Ideology

I got this video clip via Andrew Sullivan via Memeorandum. Two things immediately jump out of this video.

1. What the Southern Avenger says here is in line with what a lot of liberals and progressives have been saying for the last eight years : That people like George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin are extremists and not conservatives at all.

2. Exactly because the argument of this video is that true conservatives are against the war, I find interesting that Andrew Sullivan doesn't waste time to call out the author a paleo-conservative. And yet, if you go to the guys' website ... paleoconservative is the last word to come to my mind.

What do you think?

By some of the links I have put up today, you can tell I have been catching up on my blogospheric meanderings. I just finished reading a post by Bob Geiger and I laughed out so loud I had just had to write about it.

In Here's How Fringe I Am, Fred Thompson, Bob describes his fringieness. Here's a sample :

• Attended my son's middle-school orientation. He's "graduating" from elementary school this Thursday -- though, oddly enough, exhibiting few signs of being a "fringe element" despite having me for a father -- and on that day, our lunatic activities will center around taking many pictures of him and his friends and going for ice cream afterwards. I personally plan on ordering the Cookies and Communist Crunch.




• Volunteered at a local community clean-up effort to rid our town of the trash spawned by a predominantly-Democratic community that clearly hates America. Went to weenie roast afterwards… Put catsup on my hotdog to show how much I despise American values.

My favorite :

• Took my son to the driving range with me. While we whacked golf balls, we discussed our lack of family values and my little boy stunned me with this question: "Dad, why haven't you been divorced a bunch of times like Fred Thompson and the other Republican presidential candidates?" "Now son," I said. "Senator Thompson's only been divorced once. You're thinking of Rudy Giuliani or Newt Gingrich."

Of course, I can not not quote the punchline : So that's about it. I only regret that we didn’t have time to burn an American flag this week.

Harrumph!

UPDATE - CNN story just posted here, with full transcript of statement.
***********

Still watching the live news conference on CNN and thinking it should be required viewing in every school worldwide -- that is, if we do mean to create and preserve real environments that sustain human life by right instead of might.

"Fighting back was simply not an option."
When one is "not equipped for a fight" and reason fails in the face of unhearing, blinded, singleminded Borg-like purpose with superior numbers and ammunition, then Reason itself becomes an unreasonable response forcibly redefined against your will, becoming not an academic exercise but a raw first-rung survival skill, a matter of figuring out who is fit to survive and what it will take.

"We realized that our efforts to reason with these people were not making any headway. Nor were we able to calm some of the individuals down.
It was at this point that we realized that had we resisted there would have been a major fight, one we could not have won, with consequences that would have had major strategic impact. We made a conscious decision to not engage the Iranians and do as they asked.

And even that kind of Raw Reason falters without intelligence, sound information for making wise decisions, and being allowed untwisted, unmanipulated communication within one's one group of fellows and with the real world. Reason stripped, blindfolded and shoved up against the wall to hear the sound of guns being cocked.

At least one newspaper in Pennsylvania has decided to cancel Ann Coulter's column and several advertisers, including Verizon, have pulled their advertising from her website.

Michelle Malkin went all prim and proper on Coulter's verbal grenade, because it sullied the forthright image of conservatives; meaning it's going against their meme campaign to paint themselves as morally superior than the foul-mouthed bloggerss they were able to ouster from the Edwards campaign or that yucky liberal pundit Bill Maher.

By the way, some think Ann Marie Cox is a skank compared to Coulter. Then there's Tucker Carlson saying she called him gay once but he didn't cry about it.

Rush Limbaugh and GOsPindrones everywhere have been trying to paint 'faggot' as a synonym of 'wuss' and the applauses Ann Coulter got as a demand within the party for the kind of angry and offensive leadership Ann Coulter portrays. Right-wing bloggers everywhere have been all too fast to stay on message about their moral superiority meme and have gone of the defensive.

