Positive Liberty

Josh Claybourn notes that the Utah supreme court has upheld a bigamy conviction for a Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints polygamist — but the court also split over the relevance of Lawrence vs. Texas to the case.

Josh focuses on the dissent, which I think is fitting, since the Utah law — get this — decleares it a crime not only to obtain plural state-sanctioned marriages, but also to claim plural private, non-sanctioned marriages.

That’s right, it’s a crime in Utah even to say that you’re in a plural marriage. And it’s a crime for religions to perform plural marriages, even without state sanction.

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Watching Richard Brookhiser interviewed on After Words this weekend left me wanting to read his book on Gouverneur Morris.

Brookhiser described Morris as being like “The Wolf” (Harvey Keitel’s character) from Pulp Fiction: If you were in a bind, he was the man to call. As Brookhiser put it in this interview: “If you were broke, or in jail, or had lost the dearest person in your life, and you needed money, help, or consolation, the first Founder you would call would be Morris.” Yet, Brookhiser joked, if you had him over for dinner you’d never seat him next to your wife or your daughter. Morris seemed to be an avid womanizer and fornicator.

And yes, like the other key Founders, Morris was a theistic rationalist.

Longtime commenter Jeremy draws our attention to the following:

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life…

Could such a violent, dominionist Christian video game really break through to the popular culture? Well, it is based on a series of books that have already set sales records - the blockbuster Left Behind series of 14 novels by writer Jerry B. Jenkins and his visionary collaborator, retired Southern Baptist minister Tim LaHaye. “We hope teenagers like the game,” Mr. LaHaye told the Los Angeles Times.

Words fail.

Now, I know someone is going to ask this in the comments, so I’d better pre-empt it right away: “Jason, aren’t you a libertarian? Doesn’t that mean that people have the right to watch and say and think whatever they please?”

Yes on both counts, and this game should not be suppressed. File it next to Holocaust denial, in that great library called Repulsive Stuff We Tolerate On Principle.

Yet the content of our communication is an important barometer of our cultural values, and nothing about tolerance forbids me from commenting on it as such. See, a violent game where you kill alien invaders, malevolent robots, or the living dead — that’s one thing. It’s quite another when you’re killing your innocent neighbors over whose deity is better.

I seldom compare anything to terrorism, but really, how would we feel about a game where the object was to blow up the World Trade Center? And how is this any different?

Philip Alcabes has an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post today on harm-reduction strategies and tobacco use:

“Tobacco: deadly in any form or disguise” is the slogan of the World Health Organization’s World No Tobacco Day tomorrow. The claim is false: Tobacco is not deadly; the harm is in the smoke. A policy that confuses innocuous tobacco with harmful smoke is responsible for millions of avoidable deaths each year worldwide.

Cigarette smoke is a deadly delivery device for a benign but habit-forming product: nicotine. Nicotine isn’t especially dangerous — about like caffeine. Good policy toward tobacco use would reduce the grave harm of smoking by replacing cigarettes with non-smoked forms of nicotine for the addicts. They might use nicotine safely forever, if harmless delivery systems were widely available.

Instead, nicotine abstinence is the policymakers’ only approach to tobacco. Like other abstinence campaigns (alcohol prohibition, sexual abstinence before marriage, just saying “no” to drugs), this one is both moralistic and ineffective.

The human cost of the nicotine-abstinence policy is doleful. More than 430,000 U.S. deaths each year — one out of every five — can be attributed to smoking. This is 10 times our death rate from car crashes, 30 times the rate from AIDS — an unprecedented toll that is a testament to the inadequacy of 40 years of quit-smoking policy.

Permanent nicotine maintenance? Wouldn’t that represent a moral failure? On this presumption the public money moves, and where it goes determines our society’s relationship to nicotine. Alternative delivery systems do exist, although these aren’t always, ahem, culturally palatable. And while smokeless tobacco contains carcinogens, it is far less likely to cause cancer than cigarettes. Even smoking pipe tobacco — an entirely agreeable bad habit, by the way — would be less dangerous and represent an improvement. Gradual harm reduction, however, doesn’t get government money. Wars do. Go figure.

I’ve been doing some digging there too. I had known that JQA had started off, like his father, a Unitarian Congregationalist and thought that he had converted to Calvinism sometime in his early adult life. Indeed, one reason why I know of JQA’s drift towards Calvinism is because father and son discussed religion in their correspondence and previously I reproduced a passage from a letter where the elder Adams discusses his Unitarianism and his son’s Calvinism:

We Unitarians, one of whom I have had the Honour to be, for more than sixty Years, do not indulge our Malignity in profane Cursing and Swearing, against you Calvinists; one of whom I know not how long you have been. You and I, once saw Calvin and Arius, on the Plafond of the Cathedral of St. John the Second in Spain roasting in the Flames of Hell. We Unitarians do not delight in thinking that Plato and Cicero, Tacitus Quintilian Plyny and even Diderot, are sweltering under the scalding drops of divine Vengeance, for all Eternity.

John Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 28, 1816, Adams Papers (microfilm), reel 430, Library of Congress.

