This piece of news is from—where else?—the benighted state of Alabama (yes, I know some of you freethinkers live there). As the Torygraph reports, Jack Hawkins, chancellor of Alabama’s Troy University, a public school, was so impressed by the pro-religion video shown below that he sent it to all the faculty and staff.
But let’s deal with the video first.
The 90-second clip was put up by the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, a Mormon college in Provo Utah. In it, Clayton Christianson, a professor at Harvard’s School of Business (and someone who should know better), plumps for religion, using as an example his colleague from China, a Marxist economist who was surprised at how pervasive religion was in the US, and how important it seems for democracy. Christianson warns of the dangers of unbelief:
What will happen to our democracy? Where are the institutions that are going to teach the next generation of Americans that they too need to voluntarily obey the laws? Because if you take away religion, you can’t hire enough police.”
But watch for yourself:
Well, if nothing else, this video debunks the notion that Harvard Professors are savvy. For Christiansen’s argument is completely refuted by the existence of peaceful and largely godless societies like those of northern Europe. As far as I know, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, though largely godless, do have enough police. In fact, those societies are more lawful than those of the U.S. If Christianson was right, as religion waned in Europe over the last centuries, crime and immorality would have grown. I suspect, based on Steve Pinker’s book Better Angels of our Nature, that that isn’t the case.
At any rate, the Torygraph reports how the Troy University chancellor sent the clip around:
Jack Hawkins, the chancellor of Troy University, a public college based in Troy, Alabama sent the 90-second video as a “reminder” of what he called the “blessings” of American democracy – and its vulnerability to secularisation.
This, of course, violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution mandating separation of church and state. Troy University is an arm of Alabama’s government, and its chancellor has no business promulgating religion and denigrating secularism in an official university email. So he’s not only as clueless as Harvard’s Christianson, but is in fact lawless himself. His love of God has led Hawkins to break the law.
Predictably and fortunately, atheists have objected. Citing Phil Zuckerman’s research on Denmark and Sweden, The American Atheists (AA) objected on both Constitutional and factual grounds. (You can see their letter to Hawkins here.) As the Torygraph reports:
“We demand an apology from you for using the public university email system and your publicly funded position to disparage atheists and minority religious groups as well as perpetuating the discrimination and anti-patriotic sentiment against atheists in the United States,” wrote David Silverman, the group’s president.
Some Alabama atheists (said by the AA to constitute 11% of the state’s population) have also objected (see this blogger). And just to be sure, I’ve informed the Freedom from Religion Foundation, though I suspect they already know about this. One way or another, Chancellor Hawkins will have to apologize. And when he does so, is it too much to hope that he’ll mention that, looking at Europe, you don’t find that godlessness equals lawlessness?
h/t: Mark ~
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It’s a never ending game of theocrat wack-a-mole.
Probably clueless regarding the Internet. About to become aware. Watch for the walk back in 10… 9… 8… :-O
An apology seems like a reasonable request. Since this was sent to the faculty not the students, I’d even be happy with an emailed apology to the faculty (rather than a public announcement).
Of course I’d say the same thing for any non-work-related email a chancellor might send around that offended a bunch of the faculty. How hard is it to grasp that your work email is for work-related communications?
A correction (which, Jerry, you might want to make too). The AA letter says the chancellor emailed it to the faculty and students.
Okay, that makes it a bigger thing; it wasn’t just an in-house goof. He needs to publicly apologize.
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Certainly we have plenty of stupid jackasses who have gone to Harvard and Yale and many other so-called institutions of learning. With god inserted they can spread the lies and garbage far and wide. Brains are not necessary, just money.
I’m surprised Jesus Christ has not been named governor of Alabama. Maybe now that their football team has been beaten they will get around to that.
Example: former Virginia unsuccessful Rethuglican Lieutenant Governor candidate E. W. Jackson, graduate of Harvard Law School.
The shibboleth that democracy requires religion really annoys me.
The reality is that the skills required to be a good citizen of a democracy and the skills required to be a good citizen of a religion are polar opposite.
A good citizen of a democracy needs to be skeptical, informed, willing to think and evaluate, and open to new information.
A good citizen of religion needs to be credulous, obedient, and willing to swallow whole a philosophical system without asking any questions. L
@Linda: That’s a very good, succinct analysis. I plan to quote it when I get a chance!
Me too!
Excellent!
But that’s exactly what I think our betters mean when they talk about democracy. I don’t think they view democracy as participatory governance so much as a charade to give the little people the illusion of participation and control while taking for themselves the mantle of legitimate authority.
If the kleptocracy wanted democracy in the sense that we have been raised to think of it, they would embrace education and science, strengthen the public sector and expand the franchise. Instead they do the opposite at every turn. We call their actions inconsistent with their rhetoric, but their actions are absolutely consistent with their objectives which are manifest in the trends of wage stagnation and income inequality.
I was in college during the Vietnam war. I came to realize that there really were two views of democracy and loyalty.
One side saw our country as our parent, and valued obedience.
The other side saw our country as our child, and valued responsibility.
And, never the twain met.
I see the same thing now. L
Well put. (I was in college the same time.)
Ah — you were ahead of me.
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Of course you are right that democracy does not require religion.
But you can also be a good democratic citizen without being open, skeptical, willing to think …
Democracy doesn’t require us at all to be moral super beings.
“But you can also be a good democratic citizen without being open, skeptical, willing to think.”
How?
It’s very easy: don’t give anyone too much power.
When democracy started in my country there where only a handful of democratic thinking people. The main drive towards democracy was distrust. So they simply tried to protect themselves from each other.
Some years later we have a thriving democracy. We are rich, have to work the least hours in the world, but politicians are still regarded the lowest class in our society and show often the opposite of the qualities you mention.
