The best Holiday special, Ever

It needs to be The Year Without a Santa....

Why you ask? Well, because it has style. And in order to have style, you need a trombone.



"Some like it hot. But I like it really hot."

Reaction to Romney

A humorous excerpt from Christopher Hitchens' review of Romney's absurd speech on Religion:

If an atheist was running against him, would Romney make nothing of the fact? His stupid unease on this point is shown by his demagogic attack on the straw man "religion of secularism," when, actually, his main and most cynical critic is a moon-faced true believer and anti-Darwin pulpit-puncher from Arkansas who doesn't seem to know the difference between being born again and born yesterday.

The Speech

A Clever beginning about GHWB, his military service, and the protection of freedom.

But then, after the intro, the problems begin.

The speech rests on the dichotomy between freedom and dogmatism. Greatness develops through liberty, especially religious liberty, while damnation rests with tyranny. No big surprise here. Neither were the references with Kennedy.

He is strong when he defends his convictions:

here are some for whom these commitments are not enough. They would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers – I will be true to them and to my beliefs.

This seems to be a point at which he distances himself from the religious voters who would not vote for him. If evangelicals may reject him for his beliefs on theology, he may reach common ground with them over his stance on following principle and tradition.

Yet, after beginning with a strategy of merger, he then follows with a strategy of division based on the paper-tiger argument of "secularism".

But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

In the beginning of his address, he invokes Kennedy; yet here, he rejects Kennedy. In his 1960 speech, Kennedy spoke of an absolute division between Church and State, which his audience would accept. Forty-six years later, Romney cannot proclaim an absolute separation because his audience would reject it. Where does this lead us?

Romney:

We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders – in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places. Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'

This is a very interesting passage. He begins with the Founders, who did not place G-D on the currency or in the pledge or in Nativity scenes. The Founders did not places judges in position because of their "foundation of faith upon which the constitution rests." The constitution does not rest upon the foundation of faith. It does not rest on revelation but reason and consensus.

While Romney would reject religious tests he invokes religious tests. Romney:

Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government. No people in the history of the world have sacrificed as much for liberty.

What about the concept that liberty is a natural right based on a common human experience. No, that for Romney is not possible. It requires religion.

This religion also requires the rejection of enlightenment, which the Founding Fathers would have accepted. Well, the Founding Fathers not invoked by Romney:

I'm not sure that we fully appreciate the profound implications of our tradition of religious liberty. I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired ... so grand ... so empty. Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too 'enlightened' to venture inside and kneel in prayer.

Romney desires the balance of revelation and reason but too often he seems to reject reason. It is the same with his position of faith. He sees a problem with religion and extreme religion. Yet, if you are outside of religion, if you do not believe, then you do not have freedom and you can never desire or move toward freedom. Romney: "I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'"

Where does this leave Romney-

For the deeply religious, he offers those a message: Religion, in general, matters and there is good in all religions. Mitt:

I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I am always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life's blessings.

. Yet, this message should not resonate for the "true believer" because, for those people, it is not only that their beliefs matter but their specific beliefs matter. If you know and possess the truth, then that truth is specific.

For the religious but not committed: this speech glitters in banality. It rewrites history, it places everything within the bounds of religion, and it creates a symbolic enemy that would take religion away-- those damn secularists. This is a great message for those not steeped in deep belief and theology, do not care for the day-to-day word, and show up to service during Christmas and Easter. It is summed up by this quote: "we do not insist on a single strain of religion – rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith." Right, Mitt. Remember, you delivered this speech because some believe that Mormons, and to another extent, Catholics, are not Christians. That is a symphony invented on discord.

For the non-believers, you do not have a place at the table. This country is not for you. For remember, according to Bishop Mitt, "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

For the extremists: you are dangerous. And remember, fanatics are not limited to Islam. Meaning, if make Mitt's religion a religious test for office, you are being dogmatic. And there is no place for you.

Points of Light

Does it burn GWB and his supporters that GHWB is introducing a member of a "cult?"

And that is not a shot on Mormonism.

Romney on Religion

In less than 30 minutes, Mitt Romney will be delivering a speech on his religion at the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University.

This is an interesting speech, especially to the concepts of rhetorical echoes. In 1960, Kennedy delivered a speech to the Houston Ministerial Association to defend his ability to be independent if he were President. But can Romney make the same rhetorical choice is he is choosing to seek the support of religious voters.