However, in doing further research it appears that John Quincy Adams’s conversion wasn’t complete, but that he vacillated between Unitarianism and Calvinism throughout the rest of his life. Or at least, that’s the story that I get from these two links.

…is a great read, whether serious or funny.

My article “The Pain of Eminent Domain” appears this morning in the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram.

Randall O’Toole has a very important new report on “the planning penalty”: the incredible increase in housing costs due to regulatory interference. Here’s a shorter version from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Okay, I know that the DaVinci Code makes a lot of ahistorical claims, but one area where the DVC may be getting a bad rap is in its assertion about early disputes among Christians regarding whether Jesus was God, or something less than God. Some are absolutely outraged that the DVC asserts early Christians disputed the doctrine of Jesus Godhood.

In reality, my research tells me that at least some early Christians thought Jesus something less than God, that there was a pretty serious split on the issue. And the Council of Nicea officially “settled” the matter by deciding on the doctrine of the Trinity, and not permitting dissent.

I’ve neither read the book nor seen the movie, but plan on doing the latter. If the DVC argues that no one before the Council of Nicea believed Jesus to be God or that the doctrine was “made up” at that point, then they are wrong, or at least overstating the historical facts (is that what they argue?).

But for a long time in Christendom, especially during the Founding, theological Unitarianism has had a rich dissident history.

Indeed, anyone who follows my research on the Founding and Religion knows that our key Whig Founding Fathers were theological Unitarians, as were Newton and likely Locke, Milton and some others.

Because many of these Unitarians existed at a time when the rights of conscience were not recognized, these dissidents had to be “secret” about their belief in the doctrine. Publicly denying the Trinity could get one executed for heresy, which is exactly what happened to Michael Servetus, whom John Calvin, then governor of Geneva, ordered burned at the stake for his Unitarianism.

I’m researching the background of the vote on the Council of Nicea. Critics of the DVC say that while the book argues the vote was close, in reality, the vote was overwhelming in favor of the Trinity. As I’ve pointed out before, John Adams appeared to believe the vote was close as well, and joked about it in the following manner:

“The Trinity was carried in a general council by one vote against a quaternity; the Virgin Mary lost an equality with the Father, Son, and Spirit only by a single suffrage.”

John Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 12, 1812.

In reading up on John Adams’s religion, the following claim made by David L. Holmes, Professor of Religious Studies at the College of William and Mary, in The Faiths of the Founding Fathers, surprised me:

Unitarians asserted that they had restored the original Christian belief that Jesus was in some way commissioned or sent by God but that he remained subordinate to him.

At one point in early Christianity, the majority of Christians did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. Citing such passages as Proverbs 8:22 (”The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago”), Colossians 1:15 (”[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation”), and John 14:28 (where Jesus says, “If you love me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I”), they believed that God was a unipersonality to whom Jesus was subordinate. pp 73-4.

What surprised me was his assertion that at one point in early Christianity, the majority of Christians didn’t believe in the Trinity. Is that right?

I was an American Idol skeptic for a long time; anything that popular, I thought, must be lousy. But the fact is, as Brian Kennedy says, that this show is a marvelous celebration of American joy, uniqueness, commercial enterprise, and fun. The show conveys a wonderful sense of life—even the parts where they bash the bad contestants are done in a good spirit: the audience doesn’t get the idea that these are bad people who ought to be ashamed; rather, the audience shares in the feeling that we’re all not-very-good shower-stall singers, and yet we sing anyway because we enjoy it. It’s not considered very sophisticated today to relish something that’s “wholesome,” but the fact is that wholesomeness is a crucial part of the good life. The soul can be polluted and strained just as much as the body, and to have an opportunity simply to celebrate singing, and the success of undiscovered talent, is a luxury that many people never really enjoy to such a degree.

Moreover, American Idol is a rebuke to those silly “crunchy conservatives” who insist that modern technology and mass production denigrates community, and so forth—in T.S. Eliot’s idiotic words, “The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.” But that’s not true! The community has all joined in on this wholesome, fun, harmless moment to celebrate opportunity, singing, and lightheartedness. What could be more American than that? Lightheartedness is, I think, a profound and incredibly rare value, and one which our country has figured out how to mass produce. That may be among its greatest accomplishments ever.

Not to mention that Taylor, like, totally kicks ass.

This is sad:

Randall said it was hard to decide how to treat his son’s homosexuality once he passed the stage of struggle and publicly celebrated it.

“I have to be honest with him,” said Randall. “Would you tell a drug addict, ‘I accept you. This is your choice, this is your life and I will stand by you’? The average death age of a male homosexual is 42 years old because of disease, because of suicide, because of alcoholism, because of drugs, because of violence. It’s just not a good world. It’s a self-abusive, self-destructive sexual addiction.”

The only problem is that it isn’t true. The “42″ statistic derives from phony “studies” done by gay hating crank Paul Cameron. And such “studies” were debunked about a decade ago.

What a loon.

If you’ve been waiting to get alarmed until the Christian fascist movement started filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in “God’s army,” wait no longer.

