Positive Liberty

Hamilton, like Madison, Washington and other notable key American founders, for most of his life, especially when he did his work founding America, systematically spoke in generic, philosophical terms about God. I haven’t found any “smoking gun” quotations of his that explicitly deny the tenets of orthodox Christianity as I have with Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin. However, Hamilton, likewise never affirmed those tenets (or joined a Christian Church) until the very end of his life after his son was killed in a duel. He was actually refused communion at his deathbed because he lacked an established track record of a Christian faith.

So why would Madison, Washington, Hamilton, G. Morris and a few others constantly speak, publicly, about God in a generic sense, and leave no evidence in their private letters of orthodox Trinitarian faith? Few appreciate the context that reveals the answer. Continue Reading »

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other colleges were founded in the 17th and early 18th centuries, when America was a bunch of British Colonies and before Church and State were separated, with explicitly orthodox Christian “missions.” Most realize that something changed along the way, but few understand when and how it happened. The institutional changes occurred primarily during the 19th Century. After all, during the founding era, Timothy Dwight — a fire and brimstone fundamentalist preacher — was President of Yale. Yet, it was during this time — early to mid 18th Century — that such colleges became hotbeds of infidelity, in other words, when the seeds of change were planted. And Harvard, institutionally, officially became “infidel” around the turn of the 19th Century. Continue Reading »

Via Arts & Letters Daily, the following is likely to keep me thinking over the weekend…
Continue Reading »

“Please, Mr. bin Laden, sir. We humbly submit this petition to you, asking you to stop being such a meanie.”

It’s weird. There’s not a single idea in the Islamo-Fascism Petition that I disagree with. It’s first-rate stuff (that is, provided you can get past the dodgy capitalization and spelling). It’s not at all the “vile crap” that one of Jim Henley’s commenters claimed it to be. I reproduce it here with my full approval. Except you’d hope that they could spell “fascist” consistently from one line to the next:

Islamic Jihadists around the world have declared war on America, Israel and the West and have made clear that:

* The goal of the Islamo-Fascist jihad is world domination
* The Islamo-Fasacist Jihad demands the suppression of all Infidels
* The Islamo-Fascist Jihad is a war against Women
* The Islamo-Fascist Jihad is a war against Gays
* The Islamo-Fascist Jihad is a war against Christians
* The Islamo-Fascist Jihad is a war against Jews
* The Islamo-Fasacist Jihad is a war against non-religious people

In opposition to this, we affirm four key principles denied by the jihadists and threatened by them:

* The right of all people to live in freedom and dignity
* The freedom of the individual conscience: to change religions or have no religion at all
* The equality of dignity of women and men
* The right of all people to live free from violence, intimidation, and coercion

We call upon all campus political, cultural, ethnic and religious groups to stand with us in opposing all forms of religious supremacism, violence and intimidation.

Beautiful sentiments indeed… and yet I mistrust the proponents’ motives. The following is why I will not sign the petition:

Perhaps most importantly, a petition forces students and faculty to declare their allegiances: either to fighting our terrorist adversaries or failing to take action to stop our enemies. For this reason, we encourage you to make a special effort to bring this petition to those groups who might be least likely to sign it, for example to campus administrators, student government officers, and the Muslim Students’ Association.

The point is not, then, to stand up for freedom: It is to declare that if you do not jump whenever I tell you to jump, then you are an enemy of freedom. Don’t we have a word for this… I dunno, somewhere in our rich political vocabulary?

If I want to recognize a kernel of truth the promoters of America’s “spiritual heritage” tours have, it is, America, during its founding, embraced “religion” in the general sense and thought such provided “republics” with indispensable support. America’s “organic law” is thus more religion friendly than a strict secularist ideal would allow for. However, whenever you start mixing religion and government, political/theological problems inevitably emerge. Key to founding thought was that all men of all religions had equal rights of conscience. Thus, whatever privileges government grants, it must grant equally without regard to religion. You want to fund private religious schools with tax dollars, then Islamic schools are equally entitled to such aid, as long as they meet the secular criteria.

