Get your money changed! Right here in the temple!

Introducing the new wave of Automated Tithing Machines! Proponents say it's no different than charging gas, and that people do most of their transactions electronically now anyway, so why not move with the times?

Of course, it gets a little murkier when you realize that the machines (of course) charge a fee to a for-profit organization. And that the tithing contributes to air-miles. And that tithing on credit seems a little creepy to me personally.

It raisses the question, did Jesus flip his lid in the temple because of the prospect of exchanging foreign currencies, or was it more likely because of the inherent usury involved?

The Senate Debate

The final vote on the torture and detainee bills is coming soon.

“What this bill would do is take our civilization back 900 years,” to before the adoption of the writ of habeus corpus in medieval England, Senator Specter said.

And the President:

“Our most important responsibility is to protect the American people from further attack. And we cannot be able to tell the American people we’re doing our full job unless we have the tools to do so.”

I'll leave it to the commenters to talk about what this means.

Magna Carta Watch

Here's a tidbit from today's edition of the Washington Post:

The government has maintained since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that, based on its reading of the laws of war, anyone it labels an unlawful enemy combatant can be held indefinitely at military or CIA prisons ... The definition [of unlawful combatant] applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant.

It fills me with dread that our Congress is considering a bill that would allow the Executive - by its own discretion - to detain U.S. citizens without formal criminal proceedings. At the same time, a bill is making its way through the Senate that would allow the Executive that same discretion in determining what sorts of coercive measures are torture and which are just playing really, really rough.

Were both to pass into law, the possibility would exist whereby the President could legally detain and torture a U.S. citizen. A citizen. In a Republic. The very fact that such a possibility could exist - that such power over fellow-citizens could be placed in the hands of one man - is antithetical to everything in our Anglo-American heritage.

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

Are we really about to set the clock back to 1225?

Solace in the Classics

Be all of that as it may, it is nice to have stumbled into my current (temporary) position, where I quite literally get paid to read Latin all day.

One of the joys of the job is that I get to introduce young minds to delightfully subversive verses like these:

Your husband is going to the same dinner party as we are: I pray that this be the final meal for that man! How, exactly, will I deal with seeing my sweet darling as just another party girl? Will it be another man you cuddle? Will you cherish the chest of another man, snuggled in tight? Will he put his hand on your shoulder whenever he wants?

Ovid, the author of these verses, was banned from Rome by the Princeps himself. Now that's poetry.

The Death of Authority: Part II

Another important thing to remember, I think, when considering the loss of social cohesion and legitimate authority is this: rarely in history has it led to a society composed of enlightened individuals, free of fetters. Generally the break-down of legitimate authority and faith in it has led to waves of anarchy. The result of that has been the masquerading of naked power as legitimate authority.

In that sense, I have to be troubled by the national Republican Party (under the political direction of Karl Rove) and its swing toward authoritarianism on issues relating to executive power.

But to provide an adequate counter-balance, the Democratic Party would have to reject much of the anti-authority rhetoric currently fashionable among their partisans. It seems to me that Livy was right:

Then as the standard of morality gradually lowers, let him follow the decay of the national character, observing how at first it slowly sinks, then slips downward more and more rapidly, and finally begins to plunge into headlong ruin, until he reaches these days, in which we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies.

The Death of Authority: Part I

Welcome aboard once again to AsianSmiths! I think he’ll make a fine addition to the Optimates family. In fact, I’d like to address one of his recent commentaries: his excellent "Amsterdamistan” post. Specifically, I’d like to talk about the causes behind the West’s seeming reluctance to, well, be the West and offer an earnest defense of our heritage and our values.

I think the very notion of the primacy of the individual – key to modern liberalism – is the chief culprit. What else could explain it? In elevating the rights of the individual above family, society, and state, liberalism hoped to free us from the shackles of the illegitimate authority of a calcified past. This was the aim of the Enlightenment taken to its logical conclusion. While the removal of illegitimate authority is certainly a noble goal, liberalism – which I must at this point nearly conflate with individualism – has had the negative effect of weakening respect for all authority.

The central premise of liberalism – pace John Stuart Mill – was that freeing the individual from the burdensome pressures of authority would permit his natural creative genius to blossom for the benefit of all. While I would be the first to admit that this has happened (witness our wealth and scientific progress), it’s not all that has happened. Without legitimate authority to follow, individuals have had to follow their own inner dictates. Absent any mediation, those inner dictates can be quite self-centered. In that milieu modern, consumerist capitalism, where the highest good is the maximization of wealth and attendant creature comforts, has proved very seductive.

If there is no authority to be found in our out-of-date (and, by liberalism’s leave, harmful and oppressive) traditions of the past, and our chief aim in life is to make ourselves comfortable, is it any surprise we can’t muster a cogent intellectual defense for the existence of “The West” as a collective society?

Thoughts on Bush's UN Speech?

First and foremost: ARRRRRR!

I was all set to make a triumphant return to Optimates posting today by live blogging Bush's address to the UN. So I started typing out notes as he began his speech, waiting for the first salient point. It never arrived. As near as I can tell, the entire speech was one, fifteen minute long platitude. He name checked each major state in the "greater middle east", said some warm fuzzy things about their rich cultural heritage before proclaiming that we "respected" them and that we supported their brave struggle against their bad governments.

