Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Strong Statement by a Wash U Law Professor on the Schafly Honorary Degree Scandal

Here.

The Appalling Buffoon Oliver Kamm...

...has surfaced again--a "vicious little merchant banker" Chris Bertram (Bristol) calls him--apparently because some people in the U.K. actually read his blog.  I had assumed he dropped off the face of the earth after the last time we encountered him several years ago.  The nerve of some people!

UPDATE:  More fun with the buffoon.  (Thanks to Chris Bertram for the pointer.)

More on the Schafly Honorary Degree Scandal

Here.

Hillary Clinton's Downfall

As played by Adolf Hitler.  Very funny (lots of naughty language, though, be forewarned!).  (Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Reader Erich Matthes points out that this is actually a rip-off of an earlier parody about the "downfall of the Cowboys," the Texas football team, here.

An Honorary Degree for Phyllis Schafly???

From a serious university no less!?!?  Wow.  (Philosopher Gillian Russell at Wash U also comments.  And here's a very good letter on the subject by law faculty at Wash U.)

UPDATE:  Katha Pollitt on the Schlafly honorary degree scandal.

Cindy Sheehan Running for Congress...

...against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has, of course, done nothing to stop or atone for the criminal war of aggression against Iraq.  Back in the good 'ole (time-consuming) days of the blog, I'd suggested Ms. Sheehan for President.  I'd be happy if she made it to Congress. 

Kudos to the Longshore Workers!

Details here.

Happy May Day...

...from The Virtual Stoa.

A U.S. Presidential Election Update

At the start of the year, I expressed the worry that, against Barack Obama, the Republicans will "lock up the racist (and racially uneasy) vote by calling attention to the Church to which Senator Obama belongs in Chicago."  Last month, as U.S. readers will know, videos of the colorful and scathing pastor of Obama's Church were all over the airwaves in the US--here's a sample.  (And here's how the right-wing slime-and-smear machine is going to use this material and here is a sample of Republican gloating about it.  And here's what a so-called "reputable" journalist [i.e., one who is less obviously a right-wing shill] is doing with this material.)  I am actually now more keen on Senator Obama--whose mealy-mouthed rhetoric I find tiresome--now that I've heard his pastor, but some reasonable person might worry that I am not the average American voter.  But I confess I am also beginning to share the Clintons' suspicion that Obama is going to get cut to pieces by the Republicans.  Here's yet another example of what the right-wing slime-and-smear machine has in store for Senator Obama.  The unknown is whether this kind of stuff has any effect on anyone who is not already a member of the crypto-fascist right.  Senator Obama has the Reagan gift of demeanor and delivery that is reassuring and tranquilizing, and so he may well just sail on through the choppy seas.  And at some point one expects the "mushy middle" of the electorate will realize that Senator McCain is the candidate of perpetual war, and that fact, together with the latest economic downturn, will insure Republican defeat, even if Senator Obama picks Congressman Kucinich as his running-mate (one can dream, can't one?).  Then President-elect Obama can name Prof. Dohrn Attorney General and Rev. Wright Secretary of State, and then there really will be "change" in Washington!

Allen Wood, Immanuel Kant, and George W. Bush

Here.

5th Anniversary of the U.S. War of Aggression Against Iraq

Today marks the 5th anniversary of one of the most spectacular state crimes in recent history, one that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of lives disrupted and ruined. A recent essay by Professor Chomsky is apt for marking the occasion.  It might also be useful to recall some earlier postings on the subject here over the past few years, both on the apologists for the crimes and the crimes themselves:

On Norman Geras and the proposition that "there was no persuasive moral case against the Iraq War"

The Proposed U.S. Troop "Surge" in Iraq

The Permanent U.S. Military Presence in Iraq

U.N. Study:  Iraqis Endure Worse Conditions Now Than Under Saddam

Goebbels Had Nothing on These Guys...or the Latest in Bush Rationalizations for War and Tyranny

Pure Politics:  Bashing the Anti-War Left...in the Guardian?

Mark Twain's "The War Prayer"

Now that the Republicans have chosen Senator McCain of Arizona as their standard-bearer for the fall Presidential contest in the U.S., and since Senator McCain is, among other things, the candidate of perpetual war, it seems fitting to remember this fine short piece by Mark Twain, which a reader has sent today.

Chomsky on Iraq and the Presidential Election

I haven't posted a link to one of Chomsky's items in awhile, but this one is particularly interesting (though he, incorrectly, describes the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as a war of aggression, which it was not under international law--but that is minor).

Breaking News: Diebold Mistakenly Releases Results of 2008 Presidential Election Early

This is very funny.

UPDATE:  It goes without saying, I should think, that bullshit is the most important issue for voters in 2008.  (Thanks to Derek Pierson for the link to this one.)

An American Presidential Election Update

This is mostly for the benefit of foreign readers, though perhaps some others will find it of interest.

Yesterday, was "Super Tuesday" in the U.S., with more than twenty Presidential primaries throughout the country.

Senator John McCain from Arizona emerged the clear front-runner to win the Republican nomination.  Senator McCain is not popular with "conservatives" (I'm not sure this is the right term for these people) who object to several of his positions:  for example, his opposition to torture; his opposition to the Bush tax cuts; his lack of support for all the far right judicial nominees Bush put forward; his insufficient enthusiasm for punitive measures against illegal immigrants; and his support for campaign finance reform.  Senator McCain is, of course, also a leading war-monger, who likes to joke about bombing Iran.  This combination of positions makes him "too liberal" for a section of the American electorate.

Senator Clinton won in California, her home state of New York, the neighboring state of New Jersey, her former home state of Arkansas, Massachussetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Arizona.

Senator Obama won in his home state of Illinois, Georgia, the frequent bellwether state of Missouri, Alabama, Connectict (which borders New York), Delaware, Utah, North Dakota, Colorado, Kansas, Idaho, and Alaska.   States like Utah, North Dakota, Idaho, and Alaska have almost no African-American population, and are largely non-Hispanic white.  In Utah, Obama beat Clinton 57% to 39%; in Idaho, 79% to 17%; in Alaska, 75% to 25%; and in North Dakota, 61% to 37%.

