Discharged gay soldier receives Harvard award

Lt. Dan Choi, who was discharged from the military because he had come out as a gay man, received a Service to Humanity award from the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy. As part of his eloquent speech, Choi burned his discharge letter at the podium. My initial reaction: Any society that can't rectify a situation involving this much gross injustice probably can't get much of anything done. Hint to Congress: Simply write a law that says you won't kick highly competent soldiers out of the military just because they are gay.

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The ACORN hypocrisy

Over the past few weeks, videotapes have been trickling out that purport to show ACORN employees offered tax advice to those seeking to engage in child prostitution or other salacious activities. Having viewed the tapes, it's obvious that they have been edited extensively, and that alone should make one wonder what the original tapes may show. Further, Media Matters has a lengthy critique of the credibility of the conservative activists and the manufactured news story that they have created, including failing to report that in at least one instance police were called and the filmmakers were removed from the premises after inquiring about underage prostitution. But really, whether ACORN employees did or did not do everything they are accused of is a side issue. The Huffington Post yesterday pointed out that the legislative zeal to cut off funding for ACORN may have created an even bigger problem: it may eliminate the entire military-industrial complex. You see, the legislation prohibits federal funding or promotion of organizations that, among other things, "has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency". The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) maintains a database of companies holding federal contracts that also have "histories of misconduct such as fraud" that would ostensibly bar them from receiving any further governmental funding under the "Defund ACORN Act". Top violators include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grummond, Raytheon, KBR (former Halliburton subsidiary).... and a staggering number of other large corporations doing business with the federal government. House Republican leader John Boehner released a statement congratulating house Republicans for all they "have done to hold ACORN accountable for its abuse of taxpayer dollars and the public trust.” One wonders whether he will hold these other corporations to the same standard that they require of ACORN? After all, the scale of the violations by the weapons industry dwarfs anything ACORN is accused of. For fiscal year 2007, Lockheed Martin had federal contracts valued at $34.2 billion (with a b) dollars, and the cost of their misconduct since 1995 is valued at $577.2 million. ACORN has only received $53 million in federal funds since 1994, and none of the allegations show any actual harm was done to the government. In other words, Lockeed Martin has committed fraud to the tune of over 10 times the total amount of federal funding ACORN has received.

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Religious rituals are adaptive BECAUSE they are onerous

As evidenced by various posts at this site, I have long been intrigued by the idea that religious rituals are adaptive in that they constitute expensive displays of group loyalty. I recently found a 2004 article by anthropologist Richard Sosis, who has come to this same conclusion. His article, which was published in 2004 by American Scientist (Volume 92), is entitled "The Adaptive Value of Religious Ritual." Sosis holds that "rituals promote group cohesion by requiring members to engage in behavior that is too costly to fake." He thus argues that religious rituals are adaptive in an evolutionary sense. Sosis begins his article by surveying various tedious or grueling religious rituals. His examples include ultraorthodox Jews who wear stiflingly hot clothing in the hot summer, but it also includes Moonies who shave their heads and "Jain monks of India [who] wear contraptions on their heads and feet to avoid killing insects." The list also includes various types of surgical alteration including circumcision and Native American religious rituals that include icy baths, and one ritual that requires the person to lie motionless while being bitten by hordes of ants. The questions raised by these rituals include A) why do people engage in such practices? and B) Is it "rational" to do such things to one's self? Sosis relies upon the research done by "a new generation of anthropologists" in concluding that

The strangeness of religious practices and their inherent costs are actually the critical features that contribute to the success of religion as a universal cultural strategy . . . To understand this unexpected benefit we need to recognize the adaptive problem that ritual behavior solves.

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Idiocracy Plurubus Unum

It is refreshing to hear someone from time to time call something by what it actually is. Frank Schaeffer is a former evangelical christian whose father was one of the most influential in the budding fundamentalist movement back int he Sixties and Seventies. Schaeffer recounts his life in the memoir Crazy For God. This is a man was was there, involved, part of it. Doubtless many who did not snap out of it along the way think he's a traitor, that he's been possessed by Satan, that he is evil. Yet that still doesn't answer the criticisms he brings to the subject. A recent poll in New Jersey has revealed that one in three right wing voters believe Obama is the Anti-Christ. I will let the video take it from there. LaLa Land. That's about as accurate as one can be. What the fundamentalist movement has created of itself is a situation in which absolutely nothing can penetrate the wall of doublespeak and obfuscation they have built around themselves. They are a community living within a tautology, and they cannot allow themselves to see it. I agree with Schaeffer that it is time to encircle them and move on. But this is a democracy, wherein all voices have at least a theoretical right to be heard. We do not have a pat, rigorous response politically to the introduction of absurdisms into the public discourse. We waffle, we try to be polite (which they do not) we try to be reasonable (which they take advantage of and disrespect) we try to, ironically, turn the other cheek in the face of their fallacious onslaught of nonsense. As Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar....and sometimes an idiot is just an idiot.

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Anti-socialist protesters resort to inferior free-market solution

Sometimes, the hypocrisy is so delicious, I can't stand it. Texas Representative Kevin Brady is apparently upset that the D.C. metro subway system did not provide added services to accommodate the Tea-party protests last weekend. From the Wall Street Journal:

“These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration,” Brady wrote. “These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them.”
He added that an 80 year old woman and several veterans in wheelchairs were forced to pay for cabs. These private sector cabs (which were much more expensive and much less convenient) took them to their protest against government-provided services, when they would have preferred to ride on a taxpayer-funded socialist subway. No word yet on whether any heads exploded due to massive internal contradictions.

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