The 2006 mid-term elections are going down as having one of the most virulent campaign seasons in the last 100 years. Republicans have been the gravely wounded targets but it does not mean that Democratic incumbents and candidates have not come out hurting and smarting from the bloodfest. Because, it has been a horrendously bloody political season that started with the downfall of Jack Abramoff.

We can say that, well, the republicans were asking for it. I am not one to be beneath smacking down conservative hypocrites like Abramoff, Foley or Craig. As you well know though, I am also as eager to smack Democrats and liberal bloggers hypocrites.

Which is why, instead of smacking, I want to put a word of caution ... 19 days before the elections.

Democrats may well end up smarting, and not in a good way, from what I can only describe as their embrace tactics from the school of Karl Rove politics. This political season has been an all out war by Democrats. They are kicking ass indeed, but it may come back to haunt them.

Here's the problem:

In their eagerness to get elected anybody who calls themselves these days a Democrat, they are helping elect the rejects of the Replican party, people who not until they saw a political opportunity to switch, had no reason to call themselves a Democrat.

Party switching is not a new concept. Historically though, the wave has been against Democrats : Since the 1960's, and after the success of the Civil Rights Movement, most of party swtichers were Democrats (candidates and incumbents) bolting to the Republican party.

Democrats only need to win 15 more House seats to take back the House. That's out of 40 surprisingly close races. Well, the Republicans have all but conceded one of those races, meaning Democrats only have to win 14 more.

White Supremicists are often too close for comfort to the Republican Party. Virginia Senator Allen, for example, is clearly a bit too much of a racist for my taste, leading me to donate to and advocate for Democratic candidate for the Senate, Jim Webb. But Republicans in general don't necessarily LIKE being associated with white supremicists. Witness the Republican candidate for AZ-8 Congressional seat: Randy Graf is well connected with white supremicists and has now been endorsed by former Grand Wizard of the KKK (and former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, governor of Louisiana and twice for president of the United States) David Duke. This was too much even for the Republican Party, leading them to do the right thing and pull out all support for Graf.

Here's a statement from the DCCC on this:

I couldn't have better news. The Republicans have withdrawn all of their financial support in the pivotal race in Arizona's 8th Congressional District, all but conceding defeat in a race that we had targeted.

This year has so much potential not just for Democrats, but also for the progressive grassroots. Already, the grassroots are geared up for puting up their biggest fight to date. I want to highlight a couple of ways the grassroots are prepared to take a stand against the corrupt Halliburton Republicans and to restore integrity and democracy to our government.

Starting with Democracy for America, here are just a few things that DFA has done just in the last month:

1. Raised thousands of dollars for key Secretary of State candidates so we can start restoring fairness and accuracy to our elections, something I am working on as well.

2. Expanded DFA coverage of congressional districts though their linkup groups to cover 420 of the nation's 435 congressional districts. That leaves only 15 Congressional districts with no DFA group! You can find your local group or start a new group here.

3. Trained 2000 activists in message development and dissemination through their "Night School Program." You, too, can sign up for training here.

And that was only in one month.

MoveOn.org has been focusing their attention on putting out TV ads in key congressional districts. Market research has shown that these TV ads have been turning districts from leaning Republican to leaning Democrat, opening up more possible pick up chances. You can view these ads and donate to put more on the air by going here.

But MoveOn.org is firing up a new effort, one which my wife and I will be doing our small part for. They are gathering thousands of volunteers to participate in phone banks around the country, targeting the 30 hottest House races. Joy and I will probably be hosting one of their organizers here in Brooklyn where one of their phone banks will be located. You can sign up to participate in this effort here.

I know of a few other efforts but they are local to NYC. If you know of any other national efforts, please post them in the comments. But the most important thing is to volunteer or donate now if you want to win in November.

In West Virginia thre is a cohabitation law, which makes it a misdemeanor for unmarried people to "lewdly and lasciviously associate" and live together. This law is being challenged by a lawsuit, filed by the ACLU on behalf of an inmate whose parole was delayed because of his plan to cohabit with his fiance.

