Archbishop Canterbury Advocates for Sharia Law

As if the world-wide Anglican community doesn't have enough to fight about, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has set off a firestorm across the pond. Here is the BBC report:

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4’s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion. For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

He says Muslims should not have to choose between “the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty”.

Here is some of the response:

Following the archbishop's comments, Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said: "To ask us to fundamentally change the rule of law and to adopt Sharia law, I think, is fundamentally wrong."

Shadow community cohesion minister Baroness Warsi told BBC News 24: "Dr Williams seems to be suggesting that there should be two systems of law, running alongside each other, almost parallel, and for people to be offered the choice of opting into one or the other. That is unacceptable."

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said he had "an enormous amount of respect" for Dr Williams, but could not agree with him on this issue.

He said: "Equality before the law is part of the glue that binds our society together. We cannot have a situation where there is one law for one person and different laws for another."

Trevor Phillips, who chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said the "implication that British courts should treat people differently based on their faith is divisive and dangerous".

In an interview with BBC correspondent Christopher Landau, Dr Williams said Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".

He stressed "nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that's sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well".

The Times religious correspondent Ruth Gledhill put it more bluntly: Has the Archbishop Gone Bonkers? If you read the posts you will see that he has defenders as well who argue that his words are being mis-characterized. Still, given the troubles he is having with conflict in his own communion, it is difficult to imagine what possessed him to stir up this hornet's nest.

GetReligion.org has much more on this.

Friday with Sampson and Sadie

Excited about toys and birds.

The "Benefits" of Ethanol

A Star Tribune article this morning casts doubts on the environmental benefits of ethanol:

Renewable fuels such as ethanol have long been hailed as a cleaner-burning alternative to fossil fuels and a potent way to reduce the climate-changing gases pumped out of car tailpipes.

The 2007 Energy Act signed by President Bush last December doubles the nation's use of corn-based ethanol. Ethanol production in Minnesota, a pioneer of the technology, is expected to double during the next three years.

But research by Minnesota scientists is challenging the underpinnings of the biofuel rush. Ethanol and similar products may do more harm than good because of the changes they bring to the landscape, some scientists say.

The exploding demand for ethanol, soy diesel and other products is causing farmers to clear forests, grasslands and peat lands on a massive scale, unleashing far more carbon dioxide than is saved by the lower emissions of the biofuels, the study said.

"If we keep moving to get large amounts of energy by growing it on newly cleared land, which is what's happening around the world, we're going to be releasing much more greenhouse gas than the benefits we get from those biofuels," said David Tilman, ecology professor at the University of Minnesota and one of the study's authors.

The study, published Thursday in the online version of the journal Science, was funded by the National Science Foundation and the University of Minnesota. Another study published Thursday in Science, with estimates from economists at Iowa State University, concluded that corn-based ethanol could double greenhouse gas emissions, rather than reducing them, during the next 30 years because of the dramatic changes in land use.

From another more in-depth article:

The land-use issue makes the balance sheet far more problematic: The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, the lead author of the other study and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. "So for the next 93 years, you're making climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions."

I am sure that the ethanol industry is a godsend to the many farmers who are growing corn and actually making some money. And I am sure a similar scenario is playing out in other countries where palm and soy bean plants are replacing grasses and forests. But it is difficult to justify from any other environmental or economic perspective.

It's Time to be Creatively Maladjusted

My newsletter article this week:

Something remarkable happened on Tuesday. It wasn't the events of Super Tuesday, although the caucus in Minnesota was pretty amazing in its own right. No, I am talking about the Tuesday admission by the Bush Administration that they have in fact used torture as a means of extracting evidence from suspected terrorists.

It appears that the news first slipped out a few days before so they decided they might as well fess up. Appearing before a Congressional Committee CIA Director Michael Hayden admitted that waterboarding had been used on three terrorism suspects. He assured the committee that it had been done only in this narrow window after 9/11 when there was a great fear of more immanent attacks. But he would also not rule out the possibility that it might be used again.

Since then the Administration has been conducting a PR offensive to suggest that although waterboarding might be considered as torture by the Geneva Conventions and by current US law (and by Republican frontrunner for President John McCain who has flatly stated that it is torture), if the Attorney General of the United States rules that it is lawful to be used in certain extraordinary circumstances, then no harm has been done and no law has been broken. We can trust our leaders.

