June 22, 2005
Even in death, the battle still continued between Michael Schiavo and Terri's parents Bob and Mary Schindler, as Michael wanted Terri cremated and her ashes interred in a family plot in Pennsylvania, while the Schindlers wanted her body buried in Florida. Once again, Schiavo won in court, and most suspected that her ashes would be interred in Pennsylvania.
When I saw yesterday that Michael Schiavo seemed to relent somewhat and decided to inter Terri Schiavo's ashes in Florida as her parents had requested, I thought he'd decided to compromise. I had a bit of hope that this was a small gesture of goodwill and reconciliation towards the Shindler family.
That bit of hope was all too brief.
To backtrack for a moment, I don't think any of us are in an empirical state where we can categorically claim with absolute certainty which side was right and which side was wrong in this case. If Michael Schiavo truly believed that her was carrying out Terri's wishes, I can completely understand that at least in his mind, he was carrying out his promise. I would hope that under similar circumstances, that my wife would fight for me if she really felt that is what I wanted.
At the same time, I cam sympathize with the Schindler family, who felt that they were doing what they thought Terri would want. I am both a husband and a father. I see both sides, and I am torn between the two. While it is irrelevant here, my biggest gripe was the manner of Terri's death once it had been decided that she would die; but that is a subject for a different day.
At this point, only two things are certain.
Terri Schiavo is dead.
Michael Schiavo is an ass.
Michael Schiavo firmly ensconced himself as a first class heel as he went for the literal “last word” in against the Schindler family, using Terri Schiavo's bronze grave marker to strike out at her family one last time.
The marker lists February 25, 1990 as the date his wife “Departed this Earth,” and March 31, 2005 as the date she was “At Peace.” The obvious implication of this was that the Schindler's prolonged legal battle to keep Terri alive kept her soul in limbo from the time Michael claims she “departed this Earth” to her physical death fifteen years later.
Whatever their disagreements, using a dead woman's grave as a final insult to her family is unusually petty and cruel.
It may very well be true that Michael Schiavo never abused Terri Schiavo while she was alive, but he certainly abused her in death.
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Take Back the Memorial offers it. Here's a sample of the outrageous deception currently engaged in by the IFC and countered by Take Back the Memorial.
From the IFC:
Myth:The TBTM Fisking:
The IFC is inconsistent with what 9/11 families want to see at the World Trade Center Memorial.Fact:
The Mission Statement for the Memorial, which was crafted in 2003 and was the product of very substantial input from many family members, calls on us, through the Memorial, to “strengthen our resolve to preserve freedom, and inspire an end to hatred, ignorance, and intolerance.” That is what the IFC is about. A clear majority of family members on the WTC Memorial Foundation Board support the IFC and this Mission Statement.
Truth:Read the whole thing at Take Back the Memorial. If it doesn't get your blood boiling then you don't have a pulse.The WTC Memorial mission statement appears in full on the TakeBacktheMemorial home page. IFC cherry-picked from this quote, “May the lives remembered, the deeds recognized, and the spirit reawakened be eternal beacons, which reaffirm respect for life, strengthen our resolve to preserve freedom, and inspire an end to hatred, ignorance and intolerance.” See anything in there about “Freedom's Failures?”.
Truth:
Three family members on the WTC Memorial Foundation Board are adamantly opposed to the IFC at the Memorial site. Here are the remaining four:
- a board member of the LMDC, which voted to bring the IFC onto the Memorial site and to give it $300 million federal dollars
- a personal family friend of the LMDC chairman; the only family member selected to be a Memorial design juror and who is now a Vice Chair, board member and salaried employee of the IFC
- a Vice President of Gilbane Building Co, which was awarded a $45 million contract at Ground Zero by the LMDC
- a former aide to Gov. George Pataki who now works for the LMDC
Make sure you sign the petition.
Contact the IFC and let them know exactly what you think of their project. Tell them Ground Zero is about 9/11, not their transparent political agenda which even IFC President Richard Tofel admits, “will host debates and note points of view with which you–and I–will disagree.”
A Ground Zero memorial isn't about debate, it is about honoring the fallen.
