normblog

Ale Brider again

A long while ago in blog-time - hey, it's quite long ago in any time - I had a post about the song 'Ale Brider'. Though YouTube already existed then, I must not have been fully aware of it; anyway I gave no link to a full version of the song. Here is one now. And here's another. Oy, oy, and voy, and boy!

Giant leap for womankind at the UN

Or perhaps not:

Next, the Council elected 11 new members to fill an equal number of vacancies on the Commission on the Status of Women for four-year terms beginning at the first meeting of the Commission's fifty-sixth session in 2011 and expiring at the close of its fifty-ninth session in 2015. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia and Zimbabwe were elected from the Group of African States; Iran and Thailand were elected from the Group of Asian States; Estonia and Georgia were elected from the Group of Eastern European States; Jamaica was elected from the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States; and Belgium, Netherlands and Spain were elected from the Group of Western European and Other States. [Emphasis added.]

(Via.)

Would you believe it?

Those who are interested in the kind of amateur theological discussions I conduct here from time to time may care to read what follows; and those who aren't should look away now.

This post is a sequel to two earlier posts of mine tracing a meme roughly to the effect that belief in God doesn't necessarily involve the believer in a belief about the existence of anything, not even - would you believe it? - of a God. Stephen Clark, a professing Christian, now offers some reflections on the column of his colleague Michael McGhee, one of the writers whose opinions I had highlighted. By contrast with McGhee, Clark affirms, to begin with, that 'the question "whether God exists" is meaningful and important'. But anyone who is, like me, of a more or less literal turn of mind may be forgiven for being a little puzzled by what he immediately follows up with; because the account Clark gives of what it means to believe in God seems at first to dispense with God altogether. Not just with stage Gods, if I may so express it, of the kind he plainly disdains - 'an imagined Director of Megabig Incorporated' - but God under any notion at all, even some vaguely conceived Transcendence, behind or beneath or within, and in every case also beyond, the stuff of the more stuffish world we experience around us, a Something or a Someone that or who actually exists and has real effects in, or on, or through, the universe. Why do I say Clark seems to dispense with God altogether? I say it because he gives an account of religion, or at any rate of one religious tradition (the Abrahamic) according to which...

[T]o "believe in God"... is to believe in the possibility of Justice, of Freedom from oppression... Believing in God is believing that the orphan and the widow will be, must be vindicated. The first Abrahamic monotheists, like the first Christians, were in a real sense atheists: that is, they denied that the spirits evoked in most religious ceremonial deserved our worship, denied that kings and emperors were divine, and chose to remodel their personal and communal lives in the light of the demand for Justice. It was also important to acknowledge their own sins, their own walking aside from the Way...
.....
So Abrahamic monotheists and militant atheists have this much in common: we dream of truth and justice, and remodel our lives accordingly. When tyrants order the torture and killing of the innocent it is they who are condemned: their victims are their judges...

And so on. Clark ends, then, by saying that this is what Abrahamic monotheists and militant atheists have in common (and we must take him to mean here those militant atheists who pursue justice and freedom from oppression, since not all militant atheists do that). But he has begun by saying that these pursuits or purposes that they have in common are what 'to believe in God' is. In other words, believing in God is just like not believing in God provided that you believe in the possibility of justice and freedom from oppression. What believers and non-believers in God have in common is also given by Clark as 'what we mean by "religion"', so that one might as well say that the just and freedom-loving atheist is religious, and that the distinction between believers in God and non-believers lies in...?

Well, be puzzled no more. It turns out (in the final paragraph) that there is something which distinguishes the believers from the non-believers after all. This is, well, the belief that God does indeed exist. For only God can underwrite the attachment to justice. I let this claim pass on the present occasion, though I don't accept it. But what a rigmarole! To first define religion in a way that radically reduces its core, turns atheists into disguised people of faith and religion itself into a set of ethical and political commitments; and only later add belief in the existence of God as a necessary support for those commitments. Note also the logical fallacy of inferring an existence from a putative need. I might think that my future happiness depends on someone's securing for me a chauffeur-driven stretch limo and a supplementary barouche; but even if I do think it, I wouldn't let the hypothesis convince me that such a benefactor will eventually turn up.

Identity and family relationships

Filling out his census form, the President of the United States chose to answer the question about race by identifying himself as African-American.

Mr. Obama could have checked white, checked both black and white, or checked the last category on the form, "some other race," which he would then have been asked to identify in writing.

But Obama went for the single classification, black. In yesterday's Washington Post Elizabeth Chang takes him to task. She's disappointed that he should have so self-identified, rather than registering that he is biracial. There's more than one issue wrapped up in what she says. Is one's preferred identification all that matters? Or should we care, rather, about accuracy? Perhaps by filling in the form as he did Obama was 'simply exhibiting pride in being African American'. I won't comment on any of these points. I just want to pick out one aspect of Chang's argument that I think is questionable. It's here:

Despite being raised by a white mother and white grandparents, despite hav[ing] spent most of his childhood in the rainbow state of Hawaii, despite clearly being comfortable in almost any type of crowd (though I suppose Tea Partyers might give him pause), the president apparently considers himself only black... But he also argued in his famous speech about race that he could no more disown the Reverend Jeremiah Wright "than I can my white grandmother." With his census choice, he has done precisely that.

That is an inference too far. A person's links to parents and grandparents are of many dimensions, one of these, most likely, the sharing of a common ethnic identity, but only one of them. That someone should choose to self-identify in a certain way different from a parent or grandparent cannot be taken as a disowning. Though the two acts might go together, they needn't. Here's an analogy: a son or daughter of Jews, one to whom Jewish identity ceases to matter and who assimilates, can continue to have a very close and perfectly loving relationship with his or her parents and grandparents despite that. The word 'disowning' would be a simple misdescription of that relationship. To insist otherwise is to rule out the legitimacy of personal choice in matters of identity. There are, of course, families in which such choice is frowned upon or worse, but they aren't universal within a liberal and secular culture.