It is a dangerous argument in its own right. But I think it is important that we see it is part of a larger narrative that we been fed for the past 6 years, a narrative that reminds us again and again that we were attacked by terrorists on 9/11 and at any moment it could happen again. We should be afraid, perpetually afraid. And we should not wait for that attack to come but take the battle to the terrorists wherever they are, and they could be, and are, everywhere. It follows, then, from this frightening fact that the enemy is widely dispersed and hard to find that we are going to need to be in a war with no end in sight, a war that will require an enormous proportion of our nation's resources to be devoted to the military; other pressing needs will have to take a back seat. This endless war will also require periodic suspensions of civil liberties, like illegal wiretapping, and violations of the law, like the use of torture. But it will all be done by our government which is made up of good people we elected to office, and it will serve the larger cause of protecting our American way of life. So we can feel OK about it.

A carefully thought out and concerted effort is being made to get us adjusted to a way of life that sounds like it was taken right out of George Orwell's novel 1984. "Reasonable," "deep-thinking" men who see the world "as it really is" are suggesting to us that perpetual fear, endless war, illegal wire-tapping, and torture are respectable and normal.

I strongly suggest that we must not become adjusted to this way of life. I offer as support these words from Martin Luther King , Jr., talking about the need to be "creatively maladjusted":

Everybody passionately seeks to be well-adjusted. But there are some things in our world to which (those) of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive (people) of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self- defeating effects of physical violence.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

We must make a choice. Will we continue to march to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability, or will we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, move to its echoing sounds? Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soulsaving music of eternity?

The time and the issues are different. But our task, our calling, remains the same: to be a creatively maladjusted people. This is the very definition of a healthy church.

White House Says Torture is Legal

From the Los Angeles Times:

The White House said Wednesday that the widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding is legal and that President Bush could authorize the CIA to resume using the simulated-drowning method under extraordinary circumstances.

The surprise assertion from the Bush administration reopened a debate that many in Washington had considered closed. Two laws passed by Congress in recent years -- as well as a Supreme Court ruling on the treatment of detainees -- were widely interpreted to have banned the CIA's use of the extreme interrogation method.

But in remarks that were greeted with disbelief by some members of Congress and human rights groups, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that waterboarding was a legal technique that could be employed again "under certain circumstances."

Here's what Republican Candidate John McCain has to say about waterboarding:

In a recent GOP presidential debate, McCain said it was inconceivable that "anyone could believe that [waterboarding is] not torture. It's in violation of the Geneva Convention. It's in violation of existing law."

Hillary and Obama have said the same. But we have a president who believes that with the stroke of his signing pen he is above the law. It is inconceivable to me that lying about sex is an impeachable offense but brazenly breaking the law of the land regarding torture is not. Clinton brought disgrace upon himself. Bush has brought disgrace on everything this country stands for.

Beatles Yogi Dead

From the Washington Post:

The man who introduced transcendental meditation to the West, who briefly became a guru to the Beatles and other pop musicians and who built a multimillion-dollar global business based on teaching people how to pause and close their eyes twice a day, died Feb. 5 at his home in Vlodrop, Netherlands. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was thought to be 91.

George Harrison's hit My Sweet Lord might have been my introduction to eastern religion.

A Dental Vacation

It's not my idea of a fun getaway, but for more and more families who don't have dental insurance, combining a vacation outside the US with dental care is a necessary choice:

JENNIFER GATES, 40, a hairstylist and makeup artist from Northern California, hadn’t seen a dentist in a decade when she got the call last spring. Her father, Jerry Halley, 64, phoned to say he desperately needed crowns for a few back teeth and other work. Without insurance, Mr. Halley, who owns a landscaping business in Oregon, would have to pay the estimated $8,000 bill.

“We all needed quality dental care, fast,” said Ms. Gates, whose own dental-work estimate was $20,000 and whose immediate family was also uninsured. “So, I started planning.”

Ms. Gates found a reputable dentist through friends of her parents who had traveled to Mexico for care. Six weeks later, Ms. Gates flew to join her parents for a week of massages and tanning in San José del Cabo, Mexico, punctuated, in her case, by daily visits to Dr. Rosa Peña for five procedures including a root canal.

