A dialogue on the cultural divide

You may remember that Andrew O’Hehir took a bit of a drubbing over his “death of film culture” screed last month, especially because of the undisguised elitism permeating it. This last weekend, he wrote a sterling post reflecting upon, in part, that elitism and the cultural divide it perpetuates in the United States. But he goes even beyond that, assessing (pretty accurately, I think) that the so-called “culture war” is something that is being waged almost subconsciously; that the dynamics informing the ebb and flow of one side or the other’s cultural dominance has deep, deep roots, and that most people are not necessarily aware of it, especially when doing things like voting for political candidates.

But the American division is not essentially about partisan politics or ideological labels, and it can only sometimes be reduced to questions of economic policy. It is sometimes but not always about racial resentment, sometimes but not always about the contested public role of Christianity, and often but not always about big words that are inherently squashy and subjective, like “patriotism” and “freedom.” One of the key concepts, to my mind, is what sociologists call the loss of “relative privilege.” Many white men perceive, correctly, that they have lost social status relative to women and minorities, especially when they compare themselves to their fathers and grandfathers, who benefited from white supremacy and male supremacy (whether or not they personally held racist or sexist views). But is that really the central issue or just the one that my own cultural and educational backgrounds point me toward? We have to be careful about forming conclusions when the evidence is so deeply buried.

There appear to be two aims of this post. One is to warn liberals not to get too cocky, lest the the right wing ambush them; the other is to take seriously the thought that perhaps this cultural divide is better discussed openly and thoughtfully rather than fought over. I’ll take it a step further. O’Hehir doesn’t really endorse a binary division, per se, but it’s convenient to talk about the divide in such terms. I am not chiding him for doing so, because it wasn’t really the point of his post, but I’d like to make it explicit that there must be more than two sides to this culture war, and that’s part of what makes it so confusing and troublesome: it’s a war with multiple groups and multiple fronts that keeps getting commandeered by the two biggest armies. When discrete groups with their own interests are pressganged into fighting for a side that isn’t really theirs, ideological confusion is sure to take root. The entire discourse basically hinges upon a binary construct, yet as Jubilare recently ranted, it’s not actually a dichotomy. Framing it as such only cracks the frame and skews the debate.

The other important aspect to consider is the fact that this cultural divide is framed as a war. Wars have winners and losers, and wars are usually won by aggression and martial superiority. In many ways, it’s an apt term. Competition is a fact of nature; it’s everywhere, it guides the evolution of species, it’s built into our DNA. We can’t ignore it or excise it, even though we wish we could. War is the nightmarish, logical extreme of this natural impulse. But it isn’t the only outlet for it. I do believe that we can work around the exigency of war by other means, if a majority of people are committed to it — both literally and metaphorically.

The day after the election, I was disgusted with the bitterness and intransigence on display by partisans. Earlier this year, I ruminated on what it means to be conservative and the ways in which Americans of various political persuasions relate to each other. I ended by suggesting that we acknowledge that, divided as it is, our culture is still our culture; we share it, and by that virtue we are still fellow Americans. We needn’t behave as it this were a second Civil War. One of the responses I got was from another self-identified conservative who had this to say:

America certainly has a recognizable culture and that is what the Liberals – and some who call themselves Conservatives – are, amongst other things, assailing. Their’s is an attempt to remake the nation into something unrecognizable.

Hence, this is not a game. It is a war, though one that has not reached the point of large scale violence as of yet.

And no, insofar as I can see the Liberals are not part of American culture since they’re deliberately and willfully antagonistic too it more often than not.

But then I’m one of those who you describe as a hateful, hostile warriors that will rip the throat out of anyone in my way. That’s because I take this serious, not as some useless competition where you meet your enemy for a friendly dinner, though I’ll certainly drink a beer standing on their grave – then piss on it.

I found this response to be both disappointing and disturbing, but not very surprising. My attempt to engage fruitfully with the commenter was a bust, unfortunately. But it shook me up a bit. I read plenty of blogs from across the ideological spectrum that espouse attitudes similar to this. They anger me, but they don’t shock me. They mostly preach to the choir or vent hateful prejudices that are unlikely ever to be overcome. They aren’t specifically directed at people who are likely to engage them in any meaningful way. What upset me about the comments on my blog was that they were a direct response to me and to what I had said. And the comments weren’t simply insulting; they conveyed an explicit hatred toward others and a profound refusal to consider a more productive — dare I say “Christian”? — dialogue. What’s worse, they came from someone who ostensibly hails from “my side” (even though it’s obvious that he considers me to be a “fake” conservative).

