Reads around the Web 11.04.2008
Tuesday, 4 November 2008 Clay Burell 
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Campaign news, Supreme Court analysis, evolution and intelligent design textbook battles and history, the future of books and reading, “freedom of e-speech,” and more in today’s mix.
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My wife made me canvas for Obama; here’s what I learned | csmonitor.com
By a Southern banker conservative. Hopeful, wry, beautiful.
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Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan writes a fine endorsement of Obama.
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He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice.
![[Declarations]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-CP189_oj_noo_D_20081031114054.jpg)
Ken FallinA great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd “I have no comment,” or “We shouldn’t judge.” Instead he said, “My mother had me when she was 18,” which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn’t have to.
There is something else. On Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, Mr. Obama won the Alabama primary with 56% to Hillary Clinton’s 42%. That evening, a friend watched the victory speech on TV in his suburban den. His 10-year-old daughter walked in, saw on the screen “Obama Wins” and “Alabama.” She said, “Daddy, we saw a documentary on Martin Luther King Day in school.” She said, “That’s where they used the hoses.” Suddenly my friend saw it new. Birmingham, 1963, and the water hoses used against the civil rights demonstrators. And now look, the black man thanking Alabama for his victory.
This means nothing? This means a great deal.
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Why Obama-McCain race deserves ‘historic’ label
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Take the strong link between age and views on gay rights or abortion. Young people take both for granted. “For every 100 people over age 70 who die and are replaced by 100 people between 18 and 24, you get more liberal social attitudes,” Fiorina said.
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Not only McCain but much of the conservative intellectual elite warn of an impending turn to European-style socialism at home and appeasement abroad, especially if Democrats seize a monopoly in Washington.
Historians call the fears exaggerated, a reflection of the country’s 30-year rightward shift. On many issues, Obama is to the right of Nixon, the Republican who proposed a guaranteed income for all Americans, supported affirmative action, imposed wage and price controls, and established much of today’s environmental regulation.
“A conservative in 1968 was far more liberal than a liberal is in 2008,” said Schulman.
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An Obama victory offers two potential paths: a major political realignment, following Roosevelt in 1932 and Reagan in 1980. This would require that he rack up successes in his first two years, a honeymoon when presidential power is at its peak.
If he does, and realignment is under way, he could avoid the catastrophic losses that Clinton suffered after his 1993 health care plan crashed under a Democratic Congress, replaced in 1994 by a Republican one.
Another model is 1964, with a big Democratic win followed by a collapse four years later, or 1976, when Democrat Jimmy Carter ran a flawless campaign but proved a weak leader unable to control his party or rally the public.
“You could have a scenario where Obama is under a lot of pressure from his left and yet can’t do big economic things because of the difficult situation we’re in, where he can’t disengage from Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as the base would like,” Fiorina said. Obama could then come under attack from his left, face congressional losses in 2010 and by 2012 a challenge from his own party, perhaps Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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I so hope this election serves as a death-knell referendum on the divisive Roveian electioneering of the past 8 years. Here’s to a reformed conservatism in the future that plays to ideas instead of fears.
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More than Palin herself, I’m looking forward to the end of an era in which the aforementioned gomers — these relatively small pockets of bigots and witch hunters — have enjoyed undeserved attention and disproportionate sway over American politics and policy.
The truth is that politicians like Sarah Palin are merely manipulating, exploiting and inciting these people. In other words, it’s the ignorance, stupid. And next Tuesday, we have a chance to seriously marginalize this darker, uglier side of America.
It’d be crazy, though, to suggest that Tuesday will be the last day. To be sure, if Senator Obama wins, we’ll be hearing from these knee-jerk wackaloons quite a bit. Hell, Sarah Palin might try to run for president in four years. Nevertheless, we have a chance to tell the Sarah Palin’s of the world that there’s no room in American politics for fire-eaters who stoke archaic prejudices and fears rather than ameliorating them. We have a chance to tell them that not only doesn’t it work anymore, but that it actually exacerbates electoral failure.
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Excitement and Anxiety Swirl as Chicago Prepares to Host Obama Event – NYTimes.com
Pray for safety here.
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The Canadian Press: Quebec comedy duo talks porn and politics with oblivious Sarah Palin
Unbelievable. Ethics are sticky, but so is the story.
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Science takes another hit in Texas. Troubling.
More below the fold…..
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“Texas universities boast some of the leading scientists in the world,” said Ms. Miller, of the progressive, nonprofit group. “It’s appalling that some state board members turned to out-of-state ideologues to decide whether Texas kids get a 21st-century science education.”