In the last year, Ms. Gates, who had a tooth so deteriorated she could touch its nerve with her tongue, has returned with her parents, husband and 14-year-old son to scuba dive and to open wide for Dr. Peña. Her 20-year-old daughter and son-in-law also have made a trip. All told Ms. Gates’s extended clan has had 12 crowns, 6 dental veneers, 4 root canals, over half a dozen fillings, 6 whitening treatments and 2 broken teeth fixed at a savings, they say, of tens of thousands of dollars. “Dr. Rosy is now our family dentist,” Ms. Gates said.

Perhaps this is not everyone’s idea of a worry-free family getaway.

Nevertheless, for at least two decades, medical tourism has been an increasingly popular alternative for the uninsured desperate for care, and for middle-class Americans willing to travel to secure affordable health care.

Roughly half a million Americans sought medical care abroad in 2006, of which 40 percent were dental tourists, according to the National Coalition on Health Care, an alliance of more than 70 organizations. That’s up from an estimated 150,000 in 2004, said Renee-Marie Stephano, the chief operating officer for the Medical Tourism Association, a nonprofit organization that researches global health care.

In how many different ways is our healthcare system broke?

Buddhism

Many Westerners have been introduced to Buddhist meditation practices and have found the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh and Jack Kornfield, among others, to be helpful in deepening spiritual practices. But Buddhist meditation practice is not all there is to the religion of Buddhism. Today's New York Times gives us a look inside a Buddhist temple in NY City as it prepares to celebrate the Chinese New Year:

Sing Sun See is from Hong Kong and, at 56, is one of the older nuns at the temple. She rises at 4:30 a.m. to begin her daily routine of studying, chanting and maintaining the temple, while working on the qualities of awareness, kindness and wisdom that define her spiritual path. At the temple, there is no television or radio.

“Outside they have their own life; inside we have our own life,” said Ms. Sun, adding that the nuns lead humble lives so they can cultivate good karma for the next life.

“A lot of things,” she added, “you cannot explain.”

The nuns recite Buddhist chants at specific times of the day while sitting on saffron cushions placed around low tables. They always begin with multiple bows to the 1,000-armed Buddha, which involves getting down on all fours and pressing their foreheads to the ground. At the close of the afternoon chant, one of the nuns deposits some rice or water on a pedestal outside as a symbolic offering for the invisible spirits that they believe wander the streets of New York.

Because some lost souls did not lead good lives, the nuns explained, they are agonizingly stuck between this life and the next. So each night, at precisely 8:30, the nuns take turns striking a large gong with a wooden mallet and reciting a “hell-breaking mantra” to release them from their pain.

“When they hear the bell, they get peaceful,” Ms. Sun said.

A tenet of Buddhism is not to kill animals, and sometimes local devotees request that their donations be used to free caged birds or animals. The temple’s founder used to buy big lots of live frogs, turtles, fish and lobsters from Chinatown vendors and release them into the city’s rivers and ponds. That is, until the New York Police Department threatened to ticket him.

Now, Ms. Sun said, they buy and free animals outside the country. “Everybody likes freedom,” she said. “Nobody wants to be killed.”

There is an interesting slide show attached to the article.

There's Something About Mary (1)

The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, by Jane Schaberg

Chapter One, Virginia Woolf and Mary Magdalene, is a reflection on the life and writings of Virginia Woolf and her importance for the author. Each subsequent chapter begins with a quote of Woolf.

In Chapter Two, Meditations on Migdal, Schaberg talks about the town of Magdala, where Mary Magdalene was from. The town is usually associated with the ancient town of Migdal, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, five kilometers north of Tiberias. In NT times the town was thriving. As late as the thirteenth century there was a Christian church there over the purported site of Mary Magdalene's home. But by the seventeenth century only ruins were reported there. Apart from one archaeological dig in the 1970's Migdal has been largely ignored by archaeologists and scholars.

Chapter Three, Silence, Conflations, Distortions, and Legends, takes us into the scriptural references to MM and the making of her legend. This is what we know about MM from the Christian scriptures:

According to all four Christian New Testament Gospels, MM is a -- perhaps the -- primary witness to the fundamental data of the early Christian faith. She is said to have participated in the Galilean career of Jesus of Nazareth, followed him to Jerusalem, stood by and his execution and burial, found his tomb empty and received an explanation of that emptiness. Two texts mention that seven demons had come out of her (Luke 8:2; Mark 16:9). According to three accounts (Mark 16:7; Matthew 28:7; John 20:17) she is sent with the commission to deliver the explanation of the empty tune to the disciples. Also according to three accounts (Matthew 28:9-10; John 20:14-18; Mark 16:9) she was the first to experience a vision or appearance of the resurrected Jesus...