The problem is that I didn’t ask for everyone to alter their beliefs or aims; I didn’t suggest that this wasn’t some sort of competition. I didn’t even debase myself by suggesting that “we’re all winners” or somesuch cockamamie thing. Instead, I simply suggested that this competition not be regarded as a war. Then I got that response.

Obviously, not everyone agrees with that view. But it’s fairly prevalent. I have talked to both Romney and Obama supporters who have said in no uncertain terms that they expected their opponents’ champion to bring the vengeance of the gods down upon them and to destroy America. I can’t even say that these people are stupid. Most of them may be, but I know plenty of them that I consider to be intelligent, reasonably well-informed adults — and they still felt this way. Is it any wonder that they treat this as a war?

There are a couple of reasons I wanted to highlight O’Hehir’s post. First, to commend it for being mature, for apparently seeking a constructive dialogue on culture. I don’t know that he would be interested in bridging the divide, but perhaps substituting the slings and arrows on each side of the chasm with bullhorns and semaphores. Second, because I think he’s right about the deep roots of the cultural divide — however you want to define it. If I’m right in that there aren’t just two sides, and if O’Hehir is right in that nobody is really aware of how deep the trench goes, then this is a war in which nobody actually knows which side they’re on, who they’re fighting, or why. In a way, George Orwell’s prediction of perpetual war in 1984 has come to fruition; just as his book was an allegory, so is his war. Instead of literal battle, it’s metaphorical. But it’s total and unceasing. As a culture, the only thing bridging the divide seems to be the acceptance of the terms of total war. By allowing war to frame the cultural debate, there’s only one peaceful solution tolerable to any side. Our culture has adopted an ideology that demands unconditional surrender. As history shows, the cost of those terms is horrendous. At the moment, it is my belief that nobody truly understands what terms of unconditional surrender would mean for the conquered or the conquerors. Maybe there are some of us willing to tear the throat out of our opponents, carpet bomb Berlin, or drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — metaphorically speaking, of course. You know who you are. What you need to understand is that, metaphorically speaking, you are behaving like war criminals.

Framing cultural differences in terms of war does not lead to a unified culture; it does not lead to progress; it does not lead to a lasting peace. It does not bridge a divide; it fills it with spent uranium, then forces the defeated to walk across in bare feet. To me, this is untenable. I don’t want to pretend that I don’t have these warlike impulses. I do, and they sicken me. I challenge them in my culture because I wrestle with them in myself. At the core of who I am is a struggle not to be the kind of person who delights in warfare, but the kind of person who disdains it. Some days — maybe most — I fail to be the latter. I’m a war criminal, too.

I don’t say this because I think everyone should simply emulate me or necessarily share my subjectivity. I say this to illustrate that I understand struggling with the kind of choices we must make culturally in order to be a better people. What I can’t do is hate myself, just because a large part of me is something antithetical to my values; if I believe that I have been forgiven out of love, then my struggle within myself must be done on those terms. Culturally, the same applies. Instead of building cultural struggle on unconditional surrender, perhaps it might be based on unconditional love. Loving someone does not preclude them from being wrong; it doesn’t preclude challenging or wrestling them. It does require not going for the kill, and it does require accepting them in cultural fellowship. I’m not sure if this frame is any better than the one currently dominating our discourse, but it’s one that I would find much easier to live with, and I’m glad that there appear to be others out there who feel the same way. ☕

This is what I see this morning.

A quick impression for you:

One Side: “UP YOUR ASS, BITCHES!”

The Other Side: “WE WILL FIGHT YOU EVIL BASTARDS TILL OUR DYING BREATH!”

With some exceptions (and God bless them), this appears to be the state of the electorate right now. Full disclosure: even though I’m apparently a one-percenter, I’m glad that Romney lost because I think a Romney presidency would have been slightly more disastrous than four more years of Obama, and the Republican Party has, in my view, pretty much been in the process of a slow-motion implosion for the better part of the last decade. (And what the Tea Party movement became was a contributor to that implosion, as opposed to the galvanizing revival, as many conservatives have painted it.) What I had hoped — but not expected — is that, after a Romney loss (not to be confused with an Obama victory, which isn’t quite what happened last night), Americans would wake up and realize that they actually have to work together to find common ground and goals once the dust settles; that they are not enemies, but mere opponents. Alan Jacobs put it brilliantly:

I have seen (we all have seen) more and more articles, blog posts, and comments premised on the assumption that the writer’s political enemies really are enemies — wicked people bent on the destruction of all that is good and right in the world.

