Monthly Archive for January, 2008Page 3 of 4

Surprise!!!!!

Currently Reading:
Zen Buddhism: A History, India and China
by Heinrich Dumoulin



The Price of Being Excellent:
I've been gathering "ammunition" for my annual review, which I was supposed to have in mid-December. I had gather irrefutable evidence that I was worthy of both a raise and a promotion. I am overly qualified for my job, and I had done excellent work on a consistent basis.

It seemed like THE DAY I finished assembling my data to take to my department head, the CEO walks up to me.

Him: Hey, do you wanna work on a project?
Me: Sure!
Him: OK, I'll get back to you later.

The next day, he walks into my office and says, "When you're ready, meet me in my office."

I went to his office, and he got to talking about a project he wanted me to work on. He showed me the tools he expects me to utilize (which are almost completely new to web building).

Him: Are you up to it?
Me: Absolutely!
Him: Great! What do you need from me?
Me: *blank look*
Him: *waits*
Me: I need to be free from distractions.
Him: I'm going to have you in your own office in about . . . 120 seconds. What else do you need?
Me: We need to talk about compensation.
Him: What you will be learning will increase your value to the market. You can expect to be able to make 40, 50, 60K a year with these skills. As your value improves to me, so will your pay.
Me: Let's get started!


Cheers,
CET

"Much of the suffering in the world comes from the illusion that we are separate from one another." - Gautama Buddha


Getting In Touch with Your Inner Fish

This lengthy article, which I shamelessly lifted from the University of Chicago Magazine, presents the best refutation of Intelligent Design that I have seen.Adapted from Your Inner Fish by Neil...

Wesley Snipes is a Nutfudge

If you enjoy nuttiness from the likes of Mel Gibson and Ton Cruise, but are getting sick of Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise, try some Wesley Snipes on for size.

I noticed this story in the NYT (thanks Reddit!) which mentions that Snipes is a tax resister.

That means that Snipes doesn’t pay his taxes, but believes he’s right not to pay his taxes. He has some goofy belief that nobody actually has to pay taxes and that we all just do it for the entertainment value.

But, even better than that, check out this shizz:

His involvement with the tax resistance movement may stem from his association with the Nuwaubians, a quasi-religious sect of black Americans who promote antigovernment theories and who set up a headquarters in Georgia in the early 1990s.

These suckers are organized! Promoting antigovernment theories must be a fun job, and making it quasi-religious means people will be reluctant to criticize you. Well, unless you’ve forgotten you’re in America and failed to somehow link yourself to Christianity. Oops - nope, looks like they’ve gone the New-Agey route. And this isn’t scary:

In 2000, Mr. Snipes sought a federal permit for a military training compound on land next to the Nuwaubian camp; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms rejected the request.

Mr. Snipes has joined the ranks of Hollywood stars who think they’re actually in one of their own movies.

If you’re considering becoming a Nuwaubian, one of the cool perks is that you get to talk an awesome ancient Egyptian mystery language. This video explains it all.

That way, when you’re training in Wesley Snipe’s “How To Overthrow The Government” (secret, non-government approved) summer camp you know how to tell the other kids in the mess hall “Please pass the Kool Aid.” Isn’t one “Church of Scientology” enough?

The Call to Prayer in Britain

The Anglican Bishop of Rochester (UK), Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali has created considerable notoriety claiming that there are areas across Britain where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter....

A Random Walk Through The Bible: Exodus 19:6

Using our random verse finder and the basic methodology:

Exodus 19:6 (New International Version)

you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.

  • discern the spiritual principle in this verse
    • God wants me to be his priest unto the Israelites

  • ask what was god trying to get across to these people when he spoke these words
    • He wants me to tell them something

  • ask how does this apply to me
    • Stand by for an important announcement...



OK, folks God has chosen me to present a message. I don't know what it is yet, but I think it's going to be important!

Digesting Naturalism

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that I haven't been posting here for a while; or only sporadically. I've grown increasingly weary from reading and trying to address the almost daily incursions into public discourse and governmental policy (both national and local) by the Evangelical Religious Right.

Additionally, I've become bored with the Ping-Pong match between the pejoratively-named "New Atheists" and their scores of detractors. I've written about this numerous times before, so I will just briefly reiterate my thoughts on the matter.

Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens have been derided for their disrespectful and caustic tone; for their allegedly incomplete scholarship as regards contemporary theistic arguments; for their alleged advocacy of a fascist-like pogrom to rid the country of anyone professing religious belief of any kind; and for their alleged tarnishing of the good, and more temperate, name of atheism.