The margins of victory are telling elsewhere.  In her home state of New York, Clinton beat Obama by 17 percentage points; in his home state of Illinois, Obama beat Clinton by 32 percentage points.  Obama beat Clinton by a small margin in neighboring Connecticut (that he won at all is very telling), and by ten percentage points in Delaware, part of the Northeast corridor, which one might have thought safe territory for the New York Senator. 

If one remembers that Senator Clinton started with a huge name recognition advantage, and was the presumptive nominee before the process started, it is clear how much trouble she is now in.  She may yet pull it out.  The decent thing to do, of course, would be to withdraw from the race.  As one right-wing pundit wrote not long ago, "Only one thing can now unite the Republican Party:  Hillary Clinton."

UPDATE:  Ruchira Paul reflects on why older non-white women might be supporting Obama and not Clinton.

ANOTHER:  A reader was puzzled why I thought the "decent" thing for Senator Clinton to do was withdraw, so I guess I should be explicit.  I'd like her to withdraw for two reasons:  (1) there's no reason to think she's any more progressive than her husband Bill (whose domestic policies were to the right of Richard Nixon's), and she has too much blood on her hands with Iraq and her war-mongering about Iran, and (2) she's the Democrat least likely to win in November, esp. against McCain.

The Democratic Contest...as Seen from Britain

This is more illuminating and direct than anything I've seen in the U.S. media of late.  It gives a good sense of some of the ugliness to come, and confirms some of my earlier comments.  The quotes from voters in South Carolina are priceless.  First, the elderly racist: 

There's juggling...

...and then there's this guy.  This has nothing to do with philosophy, but it's really quite neat!

UPDATE:  And then there's this other guy!

ANOTHER:  And (courtesy of Fritz Warfield) check out this fellow!  Who knew there were so many amazing jugglers out there?

The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

I've corresponded with a few friends in other countries about the U.S. Presidential elections for 2008, and thought I'd share a few thoughts here since this is a low news time for philosophy.  (And, no, I am not going to resume political blogging as a matter of course--it really was too time-consuming, and it attracted too many right-wing whack jobs to the blog and my in-box!)  So here's my opinionated, and moderately informed, take:

The good news for humanity, of course, is that the Republicans are in bad shape, and not only because the war criminal and incompetent George Bush has alienated even many Republicans.  The leading contenders for the Republican nomination at the moment are a divorced social liberal from New York City, Rudy Giuliani, and a Mormon, Mitt Romney--both of whom will scare off the regular Protestant extremists the Republicans depend upon, though for different reasons--and a Baptist preacher, Mike Huckabee, who is so out of his depth it would be funny if the fate of the world didn't depend upon it.  The first two are committed authoritarians, the last is such a seemingly congenial reactionary bozo it's hard to know what to make of him.  But the key fact about American elections is that they are winner-take-all affairs, which means it will be the "independents"--those benighted souls who think they stand above sectarian disputes because they can't tell the difference between night and day--who will decide matters.   

The "independents" won't vote for someone who is too clearly identified with one wing of the Republican or Democratic parties:  religious zealots like Huckabee and Romney are in trouble then, but so too is Hillary Clinton, who comes with heavy baggage given her last name (and remember that Bill--who, of course, looks like a saint by comparison to his successor--barely won a majority of the popular vote in 1996).  If the Republicans nominate John McCain (who has managed to conceal his far right credentials fairly well thanks to our suppine press in America) or if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton, then this may really be a close race, since independents are more likely to gravitate to McCain and defect from Clinton.  But otherwise, I am hopeful we will see a repeat of 2006, when the party of the imprudently greedy, the war-mongers and the religious zealots was trounced. 

The best bet for the Democrats is obviously John Edwards, who polls better against all the likely Republican candidates than any of the other Democratic contenders--no doubt because he pulls in enough of the "independent" voters.  (He's also a real Southerner, and it has to be observed that the only Democrats to be elected President in the last forty years have been Southerners.)  Hillary Clinton suffers from being a Clinton, as well as having one of the most unappealing public personae of a national politician in recent memory.  Dick Cheney is creepier and scarier, to be sure, but "fake" is the only word that captures the impression Ms. Clinton makes every time she opens her mouth. 

Barack Obama's public positions tend to be a bit embarrassing, but I am told by some of my future colleagues who know him that he is more liberal than he lets on, and that he is aiming, on purpose, for the "mushy middle" of the American polity.  Obama's greatest liability should be obvious:  he's not white, and since de jure apartheid only ended in American forty years ago or so, there must still be 20% of the electorate that is consciously or subconciously racist, or grew up in a racist household, and will be mobilized against the mere prospect of a non-white President.  (Some of those people would likely be voting Republican anyway, but certainly not all.)  And once the Republicans are done with Barack Osama gaffes and smears, they'll lock up the racist (and racially uneasy) vote by calling attention to the Church to which Senator Obama belongs in Chicago.   (We'll know soon enough whether these concerns about racism are well-founded, starting with the Iowa caucuses this week.  Polls, I suspect, are overstating Obama's support, because of the well-known phenomenon that those responding do not want to to seem racist when answering questions.)   I am optimistic that Obama would be a more progressive President than Hillary Clinton (notwithstanding some of his mealy-mouthed rhetoric), but Edwards has taken the most genuinely progressive positions to date and is also surely more electable than either of them.

All that being said, the war criminals currently in Washington have performed so badly, in so many ways, that no matter who the Democrats nominate, they may still be able to prevail.  Of course, a lot can happen in the next ten months that may change that assessment.

UPDATE JANUARY 3:  The good news:  Senator Obama trounced the Democrat's weakest and least progressive contender, Senator Clinton, in the Iowa caucuses this evening, by a margin of 38% to 29%.  The sad news:  Senator Edwards, with 30% of the vote, is finished; given his lack of funds, and his huge investment in Iowa, he needed a resounding victory here to remain a serious contender.  That Senator Obama did so well is also a hopeful sign that the worry about latent racism will not be as much a factor as I had feared; Iowa has a negligible minority population, so for Senator Obama to have prevailed there by such a margin is an encouraging sign.  On the other hand, Iowa is not part of the "old South," and does not have the same history of racism as many states yet to come.  I certainly hope Senator Obama prevails in the remaining primaries, and in November, and that he proves to be as progressive as some of my friends assure me he actually is.