As for me, I don’t think people who disagree with me — about abortion, politics, religion, literature, whatever — are, on balance, any more wicked than I am. I just think that on the points where we disagree they happen to be wrong. That shouldn’t be such a difficult distinction to keep in mind.

After the North won the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln was re-elected president, the United States was probably in the most fragile position in its entire history. Some historically ignorant partisans may wish to claim that we’ve almost never been so divided, but until states start seceding from the Union and booting federal employees from their borders by force of arms, I call B.S. any such sentiment. To say that political tensions still ran high at the time of Lincoln’s second inauguration would be a fundamentally idiotic understatement. To their credit, both Romney and the president struck conciliatory notes in their respective concession and victory speeches. I don’t think either one put it quite as succinctly and eloquently as Lincoln, for whom, and for whose country at the time, the stakes could not have been higher:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The United States hasn’t literally been at war with itself these last four years; the politics of this election cycle (or the last several) haven’t literally created widows and orphans, and the nation’s wounds are metaphorical. Yet to judge by the rhetoric I’ve seen on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and video clips this morning, you’d think that Obama had just kneecapped grandma with a tire iron, or that Romney’s evil minions had been dragging people out of their beds at night and slapping them facedown on the guillotine. This is not a war, people, and just as losing losing political ground in an election does not mean losing the soul of the country, winning ground in an election does not equate to a unilateral endorsement of a monolithic (partisan) vision of progress. What it means is that, for the next two-to-six years, this particular set of people has been elected to debate, discuss, compromise, legislate, administrate, and generally do the hard work of running this country on its citizens’ behalf. That’s it.

So if you’re out there gloating or sulking, put a cork in it. Put on your big boy/big girl pants, wipe the spittle from your mouth, shake hands with your opponent, and get back to the business of being good neighbors. If you can’t do that, then it means you’ve never been interested in democracy, but domination. Show a little charity, please. ☕

Epic Rap Battle: Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney

EAGLE!!! ☕

Who says America doesn’t have its own mythology?

Writing at Christ and Pop Culture, Drew Dixon draws attention once again to the debate about whether America is or was ever a “Christian nation,” highlighting a video interview with two historians of evangelical Christianity who make a compelling (and fact-based) argument that our history simply doesn’t justify a clear cut yes-or-no answer. The overall warning they outline is that distorting history to score contemporary political points dishonors our past, dishonors our faith, and dishonors the humanity we Christians share with our secular fellow citizens. I highly recommend watching the entire video. The historians touch on topics such as the religious components of our founding documents, the beliefs of the founding fathers, whether America has a special relationship with God (which Dixon ties to American exceptionalism), the origins of the myth of a Christian nation, and whether secular academia should make room for Christianity in higher education. What is of particular interest to me is how historical facts are selected and shaped into narratives that are used essentially as myths from which we are to draw universal, contemporary truths — and never mind how accurate or truthful those narratives actually are. ☕

The dialectic of elections

“Today only [stereotyped] thinking is left. People still vote, but only between totalities. The anti-Semitic psychology has largely been replaced by mere acceptance of the whole fascist ticket, which is an inventory of the slogans of belligerent big business. Just as, on the ballot paper of the mass party, voters are presented with the names of people remote from their experience for whom they can only vote en bloc, the central ideological concepts have been codified into a small number of lists. One has to opt for one of them en bloc if one’s own position is not to seem as futile as splinter votes on polling day in face of the statistical mammoths.” – Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, from “Elements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment” in The Dialectic of Enlightenment

Adorno and Horkheimer were writing in the long shadow of Hitler’s Germany, from which they fled along with almost all of their colleagues in the years leading up to the Second World War. The book from which the above quote is excerpted is a critique of the prevailing philosophy of civilization, one that, in the view of the authors, divides society into individuals (who worship at the altar of individuality), then forces conformity upon them (the better to control them as a collective mass). In the context of the chapter from which that quote is taken, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that anti-Semitism is essentially a symptom of the larger disease, not the cancer itself. Anti-Semitism is an expression of a cultural phenomenon that could be filled by virtually any other attitude that projects fear and self-loathing onto Difference.