But the main goal of these New Atheists, as I read them, is to rid public discourse of the taboo against ridiculing the ridiculous; a subsidiary goal is to rid public discourse of the taboo against atheism as such. Of course, reasonable people will debate whether or not their approach to this secondary goal is the right one or not.

But what I see as the underlying motif in this campaign, as well as the more temperate tomes of thinkers like Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and Duke philosopher Owen Flanagan, is the project of de-deifying nature and, more importantly, re-naturalizing human beings.

I think the project of de-deifying nature has been almost entirely completed thanks to the blossoming of the sciences since the early 19th Century. The project of re-naturalizing human beings has also made great strides ever since the "Decade of the Brain" in the 1990's, and the steadily increasing maturation of the disciplines falling under the umbrella of neuroscience.

But there a few major obstacles to overcome before a naturalistic world-view can become widespread. These may prove insurmountable. Chief among these is the idea that human beings do not have a soul, much less a "self" that is an actual entity that comprises the kernel of personal identity. What I mean by that is what Siddhartha Gautama claimed 2,500 years ago: there is no self.

The other big one is the notion of free will - that human beings possess a power to contravene the law of universal causality. Or, as libertarian William Thomas puts it:

In every moment, many courses of action are open to us; whichever action we take, we could equally well have chosen to do something else. Within the sphere of actions that are open to choice, what we do is up to us and is not just the inescapable outcome of causes outside our control.

But there are good philosophical arguments against this view, as well as an increasing body of scientific evidence in opposition to it. The only legitimate argument in defense of it, in my view, is that from personal experience: we all feel as if we have free will. But as Spinoza noted a long time ago, "Men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and desires, but are ignorant of the causes by which they are led to wish and desire."

A more general and over-arching resistance to the re-naturalization of human beings is the displacement of our perceived importance in the Universe: we are not a loving and omnipotent god's creation; we may not even be alone in the Universe; and we are not even the apogee of the evolutionary process.

So instead of spending my time railing against the incursions of the Evangelical Religious Right and their self-proclaimed "moral majority"; or against scientifically illiterate school boards and Presidential candidates; or trying to secure a place at the table of public discourse for atheism; I will spend my time and energy trying to persuade us human beings of the need for re-naturalizing ourselves. As regarding the former activities, I will speak my mind at the ballot box.

My template for this process of re-naturalization will be what was the central concern of Friedrich Nietzsche. Whatever people think they know of Nietzsche's ideas, they are probably misinformed - and his ideas misrepresented. Granted, Nietzsche is notoriously difficult to understand, and I am indebted to the writings and correspondence of British philosopher Keith Ansell-Pearson for his accessible exegesis of Nietzsche's corpus; but I will continue the attempt to render Nietzsche's prescient ideas in a more modern vernacular. My next post will attempt just that, as concisely and as cogently as I can.







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I Seek…

I seek no happiness, for it's too heavy
I seek no satisfaction, for it's short-lived
I seek no money, for it's too silly
I seek no God, for there's none

I seek....a sunrise....

Zero to Zen Master: How I got here (again)

Some thoughts on how I came to spend my ever so valuable time thinking about silly things like zen. Like a lot of people I read a bunch of zen books in college. But that's college. You are allowed to do crazy experimental stuff. But now I'm a grown up (sort of) why am I wasting my time on this stuff again? I sort of got hit from three directions and decided to pay attention.

First, Sam Harris talks glowingly about contemplative practices in a number of places. And I was really intrigued by his essay on Buddhism and meditation.

Secondly I heard an interview with Susan Blackmore on pointofinquiry.org. It was a really interesting discussion on memes and parapsychology and drugs and consciousness and atheism. I was really surprised I had never heard of her before. I started reading her articles on her website and well, they are drenched in zen.

The last zen-ish thing was a little more circuitous. I had been reading some John (End of Science) Horgan writings on edge.org. This led me too his web site full of his essays and book excepts. I was particularly interested in his debunking of enlightened gurus. Some how from looking at this I found this article by Brad (HARDCORE ZEN) Warner which comments on Horgan's views on the topic. Soon after I started to read through his zen essays he started a blog which I keep in my feed and check every once in a while.

