But while I agree with his goal of working towards a rational, secular world, a triumph of enlightenment values, I disagree entirely with his proposed strategy, which seems to involve putting a bullet through every god-haunted brain. ~Pharyngula

It might be worth noting that the two are frequently paired in the last two centuries, and that the triumph of “enlightenment values” has often enough been associated with just such mass killing of believers.    Those who would like to insist that such mass killing-for-enlightenment has nothing to do with the “enlightenment values” cannot very well make the same connection between religion and violence committed in the name of religion.  It would require instead a non-ideological and intelligent appraisal of history, which secularists and atheists, at least of the militant variety, have never been interested in making.  Of course, a crucial difference, certainly in Western history, is that secular revolutionaries have no difficulty believing that the ends of advancing the cause justify the means, while for Christians in particular to make similar arguments they must betray Christianity’s moral and spiritual teachings.      

This gets to the heart of the absurdity of Hitchens’ view of religion.  If it “ruins everything,” as the subtitle of his book claims, how can a decent atheist stand by and let it go on ruining things so terribly?  Hitchens was simply showing the fanaticism that tends to accompany a view in which all believers are either dupes or power-hungry villains who have made the world a much worse place.  Once you have cast theism itself as a species of totalitarian groupthink, as Hitchens and his ilk do, it’s rather hard to say that you shouldn’t be willing to fight the totalitarians you have just so labeled, and to fight them tooth and nail.  Hitchens really is just taking his position to its logical extreme, which reveals the basic moral bankruptcy and evil at the heart of his ideas.  He has never been squeamish about endorsing revolutionary violence before, and his so-called “move to the right” over the last few years was simply his joining together with people who shared his faith in the redemptive and liberating power of violence.   

Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has joined the ranks of militant secularism and has lately advocated “defeating Islam” in much the same way as Hitchens, Hitchens possesses the intense certainty that a supposed devotion to rationality and enlightenment require large-scale irrational slaughter and barbarism.  That is nothing new.  It is the inevitable venom of the disenchanted ex-believer or the bitter non-believer, who cannot simply cease believing and leave it at that, but must try to “free” everyone else from “chains” that the latter do not see.  If they will not free themselves, they must be forced to be free–such is the bloody logic of “enlightenment values” and “freethinking” in action.  To get from the Freisinnigen to the death camps it takes only a few steps.

Weigel says:

I’m always curious about what Paul voters expect from this race and what they’ll do if he doesn’t win.

It depends on which Paul voters we’re talking about.  The young, optimistic and enthusiastic boosters for Rep. Paul may actually think he has a chance at winning, in which case I feel sorry for them.  It isn’t going to happen, and not necessarily because Paul’s message wouldn’t resonate with enough voters.  We have seen what happens when an insurgent anti-establishment Republican candidate has won in some of the early primaries, and it isn’t pleasant.  The mild irritation and contempt shown towards Paul and his supporters by the “mainstream” voices in the GOP would turn into incandescent hate and a concerted program of opposition if there was any chance of Paul acquiring a substantial number of delegates.  

It seems to me that other Paul voters are simply disaffected folks who are looking for someone whom they don’t loathe to support.    They expect precisely nothing, but are glad to have an alternative.  Then there are those, including myself, who have been familiar with Ron Paul for many years and who have been long-time Paul admirers.  We are in substantial agreement with virtually everything he says, and so will support him as a matter of upholding the principles he espouses.  We expect that Ron Paul will do these principles credit and speak on behalf of those libertarians and conservatives who have little or no representation these days.   

Speaking for myself, I really never expected anything, except that I thought Paul would present the libertarian-conservative case effectively and challenge others in the GOP to face up to the disasters they have helped create.  Now that there is a chance for a bit more impact on the outcome of the race, I am hopeful that Paul will become the rallying point for opponents of the eventual frontrunner.  That may not happen, but if there could be a large show of united opposition to the eventual frontrunner and nominee it would go a long way towards weakening the eventual nominee (who will, in all likelihood, be terrible on a number of major issues) without involving a futile and ultimately self-defeating third party bid.