Tell Richard Tofel and the IFC that Ground Zero is no place for politics: theirs, ours, or anyone else's. Fight for those who can no long speak.
International Freedom Center
120 Broadway, 31st Floor
New York, NY 10271
Fax
(212) 336-6727
E-mail
contact@ifcwtc.org
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June 20, 2005
Drudge reports:
"Hillary's aides noticed that Bill seemed to grow even more reckless after his memoir MY LIFE became a big bestseller. Thanks to his record-shattering $12 million book advance plus another $10 million in speaking fees, he was rolling in money -- and hubris," Klein writes.And there is indeed a picture of a man that appears to be the former Commander in Chief kissing a woman who is definitely not Hillary, though there is no context for the photo."Throwing caution to the wind, he started a torrid affair with a stunning divorcee in her early forties, who lived near the Clintons in Chappaqua. There was nothing discreet about the way he conducted this illicit relationship; he often spent the night at his lover's home, while his Secret Service agents waited in a car parked at the end of her driveway."
"It's one thing to go out to California with his wild buddies and stuff there,' said someone with intimate knowledge of the former president's philandering. 'But being indiscreet with a woman in Chappaqua steps over the line. That's the place Hillary calls home.'"
The book presents a photo of the former president 'mouth-kissing' an unidentified woman.
I have one question: does it matter?
I have no love for either Clinton. Bill is a philanderer, was in my opinion a weak if popular president, with few ethics and fewer lasting accomplishments. Hillary is a shrewd socialist hunting for a presidency of her own, and her ethical past is checkered, to say the least.
But isn't that enough?
Is there really a need to attack Hillary for being an enabler of a serial womanizer? Even if it does paint Hillary as an enabler of a sexual predator, does this really tell us anything we didn't already know about Hillary that we didn't know after the Lewinsky affair?
I don't see anything to gain from focussing on her personal failings, when her political failing are so much greater. We should focus on the failure of TennCare, the very real failing of her first foray into socialized medicine, and the recent flu vaccine shortage that was another direct result of her flawed socialist policy ideas. We should look at her radical political past, and her current refusal to condemn a fellow politician for comparing our military to the greatest genocidal regimes of the past century. Refusing to support our troops over such outrageous charges is reason enough to deny her the title of Commander in Chief. We should make these things our focus, not her personal weaknesses.
Her willingness to be a doormat for Bill's sexual conquests is irrelevant, except in that they serve to underscore her already well-known failures as a person of character. Hillary, almost certain to run for the White House in 2008, should be pilloried for her political failings, not her personal failures.
There are certainly enough things—Whitewater, the Rose Law Firm billing records scandal, Travelgate, and a lifetime of radical socialism far out of the American mainstream—to keep Hillary out of the White House.
Let's focus on keeping the debate in the public arena, where her long record of failure really matters.
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Update: I forgot the picture of the spokesman:
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June 16, 2005
The postmortem also concluded that Terri Schiavo suffered irreversible brain damage and could not hope to recover, regardless of therapy. Her physical condition was also more deteriorated than most people though, with the autopsy concluding that Terri was blind and suffering from severe osteoporosis Medical examiners were unable to find any signs of an eating disorder, meaning that the cause of Terri's 1990 collapse will likely never be known.
The autopsy of Terri Schiavo provides us only with data, not answers.
Based upon what we knew at the time, it would not have hurt anyone if Michael Schiavo relinquished control of his wife to her family. Terri would probably have not known one way or the other, but at least Bob and Mary Schindler would have had hope, if only for a while. Likewise, we'll never know for sure if Michael was carrying out Terri's wishes as he always claimed.
In any event, the long series of legal challenges seems to be an unsettling victory for those who desire for the euthanasia of the inconvenient, and the moral battles remain unresolved.
If nothing else, it comforts me somewhat to think it that Terri is in a better place now.
I'm not so sure about the rest of us.
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June 15, 2005
To the victims of lynching 4,743 people killed between 1882 and 1968, three out of four of them black, the Senate issued an apology Monday night for not standing against the violence.Two words come to mind. “Bull” is one. You can guess the other."The apology, while late, is very necessary," Doria Dee Johnson, an expert on the subject of lynching and the great-great-granddaughter of a victim. "People suffered. When the United States government could have done something about it, it did not."