Jonathan Saenz of the conservative Free Market Foundation said the panel is “balanced” because two of the other three members, UT-Austin biology Professor David Hillis and Texas Tech Professor Gerald Skoog, have joined a group of science educators wanting to eliminate a current requirement that weaknesses of the theory of evolution be taught.
“If the theory of evolution is so strong and without weaknesses, why are the evolutionists so afraid to let students have a discussion about it?” he asked.
“Close-minded efforts to ban students from [hearing both sides] is dangerous and a clear detriment to students.”
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Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook | A worldwide book group 2008
Interesting experiment in the future of collaborative reading.
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The Associated Press: Barack Obama: An ‘improbable’ journey into history
Good bio of Obama.
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Rachel Maddow Interviews Obama (VIDEO)
In the second video, Obama discusses technological goverment reforms that could be modified for reforming school bureaucracy. Impressive.
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How Well Do You Know Your State Board of Education?: Texas Monthly October 2008
Jaw-dropping and fun little quiz about the activities of the creationist board members who choose science textbooks that will be used in classrooms not only in Texas, but across much of the USA. Can we change the law to appoint qualified people to determine curriculum, instead of illiterate ideologues?
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Ever wonder who decides what your kids are taught in school? It’s not their principals and teachers. Nor is it their school’s superintendent. The Legislature, maybe? Not quite; the Legislature’s responsibility is to write the education code, fund the schools, and keep the state’s commitment to an accountability system. Every once in a while a lawmaker might pass a bill that authorizes Bible classes or requires daily recitation of the pledge of allegiance to the Texas flag, but the Legislature isn’t responsible for curriculum. Okay, then, how about the Texas Education Agency and the commissioner of education? Sounds right, but you’re wrong again. The TEA’s role is simply (or not so simply) to administer the education code.
Ready for the answer? The folks who decide what Texas schoolchildren will learn are the fifteen members of the State Board of Education. Don’t worry if you can’t name a single one. Almost nobody can! Members of this obscure panel are elected in down-ballot races that generate about as much media attention as an appointment to the Funeral Service Commission, but they are the ones who determine the classroom content for every public- or charter-school student in Texas. The board, currently composed of ten Republicans and five Democrats, oversees the process that establishes curriculum standards—known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills—and adopts or rejects textbooks. Members serve four-year terms and receive no financial compensation. (You heard right: They do this for free.) So how well do you know the powerful volunteers who control your children’s education? Take this quiz and see.
Pencils up . . . begin!
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Zombie Jamboree in Texas | a blog post at Beacon Broadside
Jesus, here we go again in 2008. School Board illiterates in Texas confusing the Bible with science books.
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Three creationists were just appointed to a six-member committee to review a draft set of Texas state biology standards, which determine what is taught in Texas’s public school science classrooms and the content of the biology textbooks approved for use in the state. And since Texas is one of the largest textbook markets in the country, what happens to textbooks there is relevant to the content of textbooks everywhere.
With all that at stake, why would anyone appoint a creationist, let alone three, to such a committee? Oh, right: the chair of the board, Don McLeroy, is a confessed creationist, who offers folksy criticisms of evolution like, “Given all the time in the world, I don’t think I could make a spider out of a rock. However, most of the books we are considering adopting, claim that Nothing made a spider out of a rock.” The far-right faction on the state board of education, including McLeroy, presently holds seven of its fifteen seats.
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A central issue is that the new draft omits a reference to “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories. Innocuous on its face, the “strengths and weaknesses” language was selectively applied only to evolution in 2003 by members of the board attempting to dilute the treatment of evolution in the biology textbooks then under consideration. After a concerted effort by scientists, teachers, parents, and others to defend evolution, all eleven books were eventually adopted—but it was a long, hard, and unedifying ordeal.
In a 2005 talk at his church, McLeroy was candid about the connection between his religious beliefs and his abuse of the “strengths and weaknesses” language, saying: “It was only the four really conservative, orthodox Christians on the board [who] were willing to stand up to the textbooks and say they don’t present the weaknesses of evolution.” (If you’re a Christian who accepts evolution, like the over 11,000 signatories of this open letter, you’re apparently not “orthodox” enough for him.)
Also under attack is the new draft’s explanation of the limits of science, which notes, “If ideas are based upon purported forces outside of nature, they cannot be tested using scientific methods.” McLeroy is digging in his heels here too, wanting to open the science classroom door to the supernatural—and not just the costumed trick-or-treating variety. As he told The New York Times, he thinks there are two types of science: “a creationist system and a naturalist system.”