In the Gospels MM a spoken to only by the figure at the empty tomb and by the risen Jesus. She speaks only to and of them, or of the empty tomb. Dialogue with her as individual occurs only in the Gospel of John, in the Garden tomb scene. Mark 16:8 depicts her and the other women fleeing from the empty tomb and saying nothing to anyone because of their fear, so that Gospel ends in their silence. In Luke 24:34 (as in first Corinthians 15:5) the first vision of the resurrected one is said to be Peter's; John 20:8 presents the mysterious figure of the beloved disciple as the first to believe.

Outside the Gospels, she is mentioned by name nowhere else in the Christian Testament, not even in first Corinthians 15:5-8 which lists those to whom the risen Jesus appeared...

Schaberg notes that an analysis of these texts in their historical context shows that as early as the second half of the first century her role in the events of the death and resurrection of Jesus is disputed. Other disciples, Peter or the Beloved Disciple, are given priority. But she is there in each of the gospels - in either a primary or secondary role - as a witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is her part in the canonical gospels.

So how, then, did she come to be associated with a whore? To be continued...

Caucus Thoughts

Four years ago our senate district had the largest caucus turnout ever, with over 800 participating. Dems were jubilant to see so many waking up and getting involved. Last night at the same building there were nearly 3000 in attendance. Cars were backed up trying to get into the parking lot; the line of people waiting to get in snaked out through the parking lot; the presidential balloting had to be held open an extra fifteen minutes; we ran out of ballots for the presidential preference vote, and had to print more. It was an exhilarating experience.

The vast majority of those in my precinct were first-time caucus-goers. It was a bit chaotic but fun leading them through the process. The resolution process in particular was crazy. In the DFL process the party platform is a grassroots effort; everyone attending caucuses has an opportunity to suggest resolutions, and if they are passed they go on to the County Unit conventions for further voting and then possibly on to the state convention. Some folks present represented groups, like a nursing association, that had resolutions ready on healthcare. Others came on the fly from the floor. Our most contentious resolution came from an insurance agent who wanted to cut off workers comp payments to illegal immigrants. He may have had some good points to make in terms of the way the system is (not) working, but he didn't have a chance in this crowd.

In the presidential preference ballot my precinct voted 2-1 for Obama over Hillary. The final Senate District vote was 1899 to 978 for Obama, helping Obama take MN.

I thought it was interesting that the Republicans bucked the nationwide trend and picked Romney over McCain. It appears that our Republicans may be more conservative than the national average. It is also safe to say that our Dems are more liberal, so we have a strongly divided house.

As much as I enjoy the caucus process, I think it is a bad system. We need a primary. Caucusing discourages participation. Only the most committed show up. Only those who can vote in a very narrow window of time get to vote. I received an email from an unhappy member of my Senate District last night saying they sat in line on County Road 42 waiting to turn onto Hayes Road towards the High School and then finally gave up and went home. I wonder how many others had the same experience. So as fun as the evening was for me, the caucus system is no way to run an election process.

No Guns in Church

The MN Court of Appeals has spoken:

In another victory for churches wanting to ban guns from their premises, the state Court of Appeals issued a 32-page decision Tuesday agreeing with the district court that religious institutions are exempt from the so-called Minnesota Citizens' Personal Protection Act of 2005.

Churches also are not required to post the statutorily proscribed signs that say that the building operator "BANS GUNS ON THESE PREMISES."

"The uncontroverted affidavits before us establish that the sign provision does compel churches that wish to exclude firearms to act in a manner that is inconsistent with their religious beliefs by requiring that they place specific, conspicuous signs at every entrance to the church," said the opinion written by Judge David Minge and signed by Judges Jill Flaskamp Halbrooks and Terri Stoneburner.

The decision means the Edina Community Lutheran Church can continue to legally bar guns with signs saying "Blessed are the peacemakers. Firearms are prohibited in this place of sanctuary." Other churches may choose their own wording.

The decision also means that parking lots, day-care centers and other charitable, educational and nonprofit facilities owned by churches may ban firearms.