Mitt Romney created a stir over the weekend with his assertion that he speaks for “the Republican wing of the Republican Party.” ~Dan Balz

The magnificent dancing fraud is at it again with more reinventions of himself.  In some ways, it imitates Dean’s own repositioning from reasonably competent centrist Northeastern governor to fire-breathing darling of the netroots, except that Romney is not receiving anything like the enthusiastic response from activists that Dean had.  What is more worrisome for Romney is that he is echoing a phrase that was given some currency earlier this year by the failed presidential candidate and former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, which shows just how desperate Romney has become.  An insurgent candidate speaks of representing a wing of the party, because he has to show that he is a more pure and idealistic and less accommodating alternative to the “safe” or establishment choices.  Insurgent candidacies thrive on energy and the promise of issuing a stiff, sharp kick to the party leadership that has hitherto failed the core constituents.  Meanwhile, a confident leading candidate speaks of representing the entire party.  Romney has resorted to this kind of talk (which is all the less credible coming from him) because he feels the walls closing in around him.  He is treated by the media and pundits as a so-called first-tier candidate, and he has significant establishment support inside Washington, but he is gaining no traction nationally–hence the desperation gambit of claiming the high ground of true Republicanism.   

Gilmore’s phrasing was obviously meant to mimic Dean’s insurgent rhetoric from 2003-04 that he used to set him apart from those Democrats who had effectively been on the GOP’s side, especially when it came to the war.  Gilmore also pioneered the “Rudy McRomney” name and conjured in the minds of many conservatives a three-headed monster, so it is especially amusing that Romney has now adopted Gilmore’s claim to represent true Republicanism.  As has been said in a different, but related context, it’s good if the town whore repents, but no one expects the penitent to preach the sermon. 

Update: Dave Weigel has more.

Chris Orr has a Highlander-inspired response to the story.

This is how I see Ron Paul. Like all candidates with an “R” at the end of his name, he uses the label to acquire electoral office. He accrues the benefits that the party label provides. However, because he takes so many divergent issue positions both in the campaign and in Congress – he does not contribute to the maintenance of the brand. To put it intuitively, he’s a libertarian who dresses up as a Republican. This is why I chuckle whenever he argues – which he often does in the debates – that he is the only true Republican in the field. If you define a Republican as a libertarian – then that would be the case! ~Jay Cost

In this post Cost seems to be lamenting the lack of ability on the part of political parties to bar candidates from debates.  It’s interesting that Cost would make a point of insisting that what Paul believes really has nothing to do with the GOP.  I have known that for some time, but it’s remarkable for someone arguing on behalf of the “GOP brand” to announce that the GOP brand really has no connection to advocacy for U.S. sovereignty, limited government, and constitutionalism, defense of civil liberties, protection of life, opposition to illegal immigration and a non-interventionist foreign policy.  The GOP must be fundamentally against all these things, since the candidate who espouses them is not helping “maintain” the GOP brand. 

If you define a Republican as a pro-choice, pro-amnesty authoritarian jingo, Giuliani would then be the ideal candidate.  For some reason, the party would rather be identified with that than with someone like Paul.  Perhaps Paul doesn’t represent the “brand” well, but that has a great deal to do with the content of the “brand” being absolutely awful. 

P.S.  There is also actually an advantage in having candidates who match their districts to provide greater flexibility and adaptability for a national party “brand.”  If everyone tried to maintain the exact same “brand” in every district, the losses would add up quickly.  The Democrats finally figured this out last year when they started running candidates that were actually suited to local views on social or cultural issues.  Complaining about candidates who are “undermining” the brand is a luxury the GOP can’t really afford when the national party’s brand is widely reviled.

Apropos of nothing, the brilliant Canadian-Armenian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian was one of the main voices on the soundtrack of The Two Towers, as well as for Atom Egoyan’s Ararat.  Bayrakdarian is one of the rising opera stars of our time, and I had the pleasure of hearing her perform during one movement of Mahler’s 4th Symphony at the CSO and again at the Lyric in Dialogues des carmelites.  Here she is singing a song adapted by the great Komitas, and here she is singing an ancient Armenian Christian hymn (taken from her DVD A Long Journey Home).