The same article later continues:
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the Senate's only black member, said, "I do hope that this chamber also spends some time … doing something concrete and tangible to heal the long shadow of slavery and the legacy of discrimination so that 100 years from now we can look back and be proud and not have to apologize once again."Let me respond to Senator Obama (Or as Uncle Teddy likes to call him, “Osama bin Obama”) by saying that the chamber did do “something concrete and tangible to heal the long shadow of slavery.” In fact, it did quite a few things:
- The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and was ratified on December 6, 1865.
- The 14th Amendment gave automatic citizenship to all former slaves, and was ratified July 9, 1868.
- The 15th Amendment ratified February 3, 1870, ensured that a person's race, color, or prior history as a slave could not be used to bar that person from voting.
- The 24th Amendment eliminated the poll tax, was ratified on January 23, 1964, eliminating one of the last legal vestiges of segregation.
It might be of some historical note to Senator Obama that all four of these constitutional Amendments were necessary to counter the tendency of southern Democrats and their Ku Klux Klan confederates to try to marginalize blacks—often violently—something that still continues today.
The ABC News article continues in the very next paragraph:
Simeon Wright said, "Good men did nothing" as his cousin, Emmett Till, was dragged from his uncle's Mississippi home and murdered, reportedly for whistling at a white woman. Wright, who was there the night Till was abducted in 1955, said that if there had been a federal anti-lynching law, "there was no way men would have come into my house and taken him out and killed him."
Mr. Wright, do you care to run that by me once again?
The abduction and murder of your cousin Emmitt Till is shocking and tragic, just like the abduction and murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the three young men murdered by Klansmen in the summer of 1964 for helping blacks in Mississippi register to vote. Both of these cases were lynching, and a federal lynching law wouldn't have averted either one of these cases, nor the 579 other lynchings that happened in Mississippi between 1882 and 1968.
Not a single one.
While the rhetorical flourishes are nice, the Senate apology means nothing. It is political grandstanding, three decades too late. The legislation the Senate filibustered would have meant nothing to the ignorant racist thugs that carried out these attacks and the thousands more just like them.
Nothing.
Both of these assaults, and probably the vast majority of other lynchings, were planned with malice aforethought. A civil rights law not would dissuade single-minded, bigoted predators already willing to commit premeditated murder and kidnapping.
A senate confirmation of anti-lynching legislation, whether passed 105 years ago or in 1963, would have changed nothing. Mr. Wright's words are wistful and full of emotion, but they have no bearing on reality.
This Senate apology is a resolution of words, not substance. At least one other person seems to feel the same way.
"If you hit someone with your car, but you apologize, he's still hurt. It's (the apology) a good idea, but it's too late."
His name is James Cameron, and he should know. Now 91, he is the only known survivor of a lynching.
The practice of lynching came from intolerance and hatred, two things of which the Senate and politics in general are never in short supply. While Robert Byrd's favorite tool of the filibuster stalled federal legislation about lynchings, it was only changes in the greater society itself that led to the near disappearance of lynchings in American life.
The American people have long since passed the time of race-motivated public lynchings.
It is time the Senate does the same.
Note: Via Instapundit, David Hardy weighs in (correctly) that is the Supreme Court, not the Senate, that should be issuing an apology.
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June 13, 2005
The anonymous source then claimed that the Clinton's room, "looked like World War III. There are pillows and busted-up furniture all over the place," implying that a very violent rape did indeed occur. The same source also claimed Bill Clinton only found out about Hillary's resulting pregnancy by reading about it in the Arkansas Gazette, and that President Clinton was completely unfazed that he found out about the pregnancy in the newspaper instead of from his wife, instead boasting:
'Do you know what night that happened?"I have some hope that these allegations Drudge attributes to Klein's book are untrue, but if Klein does in fact make these incendiary charges in his book, then Klein has stooped to a low I've not yet seen in covering the lives of political figures."'No,' I say. 'When?"