George Washington struggled with the political theological problem when he fought for John Murray — a universalist who denied the existence of eternal damnation — to be a chaplain, over the protests of the more orthodox chaplains. [Benjamin Rush likewise converted to this creed of Trinitarian Universalism.]

Washington’s own view of the afterlife is hard to pin down. He certainly believed in it, but often expressed opinions about such in non-traditional Christian terms. For instance, in one letter he cites a pagan source — Cicero — as authority for existence of the afterlife.

But with Cicero in speaking respecting his belief of the immortality of the Soul, I will say, if I am in a grateful delusion, it is an innocent one, and I am willing to remain under its influence.

This is not exactly how an orthodox Christian would put it. Personally I believe that Washington, like the other key founders probably believed that good people by their works merit Heaven immediately upon death, the bad, temporarily punished, eventually redeemed. Washington’s writings give no hint that he believed in eternal damnation. Or if he did, he certainly had a cavalier attitude towards the concept. The orthodox who posited the notion of eternal damnation tended to think it very important that folks believe it and termed theological universalism “infidelity.” For instance, Bishop Meade, an Episcopalian and an orthodox Christian, stated: “I have other reasons for knowing that infidelity, under the specious garb of Universalism, was then finding its way into the pulpit.”

Evangelicals today seem to have the same attitude. Evangelical minister Carlton Pearson denied eternal damnation and lost his entire ministry after being labeled a “heretic.” George Washington on the other hand, praised a church that preached this very “heresy.” Washington made it clear that whatever it was he valued about religion, the “infidel” Universalists had it. That’s one reason why I think Washington himself disbelieved eternal damnation.

Newt Gingrich on this link spreads one of David Barton’s phony quotations. His page says:

Washington’s personal journal provides more evidence of his deep faith:

“It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe, without the agency of a Supreme Being. It is impossible to govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being.”

Sorry, Washington never said this and these utterances and not found anywhere in the primary source record. They are part of David Barton’s phony quotations, which he admonished his followers to no longer pass. Maybe if he didn’t try to euphemize them with the label “unconfirmed,” fewer folks would still be passing them.

With Sandefur no longer writing at Positive Liberty, it seems he feels a lot more able to speak his mind about yours truly:

Those who are inclined immediately to believe the worst conceivable allegations about American soldiers will doubtless react with their usual glee to the Washington Post’s report about the alleged “bait” method; supposedly “the American government is paying people to kill” whoever picks up ammunition that they leave by the side of the road as bait.

…and…

…with regard to the glee with which critics of the war greet these kinds of stories, I think it speaks for itself. There is a sort of person who strangely relishes such accusations to the degree that they will immediately believe them without awaiting indicia of credibility. Such people may not enjoy the substance of the story, but they so enjoy whacking what they think is a mole that they’ll bang away at anything that moves.

If this is what he sincerely believes of me, then I’m not surprised he left the blog.

I hope, though, that this is not what he believes, and that it is simply a knee-jerk emotional reaction from him rather than a considered or rationally held belief. I understand that his prior political commitments often require him to think that I’m a credulous fool. I just wish he didn’t think that I was an evil credulous fool. Yet I would have to be evil to take glee in the idea of Americans shooting Iraqi civilians over bait.

I don’t know how I can make him understand this — since he apparently has his mind made up already — but I don’t feel glee at stories like these. I feel a grim sense of frustration and despair. I feel disgust and revulsion. I can’t see how anyone could read my original post and think I was happy about any of it.

To illustrate, let me use an analogy of a type that I know he likes: Suppose that an abolitionist in the North were to run stories in his newspaper describing the horrors of slavery.

“Ah,” says a critic. “But look how the abolitionist reacts with glee at the thought that Americans might be doing something reprehensible! Sure, maybe — maybe — he doesn’t enjoy the thought of black people suffering. (Then again, maybe he does enjoy it!) You know what? Either way, he certainly hates America. That’s why he is so eager to believe bad things about it. And he even believes the testimony of blacks, who have every incentive to malign the system out of their own personal interest!”

In other words, don’t presume to tell me what I feel.