It is a very interesting choice to deliver this at A&M, a very conservative school. Former President George H.W. Bush will introduce him.

When Kennedy delivered his speech in 1960, he visited the Alamo before he delivered the speech. One of the most important aspects of Kennedy's speech is that during his visit to the Alamo, he noticed that the memorial did not take account of the religion of those who died. Of course, at the time, Baptists were in favor of the separation of church and state and not for the abolishment of that separation.

But how time changes.

Begin Again

The Blog is back and running, even if I am the only one posting-- to you other members of the situation.

Religion and Politics

There is an interesting article in The New York Times about the 2008 President Election and the Evangelical Community. If nothing else, it is very interesting to read this and see how beliefs shape arguments, especially the failure of reconciliation between incompatible world-views.

War, Gore, and GLobal Warming

Last week, former Senator, VP, and failed Presidential Candidate Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Price. The question remains, how does global warming relate to peace?

From Slate:

The idea of a connection between conflict and climate change is fairly new, and one that had been mostly relegated to academic journals until earlier this year. Then, in June, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon went on record to suggest global warming as a cause for the fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan. He pointed out that warming in the tropical and southern oceans, fueled in some part by climate change, led to a decades-long drought and clashes between herders and farmers over the degrading land. When a rebellion broke out against the central government, Sudan's leaders fought back by arming and supporting the herders against the farmers—and the entire region fell into war. If global warming did cause the Sudanese drought, then it's also responsible for the 200,000 to 450,000 lives that have been lost over the last four and a half years. We may very well be watching the first major conflict caused by emissions from our factories, power plants, and cars.
Other early hot spots for warming-related conflict are likely to be in sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, or the Caribbean—places where institutions are weak, infrastructure is deficient, and the government is incompetent or malevolent. The crisis in Darfur has already stretched into Chad and the Central African Republic. Nomads from Sudan, spillovers from Sudan's desertification, are pushing deep into the Congolese rain forest. In Ghana, nomadic Fulani cattle herdsmen, forced by the expanding Sahara desert into agricultural lands, are buying high-power assault rifles to defend their animals from angry farmers.

Climate-change conflict is even spreading into the Arctic, where normally pacific Canada and Norway have joined the United States, Russia, and Denmark in a five-way tussle over mineral and shipping rights unlocked by the melting ice. Thus far largely symbolic, the conflict could take a more serious turn as the waters warm and military traffic increases. Norway and Russia already face each other down over fish in the Barents Sea. And Canada and Denmark take turns pulling up each other's flag on Hans Island, a stretch of icy rock the size of a football field. These countries may be arguing over small fries right now, but what happens when oil is at stake?

Ethos and the Academic Bill of Rights

Currently, I am researching the Academic Bill of Rights by Students for Academic Freedom
"whose goal is to end the political abuse of the university and to restore integrity to the academic mission as a disinterested pursuit of knowledge."

In an article about the firing of two DePaul Professors, the author suggests that DePaul should fire another professor for his political beliefs, which seems to counter the principles of the Academic Bill of Rights.Now, in this article, there is no discusison that the professor is violating his professional duties by trying to indoctrinate his students. There is no discusison that he presents only one sided views in his class. Instead, the author of this article would like DePaul to fire him for his research and his beliefs because, "his entire [The English Professor's] corpus of "scholarly" work consists of exercises in "revolutionary" politics.

One paragraph sticks out:

Well, we would like to take Abraham up on the challenge and urge DePaul to take a close look at this fella's academic record, which can be seen here. Abraham holds a PhD in English from Purdue, where he wrote a dissertation about "The Rhetoric of Resistance," in other words a propaganda tract for the "revolutionary" left. Before that he completed an MA thesis in Arkansas that was a sycophantic celebration of the Maoist "philosopher" Michel Foucault.

I wonder if the author in question ever read the two works in question and knows enough about the rhetoric of resistance and the work of Michel Foucault to be able to judge its academic merits. Does the author know that "the rhetoric of resistance" could be used by "conservatives" against "liberals," which, by the way, is some of the purpose behind the Academic Bill of Rights.

But instead, the rhetoric of resistance is only a "propaganda tract of the left." If you are a conservative, nothing useful could come from it....

