Poet Sharon Olds has declined to attend the National Book Festival in Washington D.C. who won a National Book Critics Circle Award and who is professor of creative writing at New York University, was invited along with a number of other writers by First Lady Laura Bush. Here's her letter…
It is striking that so many conservatives spend so much energy condemning gays. They don't just criticize gays; they condemn gays with intense passion. Nor does this process of moral judgment usually involve any sort of delicate weighing process. Too often it is a visceral and unrelenting moral harpooning delivered by the likes of Ted Haggard—or, at least, the sort of judgment previously delivered by the then-closeted version of Ted Haggard, whose name is now synonymous with “reaction formation.” Many of the people who condemn gays on street corners and pulpits remind me of steam boilers on the verge of blowing up. Anti-gay bigots are rarely if ever attempting to work through the details of any of the three main historical philosophical approaches to morality (consequentialism, deontology or virtue) when they condemn gays. No, there is nothing much philosophical about the way most people rail against the gays. They are not driven by any sort of philosophy. In my experience, they are primarily driven by disgust. What especially disturbs conservative Christians are images of men kissing men and men having sex with other men. Such images are so incredibly disgusting to those who hate gays that it has become a favorite insult on the streets and in the military to shout "You're GAY!" And when this insult is hurled in the process of casting moral judgment, it is done by people whose faces are contorted with utter disgust. Because such condemnations of gays are so visceral, this raises the issue of whether disgust is a valid basis for morality . . .
It is, indeed, time, according to Chris Hedges writing at Truthdig.com:
…Israel is currently lobbying the United States to launch aerial strikes on Iran, despite the debacle in Lebanon. Israel’s iron determination to forcibly prevent a nuclear Iran makes it probable that before the end of the Bush administration an attack on Iran will take place. The efforts to halt nuclear development through diplomatic means have failed. It does not matter that Iran poses no threat to the United States. It does not matter that it does not even pose a threat to Israel, which has several hundred nuclear weapons in its arsenal. It matters only that Israel demands total military domination of the Middle East.
The alliance between Israel and the United States has culminated after 50 years in direct U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. This involvement, which is not furthering American interests, is unleashing a geopolitical nightmare. American soldiers and Marines are dying in droves in a useless war. The impotence of the United States in the face of Israeli pressure is complete. The White House and the Congress have become, for perhaps the first time, a direct extension of Israeli interests. There is no longer any debate within the United States. This is evidenced by the obsequious nods to Israel by all the current presidential candidates with the exception of Dennis Kucinich. The political cost for those who challenge Israel is too high.
This means there will be no peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli
All of your suspicions are true and you can now find them in an article that is intensely compelling and distressing. It’s the current edition (June 28, 2007) of Rolling Stone.
It’s not every day after all that the leading scientists from 120 nations come together and agree that the entire planet is about to go to hell. But the Bush administration has never felt bound by the reality-based nature of science–especially when it comes from international experts. So after the report became public in February, Vice President Dick Cheney took to the airwaves to offer his own, competing assessment of global warming
We’re going to see a big debate on it going forward,” Cheney told ABC news, about “the extent to which it is part of a normal cycle versus the extent to which it’s caused by man.” We know today, he added, is “not enough to just sort of run out and try to slap together some policy is going to” solve the problem.” Even former White House insiders were shocked by the vice president’s see-no-evil performance.
The Rolling Stone article argues that the White House has actively worked to distort the findings of climate scientists, playing down the threat of global warming. This investigation by Rolling Stone goes further, however. It reveals that
…these distortions were sanctioned at the highest levels of our government, and a policy formulated by the vice president, implemented by the White House Council on environmental quality and enforced by none other than
This is a lively debate, as you might expect. You'll can view the entire debate at Truthdig.org. Sam Harris opens the debate by arguing that there are only three types of arguments used by those defending religion: That a particular religion is true; That believing in religion is useful; or…