"'It was Bermuda,' he says, 'And you were there!'"
Klein's unnamed source is most likely lying, and even on the off chance that the story turned out to be true, it still does not bear repeating. Just when you thought the caliber of person the NY Times would hire has hit rock bottom, the former NY Times Magazine and former Newsweek foreign editor Klein tunnels feverishly toward the earth's molten core.
This is triple character assassination, pure and simple.
Neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton nor their daughter Chelsea should be smeared in such an irresponsible manner. Bill Clinton has a history as a womanizer dating back decades, and Hillary has been criticized for sticking around for it, but neither deserves this unprecedented, unprincipled assault upon their characters. Most assuredly, this scurrilous attack most deeply affects the very being of Chelsea Clinton, and this unnerving and unwarranted assault against her is completely unforgivable.
I can only hope that one day Edward Klein will discover that “fist” can be a verb—and Hillary will write a book about it. As that is highly unlikely, Klein deserves to be sued—hopefully into bankruptcy—should the story prove to be without merit. Even if the story does turn out to be true, it still did not warrant publication.
Some things you simply don't do out of a basic respect for innocent people. Apparently all those years working for the liberal Times and Newsweek stripped away any vestiges of decency Klein may have once had.
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June 11, 2005
More than a dozen Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies will be disciplined for their roles in a controversial shooting incident in which more than 120 rounds were fired at a vehicle driven by an unarmed suspect, Sheriff Lee Baca announced Thursday.Um, yeah.
The 13 deputies will face punishments ranging from written reprimands to 15-day suspensions, Baca said.During the May 9 incident, a suspect led police on a 12-minute chase through Compton, considered one of the more dangerous cities in Southern California.
The chase ended when officers surrounded the vehicle and opened fire. The driver, 44-year-old Winston Hayes, was hit four times but survived.
One deputy was also wounded, Baca has said, possibly by so-called friendly fire...Â…Baca said the department has changed its policies on firing at moving vehicles, requiring that deputies independently decide whether to shoot, rather than all firing at a single command.
I watched the video several times, and the things that amazed me most about this incident were (a) the shoddy marksmanship of the L.A. County Sheriff's Dept., and (b) a complete and utter disregard for fire discipline by the deputies on-scene.
Part of the problem involves policy.
As noted above, deputies were told to fire at a single command. While the details of the shooting policy in place at the time are not explicitly detailed, the implication is that deputies were compelled to fire at a verbal command, regardless of how advantageous their firing position was at the time. This means that a deputy at the right rear of the vehicle (and there was more than one shown on the video) or other position without a clear line of site to the target (or anything else behind the target) was expected to discharge his weapon.
This is a patently dangerous policy.
Obscured by the mass of the SUV driven by the suspect, these deputies were quite literally firing blind, and had little chance of hitting the suspect. In addition, the bulk of the vehicle blocking their line of site also meant that they had little indication of where the rounds they fired might end up. Where these rounds did end up was obvious—in one deputy, and in the walls of houses in the area in addition to the suspect vehicle. With 120 rounds fired in a circular firing squad (men in a circle, firing at a target in the middle), it is a minor miracle that no one died.
Luckily, this “spray and pray” policy has been abandoned in favor of a policy relying on the independent judgement of individual officers. This is a move in the right direction, but it only will work if training is sufficient, both in terms of combat marksmanship and in terms of teaching proper shoot/no shoot situations.
It may be a surprise to many, but most police officers are not “gun people.”
They are people who have dedicated their lives to public service, and more often than not in law enforcement, a handgun (and occasionally shotguns, carbines, and true assault weapons for SWAT or ESU teams) is just another piece of their gear. Many officers never fired a gun before joining law enforcement, and many officers never take their guns out of their holsters except to maintain a department-mandated level of basic proficiency. Herein lies the problem.
Law enforcement officers generally only deploy their handguns in high-risk situations when they perceive a threat to themselves or others. In these situations their pulse rate quickens and as a result, the fine motor skills needed to accurately shoot a handgun diminish significantly. At this point, their training completely fails them.