Well, I have lewdly and lasciviously associated and lived together with women before I was married. And enjoyed it very much, thank you. And I considered it none of the government's business that I did so. However, I always had the option of marrying who ever I wanted to lewdly and lasciviously associate with.

Since gays are not allowed the same right to marry eachother that I have, this cohabitation law seems to clearly discriminate against gays, preventing them from lewdly and lasciviously associating with eachother legally.

But really, the fundamental question here is what business is it of the government to care who lewdly and lasciviously associates with who? When will we get the governmemt out of our bedrooms? Oh, yeah. When we get rid of Republican control over our government.

Is it just me or does the West just not get it when it comes to Islam. I remember thinking Bush was incredibly stupid when he called the fight against al-Qaeda a "crusade," a word BOUND to inflame tensions with Muslims. Now the Pope says something even worse.

I mean, I am Jewish and pro-Israel, but even I am well aware that if you go around saying bad things about Mohammed you are going to piss off a lot of people. I fell pretty solidly on the side of freedom of the press when it came to the Danish cartoons and thought the Muslim reaction was unfounded. But the Pope has just been inexcusably rude to Islam and thinks a half assed apology will suffice.

From Guysen Israël News:

Pope Benedict XVI "sincerely regrets" his comments deemed offensive by Muslims. The Pope is sorry that his speech was misinterpreted and hopes that the "true spirit" of his comments will be understood. The Holy Father had said in his speech, "Show me something new that Mohammed brought and you will find only inhuman and diabolical things, such as his order to spread his faith by the sword." The Vatican press release did not however go as far as to make an apology in the name of the Pope.

Um, so just what WAS the "true spirit" of calling Mohammed's teaching "inhuman and diabolical?"

If the new fascism has a pretty face, it may very well be the face of Zach Braff. That, perhaps, is one of the more painful lines I've ever written. I'm an admirer of Mr. Braff--Garden State was well-crafted, and Mr. Braff's ability as creator of mix tapes was sealed with the soundtrack. It was the soundtrack to The Last Kiss that drew me in the door: the music is a heady collection of mellow reflections on love and betrayal and all that affairs of the heart encompass (and I'm listening to it as I write this). So, why, 15 minutes into The Last Kiss was I ready to start chucking my shoes at the screen? And why, at the end of the movie, was I so infuriated that I wanted to walk up to Mr. Braff and cold cock him?

I'm not the kind of person who is unable to differentiate betweeen an actor and a role. I have singled out Zach Braff because chances are, most of the audience for this movie is going expecting some further installation of Garden State. There are some parallel themes—men in their 20's who haven't quite found their way being the most obvious. In The Last Kiss, however, there's a new element: the women all have vagina dentata Every single one of the women has only one object in mind: to castrate the man she's with so he will never, ever stray.

Planned Parenthood is fighting the South Dakota ban on abortion and they are asking you to host or attend a potluck fundraiser for choice.

Potluck House Parties will be held across the country to raise money and build awareness for the campaign to defeat the abortion ban in South Dakota.

Sign up to host a Potluck for South Dakota with your friends and family!

Use their online tools to create, manage and promote your potluck.

The host whose potluck raises the most money will win a Newman’s Own gift basket and a trip to New York City to meet Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards!

Or you can find a potluck near you to attend.

I have been away from Culture Kitchen for awhile. I have been so immersed in a local primary that I haven't had time to post here. But near the end of the primary season and now that it is over, I began to realize that a rather disturbing underbelly was being revealed right in my very liberal, very white neighborhood. I posted on this at Daily Gotham and got pretty seriously attacked by people who thought I was showing "reverse racism." I am hoping I can explain myself better here because the issue is one that is important for Democrats to face up to.

The Democratic Primary in the NY-11 Congressional district was a hotly contested one. The candidate I originally liked was my City Councilman, David Yassky. Eventually I grew to prefer another man, Chris Owens, who impressed me as being the ideal, intelligent and articulate voice for the progressive movement. Months of hard work, soul searching, arguing and a whole lot more ensued. Ultimately, neither won. My new Congresswoman is Yvette Clarke, someone who overall I like, though she has had some problems with telling the truth.