There's another critical reflection on Chang's column here.

Missing the dance

This one has surely got to be good for a caption. Cameron: 'What was it I was supposed to do at this point?' Or: 'I'm the one.'

The normblog profile 345: Julie

Julie is a 22-year-old European citizen with family links to the UK and Germany. She is currently studying Political Science, with a special interest in US and UK foreign policy and British domestic politics. In summer 2010 she will move to Washington DC for a period of six months, to explore the point of view from the other side of the Atlantic. After returning, Julie plans to study International Relations in Oxford or at the LSE. She blogs at Julie's Think Tank.

Why do you blog? > To let off steam and get involved in debates close to my heart.

What has been your best blogging experience? > Getting to know great people I'd never have met otherwise.

What has been your worst blogging experience? > Dealing with people who are filled with nothing but hate.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > There are good and bad blogging days. Don't get disheartened.

What are your favourite blogs? > Tricky, there are so many. Fellow Blairite John Rentoul, the brilliant Oliver Kamm and the very sharp KeepTonyBlairforPM.

Who are your intellectual heroes? > 'Heroes' is too strong but it has to be David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche and George Orwell.

What are you reading at the moment? > Andrew Rawnsley's The End of the Party.

Who are your cultural heroes? > Shakespeare.

What is the best novel you've ever read? > The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig.

What is your favourite movie? > V for Vendetta.

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind? > Containment and appeasement policy.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > Liberal interventionism.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > Racism.

Who are your political heroes? > Tony Blair for most of his political decisions, including Iraq (yes, really). And Bertie Ahern for ending, together with Blair, what has been, on and off, the longest civil war in the history of our world.

What is your favourite piece of political wisdom? > 'You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.' (Winston Churchill)

If you could choose anyone, from any walk of life, to be Prime Minister, who would you choose? > I'd bring back Tony Blair.

What would you do with the UN? > Reform the voting system and adapt the UN Charter to the new challenges of our interdependent world.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > Islamic fundamentalism.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > Can I come back to that in 30 years?

Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > Difficult but possible, as long as he would not be a member of the BNP or other fanatic.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > To believe in the power of change.

What personal fault do you most dislike? > Running away from challenges.

Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge? > Despite being culturally tolerant, I hate burkas.

What commonly enjoyed activities do you regard as a waste of time? > Arguing with CIFers at the Guardian or the Daily Mail (in case the latter publishes you).

What, if anything, do you worry about? > People close to me.

What is your most treasured possession? > The memory of my late mother.

If you had to change your first name, what would you change it to? > Something Irish. I love Irish names.

What talent would you most like to have? > To be able to ease my mind more.

Who is your favourite comedian or humorist? > George Galloway (I can't take him seriously).

What animal would you most like to be? > One of the Queen's corgis.

[The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature. A list of all the profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]

Tonge-print

Since bigotry has been in the news, I think I'll air an example of it here. Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate Madeleine Kirk has been following in the footsteps of - or maybe that should be: has taken the same tongue-route as - a certain Baroness of her party. Speaking of the power of the Jewish lobby yesterday, Ms Kirk also gave support to the 'call for an inquiry to disprove allegations that Israeli army medical teams in Haiti "harvested" organs of earthquake victims'. She has since made apology for this, in the following terms:

I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused by my remarks.

I recognise that the allegations against the IDF's humanitarian operation in Haiti are completely unfounded and utterly reprehensible. I was not aware of the allegations when asked about them at the hustings and responded without considering their full implications.

'Responded without considering their full implications' here seems to mean 'wasn't bothered whether the allegations were credible'. Does belief in the power of the Jewish lobby damage one's brain?

On hypocrisy

Yesterday was calamitous for Gordon Brown. How bad it turns out to be for the Labour Party is a matter I leave to those who know how to measure these things. But whatever the case, the episode of the open mic, unlucky as it may have been for Brown, symbolizes the wider disaster it has become that the party is being led by him in this general election campaign - Labour's own choice, unfortunately, through inertia or failure of nerve.

When all that has been said, however, one should try to keep a grip on some elementary truths about interpersonal conduct and the public domain. This is from Andrew Rawnsley:

Wearing two faces is not, of course, a hypocrisy unique to Brown.

It is not even a hypocrisy; or else it is an all but universal one. Everyone who's ever had a critical view of someone else or about something they've said or done, and shared that view with another but not with the person concerned, has at some time practised it. And who hasn't? It might even be said that it's an inevitable product of the habits of (a) civility and politeness, when combined with (b) the well-known human tendency to confide in others. It is hard to imagine a viable social life that dispensed with either of these things. If Brown is a hypocrite, it's not because he spoke one way to Mrs Duffy and then another way about her once he was in the car.

Songs of love and heartbreak 54

This is one that can't be left out - Louis singing 'Blue Turning Grey Over You'. Listen to the whole thing, up to the final note.

And there are those who think you need religion in order to know the transcendent. (Two other versions.)

[The series is introduced and indexed here.]

Gordon Bennett!

Writing last month on a completely unrelated topic, I recalled an incident from back in the day:

This reminds me [I wrote] of a meeting I attended some time in the 1970s, at which leading figures in the far-left organization to which I then belonged were trying to win over members to vote for the 'political tendency' for which they were speaking. Vexed by something said to him from the floor, one speaker denounced the partisans of the main opposing tendency as being 'a petty-bourgeois rabble'. He failed to win anyone with this observation.

I now feel I ought to insist that it was a memory and not a prediction.