What struck me about this particular passage is how uncannily — minus the period-specific references to anti-Semitism and fascism (which was, please remember, considered to be a viable and progressive political philosophy in the early 20th century) — it describes the election politics of the United States in the 21st century. One of the central themes of The Dialectic of Enlightenment is how sameness and conformity preserve the power structure of society by offering the illusion of choice to the average joe. This applies as equally to brands of soup as it does political parties. You don’t have to be a Marxist to appreciate just how much capital (cultural, economic, psychological) has been concentrated in the hands of America’s two biggest parties, and the myriad ways in which that power is wielded by both the parties’ gamesmanship and the sheer inertia of the system against the interests of the individual voters.

By dividing America in twain, the Democrats and Republicans haven’t offered choices to its citizens; they’ve categorized them as being One or the Other. If you are merely One or the Other, then you have little choice but to vote accordingly, which amounts to no choice at all. Whatever the differences between the two parties, consider that they and they alone have — together — monopolized the political establishment of this country for more than 150 years. In their theatrical struggle for power, they have exonerated the use of power itself as a political means. This is why you can hear each party claiming to “Take back America!” as if it had been stolen overnight from its crib.

Despite the changes in cultural values and their respective platforms, both parties have remained. Only those with money can gain entrance to the machine, and only those willing to perpetuate the false (that is, fraudulent) dichotomy as The Real Choice are permitted to stay. Every election is The Most Important Election in Our Lifetime. Only by giving a Mandate to Our Party can Real Change begin. The Others want to Destroy Your Country. Only We are Fighting to Preserve the Real America. Each is defined in opposition to the other, but it’s not a real contest: it’s two bullies dividing the class’s lunch money evenly between them, then flipping for that last quarter. The beauty of it is that they’ve convinced the rest of us that we actually have a stake in whether it lands heads or tails.

I’m not a Adorno/Horkheimer acolyte. But the pessimism exemplified in that quote articulates very well the frustration I feel regarding Decision 2012. It’s not a decision; it’s a coin toss. Worse than that, I know that the machine has won. Instead of seeing elections as an opportunity to direct their own political fate, the American people continue to treat election for political office as a beauty pageant. Good thing, too. We all know that the most valuable quality in an administrator is how often we’d like to have him over for a beer. The personal touch has been mechanized and commodified. In an age when the voice and image of a single person can be disseminated across thousands of miles to thousands of people via wires and electric pulses, it must be reassuring that it’s so easy to believe that, hey, I could easily imagine myself being that guy’s friend! He doesn’t even need to threaten me for my lunch money: I’ll hand it over gladly, because maybe he’ll see me for who I really am. I think he gets me, man. He really cares.

Why else would partisans work the phones on behalf of “Mitt” or “Barack”?

One more riposte from H & A. Substitute “industry” for “the two parties” and “customers and employees” for “voters and campaign volunteers.”

“Industry is interested in human beings only as its customers and employees and has in fact reduced humanity as a whole, like each of its elements, to this exhaustive formula. [...] As employees people are reminded of the rational organization and must fit into it as common sense requires. As customers they are regaled, whether on the screen or in the press, with human interest stories demonstrating freedom of choice and the charm of not belonging to the system. In both cases they remain objects.” – Horkheimer and Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” from The Dialectic of Enlightenment

Yep, they care, all right. You’d look just darling up on the shelf with their collectible Furbies.☕

Protests, propaganda, and false narratives

Narratives give definition and structure to our stories, both in fiction and in life; they can also deceive us and teach us false truths. An object lesson in wariness is unfolding right now. According to news reports, protestors yesterday have attacked U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya. In Benghazi, an American ambassador and at least three others were murdered. In Cairo, the U.S. flag was torn to shreds and replaced with a flag with the traditional Muslim prayer, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet.” So far, these facts appear to be undisputed. What is more provocative (and more relevant to this blog) is that a causal link has been made between these attacks and a film made by an Israeli-American filmmaker. The film is ironically titled The Innocence of Muslims, and it is a broadside against Islam.