The leaders of BattleCry claim that their religion and values are under attack, but amid spectacular light shows, Hummers, Navy SEALs and military imagery on stage, it is BattleCry that has declared war on everyone else. Its leader, Ron Luce, insists: “This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent—the ‘forceful’ ones—will lay hold of the kingdom.”

While in the bathroom, I saw something equally unsettling–a preteen girl wearing a shirt being sported by many attendees that night: Jesus on the cross, robes waving, and emblazoned across the front the words “Dressed to Kill.”

…Throughout this section, a loud crowd from the back of the stadium would periodically erupt, “We are warriors!”

Luce put great emphasis on following every word in the Bible, treating it as an “instruction book,” even when a person doesn’t understand or agree. This is, of course, the logic that leads to the stoning of gays, non-virgin brides, disobedient children and much more—because the Bible says so.

Chillingly, when I confronted Ron explicitly about these passages, he refused to disavow them. During the afternoon preceding the May 12 rally, Luce and about 300 BattleCry acolytes (almost entirely youths) rallied in front of Philadelphia’s Constitution Hall—the location having been chosen because Luce wants to “restore” the Founding Fathers’ vision of a religious society (never mind that the Founders enshrined in the Constitution an explicitly secular framework of government).

If I were a Christian, I’d be revolted by the things some people are doing to my religion. As an American, I’m horrified.

Look, I know some of you learned nothing in European history — I’ve taught the subject, remember? — but have you also learned nothing from comic books and television? I mean, come on, people, BattleCry even sports its very own eye-catching militaristic logo — Do you see the resemblance? Do these look familiar?

It’s just like every two-bit “it-can’t-happen-here” alterna-history pseudo-Nazi movement ever imagined. But it’s real.

Militarism, blind obedience, appeals to youth and vigor, disdain for art and culture, fears of contamination, shadowy conspiracy theories (”A stealthy enemy has infiltrated our country and is preying upon the hearts and minds of 33 million American teens,” declares BattleCry’s website)… This is the intellectual apparatus of fascism.

The iconography doesn’t define the movement, but it is, I think, indicative (and I would never have made the charge without all the other clearly fascist aspects of this movement’s ideology). Just consider by contrast the Republican elephant and Democrat donkey: At least these have the saving grace that both originated in ridicule. Ditto to Uncle Sam. Even France’s Marianne has a whimsical history — and a pretty amusing present-day incarnation, too.

BattleCry’s logo, a stylized red flag, has none of the down-to-earth humanism found in these other symbols. I also note with puzzlement the absence of the cross, the fish, the chi-rho, or even the IHS — though this last would seem to fit the Christian/militarist worldview nicely. Were I of the mischevious bent, I might suggest that the logo smacks of idolatry. But this is small beer by comparison.

Start here, then go here. Read it all. Lots more can be found here, with some excellent analysis. A sympathetic account of the movement can be found here, and also see battlecry.com. (As I am not a fascist, I naturally want you to make up your own mind on this — rather than blindly following my authority.)

For some sensible talk about economic liberty.

Ed Brayton sent me this post of William Dembski’s for my thoughts. In it Dembski criticizes Judge Jones’s invoking the Founders as Enlightenment rationalists in this modern battle that pits science v. religion.

This quotation by Judge Jones, given at Dickinson College’s (his alma mater) commencement address, is what Dembski disagrees with.

“The founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry….”

“They possessed a great confidence in an individual’s ability to understand the world and its most fundamental laws through the exercise of his or her reason….”

“This core set of beliefs led the founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state.”

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Jon Rowe and I have made something of an avocation out of criticizing David Barton, the pseudo-scholar darling of the religious right who has peddled lie after lie about the founding fathers. But after reading this column by Barton, I now see that his historical ignorance is matched by his legal ignorance. First of all, it’s absurd for him to call himself an historian. He has absolutely no credentials in the field. Yes, he writes about history, but that is irrelevant. I write about biology, but I don’t call myself a biologist. I write abou the law, but don’t call myself an attorney. This is the sort of fake credentialing that is so incredibly popular among fundamentalists (Kent Hovind and Carl Baugh, come on down).

I’m skipping over all of his bad analysis of misleading polls about abortion and going right to his legal claims, where he peddles the commonly heard conservative argument about the court “discovering rights” in the Constitution:

If the Court admits that the “right to privacy” is not specifically in the Bill of Rights, then where did it find that right? According to the Court, “the Bill of Rights has penumbras” (that is, dim shadows and vague areas where things are not clearly distinguishable); gazing into the nebulous shadows in those penumbras, the Court found new “zones of privacy.” Although conceding that this really had no specific basis in the Bill of Rights, the Court nevertheless asserted that these new “zones of privacy” probably could be justified by the general language of at least the Ninth Amendment, and perhaps even the Fourteenth.

Standard conservative bashing of the notion of penumbral reasoning, but of course they are inconsistent in this regard. They only condemn penumbral reasoning when it leads to results they don’t like, and they rarely mention the fact that such reasoning has often been used to establish rights that they fully agree with. Glenn Reynolds (yes, the Instapundit himself) wrote a terrific article in the Penn Law Review in 1992 on this very subject. He writes:
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