What makes it hard for me to lay aside this primary is the racial issues that it brought up. You see, the retiring Congressman is black in a predominantly black district. David Yassky, who is white, moved three blocks to enter the district specifically to run because he was relying on a split black vote (originally split among four black candidates, ultimately split among three) and a unified white vote to win. Those who objected to this racial calculation on Yassky's part were called racist.

Don't you love it when American right wing nutjobs start crawling even further right and bump right into their avowed enemies?

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Tuesday for a purge of liberal and secular teachers from the country's universities, urging students to return to 1980s-style radicalism.

"Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a meeting with a group of students.

David Horowitz, publisher of FrontPage magazine, and whose archive of articles is available online, has long advocated for something he calls "an academic bill of rights." Essentially, the academic bill of rights argues in language that would make the sophists blush with pleasure, that universities are not teaching, they are indoctrinating, and therefore, "intellectual balance" should be brought to bear. It's carefully worded to indicate that no professor should be hired or fired based on political views. It all sounds so reasonable. And then, when you click on Professor Horowitz's blurbs for his most recent book, The Professors, you find this:

I pass on the following call for papers:

Program Theme:
The Language of Violence: Critical Thinking about War and Peace

Saturday, November 18, 2006
SUNY Cortland, New York
Corey Union

Keynote Speaker:
Dr. Gail Presby, University of Detroit , Mercy

Over the last five years, the language of violence has entered public discourse more than ever before. Words like "war," "terrorism," even "peace" are being used in new ways. In this conference we want to ask questions about the use and meaning of language and the way language shapes public consciousness, ethical thinking and responses to violence (in the media, from government and military spokespeople, in entertainment, in the academy). We invite proposals from professors, activists, graduate and undergraduate students, across the disciplines, in areas relating to, but no restricted to, the rhetoric of violence. Paper presentations should be twenty minutes in length.

The deadline for proposals and abstracts is October 25, 2006.
Please send proposals for a panel, workshop, or roundtable discussion. Limit proposals to no more than 500 words. Also, send abstracts of articles (no more than 500 words) for consideration.

The (presumably small) Republican Jewish Coalition is apparantly suggesting that Jews, particularly Orthodox Jews, join the Repub party in protest of Lieberman's defeat.

The National Jewish Democratic Council has this to say regarding orthodox Jews defecting to the Republican Party because of Lieberman's defeat:

"I'm absolutely astonished by the RJC ad campaign. American Jews need to know that the Republican Jewish Coalition is no friend of Joe Lieberman, and it certainly isn't an advocate for the issues of importance to the mainstream of the Jewish community.

"For years, the RJC has criticized Joe Lieberman. Now they want to use his good name for their own political purposes. These guys have no shame.

"The Connecticut Senate primary was not about Israel or the Jewish community. Joe Lieberman's record on Israel is impeccable. Ned Lamont's pro-Israel position is commendable. Connecticut will have a pro-Israel senator if either Democrat is elected. Any suggestion otherwise is a distortion of the truth."

I believe this is a historic first : I am calling an NYT editorial ... ahem ... brilliant.

[via Revenge of the Irate Moderates - New York Times]:

The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president's choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration's contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.

The New York Times ought to extend the classification of irate democrats to many of the bloggers involved in getting the Lamont nomination in, and they ought to start from the top with DailyKos and his blogosphere.

Mainstream media has had a field day characterizing the Kososphere as lefty wing crazies and radicals but like my other friend Michael likes to say, for a bunch of former republicans one would be hard-pressed to find anybody who is a progressive or social libertarian.

First off, a hearty congratulations to Ned Lamont. I didn't think he would pull it off. But he did. Congratulations as well to the many people on and off line who made Lamont's win possible.

But I honestly think many people have been unfair to Joe Lieberman. He is not and never has been like Zell Miller. Zell Miller's entire voting record was right in line with the most rabidly right wing Republican. He was in every way a nut case.