Just for reference…

This is how iSideWith.com describes my political bias. Overall, not too surprising. The graphic doesn’t show it, but I side with Virgil Goode (Constitution Party) 59% of the time, and with Jill Stein (Green Party) and Rocky Anderson (Justice Party) 39% of the time.  What I find heartening is that I apparently have at least some overlap with virtually everyone across the American political spectrum. Election years tend to frustrate me, because they leave me feeling that I have no “home,” so to speak, with any of the major political groups. Getting results like this don’t alleviate the stress of my mixed feelings toward the Big Two, but it’s nice to know that I’m not completely adrift.

Despite being so simpatico with Johnson, I still prefer to think of myself as conservative, rather than libertarian. The feature I really loved in this poll is the option to choose a slightly more nuanced option besides “yes” or “no;” the ability to rank each issue’s importance to me was also pretty nifty. It wasn’t perfect, but it’s probably the best survey of this sort that I’ve taken. When taking the poll, I didn’t rank the issues in their importance to me as stringently as I probably should have, but this is likely a fairly accurate reflection of my political sympathies at the present time. As always, they are open to persuasion.☕

Love the sinner: a happy, belated Independence Day

Ken at Popehat related a moving personal story in which he witnessed the naturalization ceremony of Filipinos who fought in World War II as soldiers for the U.S. They had been promised citizenship, and it had been effectively and unconscionably denied to them for decades.

Without forgetting 54 years of injustice, they believed in an America that had the potential to transcend its injustices. I don’t know if these men forgave the Congress that betrayed them and dishonored their service in 1946, or the subsequent Congresses and administrations to weak or indifferent to remedy that wrong. I don’t think that I could expect them to do so. But whether or not they forgave the sins of America, they loved the sinner, and were obviously very proud to become her citizens. [...] It reminds me that people have experienced far greater injustice than I ever will at this country’s hands, and yet are proud of it and determined to be part of it. They are moved by what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature to believe in the shared idea of what America should be without abandoning the struggle to right its wrongs. I want to be one of them.

Read the whole post here. It’s one of the most poignant reflections on citizenship and patriotism I’ve read. Whoever you are and wherever you’re from, I hope you all had a very happy, safe, and blessed Fourth of July.☕

The “virtues” of censorship, part 4: Do Americans have right to decency?

Read Jacob Sullum’s most recent column at Reason, in which he discusses a recent SCOTUS decision not to rule on airwave indecency fines. Things like the government’s willingness to continue or turn a blind eye to censorship makes my blood boil. Sullum also linked to the site of Morality in Media, an organization dedicated to abrogating free speech rights in the name of “decency,” and which commented on the non-ruling in a press release:

“Broadcasters do not have a right to turn network television into a cesspool at the expense of children and those who wish to avoid the foul language and pornography that is now so common on cable television,” said [MIM President Patrick A.] Trueman.“The FCC must now enforce our right to decency on the public airwaves.”

Things like that make my head explode. (Not literally, but it often feels like it.) I’ve already talked about censorship here, here, here, and here. There are instances when I would, in theory, support a limited restriction on First Amendment rights, but they are very, very few, and it would have to be shown that those restrictions provide a material, immediate protection of others’ basic human rights. By and large, I think groups like Morality in Media (and those who support them) are afraid and/or unable to engage in debate about the values they cherish, so they’d rather just use the law as a billy club to beat opponents into submission. And most of them would prefer to shirk their parental duties to their children, rather than take the time and effort to instill in their children strong values and the wisdom to make good choices. Obviously, they would disagree with my assessment. I’m glad that they have the right to disagree. Too bad most of them don’t value that right the way that I do.

Here’s some other things to consider, which echo things I’ve stated previously.

1.) Broadcasters actually should have the right to turn network television into a cesspool if they want to. That’s what free speech means. It means that people can be dirty, rotten jerkfaces who would rather wallow in representations of moral sewage than advocate higher ideals. We don’t have to like it, but they should have that right, just as we should have the right to condemn it.

2.) It’s not clear to me that a boobie flash or some cuss words constitute turning television into a “cesspool.”

3.) If children and those who wish to avoid foul language and pornography want to avoid such things, they are not forced to watch the programs that contain such things.

4.) It’s not clear to me that what appears on network — or even cable — television constitutes “pornography.”