Firearms training for many officers around the country still follows an archaic system of shooting at un-obscured static (non-moving) paper targets from a fixed position in the known and usually well-lit environment of indoor and outdoor shooting ranges.
These situations are completely divorced from the reality of a world where the “target” is often at least partially hidden, prone to quick, often erratic movements, and quite capable of returning fire. In addition, instead of occurring in a range where downrange safety is assumed and almost a given, most officer-involved shootings occur in populated areas where there is a significant risk of downrange targets being hit be the officer's bullet.
What's more, it is quite possible and even likely that with the kind of ammunition used by most departments (zero-expansion “ball” and controlled-expansion hollowpoint bullets), that even a direct hit on the target can overpenetrate, going completely thorough the suspect and killing or maiming innocent bystanders.
Because of this unrealistic training environment, officers are all but doomed to fail in the real world, as this example by the L.A. Sheriff's Dept. shows.
In an ideal world, police officer's would be trained in the high-stress and varying “shoot house” environments common to emergency services and SWAT team personnel, where officers are forced into unknown situations with “no shoot” civilians, and physical barriers controlling the tone for the engagement.
Unfortunately, these live-fire “shoot houses” are themselves hazardous for officers without significant levels of training, and are prohibitively expensive to maintain.
A compromise can be struck between these two extremes that while still not ideal, is significantly better than the “old school” range training too many departments still use. Departments can build less expensive “shoot house” environments and officers can be training using so-called “simunitions,” which are special training cartridges that function in the officer's duty weapon (thus better familiarizing officer's with their weapon in high-stress environments) while not posing lethal risk.
Until these more realistic training environments become standard, you can continue to expect more situations where officers put themselves and others at risk due to antiquated training and policies.
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June 10, 2005
A Brooklyn College professor who described religious people as "moral retards" said he is dropping his bid to become chairman of the department of sociology after the college's president expressed outrage over his views.As my father has been known to say, “You made that bed, now lie in it.”Timothy Shortell, an associate professor in the sociology department at the CUNY senior college, sent a bitter e-mail on Monday to several departmental heads saying he had decided to step down as chairman-elect and claiming he was a victim of a political attack.
Â…In his e-mail, Mr. Shortell expressed anger at the treatment he received from some members of his department and at what he called the administration's "inadequate" defense of his academic freedom.
"After witnessing the amount of venom directed at me by some members of the department during the last two weeks," he wrote, "I have come to doubt the possibility of any amicable solution."
Mr. Shortell engaged in a brutal, fact-challenged rant with little intellectual merit that vilified people of faith as uneducated fanatics and escapist liars that were incapable of moral action and prone to reveling in bigotry and violence. Interestingly enough, his essay was a perfect example of the kind of narrow-minded hatred and intolerance he ascribed to others.
Sadly, Professor Shortell seems to know as little about the limits of academic freedom as he does about the merits of religion.
The gold stand of academic freedom, the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, states:
A. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.Let's look at these three principles as they apply to Professor Shortell's current situation.B. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.
Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.C. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.
A. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.Professor Shortell's essay was not the research and publication of academic findings, but a polemic. This principle clearly does not apply, as this essay was in no way an academic work.
B. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.Shortell's rant did not occur in a classroom setting, and was clearly a controversial essay targeting religion. Furthermore, depending upon the stated aims of CUNY Brooklyn College, Shortell quite possibly could have faced dismissal if he had introduced his essay in a classroom setting. This second principle of academic freedom emphatically does not apply to this case.
C. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.Shortell would be within bounds in writing an essay or even an academic work condemning religion if he followed these guidelines, but the essay he created was neither accurate, nor exercising appropriate restraint, nor showing respect for the opinions of others. It flies explicitly in the face of the kind of work that would be protected by academic freedom.
Shortell can whine about the “inadequate” defense of his academic freedom all he wants, but academic freedom does not apply to his version of a sociological Mein Kampf. Academic freedom cannot shield people from their own stupidity, an lesson Mr. Shortell is now learning.
Furthermore, from a legal perspective, academic freedom in not a guaranteed right, but merely a quasi-legal concept. It is not precisely defined nor well-justified by legal principles. In short, it is merely empty rhetoric.