Lieberman's political career may now be dead. Perhaps even more so if he runs as an Ind and the Democratic Party does the right thing and turns its back on him. Maybe his career will survive, but I don't think so. But I think we should be fair to Lieberman.

Lieberman, more than many Democrats, was a man of conviction and strong beliefs. This affected how he viewed politics. He viewed politics as a conservative, religious man, yet managed to maintain (in sharp contrast to Zell) a reasonable voting record on choice, the environment and labor, at least according to LCV, NARAL and AFL-CIO. He was on our side in many fights throughout his career. And when he wasn't on our side it wasn't because he was triangulating. It was because he believed that what he was doing was the correct thing to do. I admit that I admire that about Lieberman. He did what he thought was right.

How do we establish our solidarity with the dead and dying without appropriating their pain?

How can we on the Left proclaim our horror and disgust with the killing being done in our name, without resorting to the tactics of a power-mad White House that dared to tell us that the victims of 9/11 cried out for blood?

I do not think these are moot questions. Nor do I think them academic. They have arisen on this site in the past few days, and they are questions that I have long contemplated.

Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out?

Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours.

There are a whole host of folks on this site who are better at talking about fundamentalism than I am, but it's a topic I return to frequently. I see it all around me. And while I cannot always articulate just how freaked out I am by the ways of thinking that define fundamentalism, to paraphrase a Supreme Court Justice: "I know it when I see it."



So, imagine my delight when I came across this article today. "The four fundamentalisms and the threat to sustainable democracy" by  Robert Jensen presents a provocative argument that it is not just religious fundamentalism, but a variety of fundamentalisms that create a threat to sustainable democracy here in the United States.

Let's start by defining fundamentalism. The term has a specific meaning in Protestant history (an early 20th century movement to promote "The Fundamentals"), but I want to use it in a more general fashion to describe any intellectual/political/theological position that asserts an absolute certainty in the truth and/or righteousness of a belief system. Such fundamentalism leads to an inclination to want to marginalize, or in some cases eliminate, alternative ways to understand and organize the world. After all, what's the point of engaging in honest dialogue with those who believe in heretical systems that are so clearly wrong or even evil? In this sense, fundamentalism is an extreme form of hubris, a delusional overconfidence not only in one's beliefs but in the ability of humans to know much of anything definitively. In the way I use the term, fundamentalism isn't unique to religious people but is instead a feature of a certain approach to the world, rooted in the mistaking of very limited knowledge for wisdom.

It's funny that Jensen uses the term hubris. I tend to reserve the term as that which applies to people I consider tragic heroes, the classical sense of the term, where the one flaw (and it's always fatal) is to have pride great enough that one thinks one is better than the gods. For that, people are made to suffer, To be struck down.

Ministry supervisor Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter's Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom made the difference between School and Education crystal-gazing clear.

[quote=JK Rowling in Order of the Phoenix]- "This is School, Mr. Potter. Not the Real World," she said softly.

- "So we're not supposed to be prepared for what's waiting out there?"

- "There's nothing waiting out there . . .
who do you imagine wants to attack children like yourselves? If you are still worried, if someone is alarming you with fibs, I would like to hear about it. I am your friend. Now kindly continue your reading."[/quote]

I had to blog this while the Stupid Girls debate is on, because I consider JK Rowling's cultural smarts to reach far beyond Stupid Girls and the Tyranny of Thin. Having read every Harry Potter book at least once, I'd argue that the Culture of Schooling is a specialty of Rowling's. I'd argue that Order of the Phoenix would make a first-class focus for modern citizenship education throughout all worlds muggle and magical, in any language.

Are we just a pretend world of fashionable thought, obsessed with trying to look and feel smart for each other, neglecting and perhaps unable to actually BE smart and DO smart?