Obama Bites Hillary

A carnival float carries large papier-mache effigies during the traditional Rose Monday carnival parade in Duesseldorf February 4, 2008. The Rose Monday parades in Cologne, Mainz and Duesseldorf are the highlight of the German street carnival season.

REUTERS/Ina Fassbender

CIA Admits to Torture

It's Super Tuesday, a great exercise in American democracy, but also a day when the news media and the nation's attention is focused on the presidential race. Apparently the CIA decided it was a perfect day to fess up to the fact that they have tortured detainees. From Reuters:

The CIA on three occasions shortly after the September 11 attacks used a widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding, CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress on Tuesday.

"Waterboarding has been used on only three detainees," Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was the first time a U.S. official publicly specified the number of people subjected to waterboarding and named them.

Critics call waterboarding a form of illegal torture. Congress is considering banning the technique.

Those subjected to waterboarding were suspected September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and senior al Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Hayden said.

He said waterboarding has not been used in five years but was used then because of concerns of imminent catastrophic attacks on the United States and because authorities had limited knowledge of al Qaeda.

"The circumstances are different than they were in late 2001, early 2002," Hayden said.

So presumably the circumstances could change and they would torture again. Hayden says these were extraordinary times, but it is precisely in extraordinary times when moral character is tested. Hayden says the interrogations were "fruitful" and led to useful information about al Qaeda. Because it worked, it's justified. We don't know, of course whether it worked or not. We have the word of people who are willing to torture to get information, but who also happened to destroy the torture tapes.

Regardless of whether it worked or not, torture is never justified. It is not the mark of a civilized democracy. Let's hope we get a President in 2009 who says 'never on my watch' and 'never again.'

Maryland Legislation Would End Civil Marriage, Create Domestic Partnerships

From the Washington Post:

Advocates for same-sex marriage plan to introduce legislation in the Maryland General Assembly today that would abolish civil marriage ceremonies now confined to heterosexual unions in the state and replace them with domestic partnerships for all couples.

The bills represent an unusual new tactic in the effort to push legal rights for gay couples through the House and Senate during the legislature's 90-day session. Sponsors of the measure say they are attempting to address head-on the concerns of lawmakers who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds.

Under their proposal, all couples -- straight or gay -- would be on equal footing with secular unions. Religious marriage in churches, synagogues and mosques would be unaffected, as would existing civil marriages.

The word "marriage" would be replaced with "valid domestic partnership" in the state's family law code.

This is the way to go, in my opinion. I have long believed that the state has no business being in the marriage business. Marriage is a religious ceremony. The state's role should be to confer legal protections of civil unions or domestic partnerships to straight or gay couples. Then, if the couple wants to be married in a religious ceremony they can find a community that is welcoming. And churches that don't want to marry gays don't have to. They can be as un-Christ-like as they want to be, but it will have no bearing on legal protections granted by the state.

Fat Tuesday

Having grown up in a counter-Reformation church tradition, Lent, like most Christian holidays apart from Easter and Christmas, passed me by with little notice. To my memory we never had any Lenten observations in my home church. But most of Christendom observes Lent, which begins tomorrow, and celebrates on Shrove (or Fat) Tuesday, today. According to the food writer for the Los Angeles Times, pancake or crepe suppers are part of the tradition:

In England and here in the U.S., many churches mark the day with pancake suppers; it's also a day when people who don't ordinarily make crepes will get out their battered French crepe pan to make the thin French pancakes. As I wrote a year ago in a story about crepes, the tradition was born from kitchen economy: Cooks made pancakes or crepes in order to use up eggs, butter and milk before Lent.

I'll be celebrating Fat Tuesday at the caucuses tonight.

The Military Appeal

In a discussion group this past Sunday, we had some conversation about what it was that made joining the military appealing. Just in the nick of time, a reply comes from William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He has taught cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy, officers at the Naval Postgraduate School, and currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. He writes an occasional post for the liberal blog TomDispatch.com. Why do Americans trust the military and why do so many young people join? Apart from the simple fact that most Americans are patriotic and the fact that there is much higher trust in the military than in the politicians we elect to office, he says:

Despite often compelling evidence to the contrary, Americans like to think of their societal institutions as being open, fair-minded, and democratic. If you look without prejudice at our all-volunteer military, you quickly realize that it truly is one of the least elitist, most diverse institutions of power in American society. Most progressive voices fail to recognize this. Yet it's my belief most Americans do and it's a big reason why they say they trust it.