During my few days in Toronto, I happened to visit St. Anne’s Anglican Church for the concert I mentioned earlier.  In St. Anne’s, which was inspired in its design and decoration by Hagia Sophia, there is a traditional war memorial to the war dead of WWI and WWII.  The phrasing of the memorial was worth mentioning, in light of the arrogant bluster of a certain American presidential candidate.  Referring to those from the parish who had fallen in battle, the plaques read:

In loving memory for those who gave their lives for the world’s freedom [bold mine-DL] in the Great War of 1914

and

In loving memory for those who gave their lives for the world’s freedom [bold mine-DL] in the Great War of 1939

You can say what you will about the exaggerated claims of these memorials.  In any case, the point is that the people who dedicated these memorials believed that their departed compatriots were shedding their blood for the freedom of the other peoples (indeed, for the freedom of the whole world).  They deserve respect and honour.  This isn’t hard to understand.  Unless, of course, your name is Fred Thompson.

Coming to this debate a little late, I second Ezra Klein when he says of Roger Cohen:

These are not arguments. They are smears. They are attacks aimed at degrading the credibility, rather than the beliefs, of the coalition that opposes the Iraq War. And in intent and effect, they are indistinguishable from Bill Kristol’s worst columns, save for the possibility that they are more effective, because they ostensibly come from within the Left, rather than outside of it.

Sullivan has replied to it, saying of Klein’s post:

It’s an attack on any independent thought outside of the situational demands of a political coalition. It is a full-throated and not-even-regretful support for the subjugation of free inquiry and free ideas to the demands of political organization. It makes Sidney Blumenthal seem intellectually honest.

Clearly, Sullivan and I are reading two very different Ezra Klein posts, and I might add that nothing can make Sidney Blumenthal seem honest.  For Sullivan, Klein’s post is “chilling,” while I find it quite congenial and sensible.  First, Sullivan employs this language of suppression and subjugation, when it is clear that Klein is resisting Cohen’s attempt to denounce and delegitimise criticism of “liberal hawks” and the war.  Someone is trying to suppress dissent, but it isn’t Ezra Klein. 

It is Cohen who speaks of conspiratorially-minded loonies who supposedly mutter darkly about Jews, while Klein points out Cohen’s tendentious (one might even say dishonest) prattling about anti-Semitic conspiracy.  It is Cohen who is engaged in anything but “independent thought” and “free inquiry,” instead preferring the comfortable cell of the war supporter who continued to support his ideal Form of the war in spite of the way it has actually been waged.  Rarely has a more predictable liberal defender of aggressive war appeared on the stage. 

Klein’s distinction is quite right: Cohen’s self-identification as a “liberal hawk” is highly subjective and based on a need to distinguish himself, at least superficially, from the even more morally obtuse people who have led the charge for the war.  Using the name “liberal hawk” is a way to say, “Yes, I’m for aggressive war, but not like the neocons are.  I’m in it for the right reasons!”  Indeed, I would go further than Klein to say that such people are in some ways actually considerably worse than the neocons, for whom talk of freedom and democracy is at least partly tongue-in-cheek or at least expendable in the last resort, because they actually do believe this garbage and seem to think that murdering liberating people leads to the improvement of mankind.  Neocons often say things like this, but it is not always clear whether they are simply having us all on.

Sullivan defends Cohen up to a point by insisting that Cohen is sincere, but he seems to miss Klein’s point that Cohen’s sincerity or lack of it doesn’t matter to the end result of how Cohen’s commentary affects the debate.  Yes, every writer has a duty to his conscience to say what he thinks is right.  The problem, as I should think would be obvious, is that Cohen thinks that aggressive war is right and regards those who think otherwise as somehow morally compromised or lacking in seriousness.  That ought to be enough to discredit him, but unfortunately it is not.  It is precisely the content of what Cohen says that is Klein’s target.  Cohen’s motives and sincerity are, by Klein’s own admission, irrelevant to the significance of Cohen’s echoing of pro-war talking points.  Cohen serves his function by covering the left flank of the War Party, and even helps to consume antiwar energies in internecine quarrels about our respective attitudes towards Roger Cohen.  The fact that opponents of the Iraq war are spending any time at all fighting with each other over Roger Cohen’s support for the Iraq war is an indirect confirmation of the very phenomenon that Klein is describing.  Above all, his function is to run interference, muddle the issue and throw in distracting references to Kosovo.  If there was ever anything farther removed from free inquiry, I don’t know what it would look like.

