of treatment to McCain's speeches.



Enjoy.

Religion and Politics: Conservatism

A NYT review of books by Michael Gerson and John Bolton:

Describing the Elephant, Michael Lind

A sampling of the Gerson section:

"Where social issues are concerned, Gerson’s heroic conservatism is actually closer to the Social Gospel Protestant tradition and its equivalents on the Catholic left than to Republican orthodoxies or to the “national greatness” declarations of the neoconservatives....As one might expect, a number of conservative reviewers have been hostile to such a point of view, and with them it is reasonable to ask why Gerson considers himself a conservative at all, inasmuch as his heroes are mostly progressives, liberals and radicals."

Religion and Politics: Progressivism

I thought this was an interesting dual-book review from the Times about religious faith and the Democratic party:

Left Wing and a Prayer, R. Scott Appleby

Here's a sample:
"In short, the Democratic Party’s long string of counterproductive responses to the enduring influence of the religious right has had the cumulative effect of driving away any type of base with the word “faith” attached to it, and opening the door to the Republicans’ shrewd, if cynical, courting of religiously conservative white Christians. It’s been a self-defeating failure, since there are millions of moderate and progressive Christians ready to embrace a reasonable alternative...

"Are Sullivan and Dionne to be believed, or is this the triumph of wishful thinking over political reality?"

Evangelicals in the NYT

I just read an interesting op-ed by Nicholas Kristof in the Times about the changing shape of evangelical politics. I have to say I took some hope from this. Some of it I knew already, but I was surprised to see what topped the list of "issues" in the CBS poll.

Kristof.

Stanley Fish and Theodicy

There are a few of you to whom I owe email responses or other signals that I continue to live and breathe. Especially Adam, who wrote to me before his trip to Italy and is still waiting for a response. Unconscionable, I agree. Alas, I am finishing (read: writing from scratch, or re-writing) the first chapter of my dissertation this week, to be submitted to various members of my committee on Friday, so I won't be communicating much this week. But, by Saturday, I'll be back in action.

In the meantime, you might be interested in reading Stanley Fish's latest blog post on "Suffering, Evil and the Existence of God." The post is actually an extended review of two forthcoming books, Bart D. Ehrman's (a Wheaton and PTS grad) God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer and Antony Flew’s (not even close to a Wheaton grad) There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.

Both books take up Epicurus's old question: “Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence, then, evil.” As you might expect from their titles, they come to different conclusions on the matter. An interesting read.

Obama and the Fam

OK, this is either a commentary on the unhinged nature of our political system, the unbelievable strength of coincidence, or, my favorite option, proof that the Masons really do have a nefarious plot to rule the world. It is, in a word, bizzare.

From the Chicago Sun Times: "Barack Obama is related to both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney." Yeah, that's right. Related. The brief article continues: "Obama and Bush are 11th cousins" because "they share the same great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents -- Samuel Hinckley and Sarah Soole Hinckley of 17th century Massachusetts."

And the Cheney connection? "Obama is related to Cheney through Mareen Duvall, a 17th century immigrant from France. Mareen and Susannah Duvall were Obama's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents and Cheney's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents. That makes Obama and Cheney ninth cousins once removed."

Towards Perpetual Peace

I am in the early stages of designing and proposing my own Rhetoric course here at UT. The standard convention is teaching a course named "The Rhetoric of..." fill in your topic here. It will come as no surprise to you that I am thinking of teaching the rhetoric of political violence. My interest will be pushing the concepts of peace, war, oppression, security, violence, retribution, resistance, revolution, protest and the like. (I am also thinking about the practices of war and peace, national security and civil rights, captial punishment and torture, peaceful protest and revolution.)

I have ulterior motives in telling you this. I want to exploit you as resources. I am wondering what kinds of texts-- poems, novels, songs, films, essays, etc-- you might recommend for giving undergraduates a conceptual vocabulary to think and write about violence in the political sphere-- particularly violence that is framed as necessary and/or instrumental. A text that justifies violence could be as useful as one that presents my own personal pacifist views (although I will, of course, appreciate that kind of suggestion). Particularly, does anyone know of fitting texts by MLK or Ghandi?

[My second choice might be a rhetoric of profit, so if you have any great ideas in that direction...]

Bonhoeffer's Ethical Imperative

Thought for the day:

"If we want to understand God's goodness in God's gifts, then we must think of them as a responsibility we bear for our brothers and sisters. Let none say: God has blessed us with money and possessions, and then live as if they and their God were alone in the world. For the time will come when they realize that they have been worshipping the idols of their good fortune and selfishness. Possessions are not God's blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which God entrusts to us." (From A Testament to Freedom, p 197.)

“The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.”

This blog (with the probable exception of Coye—in fact, that’s mostly the reason why we keep you around, Coye, to smash up the normativity of our assumptions. Or something.) is populated by fans of the range of apps Google has developed and made freely available. I myself use Google’s Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Notebook, Docs and Spreadsheets, oh, and that little-known search engine they cobbled together. Siva Vaidhyanathan is not one of these, and he’s working on a book called The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce and Community—And Why We Should Worry. An interesting sample:

“The damage Google has done to the world is largely invisible. Google got big by keeping ads small. It carefully avoided pinching our marketing-saturated nervous systems and offered illusions of objectivity, precision, comprehensiveness, and democracy. After all, we are led to believe, Google search results are determined by peer-review, by us, not by an editorial team of geeks. So far, this method has worked wonderfully. Google is the hero of word-of-mouth marketing lore. Google guides me through the open Web, the space that Microsoft does not yet control. Yet Google must get bigger to satisfy its new stockholders. It must go new places and send its spiders crawling through un-indexed corners of human knowledge. Google’s mission statement includes the rather optimistic and humanistic phrase, “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” But Google co-founder Sergey Brin once offered a more ominous description of what Google might become: “The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.””

[h/t Alan Jacobs]