A good democracy doesn’t need any ideologies and does hopefully protect us from these ideologies through democratic elections freedom of speech/expression, liberal laws etc…
So institutions matter. Diversity of opinion is more important than what individual people think.
I think it works a bit like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds
I don’t think distrust is any better than blind obedience.
Throwing the baby out with the bath just because you don’t trust the source of an idea is just as bad as accepting the idea because of where it came from.
Better to evaluate the idea on its own merits, no matter where it came from.
And, if you try something out, it can always be discarded or revised as needed if it’s not living up to expectations, which is, again, something you can’t do in a religion. L
Sometimes, mostly not, there are more bad than good ideas. Maybe when you replace distrust with skepticism it becomes more acceptable to you.
Sometimes.
On physics I trust the ideas of Feynman a bit more than William Lane Craig. On morals I don’t even trust myself.
One of the stronger points of a good functioning democracy is indeed it’s adaptability. There we agree.
I think you are being a bit too optimistic. Democracy has to be institutionalized and reinforced. If you rely on the wisdom of the masses, you can still end up with Adolf Hitler. It would just take the right social climate. I think it is similar and related to the idea of government by law not of people. I hate it when I hear jingoism in the U.S., but I also believe we should be proud students of our own history.
“If you rely on the wisdom of the masses, you can still end up with Adolf Hitler.”
I should think one should rein in any reckless urge to dispute that statement, considering that, per Lawrence Krauss, approx. 50% of American adults have missed the following question on the last several NSF American adult science literacy surveys:
“T o F: The Earth goes around the sun and takes a year to do it.”
If Americans can’t assimilate and retain that incredibly fundamental and straightforward fact of reality, how are they going to deal with more complex concepts and insidious propaganda?
That’s the dilemma. The founders, as I remember it, were not too keen on full democracy, but favored a republic and a bicameral legislature. That’s distrust of democracy. Then they eliminated non-landholders, women, and slaves from the franchise. William F. Buckley believed only the smart, educated (wealthy?) need be encouraged to vote. The rest should be discouraged (prevented?). Conservatives today reveal the same bias as they work toward reducing the ability of some democratic constituencies to register. The rational is that we want the people with intelligent opinions with a deep understanding and appreciation of governance to rule. Not the excitable casual voters – the unwashed masses. Let them stay home on election day, is the argument, sipping their beer and watching TV.
“Not the excitable casual voters – the unwashed masses. Let them stay home on election day, is the argument, sipping their beer and watching TV.”
Read or heard somewhere that 96% of (adult?) Americans recognize the name “Lady Gaga.” I wonder, for starters and for example, what per cent can either verbally describe where Alaska is located, or locate it on a map within five seconds.
When I was explaining to my aunt that Suzanne Somers is full of crap when it comes to curing her cancer by explaining that most likely she had a cancer that didn’t require chemo so her woo cures didn’t cure her at all but her lumpectomy and whatever other treatment she received did (I found out later that my suspicion was correct), how the scientific method works, how peer review works and how replication of experiments is essential, it hit me that most people don’t understand the rigour of science. They place all information on the same level so, to them, Suzanne Somers’s information is the same as a scientific one that has gone through all the rigour and results; they then choose what piece of information appeals to them.
At one point, my aunt said, after I explained what makes a study good (a large population participating in the study, a study over as long a period as possible, etc.) she replied, “yeah but all those studies are by pharmaceutical companies” to which I replied, not many as many are conducted by universities or hospitals and that they must declare their bias when there is one.
So, sadly, unless there is a way to get people to understand how to tell bullshit from reality, we are pretty much doomed.
“So, sadly, unless there is a way to get people to understand how to tell bullshit from reality, we are pretty much doomed.”
There’s an old Appalachian colloquialism about “being able to tell bullshit from apple butter.”
Ironic, considering the region…
True. Though, thinking back on my growing up in my particular Appalachian locale, it might be taken as progress of a sort for a certain percentage to be able to literally discern the difference.
I agree, quoting myself “So institutions matter.” and “don’t give anyone too much power.”
Hitler didn’t really win a popular vote in 1932:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_presidential_election,_1932
So it is not really an example where “wisdom of crowds” failed. But of course it can fail miserably.
This is nicely explained in the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds
On the other hand, in the second round of voting, it was Hindenburg (Independent) 53%, Hitler 37%, Thalmann (Communist) 10%.
In many elections 37% would be enough to score an outright win. So while the ‘wisdom of crowds’ didn’t actually fail, it still gave Hitler 37% which is not very reassuring.
It probably really annoyed the 6th century BC Greeks, too. 🙂
Wow, that’s very nicely argued.
Some politicians would see in the latter list the qualities of a good (for them!) voter.
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Of course they would.
And, they’re the very same politicians who are down on education.
Go figure. L
Religion = not democracy. Ergo, democracy requires not-democracy in order to function.
I’m reminded of my Southern Baptist pastor, in responding to my inquiry regarding why a husband and wife could not work as co-equals as a team, gently telling me that someone has to be “in charge.” Ergo the husband.
I have two responses to the “captain of the ship” model of decision making.
First, just because someone cannot conceive of, or does not value, a cooperative decision-making model doesn’t mean that that is true for everyone.
Second, even if you accept the “captain of the ship” model of decision making, why is the qualification for being captain having a dick?
One more question I have for religious people that I never get an answer to is, “Why is it more important to have a dick than it is to have a mind?” L
I read that as ‘why is the qualification for captain being a dick?’
I think my interpretation works equally well. 😉
“I read that as ‘why is the qualification for captain being a dick?’
I think my interpretation works equally well. ;)”
From my own USN shipboard experience, I’m given to understand, and have observed, that the XO (Executive Officer) is “the Captain’s SOB,” though no doubt the CO has plenty of opportunity to “act out” his own inner SOB.