At what point does an intellectual pursuit just turn out to be a political pursuit?

Question for baseball Fans

A few random questions while watching the Yankees- Indians' game:

When did the seventh inning stretch tradition begin and why?

Why do they sing God Bless America? What is the conenction betwen this song and baseball?

Are there other traditions at other ballparks? I believe that Houston played "Wine, Women, and Snowpeas," er., I mean the Texas State Anthem. What elose is there?

This Just in:

President Bush just said the following: "This government does not torture people."

Explain this quote.

For reading materials to prepare your case, read this article from The New York Times.

The Revolution will not be sold (in stores)

There are certain moments in the history of music that serve as revolutionary moments, paradigm shifts in the Kuhnian sense. Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to experience another one of those moments, from a band that has already brought you two such moments,O.K. Computer and Kid A.

On October 10, you will be able to download Radiohead's new album, In Rainbows. You will not have to purchase it in stores and you will not have to pay an outrageous fee to listen to the music. Instead, you will be able to determine what price, if any, you would pay for the album.

From Rolling Stone, which by the way, also provides a preview of the new material:

As you've no doubt heard by now, Radiohead are releasing In Rainbows, their seventh studio album, in two different formats: a basic DRM-free download version that costs whatever you want that's available October 10th, and a deluxe boxed version that includes a double vinyl disc, a book, eight bonus tracks and two CDs, out the first week of December (it also comes with a DRM-free download that actives on October 10th).

"You look so tired and unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"

Where is Oxymoron? Part II

Oxymoron's commercial is back on the tele. Because we miss him, here it is again:

Where is Oxymoron? Part I

Unlike yourself, it does exist...

It appears as if the maker of John Courage Ale pulled it from the US to focus on selling Newcastle.

What is the nature of academic freedom?

This may not be a coherent post but I am looking for some feedback on a few questions.

What should the term "Academic freedom" include?
What is the relation of academic freedom and partisan interests?
How is indoctrination different from persuasion or propaganda?
How should we discuss the “left” or the “right” or “liberal” and “conservative”? Treat them as a coherent whole or divide them into belief systems?

Recently, there have been a few national stories that challenge the sense of academic freedom:

Erwin Chemerinsky was offered a position to become the Dean of UC Irvine's new law school. Subsequently, the offer was rescinded by one of the school chancellors, Michael V. Drake. Chemerinsky is a prominent constitutional scholar, who has argued before the Supreme Court (The Texas Ten Commandment cases). Also, He is outspoken politically, as he has written editorials against the death penalty.

It appears that when Drake rescinded the offer, he failed to offer good reasons for this, leading many people to believe that the push to remove the offer developed from “Conservatives” within Orange County, California. Even one of the state’s more conservative Supreme Court Justices spoke out against the hire.

Last week, the school reoffered the position to Chemerinsky. You can read about this from the The L.A. Times

Second, former Harvard President Larry Summers was asked to deliver a keynote speech for a dinner at UC Sacramento. Some of the “liberal” professors objected to this because of Summers’ view on gender. The offer was rescinded and he did not speak.

Third, professors at Stanford protested the appointment of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institute. As far as I know, the protests have not succeeded and Rumsfeld will still be a fellow at Stanford.

Fourth, Steve Bitterman,
a professor at Southwestern Community College was fired after offended students appealed to the school’s administration over Bitterman’s comments that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be read literally but rather figuratively. Bitterman told the class that "it was an extremely meaningful story, but you had to see it in a poetic, metaphoric or symbolic sense, that if you took it literally, that you were going to miss a whole lot of meaning there." After he was fired, Bitterman (a fitting name) said: I'm just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job, I'm just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job.”

How should we understand these four examples in heir relation to partisan interests and education?

John Hawkins Loves White People Like "A Fat Kid Loves Cake": The Battle for Framing in the Case of the Jena 6

"I love you/ like a fat kid loves cake" (from Get Rich or Die Trying).



Poetic recitation time being over, let us now repair to the topic of the moment. For a long time the position taken by M at
Separation of Spheres was the only one an interested party could find on the Internet and on the News. Well, actually that's not entirely true: In truth the way it started was the story was simply being buried by the media.

But then, thanks largely to socially conscious liberal bloggers like M, the corporate media was finally forced to come in and throw the big light on the bizarre and sad recent happenigns in Jena, Lousiana.