Rage, anger, vitriol have been the words this weekend, their harsh buzz emanating from the electronic nests of wasps. Anger is the no-no, apparently. We on the left, who pride ourselves on our reasonableness, our ability to see all sides, to listen respectfully, to offer gentle critiques, we are not supposed to get angry. That is for the other side. We are to suffer their slings and arrows nobly.

I have written previously about

If you have not heard about it yet, YearlyKos is the first convention being put together by people from within the DailyKosphere. As I have come in and I out of that megablog for years now, I decided to put my part. I donated tech advice as well as the original design (it has changed since then) to the site developed by my partner in tech, Lynn Siprelle.

YearlyKos got off to a bumpy start way before I was asked by some friends in the tech community to help develop this site. It seems though their not paving but bumping the way to Vegas not by the choices of panels or people but their omissions.

I am confused because the Advisory Board is not a shabby bunch at all. My blogsister, Maryscott O'Connor is there along with my favorite blogup performer, Bill in Portland; my partner in linguistic lust Jeffrey Feldman; my honorary 'rican but very Cuban Armando; and an amazing list of notables.

Am I missing something? Have the site not been updated with the latest developments? Because the line-up of panels would not indicate these are the people behind building the agenda at all. Take a look [via YearlyKos Convention News & Details | yearly kos]:

Last week we finally figured out with the help of the seven African powers, what the heck was going on with this site. Lynn and I thought the craziness was due to lack of memory juice in our server. That was only part of the problem. It's true, this here site is huge and sucks lots of bandwith even with the small community we have. What was really harshing our mellow was the blasted discussion groups (organic groups in Drupalese). So I stripped the site down for the fourth time but this time without that module and, voila! We have a site that is, albeit slowish, definitely not crashing. (Of course, as I type that, you know the server is going to go haywire.)

Much teching has been done, along also with much cup-caking and mothering : my baby turned six this past Thursday. Which is why this is a tweek recap.

After I did my previous recap, things got heated up with news that Cecilia Fire Thunder, president of the Oglala Sioux nation in South Dakota will open a Planned Parenthood Clinic on their territory since the laws of South Dakota do not apply to them. Mole333 has outline a plan over at The Daily Gotham to help them with their effort. He will be posting here shortly as well. As blog is my witness, I will be smacking some wood with a hammer in the name of every sick pregnacist that thinks reproductive slavery is the new black.

And yet they sneak up on me all the time :

* abortion rights
* american
* american cultural imperialism
* colonialism
* race, racism, racist
* black, white, colored
* imperialism
* oppression, oppressor, oppressed
* consciousness raising
* the System
* the Mainstream
* patriarchy
* radical ______________
* terrorist
* christian fundamentalist
* pro-life
* pro-choice
* christian right, religious right
* liberal, progressive
* netroots
* world peace
* assimilation
* gender parity
* sexual assault, sex crime
* objectification
* minority

Do you have any that you love to hate?

I've been in a little of a kerfuffle with Nubian of BlackAcademic. I honestly get a knee-jerk reaction when I read or listen to people using racism to reduce every single negative aspect of American politics and culture. The knee-jerk reaction gets bigger when it comes from scholars and academics because it raises up a lot of issues I had with the part of US universities that fosters what I believe is a rhetorical posing that passes for a empirical analysis.

The problem though is that, not only are my biases strong but my articulation of them is weak, short-tempered, and unfocused. Which is why I haven't been too successful in engaging in a discussion about why reducing everything to racism is counterproductive to those trying to overcome racism in the first place.

I guess I am more into the grayish nuances of capitalist exploitation, the one's that can better explain why a Condoleeza Rice is Secretary of State or why there the genocidal war that rages across central Africa is all about slavery, human trading as capital, and not about race.

Yet ... and yet ... this image raises its ugly head at Feministing via Tennessee Guerilla Women: The Red Burka for A Red America

Get your Red Burka T-Shirt here, and tell the world what you think about the relentless, never-ending, Republican-led and State-financed War on Women.

I plan to wear a Red Burka Shirt when I go downtown to watch my elected representatives vote on whether or not women should be returned to the 19th century when the male-dominated state had the unmitigated audacity to rob women of their personhood.