Farewell to Hellie and Wilson's "For the Record" Blog!

Details here.  They'll be missed!

"Santa Claus Comes to Wall Street"

Both funny and incisive.

The Duke Lacrosse Case: An Expose of KC Johnson

KC Johnson is the Brooklyn College history professor who became obsessed with the Duke lacrosse case and particularly obsessed with harassing and deriding Duke faculty whom he deemed to have any involvement with the case.  (Among the targets of his harassment has been the distinguished philosopher of biology Alex Rosenberg.)  A Duke professor has now penned an expose of Professor Johnson's misrepresentations.  More details and links here.

Is the Rack torture?

Gerald Dworkin (UC Davis) consults the experts for answers.

Who will your descendants be?

From a recent BBC story:

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said - before a decline due to dependence on technology.

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

(Thanks to Mark Greenberg for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Turns out this was another triumph of high-quality journalism, at Dr. Curry's expense.  Story here.  (Thanks to Mark Dondero for the pointer.)

ANOTHER:  Of course, some folks take even the "science fiction" seriously.

Trends in Higher Education in the UK

Thom Brooks (Newcastle) comments on recent proposals here and here.

Recent Interview with Norman Finkelstein

He makes a number of interesting points about academic freedom and the political pressures that prevent honest discussion of Israel in the United States.  He also has some funny lines about the disgraceful Alan Dershowitz.

On the 6th Anniversary of 9/11...

...I call, once again, the attention of readers to the powerful statement issued by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Aghanistan on the occasion of the second anniversary of the atrocity (issued, it bears noting, before the war crimes committed against the people of Iraq); an excerpt:

Fundamentalism is the mortal enemy of civilised humanity; to address it demands the consolidated action of all freedom-loving nations of the world. The present "world anti-terrorism coalition" has been debased by innumerable ambiguities and impurities of purpose, motivation and objectives. The contradictions between world powers will spell its doom. Therefore, it behooves anti-fundamentalist individuals and organisations working for social justice the world over to draw together without hesitation to contain and ultimately stamp out, once and for all, the vermin of fundamentalism, so that the tragedy of September 11 will never be repeated, neither in America nor anywhere else.

For obvious reasons, public discussion in America of the role of religious zealotry in the 9/11 crimes has always been completely displaced by anti-Islamic bigotry of one form or another.

Floods in Oxford!

The Virtua Stoa is on the case, with photos and commentary.

UPDATE:  It's a bad situation in Britain.  Good wishes to all my U.K. friends affected by this weather fiasco!

Philanthropy vs. "the Perpetuation of Privilege"

This is an unusually forthright piece:

On April 11, the president of Columbia University announced that it had received a $400 million pledge from alumnus John W. Kluge, who in 2006 was 52nd on the Forbes list of the wealthiest people, earning his fortune through the buying and selling of television and radio stations. This gift, payable upon the 92-year-old’s death, will be the fourth largest ever given to a single institution of higher education.

With such a massive transfer of wealth, the accolades poured in, justifying such a gift to an Ivy League university. Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, said: “The essence of America’s greatness lies, in no small measure, in our collective commitment to giving all people the opportunity to improve their lives… [Kluge] has chosen to direct his amazing generosity to ensuring that young people will have the chance to benefit from a Columbia education regardless of their wealth or family income.” Mayor Michael Bloomberg indicated that investing in education produces returns that can’t be matched. Rep. Charles Rangel said the gift would ensure greater numbers of students can afford a first-class education.

Oh please!

I am becoming less and less tolerant of people who pass wealth on to the privileged and masquerade it as philanthropy. Philanthropy is the voluntary act of donating money, goods or services to a charitable cause, intended to promote good or improve human well being. When a billionaire gives money that will benefit people who are more than likely already well off or who already have access to huge sums of money, attending the ninth richest university by endowment, this is not philanthropy. This simply extends the gross inequities that exist in our country — inequities that one day will come home to roost.

Almost 40 percent of all college students nationally earned a Pell Grant, which in general represents students from families earning less than $35,000 a year. Yes, almost 40 percent of students in college today are from low income families. At Columbia, where tuition and fees alone tops $31,000, only 16 percent of students are Pell Grant eligible. In fact, over 60 percent of Columbia students don’t even bother to apply for federal financial aid. They can pay the bill — no problem (see the Economic Diversity of Colleges Web site). Columbia is not alone. A recent New York Times article, which provided a great story on a recent Amherst College graduate, indicated that 75 percent of students attending elite colleges come from the top socioeconomic quartile, while only 10 percent come from the bottom half, and just 3 percent from the bottom quartile.

Wycliffe Hall, Oxford

What do Oxford or UK readers make of this:

The college head thinks 95% of us are going to burn in hell. His new deputy believes it's wrong for women to teach men. Insiders are complaining about an "openly homophobic" atmosphere. A third of the academic staff have resigned. Others are unwilling to speak openly to the press because they fear disciplinary action. Is this perhaps the notorious Bob Jones University in South Carolina, where rock music and mobile phones are banned, where men must have short hair and where women can't wear trousers to class? No. Welcome to the University of Oxford.

Strictly speaking Wycliffe Hall is a permanent private hall of the University of Oxford, rather than a full college. But the difference is pretty academic. Wycliffe has control over its admissions policy and those who graduate do so with a full Oxford University degree. Which is why the thought that Wycliffe has been taken over by Christian fundamentalists is ruffling senior common room feathers all over the university. For having a cell of religious extremists succeed in claiming one of its precious institutions does little to enhance Oxford's reputation.

As always, post only once and be patient!

Funny Comment of the Day...

...is due to Alastair Norcross (Rice currently, moving to Colorado):  "I have long thought that being a famous professor of economics is quite consistent with being a complete idiot."  Nothing like cross-disciplinary contempt!