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Stephen Colbert Endorses (But Does Not Support) Barack Obama (VIDEO)
Brilliant.
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George F. Will – Call Him John the Careless – washingtonpost.com
Will throws McCain under the StraightTalk Express.
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McCain’s “Closing Argument” (Satire)
Brilliant, laugh-out-loud funny.
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Beyond the Spin: High court’s future at stake | Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/30/2008
Good overview of the future of the Supreme Court.
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The future alignment of the Supreme Court – not Joe the Plumber or William Ayers – is one the most important issues in Tuesday’s presidential election.The justices most likely to retire next are two liberals: John Paul Stevens, 88, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, 75. That means that if McCain follows through on a pledge to appoint conservative judges, a Supreme Court divided 5-4 on many hot-button issues will swing dramatically to the right. On the other hand, an Obama victory, even if accompanied by a Democratic landslide in the Senate, would mean that the court retains its current balance during Obama’s first term.
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The Supreme Court is divided into two factions. In the conservative camp are Roberts, Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. On the liberal side are Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer and David Souter. Depending on the issue, Anthony Kennedy votes with either side.
Of the nine sitting justices, seven – all except Ginsburg and Breyer – were appointed by Republican presidents. Eleven of the last 13 Supreme Court appointments have been made by Republicans.
If McCain wins the election and appoints yet another conservative to the bench – which will be more difficult if Democrats extend their advantage in the Senate, which confirms or rejects judicial nominees – it will have dire consequences for affirmative action and other policies.
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In 2003, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court approved the use of race as a factor in the admission of qualified students to the University of Michigan Law School. In that case, Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor supplied the key fifth vote.
O’Connor, who was the court’s swing vote, retired and was replaced in 2006 by Samuel Alito, a solid conservative. The appointment of one more justice in the mode of Roberts and Alito will give conservatives a five-vote majority without Kennedy, the court’s current swing vote.
Possibly more important than appointments to the Supreme Court are those to the lower courts. According to National Journal, only 0.1 percent of the 60,000 cases appealed each year are taken up by the Supreme Court. Republican-appointed judges hold 54 percent of the 674 full-time U.S. District Court judgeships, and 56 percent of the 179 seats on 13 Courts of Appeals circuits.
A McCain presidency would widen that Republican advantage, and an Obama administration would narrow it.
Meanwhile, a reshaped Supreme Court, in addition to possibly eliminating or severely restricting affirmative action, could leave its imprint on other major issues, such as abortion rights, gun control, government funding of religious schools, the death penalty, civil liberties, and consumer rights.
Tuesday’s election is not only a choice between Obama and McCain; it’s also a referendum on the future of the Supreme Court and the direction it will take the nation.
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Truthdig – Reports – Sarah the Scapegoat
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Rarely has any national campaign suffered from the combination of oafish incompetence and transparent malice displayed by the little coterie of operatives who surround the Republican nominee. They continue to damage his reputation and theirs, even as they attempt to escape blame for the campaign’s declining prospects.
Now these geniuses seem to think they can offload the responsibility for their mistakes onto Sarah Palin, which would be like Doctor Frankenstein trying to blame everything on the poor monster. Of course, Frankenstein possessed too much character and decency to evade responsibility for the chaos he created. But the McCain inner circle seems unburdened by those qualities.
Recent polls indicate that Gov. Palin has turned into an albatross for the Republicans—both because of her erratic performance and the obvious questions that her nomination raised about Sen. McCain’s judgment. She has done nothing to expand the ticket’s appeal beyond the most ardent partisan base. Female Democrats, who were supposed to be attracted to a woman as vice president, dislike her intensely. Her behavior on the stump, where she regurgitates whatever cheesy material the campaign feeds her, has repelled independent voters, too.
In short, the brilliant Palin maneuver of late August hasn’t worked out so well for campaign manager Rick Davis and chief strategist Steve Schmidt come late October. The response in the latest round of leaked whispers is to trash her.
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Author Paulo Coelho Illustrates the Upside of Openness – Tools of Change for Publishing
Free is the new business model?
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Truthdig – E-Speech: The (Uncertain) Future of Free Expression
A wake-up call to web 2.0 types who ignore political engagement.
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Although no one is slowing down or opening your posted letters, spying on your face-to-face conversations or restricting your physical ability to make music, all of these barriers to free speech—and more—are becoming increasingly prevalent in the world of digital communications. And as tools like the Web, e-mail, voice over IP, Internet video, mobile phones and peer-to-peer file sharing become increasingly vital to our relationships with family, friends, colleagues, businesses and government institutions, these limitations on speech and threats to our privacy are becoming increasingly important civil rights issues.