I can't even begin to describe how culturally insensitive and narrow-minded this little campaign is.

Photo credit: MARIOS PAPADAKIS / AP

Certain Christian groups love to argue that there's been a war declared against them. As soon as they start whining, people trip over themselves to declare that no, there's no war on Christians. We're a religiously tolerant people.

But, I want to go on record saying that I have declared war on fuckwads such as Vision America. Toleration only goes so far. But when you start hurting my friends--gays, lesbians, straight women, children, immigrants, the poor, essentially anyone who doesn't cleave to your narrow-minded, bigoted vision of what life is supposed to be--you can go to fucking hell. So bring it on, brotherfuckers.

My beef is with fundamentalists of all stripes. I don't care if you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or Martian, if one of the central tenets of your religion is that you're right and everyone else is wrong, and therefore your enemy, well, I am not willing to engage in anything approaching respectful dialogue with you. Believe me, I've tried, and it's like trying to teach a pig to sing. And we all know what the end result of that is.

I'm operating on an understanding of fundamentalism that is drawn from my experiences as an historian, a journalist, and as a citizen of the world. For manageable purposes, I'm providing a definition of religious fundamentalism that looks something like this:

A Fundamental Definition of Fundamentalism:

Wow, Todd! I had no idea you had it in you :

[via IDontLikeYouInThatWay.com]:

It's no secret that the release of this film was delayed due to litigation because Sharon Stone basically wanted to make this movie a porn. While the filmmakers were cutting out reels of nudity and an orgy scene just to get an R rating, Stone was busy complaining she was performing her "duties" as an artist. I'd feel bad making fun of her if she was just an idiot, but she constantly rambles on about subjects in which she is sadly misinformed, and she truly believes she is blazing a trail for women's rights every time she flashes her tits for the camera. Her entire career has been her standing on a soapbox with her legs spread while some guy points a flashlight at her vagina.

That last part is priceless.

Hey Todd! Isolikeyouthatway.com.

"This is a blog for the majority of Americans".

Those were the opening words of the first posting on a new blog the Washington post inaugurated this week, Red America. And with those words began a saga, told at Internet speed, which quickly moved from the personal into archetype.

The story itself is quickly told; Domenech, a 24-year old blogger, Bush administration appointee, founder of redstate.com (which is the rather feeble attempt by the right to emulate Daily Kos), was hired by a Washington Post unnerved by accusations of liberalism directed at one of its own bloggers, Dan Froomkin. Froomkin writes the Post's well-regarded White House Briefing, a widely read and occasionally scathing daily examination of the Bush White House. The liberal blogosphere took up this particular gauntlet very quickly, went into Domenech's past writings, and discovered examples of blatant, offensive stupidity – "Coretta Scott King is a communist" – and more seriously, of outright plagiarism, which in turn led to his "resignation", as these things are politely called when an exit is unavoidable and all parties concerned scramble to try and save whatever face they still can.

In this abbreviated story lie several narratives that progressives need to examine.

Talk about the dance of planned parenthood -- I've known two families through their adoption of baby daughters from China.

Adopted in China, Seeking Identity in America
Most of the children are younger than 10, and an organized subculture has developed around them, complete with play groups, tours of China and online support groups.
Molly and Qiu Meng represent the leading edge of this coming-of-age population, adopted just after the laws changed and long before such placements became popular, even fashionable. . .

The first was an older couple, financially and professionally well-off in their second marriage and wanting to be a family with children. They went through a Catholic adoption process and asked us to write a formal recommendation for their application, assessing the qualities we believed would make them good parents.

Although my family left the immediate neighborhood while the daughter they'd named Amber was still a toddler, we see them out and about, at the grocery store, park or credit union. Today she is a gawky, grinning 'tween, strikingly similar in age, culture, cadence and affinities -- for Harry Potter and chess -- to our Florida-born son. The two obvious differences between them, race and sex, seem irrelevant.

