Philosophy

I stumble across The Secret website and think, "Well, I've heard of this pop concept, so I'll go take a look," and click past the splash screen (hello!) and see that they list "Featured Teachers."

Well....

It seems that women don't have much to offer in the Featured Teachers department. Well, four out of twenty-four people happen to be women.

Funny how this happens. Women don't innovate, and now, it seems, women have nothing to teach, at least about "The Secret." [cue dramatic music stinger]

So what is The Secret? Apparently a penis helps answer that question.

Today, Mata H offered four stories about religion in the news. In short, the articles report improved health for people with strong religious convictions, secular oppression of a religious blogger in Egypt, the unusually Democratic sensibilities of Hispanic Catholics, and protests by Air Force personnel with regards to browbeating harassment by fundamentalist evangelical Christians.

I noticed a very different post relating to religion today, in a post Bruce Wilson posted yesterday -- via Alternet, a fascinating blog post on Talk2Action:

It may surprise many that hardline communists were also hardline social conservatives on the matters of family and sexuality. It is the nature of extremism to incorporate far out views on these matters into state policy. The answers to this perverse mix of despotism and family values lies in the natures of religion and nationalism. It is not about left versus right because social conservatism can be found in both as tools of the state. Social conservatism, both religious and secular, when wed to nationalism and embraced as state policy, has almost always turned into an enemy of tolerance and liberty. In fact, social conservatives in the USA, led by Christian conservatives, have fought or disagreed with religious diversity, religious equality, abolition of slavery, Suffrage, desegregation, integrating the armed forces, Brown v Board of Education, mixed race marriages, respect and equality for Jews (not in MY country club!), the Civil Rights Act of 1965, gender equality laws, women in authority, working women, reproductive education, family planning, contraception, condoms, gay rights and a host of others. It was humanists, both religious and secular that banded together to win the rights movements of the past.

Recently I've had the chance to see some of the recently re-released (on DVD) documentary series, The World At War. (If you think Ken "pan-and-scan" Burns sets the standard, watch this series and think again. I cannot imagine how his upcoming series can compare with this epic achievement.)

Anyway, The World At War features a LOT of archive film footage from Germany in the years before WW2 started, and the thing that leaps right out of the screen and into the pit of your stomach is how Hitler's political rise was on the wave of a fundamentalist Christian mania. Watch the films of night-time, torch-lit rallies with crosses outnumbering swastikas. Hear the religious songs of purity and righteous glory. It will scare the crap out of you.

The Reclusive Leftist points to yet another example of how sexist chauvinism is accepted in ways that would never be tolerated by decent folks when it comes to racism.

Imagine if the host of a popular TV show on dog training had made the following remarks:

“Black people are the only species that is wired different from the rest. They always apply affection before discipline. White people apply discipline then affection, so we’re more psychological than emotional. All animals follow dominant leaders; they don’t follow lovable leaders.”

Of course, if we were to ask sometimes-funny but always-self-important culture critic Bill Maher about this, Diane Dees points out that he'd dismiss us for not focusing on the important shit.

Tonight on Real Time, Maher said something about what the Bush administration had done to "the working man." Mary Frances Berry, one of the panelists, said "The working woman, too. You said just 'the working man.'"

Then he said it: "There are so many more important issues. Don't hang me up here."

No wonder we're seeing self-labeled "progressives" willing to advocate forced pregnancy pragmatism in pursuit of power. Self-autonomy and equal rights don't pass the hill-of-beans test.

Just shut up, girls, and go make us some sandwiches. You know we're on your side, right?

Uh huh.

Now isn't this fall's election just so full of promise?

...is offered by The Heretik.

The claim:

“I don’t want it that badly,” McCain says. “I will continue to do what is right. I will continue to pursue torture, climate change. If that means I can’t get the Republican nomination, fine. I’ve had a happy life. The worst thing I can do is sell my soul to the devil.”The context:

The worst thing you can do is sell your soul and think people won’t notice. The only thing less examined than McCain’s conscience is his actual voting record and what he actually stands for.
The conclusion: Don't expect the mainstream press to do any real reporting when it comes to politicians. And don't expect them to appreciate it when they're called on it.

...what do we mean, exactly? For these days it has little to do with the real political conflicts of this age.

