An exchange from today’s Rush Limbaugh show, which I caught while roaming the roads in Texas:
Since Christopher Hitchens, renowned atheist and author, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer this summer, it seems everyone has started praying. Some are praying for his salvation, some that he will burn in hell, some pray that he will recover, and others pray that the spirit in which he lives his life – the wine-loving, controversy-inciting, love-to-hate him atheist – will continue in his life and his death.
Hitchens’ father died of esophageal cancer at the age of 79. It happened quickly in a time when medicine offered few treatment options. The junior Hitchens is 61, and while doctors have prescribed a rigorous regimen of what Hitchens calls chemo-poison, for the most part, effective detection and treatment of esophageal cancer remains a mystery. The odds are not good…
Will Wilkinson and Ross Douthat are tag-teaming on the subject of the left’s role in the culture war, and it’s worth a read. Wilkinson calls on Douthat to explain to Slate‘s Will Saletan, a writer I admire endlessly, that Saletan’s piece on Christine O’Donnell’s masturbation views didn’t make much sense. Douthat replies, chiding liberals for making such a circus of her views on sexuality while claiming the culture wars are all conservatives’ fault.
Today, Wilkinson has another entry that I think anyone who reads this website (not to mention those who write it) would do well to consider:
Cultural politics is, among other things, conflict over which beliefs our common culture will celebrate and which it will stigmatise, and the outcome of this conflict in part determines the relative status of various factions within society. It feels like war because we tend to be dead serious about advancing or at least maintaining the level of status accorded to members of our groups. I think it is easy for some liberals to miss just how antagonising flip mockery of absurd religious beliefs can be, though it’s hard to believe they don’t, at some level, grasp what’s at stake. To laugh at someone’s views on the evils of masturbation or witchcraft or gay marriage is clearly to imply that these views, and the people who hold them, deserve to be laughed at and, thereby, diminished.
More after the jump.
To prove a religious point, Moses turned his staff into a serpent before Pharaoh. On another occasion he drew water from a rock when he struck it. To the same end, Muhammad had a winged steed that flew him to the furthest mosque, to heaven and hell, and then back to earth. Then there is Jonah and the big fish, and Jesus and the fig tree; both signs to make a point. More contemporary (and less supernatural) signs include the work of Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary who began a campaign to send Bibles to Glenn Beck, and Terry Jones, pastor of the Gainesville, Florida church that threatened to burn copies of the Quran on September 11, they have the holy books themselves.
What’s the point of these signs, mythical or otherwise? Done well, grand demonstrations primarily help to affirm the faith of believers and are meant to convince non-believers to believe. It’s not the motive that’s important, but the sign itself…
On Saturday, attendees of the 2010 Values Voters Summit selected Indiana congressman Mike Pence in its 2012 presidential straw poll. Watch five minutes of his speech and you’ll understand why.
Pence has been married for 25 years, has three children, and has served in the House for 7 years. According to Wikipedia’s summary of his political views, he appears to be a real, Tea Party-style conservative: He always votes for tax cuts, he opposed several Bush administration programs, including No Child Left Behind, opposed TARP, and of course, Obamacare. He supports unlimited engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, opposes closing Guantanamo Bay, and opposes trying detainees in civilian court. He opposes hate crimes legislation.
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