Worse, as Brayton has noted at his other blog, the evidence favoring the existence of this tactic includes sworn testimony from a soldier who supports it (and this soldier, contra Sandefur’s inexcusably careless reading, is not on trial for murder). There is little reason to think that he would have a motive to lie here. As one of Brayton’s commenters pointed out, the non-denial denial from an army spokesman isn’t exactly reassuring:

“There are no classified programs that authorize the murder of local nationals and the use of ‘drop weapons’ to make killings appear legally justified.”

This is Clintonesque. Except that Clinton was a little less obvious about his obfuscation. I await more evidence, and I would welcome — with relief — the evidence that would prove the original story wrong.

Our society seems to view queuing as a standard “solution” for allocation. The problem is that it is wasteful because you are paying via a loss instead of a transfer.

For example, say the city opens a free movie theater. They have to ration tickets somehow, so they use lines. Townspeople respond by standing in line to get tickets until the time spent in line is almost equal to the value of the ticket. Compare this to an auction. The price will still go up until it is almost at the value, so to the person paying, it looks the same. But there is a crucial difference: the payment is a transfer (I hand you pieces of paper), instead of a loss (I stand in line). Looking at the whole pie, the auction does not use up any wealth, whereas queuing uses up lots of people’s time, thus reducing their happiness by denying them opportunities to do more fun things.

That may be the smartest thing I have read in a very long time.

Now this is remarkable:

Mitt Romney issued a statement this morning condemning the Democratic candidates for their refusal at last night’s debate to rule out teaching about gay issues to second-graders.

…Romney said that the answers proved “how out of touch the Democratic presidential candidates are with the American people.”

“Not one candidate was uncomfortable with young children learning about same-sex marriage in the second grade,” Romney notes. “This is a subject that should be left to parents, not public school teachers.”

Continue Reading »

Ahmedinejad’s remarks on homosexuals in Iran? Censored. In our country, when a public figure says something foolish, we never hear the end of it. In Iran, they may never hear it. But I hope they do.

For years the non-pornographic gay magazine The Advocate shipped in an opaque wrapper. There was no way around the restriction, even while the tradeoffs in the situation subtly changed: I’ve never had a problem with my neighbors or the postman knowing that I read The Advocate. I have a lot more of a problem with them thinking that I read (fill in the blank with some form of terribly kinky pornography).

This week’s issue arrived in a wrapper, which I’ve really got to change — and now I can. On the cover? Hillary Clinton. (And not that horrid busty statue of her that Andrew Sullivan likes to remind us of, either.)

Anne Applebaum makes a lot of sense to me about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University:

[H]e declared that his visit to New York would help the American people, who have “suffered in diverse ways and have been deprived of access to accurate information.” Thus the speech at Columbia: Here he is, the allegedly undemocratic Ahmadinejad, taking questions from students! At an American university! Look who’s the real democrat now!

This sort of game is both irritating and dangerous, particularly when it is being played by a man whose regime locks up academics for the “crime” of organizing academic conferences and regularly arrests the Iranian equivalent of the students who listened to him speak yesterday. Iran is experiencing an unprecedented wave of political executions and death sentences — more than 300 since January, according to the Boroumand Foundation — and there is renewed pressure on the media.

In that atmosphere, it was deeply naive to imagine that the Iranian president would enter into a “vigorous debate” with students who were deploying their “powers of dialogue and reason,” as Columbia University President Lee Bollinger stated before the event, or that he would answer the appropriately aggressive questions Bollinger put to him — which of course he didn’t. (To a question about persecution of gays, Ahmadinejad responded: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”) All things being equal, Columbia would have done better to ignore him, instead of feeding the media circus that serves his purposes. It’s not as if he is deprived of a platform in this country: Only last week, he ducked and dodged his way through a long interview on “60 Minutes,” and his pronouncements regularly appear in media of all kinds.

The one consolation I have in all of this is really very simple: Sooner or later real, live, thinking Iranians will see this speech. And they will howl with derision.

Let’s recall that whenever anyone tries to visit Iran to teach Iranians about the United States, they are almost inevitably denied entry. Ever try to secure a visa to visit Iran? I have. It is by far the most insane of all the visa applications I have ever seen, and that’s saying quite a lot. The madness exists for a reason: It’s to keep out anyone who would pose an intellectual threat to the regime. (Of course, given the arrests of certain high-profile individuals visiting Iran recently, staying away might just be more prudent in any case.)