A favorite quote I’ve carried around for decades is from Nathan Pusey, once President of Harvard: “There’s a Harvard man on the wrong side of every question.”
And where does that put the Harvard woman? Most likely in the far back seat, same as the bible.
If he had said “person,” I would have quoted him that way. But it was at least 50 years ago, and he proved his own point….
Good grief, has this guy ever left the U.S.? I get the distinct impression that people like this have never travelled and spent time in other countries that are lawful and pretty much godless. And traveling with a church group to meet other members of a church doesn’t count.
They might get heathen cooties! Also, other countries are scary because they don’t do things the Ahmurrican Way.
Which is kind of ironic because some European nationalists/conservatives seem to align themselves fairly well with American nationalists/conservatives, and they’re always going on about how traditional “insert nationality” values are the glue of society and civilized behaviour.
If only they knew. 🙂
Troy University apparently prides itself on attracting international students (my guess is they pay a hefty tuition and rarely get internal financial aid) and Hawkins has been chancellor since 1989. He has almost certainly traveled extensively in order to recruit these students.
From browsing Diwali and Chinese New Year are both celebrated on campus as traditional events. The alumni listings for 2013 http://www.troy.edu/factsite/assets/documents/2013_Alumni_Foreign_Countries.pdf indicate those countries other than the US with the largest numbers of Troy alumni are Vietnam (501), China (210), United Arab Emirates (164), and Malaysia (81). However it isn’t religiously diverse (the religious groups on campus are Catholic, Mormon, Baptist, Pentecostal). No sign of a Muslim group (though there is a Saudi Student Association). There is supposedly a Secular Student Association or has been in the past.
HBS grad here. Prof. Christiansen is actually considered a real stud in business circles (made a name in writing about technology disruption). Wikipedia him…it will sadden you that someone so undeniably smart and well-respected can still spout such nonsense. Then again, he’s been big in the LDS church for a long time. Then again and again, he had a ischemic stroke in 2010, so perhaps I should not be too harsh.
Maybe what I should challenge him to do (and he has research assistants that could actually do this) is to run a study on the religiosity of HBS grads that ended up convicted of something. See if we can fit a line through that data.
Gotta run and commit some crimes now. Later!
It actually doesn’t surprise me at all that someone that is a success in business can spout nonsense in other areas. Success in one area doesn’t necessarily mean you become immune to the effects of cognitive dissonance in another and find all manner of ways to resolve said dissonance. I’ve noted this particularly in business because it doesn’t require a very broad education and you can become very narrowly focused and still remain successful.
Did someone say Donald Trump? Prime example of a successful ignoramus. They often become socially liberal as reality forces them to recognize that women and LGBT people are just as good at business, but the religious nuttiness often remains.
Donald Trump is not successful.
Try telling him that! Though perhaps I should have qualified the word “successful”.
His story includes the delusion he would have won the last several Presidential elections if he’d deigned to run.
I worked as a valet parking attendant for a couple of parties at Mara Lago (Trump’s Palm Beach Estate) twice right after I graduated from college.
Two things you should know about Mara Lago:
1)It is the tackiest home in America. Trump is the greatest proof that money cannot buy taste.
2)It is definitely designed to project an air of success, to the point of being obnoxious. In fact, the whole thing just screams “trying too hard.”
Even his hair screams “trying too hard.”
I’ve always felt success is overrated.
He gets his information about the world from Pat Robertson. 700 Club News: Sweden Is Just Like North Korea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooZXI2jZCc4
Such people are incorrigible. Whatever ‘price’ he may pay by way of ‘apology’ will simply inform and strengthen his apologetics. And his cohort will love him for it all the more.
I just sent in my annual contribution to AU.
Prof. Christianson assumes, along with the Chinese ‘Marxist’ economist – and which Chinese economist would not have to describe him/herself as ‘Marxist’? – that the police force is an armed body of the state: and not, say, a U.K.-style police force, founded on consent of the polity and civil society in classical Peelian, liberal principles. And those values assumed no reference to religion as the foundation of social coherence.
What Prof. Christianson means by ‘religion’ is of course, ‘my religion’. And my own, probably liberal, interpretation of my religion. Would he say for instance, that democracy depends on the inspiration of Buddhism, Hinduism or Jainism? And what if the religion directly challenges the secular law? Sharia, for instance. How does the Shariat buttress consent for democracy? x
I like this one: .
But Hawkins is probably right with American democracy being vulnerable to secularisation.
Secularism would make America more democratic. Democracy is in many ways decided by money there. Many bills have irrelevant bits added required to buy votes. Becoming a political representative is a path to wealth. Lobbying often depends on bribes and not the strength of the argument. Insider trading is NOT illegal for House and Senate members, and is rife. The majority of countries that are more secular than America are also more democratic. People are fond of quoting northern Europe, but the other Five Eyes countries are all good examples: New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and Great Britain.
I don’t think that secularism does protect us from these bad things. Better institutions/laws/education can.
Ouch! Please stop quoting Five Eyes as a descriptor of those countries. They are all still reasonably democratic I think, no thanks to the spooks, but government snooping (as exemplified by the Five Eyes network) is one of the biggest threats to privacy, freedom and democracy.
Big Brother is alive and well and watching YOU.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/09/five-eyes-surveillance-pact-appeal-disclosure-human-rights
It is obvious that the Harvard prof was wrong, since secular societies with strong social services are the most lawful. But Mark Twain had a pretty good counter to this prof:
“It is curious to reflect how history repeats itself the world over. Why, I remember the same thing was done when I was a boy on the Mississippi River. There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built.”