The funny thing is that it was Brad's writing that sort of broke the camel's back. And mostly it was his suggestion that to do zen you need to sit correctly. To what ever degree this is true it was what I needed to start having a *serious* meditation practice as meager as it is. Sitting slightly uncomfortably and with good posture really does make a difference. And his writings on zen are believable to me. He writes how he had a semi-mystical experience transcending space and time and viewing the whole universe in a vision of sorts and his zen teacher ridiculed him and told him it was garbage. It's a little thing, but that gives him credibility to me.

Now I need to actually read one (or more) of his books and see if I like him as much as I *think* I would.

Any way, dear reader, that is how I found myself in Zenville, in the zen district accross the street from Zen R Us, on Zen avenue. Perhaps you know the place.

Divine misogyny

Some people, when speaking of god, will refer to him/her rather than just him. The idea seems to be that god doesn’t have a gender or that god may be a women or perhaps that god is both man and women.

Such wishful thinking will never take place on this blog. If god exists and has a gender he is most definitely a man. And he hates women:

If you claim to be a religious person, you are not a feminist, nor if you believe men and women are inherently equals can you claim to believe in the fundamental beliefs of any religion.
From the Quran:
4:34 Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other... So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them.
From the Bible:
Leviticus 12:2 If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days... 12:5 But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks.
From the Laws of Manu (part of Hindu scripture):
Law 148, Chapter V In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; A woman must never be independent.
In Buddhism, the Tibetan kind, we are yet to see a female Dalai Lama.

Despite all this, 72% of women in Australia belong to an organsied religion while the same can be said for only 67% of Australian men.

What’s with the lowercase g, g?

John Halton appears bemused (also mentioned here) by the lowercase beginning to the word “god” on this blog and among atheists generally:

Oh, and what is it with atheists these days saying "god" in lower-case all the time? It wasn't like that back in my day. I'm not a Buddhist, but I can still bring myself to use a capital "B" for the word "Buddha". Ditto "Allah", "Krishna" and "Flying Spaghetti Monster".
The distinction between Jesus (or Buddha, Krishna etc.) and god is useful. Jesus is a person, real or otherwise, while god is an idea, like liberalism or justice. When god is written with a capital g the writer is saying that the idea of god is more grounded in reality that it actually is.

Some will argue that god is not an idea but a name. When a Christian says I believe in god, she is referring to a specific entity. Yet, if you accept that god is a name, in the same way Kevin Rudd is a name, strictly speaking both “God” and “god” correct. You could call our Prime Minister a “father” or you could call him “Kevin”. In the same way you could call the Christian god “God”, his name, or a “god”, what he is.

Seeing as god is more of an idea that an actual entity, the lowercase “g” is more suitable.

Westboro Whack-Jobs

Well, Arizona Atheist has posted a BBC documentary on the Westboro Babtist Church that I had seen awhile back. I am surprised that I didn't pass it along when I first watched it..... maybe it's because I posted another short video about them last summer and felt that it was pretty representative of anything you'll ever see about the Phelps family.

I figured I should rectify the situation and forward the documentary along now:



Cheers,
Me

"Our own religious lunatics are in a better position to understand that people really believe these things"



Sam Harris, in the above, often simplistic, interview, makes the argument that those on the political left are unable to properly comprehend religious fundamentalism:

They don’t know what it’s like to really believe in god… To be sure the book they keep by their bedside is the literal work of the creator of the universe and that death is a merely a passage to an eternity of happiness…
The inability to imagine or relate to such religious fervour, leads “liberals” to discount the motivational aspects of religious belief. When confronted with a Muslim suicide bomber, Harris argues, they are likely to discount the expressed motive and instead look for economic or political reasons to explain the act of violence.

Most of the people I know are religious moderates and secularists, to use Harris’s terms. As such, I do find it very difficult to comprehend a religious faith so strong that death is embraced.

But is Harris, because of his focus on religion, downplaying other causes?

Humans are complex and when a person takes the radical step of murdering strangers, while simultaneously killing themselves, multiple factors are likely at play.

His general point stands however. Those with little experience of religion, or religious fundamentalism, must be careful when dismissing the religious beliefs of violent extremists.

Zero to Zen Master: General Plan

My basic plan for the year is to come up with month long experiments related to zen and to read some books. Nothing much fancier than that. Unless I think of something fancier. I've pondered briefly trying to identify a zendo in my area, but the thought of hanging out with a bunch of strangers and sitting quietly for long stretches of time seems kind of weird. Almost weirder than just going to church. So we'll just stick with my modest plan.

I have a list of books I'm planning to work through. I'll go over my list in the near future in some detail. As it happens I decided to read "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Zen Living" first. And despite my knee jerk expectation that the book would suck (just the title I guess) I actually like it and it seems like a pretty calm and level headed introduction.