"A Split Emerges as Conservatives Discuss Darwin" (Leiter)

So reports the New York Times in their trademark he said/she said manner, when, of course, the article might have been more aptly titled, "A Split Emerges as Ignorant Ideologues Discuss Darwin," since ignorance of evolutionary biology is almost evenly divided between the two sides:  on the one hand, the pathological liars from the Discovery [sic] Institute, the public relations arm of the "Intelligent Design" scam; on the other, Larry Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois, and John Derbyshire, a pontificator at the National Review (who at least knows enough to know that "Intelligent Design" is bogus), who are championing a different intellectual muddle:

Darwin’s scientific theories about the evolution of species can be applied to today’s patterns of human behavior, and...natural selection can provide support for many bedrock conservative ideas, like traditional social roles for men and women, free-market capitalism and governmental checks and balances.

“I do indeed believe conservatives need Charles Darwin,” said Larry Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, who has spearheaded the cause. “The intellectual vitality of conservatism in the 21st century will depend on the success of conservatives in appealing to advances in the biology of human nature as confirming conservative thought."

This, of course, confirms an observation Michael Weisberg and I made in writing about the misuse and mispresentation of evolutionary biology by some law professors:

As Professor Jones himself has noted, “the favored perspective on the causes of human behavior often reflects ephemeral enthusiasms wafted on the politics of the moment” [footnote omitted].  That summarizes we suspect, in a nutshell, the current fascination with “law and evolutionary biology,” which permits the patina of “science” to be enlisted on behalf of various hobby horses of the right: people are “selfish,” law can’t change everything, nature puts limits on utopian aspirations, and the like. Perhaps all of these are true, but right now evolutionary biology offers no support to any of them. But “ephemerical enthusiasms wafted on the politics of the moment” have made the science irrelevant. We hope to remind people that the science is relevant, indeed, crucial, and that, so far, the needed science is not there.

Professor Arnhart, himself, maintains a blog devoted to his hobby horse, which even permits comments.  Already someone has weighed in with a pertinent observation:

You will be better able to cross the divide if you stop refering to "Darwinism". The theory of gravity is not called "Newtonism".  Go over to the Physics Dept. at NIU and ask someone how gravity works. Now go over to the Biology Dept. and ask someone how natural selection works. Ithink you will find the answers illuminating.

I invite some of the many philosophers of biology out there among the readership to venture over to Professor Arnhart's site to find out to what extent he has a scholarly interest in evolutionary biology and to what extent he is really an ignorant ideologue.  Save a copy of your comments; if he doesn't post them, I'll post them here in due course.  But perhaps we shall be pleasantly surprised?

UPDATE:  A reader directs my attention to a useful short review of one of Professor Arnhart's books by philosopher of biology Roberta Millstein (UC Davis) from Ethics 110 (2000):  653.  As Professor Millstein notes, Professor Arnhart makes two characteristic mistakes of the ideologically motivated in this realm: first, in assuming, without argument, that natural selection is "the primary force in evolutionary change"; and second, in ignoring that variation is both a necessary condition and consequence of natural selection, such that no one set of phenotypic traits can be deemed the "natural" ones.  As she notes:  these points "call into question the appropriateness of grounding his [natural right] theory in modern Darwininian biology."

It All Happened on April 2

It's the birthday of literary critic and James Joyce scholar William York Tindall, (books by this author) born in Williamstown, Vermont (1903). He was a literature student when he discovered James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) while traveling in Paris. He became obsessed with Joyce, and read all of his works. When he returned to the U.S., he started teaching a course in modern literature at New York University, and he was one of the first professors in the United States to assign Ulysses to his students. The book was still banned in the U.S. at the time, so his students had to read a bootlegged copy that was chained to a desk in the library.

It was on this day in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell received patent No. 174,465 for the telephone. He filed for his patent on the same day as a Chicago electrician named Elisha Gray filed for a patent on basically the same device. Bell only beat Gray by two hours.

It was on this day in 1933 that a man named Charles Darrow trademarked the board game Monopoly. Darrow based the game on an earlier game called "The Landlord's Game," which had been designed by a woman named Elizabeth Magie to teach people about the evils of capitalism.

It was on this day in 1917 that the Victor Talking Machine Company released the first jazz record in American history. There were various terms for this new music. It was called "ratty music," "gut-bucket music," and "hot music." Historians aren't sure how it came to be called jazz, but it's believed that the word may have come from a West African word for speeding things up. It was also a slang term for sex.

CORRECTION:  Actually it all happened on March 7.

Switzerland "Accidentally Invades Liechtenstein" (Leiter)

Via The Virtual Stoa, comes this item in the category "you can't make these things up."

UPDATE:  I have to say The Virtual Stoa really is one of the few gems in the blogosphere, as this fine thread illustrates.

The Secular vs. the Religious in Britain (Leiter)

Via Ruchira Paul, I learn of this interesting item from The Guardian:

The American journalist HL Mencken once wrote: "We must accept the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." In Britain today, such wry tolerance is diminishing. Today, it's the religious on one side, and the secular on the other. Britain is dividing into intolerant camps who revel in expressing contempt for each other's most dearly held beliefs....

For example, Richard Dawkins, the British scientist and chair for the public understanding of science at Oxford University, whose perhaps timely insistence on the hideousness of the other fellow's wife and fatuousness of his offspring made his book, The God Delusion, sell 180,000 in hardback - a figure that rivals sales of Jordan's memoirs, thus demonstrating what an appetite there is for unapologetically militant atheism. This is the man so voguishly intemperate that when speaking to the Times recently about Nadia Eweida, the British Airways worker whose employer refused to allow her to wear a Christian cross openly to work, said: "I saw a picture of this woman. She had one of the most stupid faces I've ever seen."

Before The God Delusion was published, Dawkins wrote about something called Gerin oil that was poisoning human society. "Gerin oil (or Geriniol, to give it its scientific name) is a powerful drug that acts directly on the central nervous system to produce a range of characteristic symptoms, often of an antisocial or self-damaging nature. If administered chronically in childhood, Gerin oil can permanently modify the brain to produce adult disorders, including dangerous delusions that have proved very hard to treat. The four doomed flights of September 11 were, in a very real sense, Gerin oil trips: all 19 of the hijackers were high on the drug at the time." Gerin oil, of course, was an anagram of religion. His bestseller charged that God was a "psychotic delinquent", invented by mad, deluded people.