When we talk about unequal access to computers and other digital communication technologies, we speak about the “digital divide.” When we talk about the concentrated ownership of the Internet access business, we can point to a simple, powerful statistic: Four companies control nearly 60 percent of the American ISP market, and four companies control nearly 90 percent of the American mobile phone market. But there’s no simple way to talk about the interrelated issues of electronic surveillance, network neutrality, asymmetry and “walled garden” technologies that collectively threaten free expression in the digital world.
Without a name for the big picture, it’s difficult to do anything about it. Imagine trying to reverse global warming, reduce pollution and save species from extinction without the umbrella of the word environmentalism connecting the issues. Therefore, we propose the term e-speech as a concept to unite these issues, and to discuss potential solutions to the problem they collectively pose. First, however, we should briefly discuss the issues themselves.
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Kim Harrison from HarperCollins Publishers
HarperCollins trying to go 21st c to fight off declining book sales.
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Religion in disguise – Annotated
Excellent history of creationism/intelligent design in Christian theology and US politics, and good analysis of why it rests on a fundamental misunderstanding (or distortion) of what science is.
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The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Or witness the 2006 controversy in Quebec, after the Ministry of Education, knowing some independent schools were teaching creationism, ordered the schools to teach the theory of evolution or close their doors.
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Many people believe that young Earth creationism – the dominant form of creationism, which maintains that God created the world, in roughly its present form, in six literal days some 6,000 years ago – was widely accepted until the advent of modern science. Yet the young Earth creationist movement is of a much more recent vintage.
Most early Christian theologians accepted that parts of the Bible, including the creation story in Genesis I, were meant to be read allegorically, rather than literally. For example, in the fifth century, St. Augustine argued against a literal six-day creation in The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Augustine also displayed a wonderfully scientific mindset, remarking that we should be willing to change our minds in light of new information, and should be wary of reflexively interpreting the Bible literally, for it could discredit the faith.
- Well good for Augustine. Maybe more Christians should read him, instead of reading Falwell types. – post by cburell
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Nevertheless, the Protestant Reformation, beginning in 1517, began to emphasize Biblical literalism. The core belief of young Earth creationism was established in 1650, when Anglican Archbishop James Ussher recorded Biblical genealogies and concluded that the world was created in 4004 BC, a date accepted by many fundamentalist Christians today.
However, the increasing development of geology in the 19th century cast doubt on Ussher’s chronology, and by the mid-19th century, few evangelical Christians accepted a young Earth.
That began to change in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the rise of Christian fundamentalism. For 20 years between 1878 and 1897, American Presbyterians held an annual Niagara Bible Conference, and in 1910, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church presented the “five fundamentals,” one of which was Biblical inerrancy.
- Interesting. The doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy is a recent gift of the Presbyterians in the USA. I’d always thought we could lay it at the doorstep of the Catholic Church. Note: The Presbyterian Church is the dominant denomination in Korea. So I wonder if we’re going to see Creationism idiocy in educational battles here in Korea too, because of US influence. – post by cburell
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While not all “fundamentalist” Christians at the time accepted a young Earth, many Christians grew concerned about the impact of teaching the theory of evolution, which was blamed for, among other things, atrocities committed during the First – and later, the Second – World War.
- An example of historical ignorance, or else selective amnesia. The history of Christianity is rife with wars and atrocities in Jesus’ name. The Constitution was written as a secular document in order to prevent the European experience of religious wars from infecting the USA. – post by cburell
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Consequently, Christians successfully lobbied for statutes prohibiting the teaching of evolution, such as Tennessee’s Butler Act, which was the focus of the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925.
- This trial took place 30 minutes from my hometown, just across the border in north Georgia. – post by cburell
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It’s important to note that, at this time, most opponents of evolution didn’t even pretend that their objections were based in science. Rather, their concerns were explicitly moral and religious in nature, as they were concerned that science, and particularly the theory of evolution, led to the loss of Biblically-based morality. And this remains the primary concern of Christian creationists today.
- “Biblically-based morality” is problematic on so many levels. First, the Bible approves of slavery, genocide, and capital punishment for such things as disobeying your father or learning about other religions – read it in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Second, the GOOD, love- and peace-based morality we find in the Bible can be found in countless other ancient texts, from classical philosophers to Buddha. There’s not much original about the Golden Rule. I’ll stop there. – post by cburell
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The attempt to provide a scientific basis for a Biblical belief already discredited by science placed Morris and other creationists directly in conflict with most of modern science – not merely with evolutionary biology, but with cosmology, geology, paleontology and so forth. Consequently, instead of marshalling evidence for a young Earth, creationists spent – and continue to spend – most of their time attacking the sciences.