To a large extent zen is really just about meditating. When I was in college reading about it it always had this sense of *magic* about it. If I could just "get it" some how I'd have this calmness, this well spring of spontaneity and I'd have wisdom in some deep way. And the ability to shoot a bow and arrow in the dark and hit my target. To what ever extent that stuff is true I currently am just of the opinion that zen is really just about training your attention.

In that vein I will try not to get too bound up in my books but will mostly focus on the zazen practice. For each month I'll try some variation of poses, meditation style, perhaps some koans and other little things that I think of. I'm trying not to plan too far ahead so that I can just do whatever makes sense based on what I've tried so far.

So for January here's the plan:

- meditate 8 minutes a day
- count to 10 with breath
- sit in half lotus
- keep in mind the first of the Noble Eightfold Path - right view
- mindfulness trigger: first bite of food each meal

8 minutes doesn't seem like very long, but if you've never tried it, it's *insanely* long. Also I don't have a lot of time. I think it's more important to establish a doable habit than to try to do things perfectly.

I'm doing the count to 10 thing as a sort of training wheel. I've kept up a nightly meditation routine for the last 6 months or so but I still find it so very hard to focus on my breath for the 8 minutes. I've read that counting to 10 is a good "hack" to help you stay focused.

Sitting in a slightly uncomfortable position has made mindfulness possible. Years ago when I tried meditating I always fell asleep. Now it's never a problem. Doing a "true" half lotus is beyond my skill but it's the perfect level for me to aim at for now. I would *love* to get to a full lotus during the year but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Right View. I'm not deeply interested in the Buddhist aspects of zen but I also don't want to ignore them completely. So I'll just review the different steps of the noble path for a while.

Mindfulness triggers. The goal of zen (for some) seems to be as much awareness of now as you can muster. A useful tip I've heard in this respect is to create "mindfulness triggers". In other words set up a habit of having your environment remind you to be mindful. My first trigger will be for first bites of meals.

Ok, that's enough talking about zen for now. Gotta go sit on my ass for 8 minutes before I head off too bed.

Pandemic that kills 2.9 million per year a blessing

The late psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross opined:

I’m sure that, 25 years from now, we’ll see AIDS as an incredible blessing because it forces you - it literally forces you - to take a stand and make a choice based on either love or fear.
How could a trained doctor, "who worked tirelessly with AIDS victims", characterise a such horrible disease in such positive terms?

Kubler-Ross was:

a firm believer in a god and the life hereafter
She held that there is:
no such thing as death
Her belief in heaven caused her to devalue life on earth - the only one we have - and allowed her to see a fatal disease as a blessing.

Bryan Patterson, Faithworks columnist for News Ltd, quotes Kubler-Ross approving, to prove what I'm not sure, even claiming the psychiatrist:

did much to prove the existence of an afterlife
Patterson doesn't bother with anymore detail but Kubler-Ross' proof appears to rest on anecdotes from patients who believe they saw:
a shining light and familiar faces, before being brought back from the brink. Many doctors believe these are hallucinations connected to the physical process of death and not afterlife previews.

A Random Walk Through the Bible: 2 Chronicles 18:23

Using our random verse finder and the basic methodology:

2 Chronicles 18:23 (New International Version)

Then Zedekiah son of Kenaanah went up and slapped Micaiah in the face. "Which way did the spirit from the LORD go when he went from me to speak to you?" he asked.


  • discern the spiritual principle in this verse
    • huh?

  • ask what was god trying to get across to these people when he spoke these words
    • um.....

  • ask how does this apply to me
    • errr....



One verse is more profound and meaningful than the next. No wonder people people find such meaning and solace in this grand old tome. Oh, what's that you say, no one actually reads it? I guess that makes more sense.

Proof of dangerous megalomaniac’s divinity irrelevant

Bryan Patterson nails it:

There is no room in this story for regarding this Jesus as merely a good spiritual teacher. He was either a dangerous megalomaniac, a liar or what he said he was.
As Bertrand Russell points out, Jesus:
certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time… The early Christians did really believe it, and they did abstain from such things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent.
He also believed he could cast devils into a herd of pigs (Mark 5:13) and spent 40 days hallucinating in a desert ‘talking’ to Satan (Luke 4:2).

On this small collection of evidence, "liar" or “dangerous megalomaniac” look more likely. But Patterson being a Christian, believes Jesus is who he said he was. On what basis?
Jesus is a living and loving being involved in the rebirth of those who want it. In that sense, there is no need for historical proof.
Just as well there is no need for evidence. None exists.