The backlash against Dawkins' abusiveness, as well as his arguments, has started. Oxford theologian Alister McGrath has just published The Dawkins Delusion?. He argues: "We need to treat those who disagree with us with intellectual respect, rather than dismissing them - as Dawkins does - as liars, knaves and charlatans. Many atheists have been disturbed by Dawkins' crude stereotypes and seemingly pathological hostility towards religion. In fact, The God Delusion might turn out to be a monumental own goal - persuading people that atheism is just as intolerant as the worst that religion can offer."

It is worth noting that The God Delusion included an appendix entitled "a partial list of addresses, for individuals needing support in escaping from religion". In this Dawkins offers a similar service to the National Secular Society whose certificate of de-baptism is downloadable from www.secularism.org.uk. "Liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had," urges the site.

Dawkins and the National Secular Society, though, are no match for Christopher Hitchens in their hostility to religion. His new book, God Is Not Great: the Case Against Religion, is to be published by Atlantic Books in May. Its first chapter, drolly entitled Putting it Mildly, concludes: "As I write these words and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything." (Hitchens' italics.)

John Gray, professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, whose book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia will be published later this year, detects parallels between dogmatic believers and dogmatic unbelievers such as Hitchens and Dawkins. "It is not just in the rigidity of their unbelief that atheists mimic dogmatic believers. It is in their fixation on belief itself."

Gray argues that this fixation misses the point of religions: "The core of most religions is not doctrinal. In non-western traditions and even some strands of western monotheism, the spiritual life is not a matter of subscribing to a set of propositions. Its heart is in practice, in ritual, observance and (sometimes) mystical experience . . . When they dissect arguments for the existence of God, atheists parody the rationalistic theologies of western Christianity."

The intolerance for people of faith, though, might not seem to be the preserve of only angry atheists such as Dawkins and Hitchens. Instead, there is a widespread fear that religion is being treated as a problem to British society, best solved by airbrushing it from the public sphere. British Airways' insistence that employee Nadia Eweida remove her Christian cross, and Jack Straw's plea to Muslim women constituents to remove their veils at his surgery, have helped bring a sense of mutual persecution to many people of different faiths (including yarmulke-wearing Jews and turban-wearing Sikhs) - and a sense of solidarity. Many people of faith share a concern that Britain may be following secularist France, where 2004 reforms meant that "conspicuous religious symbols" could not be worn in public places, such as schools.

One particularly fraught current issue creating inter-faith solidarity is gay adoptions. Many Catholics, Anglicans, Muslims and Jews last month united against the government's sexual orientation regulations that would mean all adoption agencies could not discriminate against gay couples in placing children with adoptive parents....

The gay adoption issue also outraged many non-believers, among them philosopher AC Grayling, author of Life, Sex and Ideas: The Good Life without God. "These groups are trying to be exempt from the effort to be a fair society, and we are faced with the threat of a possible return to the dark ages. We are trying to keep a pluralistic society, and elements in the Christian church and other religions are trying to destroy it."

Why this departure from tolerant, if nicely ironic, Menckenism? Why the increasing division of Britain into shrill camps shouting unedifyingly at each other?...

[T]oday everyone is feeling threatened. Not just religious groups, but also pressure groups seeking to represent those without faith (who Stinson, citing last December's Ipsos Mori poll, suggests amount to 36% of Britons).....

In any event, the British Humanist Association campaigns against the existence of religious privileges in public life. Its symbolic struggle is BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day slot, which the BHA argues unfairly excludes humanists and other non-faith people. But Radio 4 isn't the chief culprit: "We believe that the church having privileged access to government is not good," says Stinson. "The government has had this whole thing about giving a voice to religion, which was connected to the aim of building links with minority groups. But religions have become more and more dominating . It does connect to the whole multiculturalism debate because the government is funding faith schools in order to bind British minority ethnic groups to British society. But in so doing they are paying for people to be indoctrinated, to put it bluntly."

The role of religion in education raises a terrifying spectre for Grayling. "People who cherish tolerant argument are fighting back against the teaching of creationism in schools." Last November the Guardian revealed that 59 British schools were using teaching materials promoting a creationist alternative to Darwinian evolution, called intelligent design. At the same time Dawkins, nicknamed "Darwin's rottweiler", announced he was setting up a charity that will subsidise books, pamphlets and DVDs attacking the "educational scandal" of theories such as creationism while promoting rational and scientific thought.

Atheists such as Dawkins and Grayling fear that Britain may become more like the US, where creationism has more than a foothold....

Children's author Philip Pullman argues that atheism should be taught in schools. "What I fear and deplore in the 'faith school' camp is their desire to close argument down and put some things beyond question or debate. It's vital to get clear in young minds what is a faith position and what is not, so that, for instance, they won't be taken in by religious people claiming that science is a faith position no different in kind from Christianity. Science is not a matter of faith, and too many people are being allowed to get away with claiming that it is."

Others argue that faith schools should be abolished and religion have no role in public life. Such is the Dawkins-Hitchens position. Why such hatred for religion and the proselytisation for its removal from the public sphere? One answer comes from Rabbi Julia Neuberger: "I think they're so angry about Muslims being so strident," she says. "And then they become angry about the Church of England wading into the issue of gays and adoption."

Neuberger is to take on Hitchens, Dawkins and Grayling when she speaks at a debate against the motion We'd Be Better Off Without Religion next month. The debate has been moved to a bigger venue. "What I find really distasteful is not just the tone of their rhetoric, but their lack of doubt," she says. "No scientific method says that there is no doubt. If you don't accept there's doubt in all things, you're being intellectually dishonest...."

"One form of secularism suggests that religion should be kept in the private sphere. That's Dawkins' position. Another form, expressed by philosophers suc has Isaiah Berlin and John Gray, is to do with establishing a modus vivendi. It accepts that you come to the public debate with baggage that will inform your arguments. In this, the government tries to find common ground and the best possible consensus, which can only work if we share enough to behave civilly. Of course, there will be real clashes over issues such as gay adoption, but it's not clear to me that that's a problem per se."