That’s the difference between Iran and the United States. We allow people in, even if they dislike us. And we don’t arrest them when they criticize. Words don’t hurt us. That’s our power as a nation.

But let’s also recall that the freedom of speech does not entitle a person to speak in the venue of his choice. To be invited to a venue is a privilege to be earned, not a God-given right.

Suggesting that the owner of a venue made a poor choice is therefore potentially legitimate. Yes, a university has an obligation to air many different viewpoints, including controversial ones. But suggesting that a university must air all viewpoints is ridiculous. For every speech given by an Ahmadinejad — that is, by a long-winded arrogant fanatic — resources are used that might have gone elsewhere. There is an opportunity cost here, as there is for any speaker in the limited schedule of a busy institution. Did the university act wisely? I can’t agree that it did.

So… While all those who set foot on American soil enjoy a relatively unfettered natural right to freedom of speech, the supposed freedom to speak at Columbia University is quite another story. That right, apparently, is granted to apocalyptic fanatics with a taste for militarism, mass executions, and anti-Semitism. (Hitler, I understand, would have been invited too.)

In a better world, Ahmadinejad would have been offered free entry into our country, but he would have found few venues from which to speak. In a better world, no responsible organization — from Columbia down to the local Rotarians — would have let him within twenty yards of a podium: They would all have known that they bear no obligation to let anyone to speak at their expense, and that religious thuggery is not, in fact, a qualification. (This may be a qualification to appear in certain limited venues, such as on CNN, or before the United Nations.)

In only a slightly better world, the President of Iran would then have had to wander the streets of New York, unkempt and unshaven as always, spewing his usual fanatical nonsense, but with no one listening. Without the police state that he commands, and without the imprimatur of a great university, he could scarcely be distinguished from a good number of the city’s other vagrants.

See? That’s what’s great about this country: After all the nonsense we’ve heard this week, America still has a place for the Ahmadinejads of the world, and the First Amendment would still protect them here.

(Obligatory but artless disclaimers: I think invading Iran would be a terrible idea. It irks me to no end that all criticism of Iran may now be taken to mean that I am in favor of yet another war — or, for that matter, that opposing yet another war somehow means that I cheerfully support the Iranian theocracy. Of course, a few well-placed air strikes would be a cheap alternative that may just save millions of Israeli and Palestinian lives, so I might not actually complain too much about that. In all likelihood, I don’t have the information or expertise necessary to decide about air strikes. Invasion, however, would be foolish.)

This is the first in what I intend to be a series of posts over the coming months and years. It was originally guest posted at the Family Pride blog.

Last week the Maryland Court of Appeals — the state’s highest court — ruled against recognizing same-sex marriages. The mood at our house was pretty dismal the night of the decision. Had the Court ruled the other way, the marriage Scott and I celebrated in Canada in 2003 would almost certainly be valid today.

It didn’t help that the Court decided by a single vote. Changing the mind of even one person would have made the difference — a difference that will define who we are to our neighbors, our families, and our children, perhaps for the rest of our lives.

As a family looking to adopt, we face some wide-ranging consequences. Some of these may not be known for months or years. But they need to be documented, and I will be writing a series of blog posts that will show just what this decision is costing us. All of the well-meaning people out there need to know our side of the story.

They need to know. Why? So that they will stop electing politicians who demonize gays and gay families. So that they will push their representatives to support marriage equality rather than indifference or demeaning half-measures like civil unions. And they need to know so that our children can have the same legal protections that the children of straight couples enjoy.

The religious right talks a lot about preserving the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. Sanctity is great, but we have to remember its very real human costs. If preserving the sanctity of heterosexual marriage means hurting or even breaking up some families, then is it really worth the cost? (Since when does the government dole out “sanctity”? And since when does sanctity require hurting people?) Maybe as a society we’ll decide that all this is right and appropriate. But we at least ought to know the price we are paying.

In this series, I’m going to document all of the time, money, inconvenience, and loss of dignity that the Court has imposed on us.