This video is a fantastic illustration of a point Dan Dennett makes in the Youtube video, “Good Reasons For ‘Believing’ In God–Dan Dennett, AAI 2007.” He argues that many people are so afraid that society would collapse without a belief in “god” that they go on believing it no matter what. The Harvard guy here is arguing along exactly the same lines that Dennett says is why so many otherwise reasonable and intelligent people declare a belief in a “god”–they fear a “catastrophic collapse of consensus” that would then lead to a catastrophic collapse of values in society. Dennett’s points in that video have gone a long way toward helping me understand some of the reasons people keep believing in a “god” even when there is clearly no evidence for that being true.
Dennett referred to this idea as belief in belief. So, even if you come to disbelieve, you might still say that you do and promote belief so that society does not disintegrate into Sodom and Gomorra.
You got it! That’s his point exactly. He says we non-believers need to take this seriously and I think he’s right. So we need to focus on showing how religion is not needed at all to have a healthy and safe society such as the ones JAC refers to in his piece here.
It’s an uphill battle, because the ‘belief in belief’ position relies, in part, on two fallacies that pretty much all humans have to some degree or other: 1. the belief that we are above average (i.e., the lake woebegone effect: 80% of us think we are in the top 30% of drivers, for example), and 2. the attribution bias (where we attribute our own successes to positive traits like skill/hard work and our own failures to things like bad luck, but tend to do the reverse when it comes to competitors/people outside our own groups).
The ‘belief in belief’ position hits on both of these very human failings: it reinforces our inborn notion that we are above average in not ‘needing’ religion to be moral, and its an explanation that basically runs “I don’t need religion to stay moral, but those other folks do.”
So, while Dennett and others are fighting a good fight, this particular belief (in belief) I think is going to be extremely hard to uproot from the human psyche.
Uphill battle or not, it is our war.
Incidentally, being an atheist does not make one immune to either fallacy. The atheistic equivalent of the attribution bias could be encapsulated into a statement I bet most of us would agree with: “I don’t need the police to behave morally, but all those other folks do.” When, in reality, most of us are probably no more or less moral than our neighbors.
I wouldn’t agree with that.
I don’t think the police are there for “all those other folks,” or even most of them.
I think the police are there for a vanishingly slim fraction of the population.
Yes, that slim fraction cause a disproportionate amount of the harm we as a population suffer, but that’s also a tautology.
I don’t think I need the police to keep anybody on my block from stealing from me. I might need the police to keep a few people in my neighborhood from stealing from me…but those few people are likely going to try to steal from somebody, police or no.
The police are mostly here so that, when somebody in that vanishingly slim fraction does something, we can have the reaction be by trained professionals who act dispassionately on behalf of everybody, rather than have to rely on unprofessional and ineffective vigilanteism.
A big problem in America right now is that the police are falling ever deeper into the mindset that we do need them to keep society from going into the shitter. And, as a result, we’re seeing more and more brutality and crime from the police, along with more and more pushback from citizens.
Not helping in the slightest are the masses in prison for no good reason, especially for self-medicating while poor and / or dark-skinned. I most emphatically don’t need the police to protect me from people getting stoned. Maybe to protect me from stoned people driving, but that’s not at all what the police are doing. The worst threat the majority of those in prison pose to me is of blowing foul-smelling smoke in my face…and do I really need armed thugs to ensure that the one or the other moves a suitable distance away or stubs out the butt to resolve the situation? And, if I do, why just for pot and not for tobacco?
b&
I too am perplexed at the motives of some (or most) police. They should take lessons from the motto of most firemen and firewomen: we are here to help and if you do not need us we will stay in shape to better ourselves and our community.
That’s an excellent observation.
I can’t remember the last time I saw an out-of-shape firefighter, but cops, as often as not, are in dire need of more exercise and fewer donuts. And EMTs are generally quite healthy.
Police, fire, medicine…”one of these things is not like the other ones….”
Firefighters are plenty happy to help people with fire safety and prevention, but they don’t go roaming about looking for fires, and especially don’t go breaking down doors when there’s a suspicion that somebody might be thinking about smoking in bed. Nor will an EMT charge through the window to keep you from eating that tub of ice cream all by yourself. But tell a cop that you think you heard your neighbor talking about buying some pot, and the neighbor will be lucky to come out of it alive, let alone still with the deed to his house.
b&
Except poor firefighters often get cancer from breathing in the toxic crap of whatever it is that burns in houses these days. My dad has had a couple firefighter friends get esophageal cancer.
Yeah; they’re the real heroes. They put up with all the shit, put their asses on the line, and take it in the shorts even when everything still goes the best it can. But they still do it.
The cops, on the other hand…again, plenty of good ones. But also lots who’re outright cowards who go right for the chokehold, right for the Taser, right for the pistol at the slightest sign of danger without even trying to save the life of somebody in obvious need.
I’d have a lot more respect for the police if they showed even a fraction of the courage a rookie firefighter shows. The firefighters’ll run back into a burning building to rescue little old ladies; the cops’ll send in SWAT teams with guns blazing and kill little old ladies and their yapping dogs on an anonymous tip that there might be a few ounces of pot inside, all because they’re too fucking scared they might get shot themselves.
…sorry for the rant….
b&
“the reaction be by trained professionals”
An image of Barney Fife, with his single bullet in his shirt pocket comes to mind.
No, I’m cool with the boys in blue. It just flashed in my mind. We are really talking about the police broadly speaking, and I feel they do a reasonable job for good motives. Training is probably improving gradually. But, as you say, tensions can mount and things go astray. Especially where race is a factor.
There’re plenty of individuals who’re good cops, but even they’re failing miserably when it comes to policing their own.