Other than the predictable parsing of the current Lebanese crisis as entirely Hezbollah’s fault, and his brief (read: mentioned it and moved on) endorsement of the new UN proposal for solving it, his only words of substance we his naming of former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios as a presidential special "envoy" to Darfur. It would have been nice to hear some details on this one.

Anyway, if anyone else got more of substance out of this than I did, please let me know what I missed. Also, apologies for the long an unexcused absence. Oh and... Yarrrrr!

Shi'er me timbers!

Arrr, for those o' you who be unawares, September 19 be International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

If you be a little rusty on your Pirate, please watch this instructional video. Gar.

Do share with all o' your friends, savvy?

More Frequent Blogging

Now that I've got my new routine pretty much down pat, I'll be able to ease myself back into a steady diet of blogging once more. Just thought you'd all like to know!

The Republican Delegate from Albany

You heard it here first: barring a recount, challenge, or some other disqualification, I will be headed to Concord in two weeks as my town's delegate to the state Republican Convention!

I have absolutely no idea what to expect, it being my first convention and all. I have been told we're going to be voting on the official party platform, but I don't know if that means we'll be hammering out particular planks or just saying "aye!" whenever someone with a microphone instructs us to vote.

Thanks in no small part to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, the issue of education funding has become a campaign issue again. I don't know how hotly the issue will be debated at the convention, though: the party may prefer to get lock-step behind the proposed amendment.

At the very least, I'll get a chance to mingle with my fellow GOP'ers and engage in some fine dialogue. But on the outside chance that substantive issues are to be discussed or decided, do I have any requests from the floor for any policy proposals? Now's your time to influence Republican politics at the grass roots!

Christianity and Islam : A Discussion

Very rarely does quoting a theological tract from the 14th century get you into hot water, but there's always that rare exception, as Pope Benedict XVI has found out.

The crux of the controversy is this: Benedict's statement that the Qur'an allowed for "holy war," thus opening the gates to Islamic militancy in a way that he believes Christ and early Christians did not. Benedict's deeper (theological) point is that the Christian tradition of viewing Christ as "logos" - as opposed to the Islamic tradition of viewing Muhammad as a prophet - is more than a surface distinction: to paraphrase him, it has created a more 'reason-centered' Christianity, where the ideal is one of free debate. By comparison, he does not see this same center in Islam.

While I agree with Andrew Sullivan (see the link above) that it's a highly ironic statement for Benedict to make, I still think it's an interesting statement. So here's what I'd like from our readership: a discussion. Christians and Muslims of good faith and keen wit, let's discuss this! If people want to speak to the greatness of their faith, fantastic; if they point out the downsides, that's fine too. Is the distinction between logos and prophet merely a cosmetic one? How has it shaped each religion? How does it affect your individual relationship with the divine? Does it?

I'd also certainly welcome anyone outside of those two faiths or any/all faiths to the discussion, too. One caveat, of course: let's play nice. Let me be clear that "playing nice" is a double-edged sword. Just as commenters should not needlessly antagonize each other with stereotypes and old tropes, by the same token, I'd prefer controversial discussions not be flattened dead with a comment of "that offends me." Offensive and impolitic points can be vital to understanding. It's most likely we will all be offended by this discussion at one point or another! But that doesn't make the issues less salient or various opinions less valid.

Amsterdamistan?

Hello Optimates, AsianSmiths here. I've been graciously invited to contribute to your blog and I'd like to kick off with the following article from WorldNetDaily: "Official OK with Islamic law in Netherlands" [referenced through the Religion Clause Blog ] A short excerpt:

"For me it is clear: If two-thirds of the Dutch population should want to introduce the Sharia tomorrow, then the possibility should exist," [The Netherlands' justice minister Piet Hein Donner] said. "It would be a disgrace to say: 'That is not allowed!'"

As Prometheus said during our discussion of this: "yes, let's take the constitutional out of constitutional democracy - brilliant idea", but after second consideration, if there is a point where 2/3rds of the population of the Netherlands supports Sharia, is it even the Netherlands anymore? The question for me is, would the Netherlands be in the right to cut off Muslim immigration, or use extraordinary methods to enforce intergration and assimilation in order to make sure it never gets to a point where a majority of its citizenry would dissolve the state and remake it in the model of Sharia? Furthermore, with people such as Justice Minister Donner who seem to accept the suicide of their state and way of life with the equanimity of Brahmin cows, would it even be possible for the Dutch, and countries who are confronted by the same problem, such as France and Britian, to even contemplate taking such an action?

Steve Irwin

I leave out the obligatory "R.I.P." because it isn't what he would have wanted, but I'll say this. Live on in adventure, mate.

As ridiculous as he was, he found a cause that he belived in, risked death every day pursuing it, and then, after becoming phenomenally successful, gave every extra penny back into that cause. He died young, but lived every moment he had to the fullest. The world is better for having him.

But as a happy sort of sad-news-chaser, here's a picture of some of us at a Dodgeball tournament this Satruday. It made the front page of Gothamist, so I guess we're dubious local celebs now. Awesome.




By all means, enjoy yourselves in the comments.

Enlistment

The "Letter from Fort Benning" post and discussion thread has got me thinking again about the issue of national service, in particular military service.

So let me ask our readership this two-part question: under what conditions (and be specific) would you enlist in the United States military; and into which branch of service? Just my curiosity more than anything else.