I’m going to keep the receipts. I’m going to do the math: Adding up the extra taxes, the fees, the money spent on lawyers. The vacation days that we’ll spend reading the fine print, lest someone take our children away. And at the end of this journey — wherever we end up — I’m going to give an account of just how much this precious sanctity has cost our family.

It’s worth pointing out that relatively few of these costs are government benefits that would otherwise come out of taxpayers’ pockets. For example, a second-parent adoption is a complex legal process that may end up costing us a lot — but it will also end up costing the taxpayers, too. Conservatives often say they don’t want to see taxpayers subsidizing relationships that they consider immoral. Fine: Let us get married. This cost, among many others, will disappear.

There is another cost, too, one that will be harder to document.

There is a quietly gripping passage in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale in which a young married couple has just learned of the new law putting the husband in charge of all property.

It doesn’t matter, the husband tells the wife. He insists that it won’t change anything. The wife, though, knows better. The law is a living embodiment of a set of values. The law is a teacher, and it works a subtle but often decisive influence on the public.

The woman who learns that she can no longer own property on an equal footing with her husband may hold the new law in contempt. But the woman’s daughter may grow up in a different world. That’s what the law can do.

For gays, the law has taught some harsh lessons over the years: We are deviants, perverts, and criminals. We shouldn’t be around children. We shouldn’t be treated as family. Sometimes, we shouldn’t even be treated as humans.

Straight and gay alike, we’ve absorbed these lessons, and it’s a tribute to our cultural and intellectual independence, to our stubbornness and our willingness to think for ourselves, that we are even having a debate about same-sex marriage today. The law is a teacher, but as students, we can choose to think for ourselves.

The law taught us all a harsh lesson this week. I thank my straight friends who assure us that it doesn’t matter, and that they think of us as married anyway. But I’m still saving my receipts.

Probably the best post I’ve ever written continues to generate discussion.

Excerpts from my attempt to define marriage have been read at a (heterosexual) wedding. And this morning I found the following:

What a load of perfectic rubbish! (Think about It) then try again! If I did repeat this, it’s because I got carried away with those suggestions, and I have grandchildren. Lets leave them something to have respect, for. marriage is everything, I have been married for 42 years, and proud of it.

All typos are in the original. The commenter apparently believes that marriage is not primarily about the fully, complete nurturing of one other person, and of any children that may arrive. The following, I infer, is rubbish:

[T]his, in one word, is the true purpose of marriage. Nurturing is the one essential thing that all good marriages have in common, be they gay or straight, fertile or infertile, octogenarian or twentysomething. Nurturing is the reason for marriage and the goal toward which marriage should lead us.

Marriage is not… merely about choosing a steady sexual partner. On the contrary, it is a reciprocal agreement with another individual (and often with God), to look after the total well-being of that person and of any children that might come into your mutual care.

This total well-being encompasses all aspects of life, including not just the sexual, but also the spiritual, social, economic, psychological, and physiological best interests of the partner. Ideally, it lasts from the time the marriage is solemnized until the death of one of the partners.

It cheapens the covenant to say that marriage is just about sex, or just about rights, or just about children. Marriage is about all of this — and more. Marriage is a complete, all-encompassing, nurturing relationship. It’s about care for the whole person, so much so that no one else in all the world is quite as important.

Consider me puzzled. I’d like to know why this is rubbish.

Imagine you are walking down the street and see a box of ammunition. Do you

a) Walk blithely on by.
b) Pick it up so that kids won’t play with it.
c) Pick it up so that killers won’t use it.
d) Pick it up so the authorities can dispose of it safely.

If you live in Iraq, and if you answered anything other than a), congratulations. The U.S. government is paying people to kill you:

A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of “bait,” such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.

The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.

“Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy,” Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. “Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces.”

I know that the rules of civil society go out the window in wartime. Yet if I lived in a violent area during a war, you can be damned sure I would pick up any unsecured weaponry lying around my neighborhood. I wouldn’t want the militias getting any of it. I mean, duh. One of those bullets might have my name on it.

Way to alienate the decent civilians out there. Or maybe the assumption is that there are no decent civilians left? Why not carpet bombing, then?