Whenever I travel I almost always end up in deep political conversations with people who identify themselves as conservatives and republicans. I guess people feel like they can open up with me. I did at one point want to be a nun and I guess people get that I am not only willing to listen but I take the conversation seriously to the point of it being sacred. To me communication is communion and those 10, 15, 20 minutes to me are sincerely precious.

This is the second time I have been given permission to write about these conversations with pseudonymous attribution. The first conversation I published was the one I had with “The Guy”. I met The Guy during a return trip from Washington DC. I really want to re-publish what he had to say because, honestly, it cannot be repeated enough :

"Michael Moore is right";, he said. I asked him about the coming fight over Roberts and the likes of people like Dobson : "You don't understand, they don't care. These people don't care. This is just entertainment to them. A way to keep the masses fighting with each other. They are out to make billions and billions of dollars, amass incredible wealth and power while we're here, the have-nots of all sorts of incomes, down here duking it out. They don't care about Roberts or homosexuals or dead babies. They only care about power. And that power is money and oil." I sat there quietly, with my eyes wide open. The Guy had told me earlier that he worked in satellite broadcasting media. That means his contracts are in the tens of millions. And this guy looked at Bush as the enemy.

Now it's Mr. D's turn.

I met Mr. D on the way over to the airport. Mr. D works in finance and was taking a plane to Las Vegas to take the qualifying exam for their fire department. To my beanie-wearing readers, Mr. D looked like he could be the love child of Clay Shirky and Cam Barrett. Young, white, affluent. Not your typical red stater but certainly of the kind that matters to the GOP (and unfortunately to any political party) : he's a guy with money to spare in the form of campaign contributions.

Why was Mr. D. leaving an extremely well paid job with gobs of economic perks for a chance to work as a firefighter? Two words : September 11.

Patriarchy does not simply mean that men rule. Indeed, it is a particular value system that not only requires men to marry but to marry a woman of proper station. It competes with many other male visions of the good life, and for that reason alone is prone to come in cycles. Yet before it degenerates, it is a cultural regime that serves to keep birthrates high among the affluent, while also maximizing parents’ investments in their children. No advanced civilization has yet learned how to endure without it.

Through a process of cultural evolution, societies that adopted this particular social system—which involves far more than simple male domination—maximized their population and therefore their power, whereas those that didn’t were either overrun or absorbed. This cycle in human history may be obnoxious to the enlightened, but it is set to make a comeback.

Oh, crap. You don't think an article like this isn't going to piss me off, do you? There's so much crap to wade through, it's going to take a while, so settle yourself in while I eviscerate the article here and argue that The Return of Patriarchy is more bullshit from the current issue of FP.
Here's the argument in a nutshell. I'll go into further detail as I come across the passages that make my blood boil. In essence, "well-fed, healthy, peaceful populations" are producing too few children to replace them. Therefore, it's only a matter of time before these populations fade into obscurity, to be replaced by...

Now, here's where the argument gets interesting. The author could have said something gravely offensive, like, "wogs will rule the earth." You know. Those people are breeding like rabbits and they will simply overwhelm us western, good folks. (I say this 'coz we've heard this argument ad nauseum.)  But, instead, the author delivers a body-slam to liberals, because lo and behold, the people who are going forth and multiplying are, you guessed it, conservative, right-wing families and thus it turns out that liberals are going to non-breed themselves right into extinction. Well, shit. Didn't see that one coming, did you?

So, let me start from the beginning and try to set up a counterpoint to the arguments being put forth, or at least point out where this article seems to verge awfully close to something that looks like feminist-bashing, "uppity women are ruining us" kind of stuff. (And I don't know the author, so I'm not trying to pin a tail on his ass, but...)

It has been well-documented that fertility rates fluctuate, as do rates at which people reproduce. Certain cultures go through phases in which large parts of the population do not have children, or marry much later, thus restricting the number of children they might have (most famous example: European Marriage Pattern). What prevents these societies from simply disappearing altogether?

Indeed, falling fertility is a recurri