Adventures in Enlightenment: Zero to Zen Master

So it's time to take it up a notch. I've had some fun with my monthly samplers from the enlightenment buffet. But now it is time for a full meal. While I'm capable of many things, becoming enlightened by way of a month long experiment is apparently not within my power.

Let's make it a year then. If I can't get enlightened in a year then I think it's safe to say that this whole enlightenment thing is (gasp) a sham. Or I'm spiritually tone deaf, metaphysically color blind, or just dumb.

By a not very scientific assessment it seems that zen is the best bet. First of all the amount of clearly ridiculous beliefs you have to start out with are at a minimum and secondly there does appear to be some half way credible evidence around that meditating is good for you.

Zen seems to be one of those things that in a sense gets a "free ride" from otherwise skeptical people. My goal is to determine if there really is something interesting behind this whole zen thing or if its just more metaphysical gobbledygook. Along the way I could just get in on some of that satori action.

Over the next few days I'll start outlining exactly what my year long schedule is going to be and what the specific month long zen themed enlightenment experiments will be. Until then if you want to help a struggling zen-weenie along, what books would you recommend or warn against?

If you need a little zen snack to get you through the day while you are awaiting my words of wisdom, you could probably do worse than checking out the HARDCORE ZEN blog. (This author actually has at least a small role in my revisiting zen as I hope to talk about in the near future).

Cults of Personality

The most interesting thing about the race for the Democratic nomination this election is the way in which the candidates, by and large, have become the centers of religions. (The Republicans seem, for the most part, to have avoided this, with the exceptions of Ron Paul — whose supporters tend to be as willfully ignorant of his less-sane positions as any religious fundamentalist is of contradictions within their holy book — and Rudy Giuliani’s attempt to turn “9/11” into a mantra. The other Republican candidates may collectively desire a theocratic police state, but they are not personally the centers of belief.)

Hillary Clinton, in particular, is unique in that she is the center of two religions, one in which she is an angel, and one in which she is a devil.

Clinton, it must be remembered, started her political life as a pro-Nixon Republican. Her career — particularly during the last seven years — has been marked by a tendency to give the “money” half of the right wing what they want, and the “religion” half some of what they want. The sole issue on which she meaningfully digs in her heels is that of equal rights, and then only in an ill-considered and inconsistent way. (What is Clinton’s stance on abortion? It was anti, until it was pro, until it was anti again.) She has repeatedly voted to support the war in Iraq, and has also voted for the Lieberman-Kyl “Let’s Start World War III Now And Avoid The Rush” resolution which was an obvious step toward expanding the war to include Iran. She also refused to vote against the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. (Admittedly, she didn’t vote for it either. She didn’t vote, thus sending an unambiguous message that she stands for… well, nothing, apparently. Or else for something she doesn’t want us to be able to know. Hardly reassuring.) She repeatedly failed to filibuster right-wing bills, fearing that the Republicans would revise the rules to remove filibusters, thus making Republican opposition actually unnecessary. And she managed to vote for both the USA-PATRIOT Act and its extension.

Her qualifications largely seem to consist of having been first lady when her husband was president. But her husband was not, all things considered, very good at his job. He failed to accomplish the major task to which he laid claim — health care reform — and his presidency was filled with minor victories for right-wing interests. (The DMCA and NAFTA come to mind, for example.) And during a period when scrutiny of his presidency was highest and investigations were already afoot, he got embroiled in a tawdry sex scandal. I don’t care about the sex, but the timing of it is an insult — even a libidinous president should have been intelligent enough to avoid it.

Consider, then, the two religions centered on Hillary Clinton:

The Republicans can’t stand her. If she wins the nomination (which is still possible, though unlikely) she will cause the highest possible voter turnout for the other side, so strong is the hatred of her name. And yet of all the Democratic hopefuls, she is the one who consistently has been closest to being a Bush supporter. Obama may claim to want to work with the Republicans, but Clinton actually is one.

Hillary’s supporters, on the other hand, see her has a potential savior of the Democratic Party. This view persists despite her repeated lack of achievement, and her extremely dubious allegiance. Her experience is often cited, particularly when referring to Obama. The fact that her experience has largely been experience of giving up, selling out, and failing is never mentioned. Hey, George W. Bush has as much experience as Bill Clinton. Does that mean you’d trust him for another four years?