5.) It’s not clear to me that foul language and pornography are “common” on cable television. Considering that cable television provides hundreds of channels — and satellite TV probably provides even more — it seems highly improbable that even a slim majority of it is genuine “pornography.”

6.) As Sullum beautifully illustrates in his column, the “right to decency on the airwaves” is a myth.

7.) This myth propagated by people who may want to enforce cultural hegemony, but their legal actions actually lay the groundwork to enable the government apparatus to enforce whatever cultural hegemony whoever is in power at the time would like to enforce.

8.) Giving up that kind of power is beyond stupid, incredibly dangerous, and runs directly counter to the principle of the First Amendment.

Two last things to consider. As of the time I published this post, MIM has more than 94,000 followers who “Like” them on Facebook. That might not seem like a lot, but it’s far too many, and that number can only grow. And the Supreme Court can only dodge the broader free speech questions related to the FCC for so long.☕

Conservatism, pop culture, and Speed Racer

Acculturated is running a symposium this week that asks if conservatives are “bad at pop culture.”  Editor Emily Esfahani Smith lays it out for the readers:

[W]e set out to ask some prominent writers that we know, many of them conservative, about the relationship between conservatives and pop culture. Some of the questions we asked them were: Are conservatives bad at pop culture? Or, is that a myth? If they are inherently “bad” at pop culture, then why? More broadly, why do conservative writers and pundits appear uninterested in pop culture? Can you think of good examples of conservatives doing pop culture today?

Quote of the week: Move over, Chuck Norris.

Gary Johnson took a roundhouse kick to the face while sparring with Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris’s leg will heal in 4-6 months.

Though it hasn’t been updated since October, the Gary Johnson Facts Twitter feed has quite a few gems.  Looks like the GOP unwittingly lost a Nietzchean ubermensch when they let Johnson defect to the Libertarians.  Can you imagine anybody saying something like this about Mitt Romney?

Gary Johnson vetoed more bills than the other 49 governors combined. He also took them all on in hand-to-hand combat simultaneously and won.

You know how people say things like, “Politics is like one big cage match”?  If that weren’t a simile, chances are that Gary Johnson would currently be ruling the world.  On a throne fashioned from the bones of his opponents.

A trailer deconstructed: 2016 and anti-Obama prejudice

For the last several years, I’ve tried to resist the narrative that the conservative/Tea Party animus against the president is purely motivated by racism.  For the most part, I don’t think there’s overwhelming evidence for that narrative, though I know must still be a segment of the population that forms judgments based on racial bigotry.  By and large, I think the charge of racism is used as a catchall ad hominem by those who want to reframe the debate away from the actual political issues involved.  And then.  Then I see something like this trailer for the upcoming documentary, 2016.  Lest I fall into the pit that I just described, I’ll officially and explicitly state that I don’t categorically believe that these filmmakers are dirty, rotten racists.  With that out of the way, let me now question how anybody could see this trailer as anything but ignorant at best, or bigoted at worst.

An Insidious choice

A teacher at an elementary school gave his fifth graders the chance to watch a movie in class as a “break.”  (Way to maximize class time, teach!)  The class chose to watch Insidious, a pretty decent old school fright fest by Saw‘s James Wan and Leigh Whannell.  One of the boys in the class went home so scared that he vomited until midnight.  This school has a common sense policy that any video to be shown in class must first get the administration’s approval; in this case, that approval was not sought, so the teacher is indisputably in the wrong on that score.

Perhaps the most salient point is that the class, as a whole, voted to watch Insidious.  This wasn’t something simply inflicted upon them by the teacher; they chose it.  One of the first questions I had was whether the kid who went home sick voted with the majority; that question isn’t answered in that story.  Let’s assume he didn’t, though.  Let’s say that, once everyone else voted for the scary movie, he had no choice but to go along with it.  Ten is a tender age at which to learn life’s harshest lessons, but one of them is that participating in a representative democracy, despite its advantages, sucks sometimes.  This is an election year.  We, the American people, are being offered a choice between two mainstream contenders for the presidency (and several outsiders that have virtually no chance whatsoever at winning the election).  I am opposed to both the establishment candidates.  The boy in this story — as well as his class — was apparently presented with a choice between a scary movie and a comedy.  The options were apparently preselected by the teacher.  Much like that class, the American public is being given the choice between a joke and a horror show.  It’s a wonder I don’t vomit through the night, too.