Our military is demonstrably diverse -- racially, by class, and even more politically than most critics imagine. As a retired military officer who now finds himself a liberal arts professor in academia, I'm struck by the relative conformity of the latter, at least when contrasted to the diversity I found in my former life. Racial minorities from the lower classes are well represented in our military. (Some critics have claimed that they are over-represented, at least in frontline infantry units.) I've seen more black or brown faces in positions of authority within our military than in academia. (In my last job in the Air Force, my boss was a black female colonel.) Indeed, until very recently in American society, our military was one of the few places where African Americans and Hispanics routinely bossed around whites. (Louis Gossett Jr.'s drill instructor in the 1982 movie An Officer and A Gentleman was not exceptional; many times I've witnessed real versions of him in action.)

Politically, our military tends, of course, to be conservative, though not necessarily monochromatically Republican. Again, the world of academia provides a stark contrast, especially in liberal arts departments in top-tier colleges and universities, which do tend to be overwhelmingly Democratic and left of center. To cite only one example, of 42 professors in the English, history, sociology, and political science departments at Brown University who registered to vote, all registered as Democrats.

Ordinary Americans trust the military, in part, because the "have-nots" have direct access to it -- far more access than most will ever have to elite universities, elite law firms, mainstream media outlets, Washington lobbying outfits, or other institutions of influence and power. Indeed, our military remains deeply rooted in the broad middle-and working-class elements of society...

Astore says that the one notable exception to this egalitarian spirit is based on gender (one might also add sexual orientation). But this is another piece of the puzzle that liberals often don't get:

This leads me to the second blind spot in the academic/progressive critique of our military -- the failure to recognize the enduring attractiveness of military service to young men seeking to construct their own identities. To many of these potential recruits, American culture today appears feminized -- or, at least demasculinized -- a mommy-state, a risk-averse society with designer drugs and syndrome-of-the-day counselors to ease our pain. In response, what we're seeing is a romantic yearning among young men for the very hardness, the brutality even, epitomized by military service and warfare.

In talking to young men in the rural, conservative area of Pennsylvania where I live, what strikes me is how many of them have seen all 10 episodes of the HBO World War II series, Band of Brothers, and how many admire the bravery, camaraderie, and sacrifice it depicts in portraying paratroopers of the 101st Airborne fighting their way across France and into Germany in 1944-45. Seasoned Marines, a colleague reports, confess that one thing working to sustain recruiting, despite the war in Iraq and regular news reports on an overstrained and exhausted military, is young men who, raised in self-esteem-touting, gender-bending environments (on TV, if nowhere else), sign up to experience "the other side."

It's easy to dismiss such yearnings as Neanderthal. The irony is that that very dismissal creates an inviting taboo for a whole segment of young American males to challenge. For academia and progressives, war is today what sex was to society in the Victorian age, involving as it does emotions nice people don't feel and acts nice people don't opt to commit. Yes, many volunteers join the military with educational or career possibilities in mind, but among young men who enlist, there is also a certain element, conscious or unconscious, of taboo-breaking -- and of self-affirmation.

For women, gender identity is often shaped by biological rites of passage: menstruation, pregnancy, menopause. Male identity is arguably less secure and defined more by the gaze of other men -- you're a man when other men, men you respect, say you are. Men have gender too -- and many seek to construct and assert their maleness within the military, a cultural setting they perceive as patriotic, meritocratic, and sanctioned by the trust and respect of friends, family, and community.

The challenge for progressives is to recognize this and then to work to create viable alternatives to military service in which masculinity and patriotism can be demonstrated in non-lethal settings...

He suggests, for instance, that there is a need for a stronger civilian conservation corps/Peace Corp kind of program that offers a rigorous and patriotic alternative to the military.

I think this is a very good post. Many of us in the progressive camp are quick to dismiss - as mindless or uncritical - military service, but we miss what is behind it: the urge to serve and sacrifice for a larger cause. This, in fact, is a good character trait that often burns strong in young people who are full of idealism. For young men in particular, the military offers a path to serve and to learn how to become a man. And I can attest to the fact that even in the home of an ardent critic of the military, Band of Brothers was a requested, and granted, Christmas present for a teenage son. We watched many of them together and I get the appeal.

So instead of looking down on those who choose to serve in the military, we need to honor the desire to serve and do a better jobe offering alternatives.