Much like the vile anti-religious holdings-forth of one Timothy Shortell.
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June 09, 2005
"...The ACLU played a helpful role in the civil rights movement defending these people, and I can't turn my back on that. I have to give credit where credit is due."Who said that? Mr. Reese Lloyd, former ACLU lawyer."But....that being said, what they have done in the past is completely eviscerated by what they do in the present. The ACLU has become a fanatical anti-faith Taliban of American religious secularism."
Read the rest of this fascinating and disturbing portrait of what the ACLU really hopes to accomplish at Stop The ACLU.
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June 03, 2005
Shortell is deep in controversy over online comments he made in an essay called “Religion & Morality: A Contradiction Explained”. The basic premise of Shortell's essay is that religion is irrational, inherently violent, creates immorality, and that the human condition will only improve with the eventual shunning of religion in favor of pleasure-seeking rationalism.
Shortell has just won an election to become the department chair of the Brooklyn College sociology department, but has not yet been confirmed to the position. Students began protesting Shortell's election as department chair once his essay became public, and now his chairman ship seems in doubt.
According to Fox News:
The school president must still approve the vote and has convened a committee to examine Shortell's qualifications. Members of the board of trustees at the publicly funded school are anxious to see the committee's report.Mr. Weisenfeld is correct.Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who is a member of the board of trustees, said, "He hasn't done anything within the classroom, at least as far we know and as yet that would amount to what might be called ... an impeachable offense."
The topic of the essay, while very controversial and confrontational, should not disqualify Professor Shortell from his duly elected chairmanship. Intellectual freedom to discuss controversial topics must be protected if higher education is to develop and encourage a new generation of thinkers.
The excretable quality of his essay, rife with contradictions in logic, unsupported accusations, and often unintentional comedy, is another matter entirely. If this essay's quality of writing is indicative of Shortell's academic prowess, I can only hope that the Brooklyn College facilities maintenance department has tenure-track positions.
Shortell's essay begins:
French Sociologist Émile Durkheim observed that religion was the root of science. Religion, he said, was the first human attempt to systematically explain the world. Durkheim thought that religious rationality would wither away in modern times (for him, the early twentieth century) because scientific rationality would replace it, by virtue of its superior explanatory power. Alas, he seems to have gotten this one wrong.Scientific thinking is indeed superior for many purposes, but it is smug arrogance to proclaim that a scientific approach is applicable to all situations. Someone should remind Shortell that Durkheim's revered scientific rationality was insufficient to deal with the emotional loss of his son in World War I. Durkheim withdrew within himself and could not even bear to have his son's name mentioned in his presence, a patently emotional, decidedly non-scientific response.But Durkheim was right about the genealogy of thought. Modern religion is an elaboration of a belief in magic. In the absence of a scientific explanation of events and institutions, faith in magical powers, fetishization of nature, and overinterpretation of random variation are inevitable. Durkheim expected religion to fall out of fashion as the outright belief in magic had, for the same reason. For anyone with the least education, the superior power of scientific thinking is obvious. Only a willful ignorance could lead to any other conclusion.
Professor Shortell further evangelizes:
Religions have persisted, despite their inability to explain the modern world. Here, in fact, we have a stunning reversal: religions play up the "essential mystery" of modern life. Since the world is too complex to understand all at once, in its entirety—even for the scientist—all of us will sometimes shake our heads in wonder at the turn of events in which we find ourselves. Many will find this uncertainty anxiety-provoking, and will look around for a convenient escape.
Once could presumably reverse the argument and also make the valid point that science still exists despite its inability to explain the modern world.
Despite research going back well past the time of Archimedes, mathematicians still cannot fully compute pi, the mathematical constant that is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. Should we not believe in mathematics or circles until pi is proven?