What should such a public square be like? It might not be Menckian, but it could be based on respectful understanding of others' most cherished beliefs, argues Spencer: "We should be more willing to treat other value systems as coherent, reasonable and even valuable rather than as primitive or grotesque mutations of liberal humanism to which every sane person adheres." It is, at least, a hope, albeit one, given our current climate, in which it would be foolish to place too much faith.

I am curious to hear what U.K. readers make of this portrayl of the "clash" between securalism and religion?  Non-anonymous comments very strongly preferred; post only once--comments may take awhile to appear.

Paul Craig Roberts on Bush, Again (Leiter)

As the new "Gulf of Tonkin" rush to war continues, it is some small consolation to read someone who doesn't pull punches on the subject of these war criminals:

What would be the consequences of a US or Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear energy sites?

At the 2006 Perdana Global Peace Forum, Australian medical scientist Dr. Helen Caldicott provided an authoritative analysis of the devastating impact on human life that would result from the radiation release from such an attack.

Dr. Caldicott described the catastrophic deaths that would result from a conventional attack on nuclear facilities and the long-term increase in cancer deaths from the radiation release.

Should the attack be made with nuclear weapons--as some of Bush's criminally insane neoconservative advisers advocate--the populations of many countries would suffer for generations from radioactive particles in air, water, and food chains. Deaths would number in the many millions.

Such an attack justified in the name of "American security" and "American hegemony" would constitute the rawest form of evil the world has ever seen, far surpassing in evil the atrocities of the Nazi and Communist regimes.

Dr. Caldicott detailed the horrible long-term consequences for the Iraqi population from the US military's current use of depleted uranium in explosive ammunition used in Iraq. Caldicott explained that "depleted" does not mean depleted of radiation. She explained that each time such ammunition is used, radioactive particles are released in the air and are absorbed into people's lungs. We are yet to see the horrific civilian casualty rate of the American invasion--or the true casualty rate among US troops.

Dr. Caldicott expressed bewilderment why the rest of the world does not stand up to the US and force a halt to its crimes against humanity.

One man heard her--Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.

On February 10 at the 43rd Munich Security Conference, President Putin told the world's assembled political leaders that the US was trying to establish a "uni-polar world," which he defined as "one single center of power, one single center of force and one single master."

This goal, Putin said, was a "formula for disaster."

"The United States," Putin said, truthfully, "has overstepped its borders in all spheres" and "has imposed itself on other states."

The Russian leader declared: "We see no kind of restraint--a hyper-inflated use of force."

To avoid catastrophe, Putin said a reconsideration of the entire existing architecture of global security was necessary.

Putin's words of truth fell on many deaf ears. US Senator John McCain, America's most idiotic and dangerous "leader" after Bush and Cheney, equated Putin's legitimate criticism of the US with "confrontation."

America's new puppets--the states of central and Eastern Europe and the secretary general of NATO, no longer a treaty for the defense of Europe but a military force enlisted in America's quest for empire--lined up with McCain's argument that Russia was in fundamental conflict "with the core values of Euro-Atlantic democracies."

Even the BBC's defense and security correspondent, Rob Watson, jumped on the American propaganda bandwagon, tagging Putin's speech a revival of the cold war.

No delegate at the security conference stood up to state the obvious fact that it is not Russia that is invading countries under pretexts as false as Hitler's and setting up weapons systems on foreign soil in order to achieve military hegemony.

The reception given to Putin's words made it clear to Russia, China, and every country not bribed, threatened or purchased into participation in America's drive for world hegemony that the US has no interest whatsoever in peace. Intelligent people realize that American claims to be a moral and democratic force are mere pretense behind which hides a policy of military aggression.

The US, Putin said, has gone "from one conflict to another without achieving a fully-fledged solution to any of them...."

In his 2006 state of the nation speech, Putin noted that America's military budget is 25 times larger than Russia's. He compared the Bush Regime to a wolf who eats whom he wants without listening....

The Bush Regime has taken the US outside the boundaries of international law and is acting unilaterally, falsely declaring American military aggression to be "defensive" and in the interests of peace. Much of the world realizes the hypocrisy and danger in the Bush Regime's justification of the unbridled use of US military power, but no countries except other nuclear powers can challenge American aggression, and then only at the risk of all life on earth.

Has Hugo Chavez Opened the Door to Authoritarian Rule? (Leiter)

The right-wing media in the U.S.--and not just the far right, but the "normal" right (e.g., The New York Times)--have characterized recent moves by Venezuelan President Chavez to "rule by decree" (for 18 months) as setting the country on the road to authoritarianism.

Chavez has, of course, been a pointed (and accurate) critic of Bush and the U.S., and has created in Venezuela an alternative to the neoliberal paradigm favored by the ruling elites in the capitalist pseudo-democracies.  We have remarked before on the smear jobs in even the "liberal" media, but has Chavez now shown his true colors?  This article takes a more benign view, noting, for example, that:

In Venezuela, the enabling law is completely different [than in other totalitarian instances of such laws]....First, the President is bound by the constitution. He can only issue so-called "law-decrees" in the areas named by the National Assembly, in the time limit the Assembly imposes, and that are consistent with the constitution. In other words, he cannot arbitrarily order someone's arrest or do away with basic civil rights, for example. Some of the laws even need to be submitted to the Supreme Court, which vets the law for its constitutionality.

Second, contrary to popular belief, even though Chavez supporters control all branches of the state, law-decrees can be reversed by the most important power of all:  the citizens. That is, law-decrees can be rescinded by popular vote. According to Venezuela's 1999 constitution all laws can be submitted to a referendum if at least 10% of registered voters request such a referendum. Law decrees have an even lower signature requirement, of only 5% of registered voters (800,000 out of 16 million registered voters).

Third, the National Assembly may also modify or rescind law-decrees, at any time, should it feel the need to do so. This is quite unlike the enabling law in the U.S., known as the "Fast Track" law, where the president may sign international treaties that are automatically binding and not open to revision or rescinding by the population....

Venezuela's enabling laws are thus relatively moderate measures as far as the common understanding of "rule by decree" is concerned. The next and more important question thus becomes whether such a law will lead to law decrees that end up being dangerous for Venezuelan democracy.

