Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/28/2008
Tuesday, 28 October 2008 Clay Burell 
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Daily Times – Leading News Resource of Pakistan – Obama and McCain strategists are worlds apart
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DAVID Axelrod, the political consultant behind the stunning rise of the Democratic White House hopeful, does not brim over with joy. With his heavy-lidded eyes and bushy moustache, he looks like a shy professor. But appearances are deceptive. Without sharp elbows and acute antennae, the former political reporter could never have emerged as the preeminent campaign operative in the cut-throat world of Chicago politics. Axelrod, 53, has carved out a niche by helping to package African-American candidates for a white electorate. But with Obama, whom he has known for 17 years, his motivation appears intensely personal. Electing Obama president would be “something you could really be proud of for the rest of your life,” he told the New York Times in January 2007 as the Illinois senator prepared to announce his historic candidacy.
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More broadly, Axelrod and campaign manager David Plouffe were the architects of an ambitious nationwide electoral strategy that now appears to be paying off for Obama as McCain plays defense in what should be “red’ Republican bastions. In the process, the Obama campaign has built an astounding fundraising operation fueled by Axelrod’s signature belief in “grassroots” politics driven from the ground up. But echoing Obama, and betraying his own natural pessimism, Axelrod is taking nothing for granted. He told reporters last week: ‘We’re going to fight every day between now and November 4 to get our message out. Nothing’s over until it’s over.”
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Palin’s Nightmare—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)
Worthwhile read.
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Early e-voting results in vote flipping in three states so far – Machinist – Salon.com
Troubling.
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New Yorker: Barack Obama is a socialist? – The New Yorker- msnbc.com
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There is a whole shelf of books on the question of why socialism never became a real mass movement here. For decades, the word served mainly as a cudgel with which conservative Republicans beat liberal Democrats about the head. When Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan accused John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson of socialism for advocating guaranteed health care for the aged and the poor, the implication was that Medicare and Medicaid would presage a Soviet America. Now that Communism has been defunct for nearly twenty years, though, the cry of socialism no longer packs its old punch. “At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives,” McCain said the other day—thereby suggesting that the dystopia he abhors is not some North Korean-style totalitarian ant heap but, rather, the gentle social democracies across the Atlantic, where, in return for higher taxes and without any diminution of civil liberty, people buy themselves excellent public education, anxiety-free health care, and decent public transportation.
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IHS :: HNN :: Einstein’s God: A New Book Explores the Scientist’s Spirituality
A good fact-check on the “Einstein was a Theist” canard.
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“I am a deeply religious non-believer,” Einstein wrote in a letter to his friend and colleague Hans Muehsam, in 1954. “If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
However, his philosophy firmly excluded a belief in the supernatural or a Creator-God.
Todd Macalister’s new book Einstein’s God: A Way of Being Spiritual without the Supernatural, (Apocryphile Press, Berkeley; 2008) explores the scientist’s views on spirituality as expressed through his lectures and personal papers.
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Daylight Atheism > Skin Deep – Annotated
The writer on this site is so worth reading.
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I’ve been reading this account of a disciplinary hearing against the odious John Freshwater, an Ohio science teacher who allegedly promoted religion in his class, repeatedly and illegally, even after being ordered by school administrators to stop. Among other things, Freshwater brazenly taught creationism in class – directing his students to Answers in Genesis and giving extra credit to those willing to see the anti-evolution documentary Expelled. Most infamously, he was accused of using a Tesla coil to burn a cross onto a student’s arm.
However, I want to focus on a different aspect of this story. As often occurs, this case has divided the community, with the religious students who support Freshwater intimidating and demonizing those who don’t:
Students carried Bibles to class last spring to support Freshwater.
Classmates of Arie Alvarado questioned her and a few other eighth-grade students who didn’t take part.
“They were calling us atheists,” Alvarado said. “I couldn’t believe it. One day they’re your friend, and the next day you’re an atheist and they’re completely ignoring you in the hallway.”
- If any of you students or teachers out there have direct knowledge of this happening in your own school, I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment or use the contact form in the sidebar. – post by cburell
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Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being an atheist – although many of the Dover plaintiffs were not. Still, the reaction of these hostile believers is telling. They think that the worst insult you can hurl at somebody is to call them an atheist, as though someone’s not believing in God necessarily implies that they’re an immoral and evil person.
We’ve seen this sort of demonization before. All too often, believers judge atheists based solely on our lack of belief, not on our actions or our character. It’s another manifestation of the pernicious human tendency toward tribalism, which religion does much to encourage.