But anyway, when Harrogate first got wind of the story from the liberal bloggers, he wondered: are the conservatives defending this? Are the white students or their families or the DA speaking out in their defense? What, o What could they be saying in light of what looks to us like a clear case of justice miscarried by the good ole boy system? Here the importance of what famed linguist George Lakoff has to say about framing and contemporary politics is, it seems to Harrogate, very clearly illustrated.

There was a period where the conservative pundits layed low on this story and so the liberal blogosphere remained free to dictate the terms of our moral imaginations.

But the silence is over, and now the real battle for framing is afoot. As it heats up, the implications of this tussle will not extend to Mychal Bell himself, who already has been released on bond and now, quite appropriately, awaits his day in juvenile court to face charges dramatically reduced from what had started out as no less than Attempted Murder. But the battle has rhetorical and, therefore, political implications that are in many ways far more important than the fates of any of the individuals involved, or even for that matter the fate of Harrogate himself.

Increasingly popular pundit John Hawkins has captured, Harrogate believes, the essence of conservative apologetics for the Jena DA's original approach to the case. Harrogate exhorts ye, o readers, to peruse Hawkins' petition to the people that we have all been had by the hucksters of race.

Is there merit to his case? Harrogate reports. Ye decide.

(BTW, far be it from Harrogate to introduce the Ad Hominem element into his otherwise sober, wholly unironic, erudite political and rhetorical discourses. Yet he nevertheless feels it both necessary and even somewhat entertaining, in a morbid sort of way, to remind readers that when they're reading the ruminations of this god-prattling, gun-championing, homosexual hating, war supporting fella, you're also reading someone who very recently reminded us that the people of New Orleans need to stop milking Katrina sympathy, show some of that can-do American attitude and get over it already)

The Mask

Police releashed this image of the mask in question. One student stated it was "fleshy-colored" and "wrinkled."

I have no idea what it represents.

It appears that the gun was loaded but it only contained one round. The student, who has a history of mental illness, did not carry any other rounds.

Update: The New York Times reports that it was a Fred Flintstone mask.

And how was your day at work Honey?

At around 2:30 pm today, a crazed lunatic who wore a mask (some say it was the mask from Scream others say it was a mask of George H.W. Bush, but it looks like Reagan to me-- and I am being serious) and carried a rifle tried to enter the building in which I teach. Some of my students were last to class and, when I asked why they were late, they stated campus police were arresting a man with a rifle. I thought that to be a reasonable excuse.

The gunman had put his rifle in a bag and, when confronted, tried to get it out. Police sub-dued him before he could. It seems that someone noticed a man with a mask and a large bag, thought it was strange, and called security.

No one was hurt.

I will add more about this tomorrow.

Kevin Everett and the Wonders of Modern Medicine

Some news all Sports Fans can be happy with.Kevin Everett likely to be walking within a matter of weeks.

Solon is truly our resident expert on all things NFL, particularly when it comes to the vaunted Buffalo Bills. And we look forward to his sharing details of what is on the verge of becoming, even in this hyper ironic age, a genuine feel-good story.

Yet Harrogate hopes he is not overstepping his provincial bounds by taking this opportunity to join Everett's legion of well-wishers. And to express wonder at how this all came to be: the most amazing part is how the on-field trainer was able to sufficiently lower Everett's body temperature with some sort of an injection, in a matter of mere minutes, before swelling could do permanent damage. Is there a day coming soon when doctors will be able to straight-up fuse severed spinal tissue and virtually eliminate paralyses born of accident?

Why does Harrogate Hate Free Speech?

To continue a conversation that should have been stopped weeks ago....

The ACLU submitted an amicus brief on behalf of Senator Larry Craig arguing that the Minnesota Law is overbroad and that toe-tapping is free speech. If nothing else, the toe-tapping fun of Senator Craig is certainly a means of communication. Slate has the story here.

Since this news broke, 4,378 conservative heads exploded as they pondered why the ACLU would help Senator Craig. Of course, ACLU haters believe this is more about protecting perversion than privacy:

Of course, for the “non-partisan” organization, this is more about protecting perversion than politics or privacy. As much as the media will make a day out of a conservative getting support from the ACLU, its really the solicitation for sex that is being defended.

Could you ask for anything more in this case?

Your move Harrogate, your move.