Update: Klein responds to Sullivan here.
Incidentally, it is astonishing that Sullivan could read Klein’s response to Cohen as proof that Klein is the apparatchik.  Perhaps neither deserve that label, but it is an enormous stretch to say that Klein has delved here into some fetid den of partisan lackeydom.  He is calling b.s. on Cohen’s blustering op-eds that denounce the left-wing critics of “liberal hawks” on the grounds that said op-eds are, well, b.s.  He is refusing to let Cohen define the terms of the debate and write out everyone to the left of Friedman as intolerable.  Sounds good to me.

Only Turks question this history. ~Ralph Peters

There, of course, Mr. Peters is laughably wrong.  If “only” Turks questioned this history, there would be no debate whatever in any academic circles outside Turkey over “whether” there was a genocide.  You would not find academics readily spouting the official Ankara line, nor would you find pundits and hacks mouthing denialist rhetoric.  The truth is that there are a great many willing, non-Turkish collaborators who help cover up or apologise for this “questioning.”  At least Peters has the integrity, so to speak, to acknowledge that his opposition to the resolution is motivated out of his fidelity to the Iraq war.  He is quite happy to quash the resolution and tacitly abet genocide denial if it allows the war to continue.

Michael Crowley raises a good point that the genocide resolution is providing hay for conservative talk show hosts, who would like to turn the entire question into a debate over national security and the war.  This angle had occurred to me, but Pelosi doesn’t strike me as  being nearly so clever as to engineer such a roundabout, indirect way of making the continuation of the war untenable, and attacks on her along these lines will not persuade anyone who isn’t already steadfastly behind the war.  Actually, if pro-war talk show hosts wanted to go down that road I think it could help the antiwar cause in one respect: it closely links support for the Iraq war to supporting, tacitly or not, genocide denial.  They can keep saying, in effect, “Genocide denial is essential to victory.”  I’d be interested to see how many people buy into such a corrupt bargain.

On a different point, when Pelosi says, “this is about the [former] Ottoman Empire,” she is clearly trying to distiguish between the condemnation of a genocide in the past and the perception that recognising this for what it is somehow entails equal condemnation of the current government or the Republic of Turkey.   

Update: Here is a roll call of the committee vote.

When I was in a summer program in England on Tudor and Stuart history and literature, I once had the pleasure of seeing one of my classmates react with visceral horror at the historical mockery that was the original Elizabeth.  He was particularly amazed at the absurdly short shrift given to Lord Burleigh, as anyone familiar with the period would be. 

Don’t misunderstand me.  As a work of cinema and as a matter of acting, Elizabeth was impressive and deserved to beat that preposterous Shakespeare in Love (which stole its deserved Best Picture and Best Actress awards) in every category.  For their sins, Gwynneth Paltrow went on to make such masterpieces as Proof and Joseph Fiennes disappeared into a cinematic void after his weaselly character was shot in the head in Enemy at the Gates (though, I am sorry to see, he is poised to sully the good name of Vivaldi by taking on the lead role in a film of the same name). 

As Chris Orr tells us, the Elizabeth sequel is a different story, filled with dialogue that might have been scrounged from the wastebins at the writing sessions for Star Wars, Episodes II and III:

Him: “Why be afraid of tomorrow, when today is all we have?” Her: “In another world and at another time, could you have loved me?” 

On the plus side, I have heard that the music is by A.R. Rahman, who wrote, among other things, the score for the Oscar-nominated Lagaan, so perhaps there is some small redeeming virtue left in the film.