As social organizations, religions have a dramatic power that hides their essential irrationality. They persist today because they are so effective at constructing group identities and at setting up conflict between the in- and out-groups. For all religions, there is an "us" and a "them." All the ritual and the fellowship associated with religious practice is just a means of continually emphasizing group boundaries and hostility. It is no accident that the history of world religions is a history of violence, hatred and intolerance. The in-group has exclusive access to the truth, so the out-group need not—indeed, should not—be listened to; they can only deceive. And, being liars, and thus, evil, they forfeit their rights as equal members of the community. This is the poisonous logic of religious irrationality.Shortell selectively targets religions as having a history of violence and intolerance, while ignoring that the greatest mass murderers of the past century were secularists. Stalin and Mao shared the good professor's dislike of religion, and Shortell seems unable to reconcile his cherry picking of the historical record with actual reality, and so proselytizes onward once more.All modern religions are ideological: they insist on a total, though contradictory, system of beliefs and evaluations. Complete acceptance is the only way to escape the uncertainty of modernity. For this reason, religion without fanaticism is impossible. Anyone whose mind is trapped inside such a mental prison will be susceptible to extreme forms of behavior. All religions foment their own kind of holy war.
The reader might point out that some believers are more bland and mild than fire and brimstone. Those whose devotion is moderate are, perhaps, only cowardly fanatics. They want the fellowship and the security but ignore the logic of the system to which they grudgingly adhere. They may be more numerous than the overt fanatics, but they will always have less influence. This is simply the operation of the rule of the lowest common denominator; in response to uncertainty, the exaggerated sense of confidence of the zealot will win over the crowd. If you doubt that this is true, consider modern politics. The same dynamic applies. This is why our political system has given birth to the "war on drugs" and "family values."Shortell preaches that anyone faithful to the tenets of their faith—no matter which faith—is a fanatic, while those who are less adamant in their religion are cowardly fanatics. Once again, Shortell shows a cultish divisiveness of his own, insisting that you must believe fully as he does or face being labeled an infidel.
One might also be amused to note that Shortell seems to be counting on his own zealotry to “win over the crowd” that he rails against.
Faith is by definition not rational—that is, it is belief in the absence of verification. (If you do not think this is a fair definition of faith, look it up. I got this from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, item 2b.)
Perhaps not surprisingly considering his track record thus far, Shortell "accurately misquotes" Merriam-Webster's item 2b, which defines faith as a “firm belief in something for which there is no proof .”
I find it every much as interesting that he chose that particular definition, as faith is also defined as an allegiance to duty or to a person, and also as loyalty, fidelity, and a sincerity of intentions.
Shortell seems against loyalty and suspicious of fidelity, and it isn't hard to see this in disturbing detail. In addition to the text of this essay, Shortell also includes a collection of original artwork he created.
In the majority of these pictures, we see the same solitary, dark, limbless human silhouette about to be crushed by elements of his environment.
In one image the figure is in the path of giant dominoes about to fall; in another, it sits helplessly in front of boulders careening down a hillside. Yet a third shows the torso about to be overrun by an oncoming pair of headlights. Shortell seems obsessed with stark loneliness, feelings of abandonment, helplessness, and impending death.
To put it mildly, he's got "issues.”
If every assertion were subject to question, the faithful would have to admit that they hold their beliefs without rational basis. If the public sphere were to promote the free contest of ideas, religious belief would wither under the scrutiny of scientific rationality, just as Durkheim expected. As with nationalism, faith is secured by appeals to emotion, not critical thinking. Emotion in crowds tends toward panic or violence.While I'm sure the good professor finds it infuriating, the marketplace of ideas has been around for quite sometime, and scientific rationality seems to have done religion no harm. Faith isn't based on science, or pseudo-science, but upon a core human desire for something greater than this plane of existence, which is found in the vast majority of cultures in human history.
Shortell seems hell-bent on stripping us of humanity in a mad pursuit of cold objectivity. Perhaps he has spent a bit too much time imagining life as a Vulcan.
His comments about the tendency of crowds may or may not have a degree of merit, but I would think that if his theory is correct, then there should be bloodbaths during every NASCAR race, Broadway show, and PTA meeting. I remain unconvinced.
In order to be protected from the harsh light of rational argument, the faithful want to make religion a taboo subject. Orthodoxy is supposed to be beyond question. Just like in totalitarian states, where criticism of the government is a capital offense, the faithful would like to enforce an intellectual gag-order so that the barbarity of their regime goes unchallenged.