There's a political model for governmental regimes that uses a circle as metaphor. For illustrative purposes, I've overlaid it on the political compass that is in such fashion with bloggers today.

You put liberal democracy (lowercase "l" and "d") at the bottom of the wheel, and total dictatorship at the top.

Now, rather than define left vs. right in terms of economics, you define it in terms of basis for political debate: ideology vs. identity.

• As you move left, you have more conformist pressure in ideology.
• As you move right, you have more conformist pressure in identity, race and religious dogma.

Push far enough and the two sides meet again at the top, with the conformist pressure having become total authoritarian control by the government: dictatorship.

For example, Hitler was the extreme of the right, and his dictatorship was defined by notions of race and genetic superiority, as well as Christian Crusade. His contemporary rival for power in Europe, Stalin, was the extreme of the left, and his dictatorship was defined by notions of GoodThink and correct ways of thinking. Yet in effect upon the populace, the result is the same: no freedom. What's more, both vectors towards the top appeal to a pro-government form of nationalism. Either way, the effect upon the population -- the "peasants," as our own plutarchs in the West call us -- is much the same: total authoritarian control, little or no liberty, little or no privacy.

Today we're seeing the left push ever further up on the left side of the wheel, wanting more control over ideology. Thus quaint notions of freedom and equality are ditched for the ideology defined by the rulers: Party first, and Party always.

On the right, they've already pushed far up the wheel. What became clear to many in the aftermath of Katrina is that much of the right's basis of authority is based upon race. "Those people" are undeserving, the Right says. And this goes back to Reagan, and how he scapegoated all the nation's problems on poor, unmarried, black mothers, appealing to people's unexamined and deep-rooted racist attitudes perpetuated by a culture that allows everything from the grossly disproportionate public spending in minority neighborhoods, incarceration rates and crime rates, to stupid jokes (like Bill Maher's tasteless attack on Danny Glover last week, asking in an accusing tone, "Have you ever been on a college campus?").

What we see of these pushes by both parties towards authoritarian rule is the abandonment of the people and any effort to build an egalitarian society, a "liberal democracy" (small "l" and "d").

In his comment to Matsu's post on the modern political ideology, pennywit writes:

Today, I face two increasingly unpalatable choices. In the GOP, the far right continues to build a bridge to the 16th century while the party's moderates (three at last count) cling to some vestige of what the party used to be. The Democrats, meanwhile, alternate between milquetoast "moderates" who are scared of their own shadows, Beltway insiders who are afrai of losing what little power they have, and far-left firebrands whose politics I find no more palatable than Jerry Falwell's.

Despite the scorn heaped on Lieberman by the Kosettes and the lack of respect that Republican firebreathers show Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter, and Lincoln Chafee, I often find myself in that moderate middle ground. And though survey after survey tells me that I am hardly alone in this position, Snowe Country has rapidly become a political no man's land, leaving me with few, if any, worthwhile choices at the ballot box.

What pennywit is saying is what millions of "We the People" can see, whether we all can articulate it or not. "My vote doesn't count," "What's the point of voting?" and "They're all the same, anyway," are similar declarations of this realization that our two-party system is all about who will hold the authoritarian sword over the people, and not about representative government at all.

In a separate comment on the same thread, pennywit says:

The Democrats have sunk a lot of effort into being the default party -- that is, the people you vote for when a particular Republican is repugnant. But given that it is possible for the GOP to put forward a non-repugnant candidate, this is a losing proposition for the Democrats.

But when both parties are pushing up either side of that circle, the people are left alone ... at the bottom.

Caveat: Nothing in real life is as clean or simple as theory, and there's no question that the Democrats and Republicans also use conformist pressures from the "opposite" side. For example, Republicans certainly trumpeted their own brand of ideological pressure upon the population. To a degree, their attitudes are born out of religious dogma and identity, but as they couch their arguments more in terms of civil ideology they are borrowing from the "left" in this model. And on the other side, the Democrats seem to covet right-wing appeals to identity and religion. Their recruiting of political candidates like Bob Casey, Jr. are manifestations of this.

To be sure, there are many ways to break down and analyze the political landscape. Still, I find this model illustrative in deciphering the differences and similarities between the two parties -- especially in how they are behaving today, in this election year.

Your thoughts?