Do dissenting liberals take the positive aspects of their country for granted?

A few years ago, a play written by Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”, “Munich”), titled “Homebody/Kabul” was staged in America. It tells the tale of a frustrated British housewife, who tries to overcome the monotony that engulfs her everyday life by escaping into her perceptions of Afghanistan, a mystical land which she claims accounted for the ‘dawn of civilization’. Her perceptions of the country are based on travel book, which obviously presents a white-washed picture of the country. 

Though the play was staged after the 9/11 attacks, it was written well before it. Hence, there are no references to the attack, but there are plenty of references to the Taliban. Nevertheless, once the housewife (named ‘Ms. Homebody’) travels to Afghanistan, she disappears. Her husband and daughter, who follow her to Afghanistan in search of her, are shocked to find an Afghanistan completely different from the one their wife had talked to them about. It is a country steeped in poverty and utter misogyny.

Though I have read reviews of the play, it has not been staged anywhere in the vicinity of my country (India), and hence, I haven’t seen it. But I urge anybody lucky enough to be living in America make use of any opportunity you have to see the play (note that I said “lucky enough to be living in America”; an interesting precursor to what I’m about to say), as this play deals with tendency of many people (particularly liberals) to become cynical of their culture, and …

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Val Lewton and the Madness of Authoritarianism

I’ve always been a fan of Val Lewton films, and I recently discovered a “new” one which can be enjoyed for reasons which go beyond the Lewton trademark cinematography and low-budget creativity. The Ghost Ship (dir. Mark Robson, 1943) was pulled from theaters almost immediately after its release due to…

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Does failure come from “fear or laziness”?

The puzzle goes like this: young student actor Wiley Wiggins, star of the trippy, philosophical film Waking Life, walks into a bar. There he finds University of Texas Professor of Philosophy Louis Mackey, who muses on two kinds of human suffering: those that suffer from an “overabundance of life”, like…

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Why gay people simply must go to hell

A few years ago I had an extended conversation about gay people with an evangelical man in his mid-50s.  I thought that this conversation might be illuminating, in that this fellow is a decent fellow in many ways.  He would make a nice neighbor, for instance.  He works hard, pays his taxes, makes contributions to poor people, loves his children and abhors bigotry, at least when it involves blatant discrimination of African-Americans. On the other hand, he is deeply troubled with the “problem” of gays.  For purposes of this post, I will refer to him as “Donald.”

Here’s how the conversation went:

Do gays choose to be gay?  Donald is really perturbed that some people choose to engage in homosexual sex as a matter of sexual variety or perverted fun.  On the other hand, he does acknowledge that there are numerous gay people who have not chosen to be gay.  They were born or raised in such a way that they turned out “differently.”  Donald admits that they had no choice. They have innocently found themselves attracted to members of the same sex.  I asked Donald whether his God created them this way, and he shrugged.

Donald admits that many heterosexuals engage in sex that he considers degenerate or immoral.  This would include oral sex, anal sex or S&M for example.  Donald reluctantly admits that these people should nonetheless be allowed to marry.  People who do not want to have children or who physically can’t have children should also be …

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We must do X because we’ve ALWAYS done X

We’ve recently raised a few issues regarding justifications for bigotry.  What especially rankles some of us is the often-heard argument that people should do something a particular way (recently, the issue is preventing gay marriage) because that is the way that it has been done in the past.  

What a ridiculous-sounding principle on which to base an argument! Ridiculous sounding, unless you are a lawyer arguing an important case.  In courtrooms across this country, multitudes of lawyers lawyers stand up every day with straight faces and proceed to argue to judges that a case should be decided a particular way solely because a previous and similar case was handled that same way.

In law, this principle that judges should rely on precendent is given the obscure and mysterious-sounding label “stare decisis,” from the Latin, “stand by the thing decided.” [Stare decisis et non quieta movere, meaning “to stand by the decisions and not to disturb settled points”].

There is the great power in this heuristic.  At least it’s an equal opportunity principle:  Analogizing to old cases is a technique that can be used by crafty opportunists, as well as good-hearted seekers of justice. 

Though we are tempted to scoff at this principle (of relying on precedent) when it is employed by bigots, we need to keep things in context.  That very same principle is the heartbeat of justice.  How strange, you might think, that such an amoral principle determines outcomes of important cases!  That’s the way it is, however.  I’ll …

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