“Thin blue line” my ass. Cops should hold to the highest of standards, and have even stricter standards with less required for conviction than the rest of us. Better to boot ten honest cops from the force (or even hand them over to an independent prosecutor’s office) than let one crooked one stay on.
And yet…cops can do no wrong. The lengths they’ll go to to protect one of their own…simply inexcusable. Where it should be a sorrowful, “I’m sure this is all nothing, baseless allegation, but you know how it is — we gotta avoid even the appearance of impropriety,” we instead get…the thin blue line.
b&
A lot of them are masons too, which doesn’t sit well with me.
It also seems to me that there isn’t enough trust worthy oversight of the police and I often think of Rome when rich people raised their own army and attacked it (a period of civil unrest Caesar and Cicero grew up in). Yeah, I know it isn’t as bad as all that but it sometimes appears as though the underlying climate exists.
I don’t think it’s any secret that there’re all kinds of parallels between the States today and Rome as it transitioned from the Republic to the Empire through to theocracy and eventual collapse. Widespread political corruption and concentration of wealth and militarism and jingoism and plenty more…the United States are very sick, and it’s getting to the point where recovery seems less and less likely, leaving the main question being whether it’ll self-destruct from within or be conquered from without or a combination of the two — and just how long it’ll take and how bloody any such transition will wind up being and how widespread the chaos. Not likely to be a very bright future, regardless, even if the party lasts for some time.
b&
Diana, historical analogies always lack precision but I think that you can see some similarities, tentatively viewed, between the Roman and U.S. societies and empires.
Nevertheless, one must always bear in mind that only about 10% of Roman literature comes down to us. Still, take Roman historiography: and their most attractive, accessible, ‘modern’ representative, Tacitus, whom anyone would invite to their historical dinner-table. Even he, critical and sceptical as he was, asserted that the purpose of writing history was to speak of Rome and events as they affected Rome. And indeed all subsequent Roman historians can be viewed as a footnote to Tacitus, a mere updating of the story of Rome, post-Tacitus. It fossilized. Intellectual creativity was channelled into the Annal, the anal, the banal: this happened, then that, all to the glory of Rome. A section of Roman intellectuals, of Roman historiography, was only interested in Rome: it never moved on or seriously and imaginatively questioned its own paradigm. It was the End of History.
Likewise with the huge sweep of U.S. intellectual thought, for which, absurdly, the socialist perspective is almost unthinkable: or at least unsayable, unacknowledged, even if the content is socialist. This is to vastly calumniate the breadth and imagination of U.S. intellectual scope: but there is a taboo and fear among U.S. ‘liberals’ in frankly labelling their ideas ‘socialist’. It would only be possible in a polity in which the word and ideas of ‘Socialism’ were anathema that an intellectual could seriously propose that we had reached the End of History. Like the Romans did. x
Sure, but I think my point stands. History shows us what can go wrong when allegences shift. Though Rome was relatively safe, it was lawless compared to our modern Western societies. People needed protection to go out at night – usually in the form of slave body guards. The armies were loyal to whomever paid their wages and when Augustus came to power he stopped generals paying their armies so that soldiers received payment from Rome itself not random bosses.
Armed men in a city have to be controlled carefully.
Exactly — and it’s not just actual safety, but perception of safety. Violent crime is way down, but do people feel safer today? Not a chance.
And why should we? The constant message from the government is, “Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.”
Afraid of terrorists.
Afraid of child pornographers.
Afraid of druggies.
Afraid of dark-skinned foreigners crossing our borders to terrorize us, pornographize our children, and sell them drugs.
What the NSA and the CIA and even the TSA do are far worse than anything King George ever could possibly have dreamed of doing to the Colonials, and yet people fearfully accept it all in the name of “homeland security.”
This is not healthy. It wasn’t healthy a couple millennia ago, it wasn’t healthy a couple centuries ago, and it’s still not healthy today.
b&
Congenially seeking to clarify your position – do you say that the TSA should dissolved? Or sufficiently change the way TSA operates?
I reasonably assume that you want some reasonable and appropriate and sufficient airline security.
I’d take off and nuke the TSA from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
The TSA has done precisely jack shit in terms of stopping terrorists from attacking. We didn’t need them before, and we certainly don’t need them now. They’d be the homeopathy of policing, save for the fact that it’s not water that gets endlessly diluted with water but toxins that get diluted with poisons.
“Appropriate and sufficient airline security” is a solid bulkhead between passengers and crew, with separate entrances. And that would be a trivial retrofit, considering all airliners already have a pair of entrances at the front; just put a bulkhead-grade barrier diagonally across the two such that the lefthand side connects with the cabin and the righthand side connects with the cockpit.
The airlines, of course, are too cheap to do that sort of thing; and the government wants us to be afraid, very afraid; so the obvious answer is the TSA. Airlines don’t have to spend an extra dime, and the government gets to terrorize people and humiliate them with rape scanners and confiscate their bottles of shampoo.
b&
What is your view on screening luggage? (Re: 1988 Lockerbie Pan Am explosion)
Minimal, if any. Certainly no more than for freight shipping. And if “they” want a closer look at somebody’s bags, that person must be present before they open them, and the person should be given a no-questions-asked no-charge option to ship the item by common ground freight in lieu of stowage if he or she doesn’t want strangers pawing through private effects.
If the person is on the plane with the bags, then only suicide attackers are going to do anything nasty with luggage…and there’s a far juicier target today for such crazies in the form of the security checkin line. Whatever dastardly deed you might once have done on a plane, if you do it today just as you’re almost at the head of the line, you’ll wreak far more havoc than if you had actually made it through security and onto the plane. Whatever we’ve done that’s kept terrorists from attacking security checkpoints is equally effective for keeping them from doing not as much damage on a plane.
b&
Let’s remember, also, who among us become cops. These are idealistic young people, men and women, who grow up watching TV cop shows. They want to serve and be admired for their efforts. But, they are all human, and as they gain experience are going to, at some point likely, leave their idealism and become like most everyone else – just trying to get by in a complicated political world. At the age of 35, I’d guess, many are looking forward to retirement and the chance to collect a nice pension and get the hell out of the frightening risks involved. A lot are probably under emotional pressure like everyone else. At times they become less that the shining TV heroes they emulated, and become subject to less than professional. Flawed. Subject to criticism and more.