New Mormon Leader

From the New York Times:

An 80-year-old former advertising and publishing executive, Thomas S. Monson, was named on Monday to be the 16th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one week after the death of the previous president, Gordon B. Hinckley.

Mr. Monson’s appointment was expected. Leadership changes in the 13-million member Mormon Church are based on seniority in the upper ranks, which makes the transition free of politics, but also guarantees a certain mantle of age. Mr. Hinckley was 84 when he got the job in 1995. He died at age 97...

Mr. Monson, whose elevation to the church presidency also makes him a prophet of God in the eyes of Mormon believers, was born in Salt Lake City, and has lived a life — common in the Mormon church, where there is no professional paid clergy — that has straddled the business and religious worlds.

His career, beginning in the late 1940s in advertising and later as sales manager for the Deseret News Press, a commercial printing firm then affiliated with the church, went hand-in-hand with his advancement into bigger and bigger assignments for the church itself.

They pick 'em' young, don't they.

From BC to BZ

That's before Zeus:

Before Zeus hurled his first thunderbolt from Olympus, the pre-Greek people occupying the land presumably paid homage and offered sacrifices to their own gods and goddesses, whose nature and identities are unknown to scholars today.

But archaeologists say they have now found the ashes, bones and other evidence of animal sacrifices to some pre-Zeus deity on the summit of Mount Lykaion, in the region of Greece known as Arcadia. The remains were uncovered last summer at an altar later devoted to Zeus.

Fragments of a coarse, undecorated pottery in the debris indicated that the sacrifices might have been made as early as 3000 B.C., the archaeologists concluded. That was about 900 years before Greek-speaking people arrived, probably from the north in the Balkans, and brought their religion with them.

The excavators were astonished. They were digging in a sanctuary to Zeus, in Greek mythology the father of gods and goddesses. From texts in Linear B, an ancient form of Greek writing, Zeus is attested as a pre-eminent god as early as 1400 B.C. By some accounts, the birthplace of Zeus was on the heights of Lykaion.

After reviewing the findings of pottery experts, geologists and other archaeologists, David Gilman Romano of the University of Pennsylvania concluded that material at the Lykaion altar “suggests that the tradition of devotion to some divinity on that spot is very ancient” and “very likely predates the introduction of Zeus in the Greek world.”

As Dr. Romano remarked, quoting a quip by a friend, “We went from B.C. to B.Z., before Zeus."

Just as Jewish holy sites became Christian holy sites became Muslim holy sites, apparently. And what is with the BC (Before Christ) stuff? It's BCE (Before the Common Era) now.

Wall Street Caps Coal

Easy money for coal-fired power plants may be coming to an end, according to this post in the Wall Street Journal:

Three of Wall Street's biggest investment banks are set to announce today that they are imposing new environmental standards that will make it harder for companies to get financing to build coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley say they have concluded that the U.S. government will cap greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants sometime in the next few years. The banks will require utilities seeking financing for plants before then to prove the plants will be economically viable even under potentially stringent federal caps on carbon dioxide, the main man-made greenhouse gas.

The banks can see the political hand-writing on the wall, but their actions may force change more quickly than the politicians.

Brethren Minister Challenges County Immigration Policies

From the Washington Post:

More than 50 religious leaders have sent a letter to Prince William County's elected officials saying the county's illegal-immigration crackdown has divided the community and created an "unwelcoming spirit."

The 58 leaders of Prince William congregations who signed the letter offered to "work constructively" with county officials and urged them to respond to public concern with legislation that upholds "the dignity and rights of all people."

"It's an invitation to elected officials to be part of a greater conversation," said the Rev. Jeff Carter of the Manassas Church of the Brethren. "It's an offer for some help in mediating and moderating this dialogue."

Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large), chairman of the board of county supervisors, called the group illegitimate and misguided.

"We don't need them as an intermediary," he said. "They need to do what they do best: serve their congregants and attend to their denominations and not get involved in partisan politics."

The religious leaders have been meeting since September, a month before supervisors approved a resolution to increase police enforcement of immigration laws and deny some services to undocumented immigrants. The group, which represents 25 houses of worship and 10 denominations, spent several months crafting a collaborative response.

There is nothing that unjust rulers want more than churches to close their eyes and pray and ignore the injustice going on in their communities. In the sweet, by and by...