Obama, on the other hand, has not yet been the focus of a negative religious focus. (Should he be nominated, to say nothing of elected, he certainly will experience this — Fox News alone is too adroit at its Two Minutes Hate segments for this to be avoided, to say nothing of more explicitly right-wing media like Rush Limbaugh.) But he definitely has support far in excess of his actions.

Barack Obama has a history of failing to show a backbone which is only marginally better than Clinton’s. Remember when he attempted to organize a filibuster but said in advance that he thought it would fail? (This still puts him one up on Clinton, who could seldom, if ever, be bothered to try.) He has not particularly voted against the war in Iraq, he voted to extend the USA-PATRIOT Act, and he took the same “not voting” cowardly way out on the Lieberman-Kyl saber-rattling amendment that Clinton took on the Bankruptcy bill. His platform also seems to be fairly light on actual policy. Not to the degree that Clinton supporters suggest, but enough to be notable. (Quick: what does Obama actually propose to do about global warming? How about the war in Iraq?) Obama is less of a DINO than Hillary Clinton, and there is no longstanding hatred of his name, so he makes a superior candidate, but like Clinton he is not the savior his supporters often suggest.

Then there’s Edwards. Edwards is difficult for me to take seriously, I admit. His career at the national level began as a result of the idea, particularly prevalent four years ago, that Americans would be unwilling to vote for Democrats on the basis of issues and positions, but would be likely to vote based on geographic origin. After all, a gooey southern accent and pandering to southern racists has worked in the past, why not try it again? (The fact that the sort of person who specifically wants a southerner in office wants a southerner in office because southerners tend to be right-wingers has escaped notice.)

Edwards’ record is not all that one could hope it would be, either. He missed out on the bankruptcy bill, the PATRIOT Act extension, and Lieberman-Kyl, but he did manage to vote for the USA-PATRIOT Act itself and the war in Iraq. He seems in general to have been somewhat more sane than most of his fellow-travelers on other subjects — his Wikipedia entry says he sponsored the Fragile X Research Breakthrough Act, which is a good sign (and seems to be bearing fruit — fragile X syndrome, which causes all sorts of mental illness, has been cured in mice, and may be cured in humans relatively soon).

Still, one must remember that, despite what many politicians want us to believe, it was actually quite easy to see that Iraq did not need to be invaded. Even before the invasion, the various justifications put forward by the Bush administration were debunked, and at the time of the invasion, most (thought not all) polls showed a majority of America against invading. Anyone who voted for the invasion is asking us to believe that they were too stupid to see through the lies, too cowardly to do anything about their knowledge, or too grossly incompetent to do the right thing. This is not something in favor of any of the three candidates, who have all supported the war repeatedly, but Edwards lacks recent involvement because his term ends in 2006, so it is particularly damning in his case.

It is sad that the three front-runners for the nomination fall so short of the ideal. It is sadder still that supporters of all three believe so strongly in what is not there. This seems to be a common failure among the Democratic rank and file. Remember how the Democrats won all those seats in Congress in 2006, yet nothing changed? Remember how lots of Connecticut Democrats voted for Joseph Lieberman, who then turned into George Bush’s lap dog?

Any realistic consideration of Democratic performance over the last decade or so must conclude (barring accusations of sheer gross incompetence or unbelievable stupidity) that the Democrats have given up on what has, in the more recent half-century, been their base. They no longer seek to do what the center/left wants. Possibly this is because turnout on the left has been disappointing. Possibly they take the left for granted, knowing that the Republicans don’t want it and have no chance of getting it.

This conclusion is nothing new — it has been a part of Green Party rhetoric for quite some time. But in this election the effect has become so pronounced that it is hard to ignore. Even Dennis Kuchinich, who has been campaigning under the banner of “Leftier Than Thou”, has thrown the right wing some bones. Kuchinich has had to pander on the subject of faith, and his wife even talked about having Ron Paul as a running mate, apparently to suggest that this would somehow sanitize his candidacy.

Where does this lead? Certainly it would be helpful if Democrats would stop using faith as a guide to their candidates; if nothing else it might encourage some of their elected officials to act with more intelligence and bravery. If the Democratic nominee were seriously afraid that liberals would stay home, or vote for someone else, they might actually uphold their principles in the face of the usual right-wing barrage. They might even have the guts to go about dismantling it if elected. This, however, is an outcome which requires an unbelievable amount of optimism. Religions are not so easily displaced by reality.

Edit: WordPress saved all my paragraph breaks in the preview, then deleted them when I submitted the post. I have restored them, or at least most of them.