But still, we need them.
The NY Times editorial board has been criticizing the NYPD fairly intensely the last week or so. Yep, perhaps the rank and file should have disciplined themselves not to turn their backs to the mayor while he was speaking here and there.
It’s manifestly, obviously true that the police are, and I suppose should be, held to a higher standard of behavior than the average citizen in The Land of American Exceptionalism. But it rankles me a bit that the editorial board gets in a dig at and makes a big point to remind them about being public “servants,” as opposed to public “employees.” Perhaps one should refer to “workers” and “employees” rather as “private servants.” If one works for another flesh-and-blood human being, how is s/he not a private servant (serf)? I suppose it’s OK enough for one to be willing to submit to that designation so as to accomplish a greater, general good.
Just whom does the Times or anyone else expect to become a police officer – what enticements will motivate them? The increased likelihood of being shot and spit at and cussed out? To the extent that any such obligation or duty exists, a NY Times editor has no less an obligation to become a police officer (or teacher or social worker, or for that matter to enter the military to go in harm’s way to be killed or maimed for life at the pleasure of a politician).
I just need to say one more thing on this Clay Christensen 90 second video. It is almost overwhelming that someone of this education could be so ignorant of our own history. The fact that the chinese fellow might be is sorry enough but hold on – I believe I can hear the Founders spinning in their graves.
A simpler explanation would be that he is not that ignorant, he is lying about it.
He most likely rationalizes this away by abdicating responsibility for his actions and allowing blind adherence to a system of tribal ethics and morality to inform his personal morality.
This person is of course the real danger to a post enlightenment secular democracy and his disgusting ideas need to be publicly refuted.
I think that this is well past demanding an apology, when highly placed officials of public institutions violate the trust placed in them in such an egregious manner the only appropriate recourse is his resignation or termination of employment.
“A simpler explanation would be that he is not that ignorant, he is lying about it.”
The simpler, more likely, and more charitable explanation is confirmation bias. It affects everyone, no matter the education or intelligence.
I don’t that is simpler, it’s simply condescending.
The man most likely a liar but he’s obviously not an idiot.
So why treat him as one ?
” It is almost overwhelming that someone of this education could be so ignorant of our own history. ”
He’s not ignorant of it. If you asked him to access the information via a different route, one that didn’t involve his religious beliefs, he would have been able to retrieve it.
I think Steve is right. He’s not mistaken, he’s obfuscating.
I find him manipulative and condescending.
It is not by, any means, too much to hope that the chancellor will concede the evidence that godlessness leads not to immorality and lawlessness. To so hope is rational and yet unrealistic.
“Because if you take away religion, you can’t hire enough police.”
And what percentage of our prisoners are Christians? If the threat of an omnipotent, omniscient God who can send them to hell for eternity isn’t enough to keep them all honest, then why appeal to a secular agency.
Stop asking questions. You’re scaring the authoritarians.
Oh dear, a scared authoritarian is a scary thing.
“Democracy works because most people, most of the time, voluntarily choose to obey the law”
That’s right, but since when do we need religion to make that choice?? I’m pretty sure common sense does a better job than religion in convincing people to make this choice.
“Some Alabama atheists (said by the AA to constitute 11% of the state’s population)”
I have a hard time believing that number.
The number seems high for Alabama, but probably refers to Nones rather than atheists, I wouldn’t mind betting though that a majority of Alabama atheists are either still in the closet or only partly out.
Agreed.
However, Ned Carter is clearly out, and needs to be publicly commended for his courage. You rock, Ned!
This sort of thing isn’t new for Troy University. See this NY Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/education/the-christian-dorm-at-the-public-university.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I agree with JAC but I think Christensen is correct in a limited sense – religious people are more likely to defer to authority, but this doesnt help democracy, it hurts it. Following the laws may make for a stable society but the ability to question authority is vital for any healthy democracy. Religious people have a hard time doing this in many cases. After all, they beleive that at bottom the universe is run by an absolute tyrant who will not bargain or compromise. Many religious people seem to prefer not to think for themselves when it comes to matters or right or wrong- they like being told what to do. This is why theism goes so well with monarchy, and why right-wingers in the US will ignore and excuse any anti-democratic behavior by a Republican president.
The first error in this person’s video is this word Democracy. That is your first hint the guy does not have a clue what he is taking about. If anyone thinks Democracy is what was being created in this country back in 1787 I would only suggest you go back and study up.
I could also say that police forces as a reality in this country were nowhere to be found for many years. The word Democracy was not in the Constitution and was not being considered in Philly when they created the thing.
It’s kind of like saying the bible is where christians got their ideas on abortion.
OK, what concise noun name would the U.S. Founders use? “Republic”? “Democratic Republic”? “Indirect Democracy”?
The U.S. is nominally more a democracy since 1930, when U.S. senators started being elected by the citizenry versus state legislatures. It’s a wonder that amendment passed, what with the approval of 3/4 of the states (either via legislature vote or plebiscite, if I correctly recall). I assume that state legislators are jealous of their perogatives no less than congresspeople.
I speculate that many if not most university heads, public and private, fancy themselves the equivalent of Fortune 500 corporate tyrants (re: the corporatization of universities and the increase in poorly-paid adjunct professors during the last twenty years), and would like to keep the gov’t at arms-length. Conservatives want to reduce gov’t and privatize as much as possible, so that they might do as they please imposing their religious beliefs on schools and universities and employees (re: Hobby Lobby).