Professor Shortell does not desire a rational discourse. He dismisses the merits of religion out of hand. Nobody has censored him nor put him in prison for his views, but neither has he the courage to stand up for his accusations. He claims, "we should be able to debate the issue in the public sphere without fear of retribution," but refuses to debate. He hits and runs, making me suspect he does not desire the rational argument he claims, but instead simply wishes to stand alone on his soap box inside an echo chamber.
This only addresses roughly the first half of Shortell's essay, and the rest is as agonizingly tiresome. He bloviates on, making one unsubstantiated statement after another. Feel free to read the rest, but you won' t miss much other than more projections of Shortell's apparent insensitivity and insecurity.
His thesis is simply this, “Can there be any doubt that humanity would be better off without religion?”
I think we can answer quite honestly that, "Yes sir, after thousands of years finding comfort in religion in every corner of this world, and on others, there is obviously quite a bit of doubt."
Religions are well established worldwide, and the bulk of humanity seems to think we are better off with them as an intrinsic part of our collective social fabric. What is not so readily apparent is the value of Professor Shortell's relatively new cult of scientific rationality.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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June 01, 2005
The bill passed the Illinois Senate earlier this month.
Other states and municipalities have tried similar bills, but they have repeatedly been struck down on First Amendment grounds. Under the impending law, clerks that knowingly sell adult video games to minors face a $1,000 fine, but the bill leaves it to the stores to determine which games are too violent or too sexually explicit for minors.
The proposed law has almost no chance of standing up to federal scrutiny. Not only does it place an undue burden upon stores to determine which games contain inappropriate content; it also fails to provide a significantly narrow definition of what constitutes violent or sexually explicit behavior, placing an undue burden upon store owners to make that determination without sufficient guidelines.
Two thoughts came to mind as I read of this proposed bill:
• That there are some similar problems between this bill and the practical failure of the “Assault Weapons Ban” embedded in the 1994 Crime Control and Prevention Act ( more commonly known as the “Assault Weapons Ban”) that expired last year, and;
• Illinois lawmakers must have known that this bill would not pass federal scrutiny based upon similar laws previously defeated… so why did they pass a bill that will almost certainly be challenged and struck down by federal courts once it becomes a law?
The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban signed into law by President Bill Clinton banned some specific firearms, but also attempted to ban similar weapons by banning certain features they felt were common to assault weapons. A partial list of these features included flash-hiders, pistol grips, and bayonet lugs.
The ban, while legal, was a practical failure. Firearm manufacturers simply removed the offending features and were then able to sell the exact same firearm type with only minor cosmetic changes.
It is a battle between the specific and the vague. The AW Ban failed because it tried to limit firearm access using specific but vague criteria, and the Illinois ban follows a similar path.
In the former, the 1994 Crime Bill was an attempt to get the desired result while ignoring the basic engineering truth that these firearm operating systems were identical to those of sporting guns. The lawmakers knew they could not pass a law that was a direct assault on the Second Amendment, and attempted a work-around that failed.
In the latter case , Illinois is attempting to get a desired result by while ignoring a basic truth that free speech, even speech we don't like, cannot be unreasonably constricted without just cause. They only compound their problems by unfairly placing an undue burden upon stores to determine what constitutes inappropriate content in an attempt to bypass the First Amendment.
So why are Illinois lawmakers so enthusiastically supporting a law that is destined to fail?
I have no easy answers, but suspect that it is a combination of some lawmakers trying to seriously address what they feel is a serious problem in our society, and others that calculated an immediate political gain from supporting such legislation with little or no political downside.
In any event, it will be interesting to see what Illinois lawmakers decide to once the law is signed and then almost certainly struck down. Will they go back to the proverbial drawing board and try to draft a constitutionally sound proposal, or will they simply throw their hands up and say, “we tried.”
Their response to a torpedoed law will go a long way towards telling us just how serious they really are.
Note: The bill that passed the House seems to be different that the version of the bill I discussed here in December.
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