How to screw up Palm Sunday in one easy step

Build your entire liturgy around music from Jesus Christ Superstar.  Since this was the first time I’d had off on a Sunday morning in months, I wasn’t inclined to spend my first church service in ages subjecting myself to an amateur church choir’s renditions of songs I don’t really like to begin with.  Apart from disdaining Andrew Lloyd Webber in general, my wife and I had specifically chosen to attend what we thought was going to be a traditional service, because that’s what we were in the mood for on Palm Sunday.  After the first 90 seconds or so of “Heaven on Their Minds,” during which time my consultation of the bulletin confirmed that the entire service would be more of the same, we were outta there.  I only mention this because the aesthetics of worship can be a divisive, but interesting topic.  I’m not one of those who will outright condemn people who find that they are best able to worship God by participating in a staged recital of a 1970s rock opera, but I do wonder about the efficacy of it as an outreach tool and as a witness for the particular beliefs that congregations wishes to extol.

I enjoy contemporary worship services, but I also enjoy traditional liturgies and music.  Striking just the right balance between the two is incredibly difficult, and I don’t envy the ministers, worship planners, and hymnal editors who undertake to strike it.  At the same time, while I’m aware that I could take this opportunity to reflect on why, in particular, I wanted a traditional service on this particular day, or why I reacted with such disgust to what others might (quite validly) perceive as a creative approach to worship, I’m instead left wondering why people like me were left out in the cold by this particular congregation.  It appeared that both services yesterday were the same; anyone who wanted to attend a traditional service was out of luck.  In terms of the congregation styling its worship aesthetics to its own preference, that’s all perfectly fine and understandable.  If they all want to let Tim Rice (that august Christian poet) govern their expressions of praise, that’s certainly up to them.  But beyond catering to its members, I feel that the mission of a Christian congregation is also to reach out to others in the larger community and provide opportunities for them to honor Christ and receive spiritual nourishment in the smaller church community.

While I would not ask a congregation to sacrifice its theological principles for the sake of attracting strangers, it does seem odd to me that, at a time of year that is so strongly intertwined with church tradition, and on such a particularly noted church holiday, a congregation would be so willing — by design or by lack of forethought — to alienate potential worshippers who simply might not care for such an indissoluble blend of secular aesthetics with religious devotion.  This isn’t about doctrine so much as mindset.  I come from a very insular, conservative faith community that prides itself on making as few concessions to modernity as possible, leaving little to no room for diversity of thought or personality.  What I encountered on Sunday seems to be the flip side: a faith community so dedicated to a liberal embrace of modernity that “diversity” is reduced to meaning the exclusion of anything traditional.  I don’t know if this is right or wrong, but I do know that it wasn’t for us, and both my wife and I were very disappointed when we realized that it was too late for us to attend a worship service that would satisfy us.  Walking out of a church service not two minutes after it started because I had to choose between my personal aversion to glam rock as a worship device and worshipping at all was not the way I wanted to spend my Palm Sunday.

(Or am I just being a persnickety crank?)

The “virtues” of censorship, pt. 3: searching for “safe libraries”

The porn industry is free to make porn films.  Theatres are free to run porn films.  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is free to award porn films with an Oscar.  But do they?  Of course not.  And if they did, would anyone take it seriously anymore?  Of course not.  Would anyone allow their children to watch such “award winning” porn movies?  Of course not.
- SafeLibraries.org

A while back, one of my wife’s blog entries on Banned Books Week attracted the notice of Dan Kleinman, the driving force behind Safe Libraries, a nonprofit organization dedicated to (as far as I can tell) holding the American Library Association accountable for the moral corruption of America’s youth. In an interview Kleinman gave to Rory Litwin, he understates his mission a bit: “What I am really doing is reporting what [the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom is] actually doing and linking to the sources where people can see this for themselves.” In the course of the interview, Kleinman repeatedly assigns himself the role of humble “messenger,” doing nothing more than reporting the facts. Surprisingly, there is indeed quite a bit of factual information on the Safe Libraries Web site. The problem is that a great deal of it is presented in a context that is either misleading or misinterpreted. The upshot is that while Kleinman expends a great deal of energy trying to indict the ALA/OIF’s hypocrisy and inconsistency, he is really hotfooting around the likelihood that he opposes the Office of Intellectual Freedom for the pure and simple fact that he is not comfortable with intellectual freedom.