Thanks for the additional information but remember…a republic is not democracy and the word democracy was not used hardly at all back in our Constitution days. It was considered a bad word…a form of govt. they would avoid.
After half the population was finally given the right to vote in the 20th century you can give the word democracy a try. However, today, with the current government we practice it is mostly an illusion.
One of my all-time favorite quotes: “America is not a democracy. It is a corporate oligarchy with a considerable, but steadily decreasing degree of personal freedom.”
+5 insightful / -17 depressing….
b&
“America is not a democracy. It is a corporate oligarchy with a considerable, but steadily decreasing degree of personal freedom.”
Surely seems a quite accurate, realistic assessment.
Dude has no clue what the law is or its purpose.
If you have laws that society isn’t willing to follow, society has failed at the process of lawmaking. And if those laws came not from society but some privileged elite, or even some hypothetical otherworldly authority, what you have is most emphatically not democracy.
And, no. No amount of police will “remedy” such bad laws. Revolution is about the only option you’re left with at that point.
b&
Excellent argument, Ben.
Anyone else notice that the panhandler in the street was a black guy and the person getting arrested was likely Hispanic? To be fair, the litterbug alcoholic might have been white.
Exactly, bacopa, and, on average, blacks and mestizos are more religious than whites in America. So these scenes undermine the argument in the video.
Nothing to add regarding the flaws in Christensen’s argument; however, I’m not sure that Hawkins’ action violates the constitution. The video certainly promotes religion in the abstract, but does so by stating a position supported by an argument. No religion is established, no prayer given, no requirement imposed on the student body. Hawkins can be taken to task for his ignorance and faulty logic, but a different portion of the Fist Amendment suggests the opinion itself should be tolerated.
I could be wrong here folks, but a quick scan of case law in Wikipedia didn’t reveal anything applicable.
What you’re looking for is the Lemon Test.
Failure of any one of the three prongs renders the action unconstitutional.
Whammo. He says you can’t have democracy without religion; can’t get more entangled than that.
Ker-pow. He’s advocating for the advancement of religion, lest society disintegrate.
Shazaam. No conceivable secular purpose here.
It’s a slam-dunk, open-and-shut case. Only had to violate one of the three prongs, yet violates all three.
Cheers,
b&
As you clearly state the Lemon Test applies to laws and statues not to opinions.
I’m assuming that the critical question is to what extent an official of a public institution can use the communication facilities of that institution to publish an opinion. That’s the question I couldn’t find any relevant case law. But I spent no more than five minutes in my search so I’m sure there is something that does apply.
Seems a public university president is no less entitled to his personal religious opinions, as a private citizen, though it seems iffy to say the least for him to be so obviously promulgating them in his official capacity.
Were said president out to dinner one night, and a private citizen inquired of him his personal religious opinion, and said private citizen communicated this to the media, would that be verboten on the part of the president?
There is a lot of manipulative imagery in the video – police car with lights flashing, a scary guy getting arrested, surveillance cameras. Their purpose is to instill fear and paranoia. If you stop going to church, society will collapse and criminals will come for you.
What a dishonest argument. If that’s the best case for religion, then there is no case.
yeah, very manipulative.
Maybe it’s just professionally done, but it gives me the creeps.
May I presume to say that most if not all readers here ain’t got no need fer the fancy imagery and music, manifestly contrived to try to emotionally manipulate one? We can listen/read. (But, the professional media types probably have the “typical Amuricun” pegged in this regard. Hence the breathless, borderline histrionic network news and other television presenters.) E.g., in listening to Hitch online, I don’t need to be exposed to someones notion of dramatic music underlying his words.
One already incredibly knows the perspective of this gentleman and his ilk. I want him to compare his specific faith with another, or compare two or more faiths not his own, and tell me which I should follow, which specific church I should attend and tell me how he possibly knows that.
Why didn’t we see any images of corporate malfeasance, or clerics being led away because of raping children?
The linked blog made what I thought was the most important point in all of this. How is an atheist student at Troy University supposed to think that she/he is going to be treated equally as as his/her christian counter-parts.
A forum free of harassment and judgement for atheist/secular students at universities in the bible-belt is absolutely vital. It is the first place many of those students will ever be that it will even be thinkable for them to come out as atheists or even to engage in a meaningful dialogue about the perfidies of belief.
The skeptic in me deplores unfounded speculation about people’s motives, but it would not shock me if the Chancellor was aware of this and the desire to insult and misrepresent secularism may have played a role in his decision to disseminate the offending e-mail to the entire student body.
I agree. He’s a bully.
Whoa! Just came across this one:
“By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from present-day mankind its education-based, religious- dogmatic principles– or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles– by abolishing this religious education, but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of their existence.” – Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
And so instead he added himself to the mix as a modern messiah.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand why so many godless people think that religion is to be replaced with something similar or else all things must fail.
Fear of the unknown, perhaps.
In today’s hard-copy NY Times, columnist Paul Krugman reflects on the possibility of the ascendance of some not very nice (Hitleresque?) people potentially fomenting political movement in response to and as a result of conservative corporate tyrant types opposing efforts of governments to ameliorate the negative effects of the Great Recession of the last several years.
Scary fucking shit.
Sometimes I wonder if parts of “Mein Kampf” shouldn’t be mandatory in high schools as an example of how indoctrination and propaganda can be carried out in a relatively modern society.
He wrote what he was going to do, but nobody believed him or believed that it was ever possible.
2015 and we have ISIS. Here we go again.
I’ve read “Mein Kampf”, it’s just a piece of boring hysterical crap. I’m afraid that Cristensen is better at propaganda then AH.