Tribalism is a tendency that’s always been with us, stamped deep into our brains by evolution. It’s the urge to label and categorize people, to sort them into groups, and then to judge them based solely on which of these groups they give their allegiance to. Even when tribal distinctions are completely arbitrary, human beings can be passionate to the point of zealousness about them (consider sports fans), even to the point of violence (consider sports riots). And when tribal membership is determined by religion, which most people consider a far more integral part of their identity than sports fandom, the consequences of irrational tribalism are far worse. Those who are outside the tribe, who are labeled as “the Other”, will inevitably be blamed by tribe members for everything that is evil and frightening in the world.
- My favorite riff on this, coming from my years living in China, is that BUDDHISTS are RELIGIOUS, but also NON-THEISTIC (at least if they know original Buddhism).
They’re also the least dogmatic religion, which is probably why wars and terrorism almost never involve Buddhist causes. – post by cburell
- My favorite riff on this, coming from my years living in China, is that BUDDHISTS are RELIGIOUS, but also NON-THEISTIC (at least if they know original Buddhism).
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A moral and rational person judges others as individuals, not on the basis of tribal allegiance. The labels we wear, by themselves, say nothing about a person’s ethics or character. The only way to learn what kind of person someone is is to get to know them, to understand what they care about and what motivates them, and what kinds of ideals they want to see realized in the world. This is as true for atheists (or for theists) as it is for any other group.
The advocates of tribalism want to bypass all this. They want to find some superficial mark of good character, one which immediately determines whether someone is good or evil, Friend or Enemy, One of Us or Other, without having to know the person as a whole. And, if you think about it, this is really no different from what racists do; it’s just that they fixate on a different superficial characteristic. Although racism is retreating, anti-atheist bigotry is still openly practiced. We can achieve much for the atheist cause by pointing out that equivalence.
- Read David Sedaris “Us and Them” (search for posts on the story in my blog) for a beautiful and laugh-out-loud funny exploration of the Us and Them syndrome. – post by cburell
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Wikipedia for Schools is a torrentable DVD version of Wikipedia that you can run on classroom PCs that aren’t connected to the net. It’s also a handy size for sticking on a memory card and plugging into your phone or netbook.
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BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | The treasure trove making waves
Exciting finds.
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Ten years ago, at a spot known locally as “Black Rock”, two men diving for sea cucumbers came across a large pile of sand and coral.
Digging a hole, they reached in and pulled out a barnacle-encrusted bowl. Then another. And another.
They had stumbled on the oldest, most important, marine archaeological discovery ever made in South East Asia, an Arab dhow – or ship – built of teak, coconut wood and hibiscus fibre, packed with a treasure that Indiana Jones could only dream of.
There were 63,000 pieces of gold, silver and ceramics from the fabled Tang dynasty, which flourished between the seventh and 10th centuries.
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Former GOP senator, vet backs Obama – Alexander Burns – Politico.com
A Vietnam vet ex-senator breaks with McCain to vote Obama.
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Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who was the first Vietnam veteran to serve in the United States Senate, is the latest Republican to back Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, Politico learned Sunday.
Pressler, who said that in addition to casting an absentee ballot for Obama he’d donated $500 to the Illinois senator’s campaign, cited the Democrat’s response to the financial crisis as the primary reason for his decision.
“I just got the feeling that Obama will be able to handle this financial crisis better, and I like his financial team of [former Treasury Secretary Robert] Rubin and [former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul] Volcker better,” he said. By contrast, John McCain’s “handling of the financial crisis made me feel nervous.”
The former senator added that he hoped the next president would help place restraints on executive pay, and said: “I don’t think [McCain] will take action in that area, or he’s as likely to.”
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He joins a growing list of Republicans who have thrown their support to Obama in recent days. Last Sunday former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Obama on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” On Thursday Obama picked up the support of former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson, who was joined on Friday by former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld.
Like some of Obama’s other Republican supporters, Pressler said he had concerns about his party’s fiscal policy, particularly the war in Iraq, that went beyond the presidential campaign.
“We have to be a moderate party. We can’t be for all these foreign military adventures. We have to stop spending so much money. My God, the deficit is so high!” he said. “The Republican Party I knew in the 1970s is just all gone.”
Despite his support for Obama, however, Pressler emphasized that he intended to stay in the GOP and described himself as a “moderate conservative.”
“I’m not leaving the Republican Party. We’re going to reform it,” he said, but added: “In the general election, if you have disagreements, you should not vote the party line.”
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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
- Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/24/2008
- Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/29/2008
- Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/27/2008
- Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/26/2008
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