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Further, following Morris’s and McCready-Price’s discussions of fossils, many creationists suggest that any gaps in the fossil record, and any gaps in our knowledge, reveal not just the incompleteness of the theory of theory of evolution, but also open the door to discussion of divine action. For if we lack evidence as to how a given species originated, then we can always assume that the hand of God was at work in bringing that species into being.
This “God in the gaps” theorizing is, however, extremely dangerous for believers, since new discoveries frequently fill in the gaps in our knowledge, and thereby leave less and less for God to do.
Interestingly, it is this very theorizing that led Richard Dawkins to declare that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist,” since, according to Dawkins, Darwin finally provided a non-theistic explanation for complex biological design – that is, Darwin filled a gap in our knowledge which rendered appeals to God superfluous. Suffice it to say then, that as science progresses, God in the gaps theories, far from proving the existence of the divine, may squeeze God out of the picture.
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Design theory also doesn’t get us to science: A scientific theory must yield testable hypotheses, and to do so, it must possess predictive power. Yet since we don’t know what the designer is or how it operates, there is no way of predicting what it will do next. We therefore have no hypotheses to test – no way of knowing whether the evidence supports or refutes the theory – and hence nothing for scientists to do. This explains why ID has produced no research program and published no empirical studies in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
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Despite these problems – or perhaps because of them – ID theorists, much like their creationist forebears, have focused on attacking modern science. The attack began in 1991, when University of California, Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson published Darwin on Trial, which became the template of the ID movement.
Then in 1996, the Seattle-based Discovery Institute opened its Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (now the Center for Science and Culture) with the express purpose of promoting ID. The centre has proven highly successful in this regard, convincing many politicians to consider laws favouring at least the mention of ID in biology classes.
Although the institute claims that ID is not at odds with science, an institute paper known as the Wedge document makes the anti-scientific nature of the movement explicit. According to the document, the two governing goals of ID are: “To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies,” and “To replace materialistic explanations with a theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.”
This document therefore makes two things clear: First, similar to young Earth creationists, the ID theorists primary concern is with what they believe to be the ethical consequences of modern science, or what they call “scientific materialism.” And second, for the foregoing reason, they desire to overthrow modern science, or scientific materialism.
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At issue here is a normative rule of science called methodological materialism (or methodological naturalism), which states that when explaining the world, scientists must limit themselves to natural causes – to matter, energy and the interaction of matter of energy. Consequently, scientists must avoid recourse to supernatural causes, such as God, karma and so on.
This resistance to relying on supernatural causes dates all the way back to the earliest pre-Socratic philosophers and for good reason. First, since science concerns itself with the study of the natural world – and leaves the supernatural to theology – it stands to reason that it would avoid positing supernatural causation.
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But more important, we know that methodological naturalism works: By eschewing reliance on supernatural causes, science has been tremendously successful at explaining – and controlling – the natural world. If we were to permit consideration of the supernatural, this success would likely come to a crashing halt because once we posit a supernatural cause for some phenomenon, we have our answer, and there is no reason to seek further explanation.
Now that said, methodological materialism is, as the name suggests, a methodological rule, not a metaphysical theory. By following the rule, scientists are not saying that nothing supernatural exists – indeed, there are many scientists who do believe in the supernatural but who recognize that they must avoid relying on it when doing science. On the other hand, metaphysical materialism, as a theory of reality rather than a scientific rule, suggests that natural causes are all that exist. And while there are some scientists who subscribe to this theory, commitment to methodological materialism does not in any way commit one to metaphysical materialism.
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Nevertheless, some other ID theorists suggest that methodological materialism leads quite naturally to metaphysical materialism. And since metaphysical materialism leaves no room for God, both forms of materialism must be overthrown.
Thus, in its desire to overthrow methodological materialism – to overthrow scientific method – ID reveals itself as a religious theory, fundamentally in conflict with science.
Despite this, ID did score some victories, most notably in Dover, Penn., when in 2004 the Dover school board approved the mention of ID in high school biology classes. That victory was short-lived however, as the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, after an extensive discussion of methodological materialism, declared in 2005 that ID is a religious theory and hence laws promoting its inclusion in the curriculum are unconstitutional.
But creationism will no doubt be back in some form. And while the movement regroups, it’s worth considering whether there is any legitimacy to creationists’ primary concern with modern science, and in particular, with the theory of evolution: That it leads, or has led, to a materialist metaphysics and to destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
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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 10/28/2008
- Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/27/2008
- Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/29/2008
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