Chavez critics who concede the above points imply that even if the power is limited, the lack of separation between executive and legislative will lead to disastrous results. Exactly why this is the case is never explained, other than to say that there are no "checks and balances" between the two. Certainly, with Chavez supporters controlling the legislature, the controls on the presidency are not as strong as they would be if the opposition controlled them, but this is also true for just about any parliamentary system of government and any system in which the executive and the legislature are controlled by the same party. Oddly enough, Chavez critics hardly ever raise such dire warnings about other countries where this is the case.

Actually, of course, these worries were raised in the U.S. when we had one-party control of the executive and legislative branches.  Separation of powers really only acts as a check when the branches are controlled by opposition parties--and even then, as the U.S. again illustrates, the limits on executive power may be of limited significance when the "opposition" party represents just a different wing of the ruling class.

More important than the question about "checks and balances" (which, as we saw, there are in Venezuela, in the form of the citizenry and the National Assembly), is what Chavez will do with the law. The main objectives for passing these laws, according to the enabling law text, is to promote "popular democracy," to make the state more efficient, to eradicate corruption, to increase citizen security, to nationalize strategic industries, among many other things. If this is what the laws will actually do, then what is the fuss about? Presumably Chavez critics believe that Chavez will use the enabling law to pass completely different and tyrannical laws. But is there any evidence that this might happen?

I must say I find this paragraph somewhat incredible:  under the guise of "increas[ing] citizen security," Bush has been trying to establish executive power of Schmittian proportions.  It is rather easy to see how a law that charges the executive to "increase security" or "eradicate corruption" is an invitation to limits subsantive and procedural rights of the citizenry.

On the other hand, the author does finally make a pertinent point about the enabling law in the Venezuelan case:

If we look at the previous instance in which Chavez had the power of an enabling law, in 2001, this is not what happened. The 49 law-decrees that Chavez signed into effect in November 2001 had a democratizing effect, such as the land reform that democratized land distribution, the banking reform that improved access to credit for micro-entrepreneurs, the fishing reform that empowered small fishers to increase their catch because larger fishers have to fish further from the shore, or the hydrocarbons law that increased state revenues from oil production. Based on this previous experience, there is no reason to believe that this time around Chavez will not pass the types of laws that the enabling laws says he will.

What is more, polls by the Chilean NGO Latinobarometro have shown over and over again that despite all of the opposition's dire warnings about Venezuela's supposed slide towards dictatorship, Venezuelans themselves overwhelmingly believe that their government is democratic and is getting more so with every year. Eight years into the "Bolivarian Revolution," and Venezuelans are in second place, after Uruguay, compared to all other countries in Latin America in saying that they are satisfied with their democracy. This percentage has been on the increase throughout Chavez's presidency, rising from 32% in 1998 to 57% in 2006. Meanwhile, the Latin American average was 38% in 2006. This and many other similar poll results flatly contradict the notion that Chavez is steadily heading Venezuela towards dictatorship.

My friend Dick Posner is, unlike me, a big believer in the ability of the blogosphere to correct error and provide insight by bringing together many different sources of knowledge.  This blog is fortunate to have a quite erudite readership, so let us try an experiment in this case.  I would like to invite  informed readers to offer information about the issues discussed above. What will this law mean both "in the books" and in reality?  Is Chavez, an old military man, out to establish a dictatorship?  Or is the law being misportrayed in the U.S. because of the characteristic cowardice of the media?  Post only once!  Comments may take awhile to appear, and only substantive contributions will be approved, of course.

For only US$335,000 you can get a flat in the best part of London....

...but it's only 77 square feet, "slightly bigger than a prison cell and without electricity." 

How are London academics coping with the insane cost of living?

Ehrenreich on "The Suppression of Collective Joy" (Leiter)

This sounds like an interesting book; an excerpt from the article, which is largely quoting Erhrenreich (I've omitted some of the pop evolutionary psychology):

"When Europeans fanned out across the globe from the 15th to 19th centuries conquering people, they found rituals and festivities going on everywhere from Polynesia to Alaska to Sub-Saharan Africa to india. Everywhere there were occasions for dressing up -often in a religious context but not always. The Europeans were horrified by what they saw and described it as 'savagery' and 'devil worship.' They thought it showed the inherent inferiority of indigenous people that they could let go in this way. The truth is, these traditions were European, too, but forgotten. The ancient Greeks had a god for ecstasy, Dionysus. Women especially worshipped Dionysus...        

"There is evidence that Christianity until the 13th century was very much a danced religion. The archbishops were always complaining about it. When dancing was eventually banned in the churches it went outside in the form of carnival and other festivities that filled the church calendar. In 15th century France, one out of four days of the year was given over to festivities of some sort. People didn't live to work, they lived to party...                       

"Why is there so little collective joy today?  Why is our culture bereft of opportunity for this kind of thing? Mostly, we sit in cubicles at work and we sit in our cars. If you mention 'ecstasy' people think you're talking about a drug. The cure for loneliness and isolation and despair is Prozac... The simple answer is: the ancient tradition of festivities and ecstatic rituals was deliberately suppressed by elites -people in power who associated this kind of frolicking with the lower classes and especially with women...       

"The Romans had their own Dionysus worshippers in Italy and they slaughtered them in 60 BC with the kind of ferocity they later directed at Christians... The Protestants were the real killjoys. They just wiped out that entire calendar of festivities from the Catholic church and outlawed dancing and masking. Around the world it was mainly missionaries who crushed the ecstatic rituals of indigenous people. In this country, slave owners banned not only reading and books, they banned the drum.  They understood that in these kinds of rituals people found collective strength. A similar thing happened in 18th century Arabia with the rise of Wahabist Islam, the antecedent of Al Qaeda and Saudi Islam. Their main enemy was not Christians or Jews so much as it was the Sufi tradition within Islam which is ecstatic and involves music and dance.      
"Elites fear that disorderly kinds of events could turn into uprisings. And this fear is justified. Whether you're looking at European peasants in the late middle ages or Caribbean slaves in the 19th century, they were using festivity and carnival as the occasion for revolts.      