Luckily for us the bible is also very boring and not very convincing.
Moses couldn’t have said it better.
“Bestial vegetation?”
It probably makes sense in the original German.
So you think they used Google Translate?
Very possibly.
Google Translate does a remarkably good job, considering the huge difficulties. The problem is that languages are idiomatic, and the same word may have two or more different equivalents in the target language depending on context.
I’ve been reading French regional tourist-oriented pages for practice, filling in the words I don’t know with Google Translate, and quite often the translation is ‘obviously’ not right, but a clue to the real meaning which can be deduced with a moment’s thought.
And of course the Engrish instructions that come with Chinese-made gadgets are rightly famous.
Yes, they are!
(BTW, I hope it came across that my comment was meant to be a joke. Sometimes I only make sense to me.)
Not obviously joking but – no matter.
Most people voluntarily obey the law in China, yet, it is not a democracy. South Korea, another fairly irreligious country, meanwhile, remains a democracy. Religion certainly has little correlation to law-abiding behavior, and probably has little correlation to democracy. Uruguay, for example, is by far the least religious country in the Americas, and is one of the most democratic.
Also, Hong Kong, while rather irreligious, is also heading in the direction of democracy.
Oh I think it has a correlation. A negative one.
You cannot underestimate the intolerance of religion. They seem to be telling me that their women and children need to be locked up because I cannot believe that a god exist. I may be critical of religion but I have never accused them of being sociopaths.
Like so many others, Christiansen makes a claim that without religion religious people are unable or unlikely to act morally.
I do not refute that. It is a claim, however, that demeans the intelligence and will power of religious people: unable to think or care for their fellow human beings without a supernatural supvisor.
Religion is needed for democracy like sickness is needed for health.
I’m liking this post, but only because it demonstrates how Christianity, far from being under attack, is in fact on the attack–as it has long been.
One can get a very good education at Troy University, but it doesn’t happen very often.
After reading this, I looked at our local newspaper and guess what I found!
http://www.dothaneagle.com/news/local/atheist-group-demands-apology-from-troy-chancellor/article_ab8dcd50-92cb-11e4-b09f-abffeaf2b263.html
The money quote is at the end:
I smell a lawsuit coming….
b&
“provide the university community with information and insights for healthy consideration and debate about our country’s democracy,”
information and insights? Herr Goebbels could not have done better.
Sorry for the multiple posts, but this issue has really upset me. Did a little googling–Christensen has said this before in 2009, before his stroke–at the Souther New Hampshire University’s commencement speech. It comes across as a sermon. In fact, if it was said at a church, it would make sense.
Here’s a quote that really set me back:
“Those who assume that the atheistic religions of secularism are a better backbone for freedom and prosperity than the theistic ones that they are trying to push under the back seat, have a huge burden of proof which they’ve not had the intellectual fortitude to discuss, let alone bring forward.”
Kind of has it completely reversed.
Here’s a link to the whole speech. It’s worth reading.
http://www.snhu.edu/8841.asp
Harvard and theocratic moneymakers, eh….whaddya gonna do?
A quote from the SNHU speech:
“America seems to have played a role in the ouster of rulers with names like Batista, Duvalier, Marcos, Allende, Ortega, Suharto and others, so that we could help the people in those nations experience the blessings of democracy and free markets.”
“Seems” to have played a role? “Blessings”? Ha! He can get by with such a fatuous statement in front of (semi-?)innocently-ignorant students born in the 1980’s. Another example of something necessarily being so by virtue of someone saying so.
Why does he include the U.S. business-friendly favorite Cuban dictator Batista in this list of names? Just what role did the U.S. play in the ouster of Batista – supporting Fidel Castro’s revolution? (Has “Batista” been uncomfortably mentioned no more than once in the NY Times? I dare say, in the view of policy makers/opinion swayers, the less the uninformed U.S. public hears “Batista,” the better.)
Duvalier? For sure a tyrant. (But then, did the U.S. have no problem with him for a number of years, as it has had no problem with dictators [Saddam Huszein] across the globe?) The prof should also reflect on the whys and wherefores of U.S. control of Haiti (1915-1934). What USers know about that? And the grief the U.S. gave Jean-Bertrand Aristide? Tell graduates about the fright experienced by pious Christian U.S. slave-holders on account of the successful 1790’s Haitian slave revolt.
Marcos? A good guerilla chap for us during WWII. Less and less so over time until his exile in the 80’s, but we put up with him so as to maintain bases there. But the prof should feel no less obligated to reflect on the post-Spanish-American War so-called Philippine Insurrection (or more accurately the U.S. Attack, Subjugation and Dictatorship) resulting in a multitude of Filipino deaths.
Allende? Does one correctly understand that, per Hitch, Allende’s democratic election was subverted by Henry “Countries Have No Friends, Only Interests” Kissinger, with the U.S. installing dictator Pinochet?
Ortega? Iran-Contra, Oliver North, John Poindexter, Eliot Abrams, Amnesiac Reagan? Need one say more?
Suharto? The good prof needs to also reflect for graduates’ benefit on the U.S. supporting, or at least actively not opposing, Indonesia’s invading East Timor and massacring a multitude of its citizens.
Sorry for the length.
Somebody had to say it.
The one that really made me spew was the mention of Allende. So far as I’m aware his ‘crime’ was being a Marxist and attempting to nationalise big American-owned mining interests. He was replaced in a CIA-supported military coup by Pinochet, who was one of the nastiest mass-murdering dictators of recent decades. The Chileans certainly experienced the blessings of ‘democracy’ – NOT! And Mr Christensen thinks this was a good thing?
He’s not only reprehensible, he’s an idiot.
Doesn’t look good…
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/20736/