"A second reason that comes with the industrial revolution is, of course, the need to impose social discipline. It's hard to take agricultural people or herding people and convince them that they should get up and work six days a week, 12 hours a day, and then spend the seventh day listening to boring sermons in a church. To discipline the    working class and slaves was a huge enterprise."

I wonder whether any Foucauldians or similarly historically-minded philosophers have a view about whether the historical claims here are accurate?

Ted Nugent Comes to Texas... (Leiter)

...and embarrasses the (already embarrassing) Governor.  A grown-up might have anticipated this problem.

Blog Watch (Leiter)

The Accidental Blogger is covering anti-Indian racism in Britain, "right-wing psychoanalysis," and the machinations of the Bushistas in the fake war on terror.

"The 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2006" (Leiter)

The reader who sent me this list summed it up accurately:  "very crazy, very funny."  (I have to warn that a quarter of their targets I've never even heard of.)  With some justice, they name the far right Arizona Senator John McCain as "the most loathsome," noting:

The most consistently mischaracterized politician in the country, even McCain’s most nakedly self-serving machinations are universally hailed as the bold moves of an independent maverick who really, really, like, cares, man. By virtue of his five-year stay at the Hanoi Hilton and a completely ineffectual campaign finance reform bill (which was itself only PR damage control for his long-forgotten role in the Keating         Five), McCain has so successfully snowed America the he could go around kicking puppies all day and he’d be applauded for his authenticity.   In reality, McCain is as phony as slimeballs come, having reversed his  positions on Roe v. Wade, Bush’s tax cuts, the gay marriage amendment and Jerry Falwell in the last year alone, while the mainstream press looked away and whistled nonchalantly.

Bill Gates--who discovered philanthropy as soon as Microsoft became the target of a highly-publicized antitrust legal action--gets a good thrashing too:

As founder and co-chair of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he’s fighting global poverty and disease by investing in corporations that are the source of global poverty and disease. According to the L.A. Times, The BMGF has over $9 billion invested in companies whose activities contradict the foundation’s stated mission.

Nancy Pelosi, poster girl for spineless Democrats, is also pegged:

[She has] betrayed her supposed San Francisco values by sweeping the prospect of a well-deserved impeachment "off the table" and preemptively castrating the investigations she simultaneously promised. Anyone who thinks this brittle fundraising machine with the safest seat this side of North Korea is going to implement any ethics  reform beyond the paltriest possible cosmetic gesture needs to lay off the medicinal marijuana.

They have a good line on the pathological liar David Horowitz--"Like most fascist converts, Horowitz sees disseminating information as an act of treason. His favorite targets are university professors he declares enemies of "academic freedom," because nothing is more dangerous to a neocon than someone who actually knows what they’re talking about"--as well as apt remarks about Rush Limbaugh, Senator Lieberman and Ann Coulter, though these are not quotable for the family audience this blog attracts.  The remarks about Cindy Sheehan are stupid--but, as my correspondent said, this list is both "very crazy" and often "very funny."  Perhaps the funniest is #16 on the list--"You"--which is their Menckenesque characterization of the typical reader of InstaIgnorance or viewer of Fox News or (dare we note?) devotee of the New York Times:

Your whole life has been a pitiful exercise in rote mimicry, a meek subjugation of individuality in exchange for herd approval. Your delusions of "common sense" wisdom stem from an unwillingness to seek information and an inability to critically analyze it. You never hesitate to offer strong opinions on subjects you don’t know a damn thing about. You’re willing to believe anything a guy in a suit says on TV, as long as it        doesn’t hint at your culpability in the negligent homicide of your country and planet or otherwise cloud your streak-free conscience. You’re more  worried about friction on the "Desperate Housewives" set than the lack of health coverage at your tedious, soul-destroying job. You have no idea what is going on in the world, and you’re fine with that. You are why democracy doesn’t work.

Littlejohn on Plantinga on Dawkins (Leiter)

Good stuff.

Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) on Bush's War-Mongering (Leiter)

Thank goodness there is at least one actual libertarian in Congress who is willing to turn an appropriately skeptical eye to the nonsense that emanates from the White House:

While the president’s announcement that an additional 20,000 troops would be sent to Iraq dominated the headlines last week, the real story was the president’s sharp rhetoric towards Iran and Syria.  And recent moves by the administration only serve to confirm the likelihood of a wider conflict in the Middle East.            

The president stated last week that, “Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending  its territorial integrity –  and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria.” He also announced the deployment of an additional aircraft carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf, and the deployment of  Patriot air missile defense systems to countries in the Middle East.    Meanwhile, US troops stormed the Iranian consulate in Iraq and detained several Iranian diplomats. Taken together, the message was clear:  the administration intends to move the US closer to a dangerous and ill-advised conflict with Iran.            

As I said last week on the House floor, speculation in Washington focuses on when,        not if, either Israel or the U.S. will bomb Iran – possibly with nuclear weapons. The accusation sounds very familiar: namely, that Iran possesses weapons of mass destruction. Iran has never been found in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and our own Central Intelligence Agency says Iran is more than ten years away from producing any kind of nuclear weapon. Yet we are told we must act immediately while we still can!          

This all sounds very familiar, but many of my colleagues don’t seem to have learned much from the invasion of Iraq. House Democrats strongly criticized the Iraq troop surge after the president’s announcement, but then praised the president’s confrontational words condemning Iran....

We need to reject the increasingly shrill rhetoric coming from the same voices who urged the president to invade Iraq.             

The truth is that Iran, like Iraq, is a third-world nation without a significant military. Nothing in history hints that she is likely to invade a neighboring country, let alone America or Israel. I am concerned, however, that a contrived Gulf of Tonkin-type incident may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran.

He is not the only one so concerned.  I reitreate my hope that we are all wrong.

Deja Vu All Over Again: King on Vietnam

MOVING TO THE FRONT FROM JANUARY 16, 2006

Today is the official Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in the United States.  Here are remarks Dr. King made in 1967 regarding the criminal and immoral war in Vietnam:

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality [applause], and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. [sustained applause] So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." [applause] Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin [applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [applause]

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [sustained applause]

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.