Today's Bathroom Reading...

Leon Wieseltier "Opiates" (The New Republic) May 7, 2008 * * *

American religion may be the most unreflective religion in the world. It is unreflective almost as a matter of principle. The most significant American contribution to theology--the merry dismissal of thought known as "the will to believe"--lifts the soul up with probabilities and risks, with a vaguely economic calculation that the profit is worth the gamble. In recent years "studies have shown" that religion is even good for your health. What if it is good for your health, but false? And what if it were bad for your health, but true? It would be wonderful one day to meet an American whose God has made his life harder, not easier. But here belief is relief. It is "elitist," I know, to expect philosophy of every man and woman: whether or not all intellectuals are God's children, all God's children are not intellectuals. Still, Christians in America care more about what Jesus would do than about what Jesus would think. This accounts also for the wild politicization of religion. Obama, remember, champions mainly "the Social Gospel," and first entered the church in Chicago for the purpose of community organizing. But the Social Gospel is about benevolence, not transcendence; and there is no moral difference between the good works of believers and the good works of unbelievers. May the world be improved by whoever can improve it! As for Obama's neoconservative critics: they are second to none, and close students of Machiavelli, in their insistence upon the usefulness of religion to society as an authority and a principle of order, and also upon its usefulness to their candidates. They, too, hunger for the benefits, and not for the mysteries.

Jonah Goldberg "Time's Environmental-War Whoop" (National Review) April 25, 2008 * *

Time magazine recently doctored the iconic photo of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima in order to “celebrate” Earth Day. Instead of Marines valiantly struggling to lift the stars and stripes, they are depicted planting atree. No doubt Time’s editors think they will be celebrated in poetry and song for generations to come for their high-minded cleverness. Still, if the symbolism wasn’t clear enough, Time writer Bryan Walsh spells it out: “Green is the new red, white and blue.”

There are any number of problems here, starting with the fact that this is simply a lie. Green is not the new red, white, and blue. Concern over climate change may be the most honorable and vital thing imaginable. But if “the red, white and blue” means anything, it means patriotism or love of country. Patriotism and environmentalism simply aren’t synonymous terms. Two things can be good without being the same. Fatherhood and all-you-can-eat chicken wings, for example, don’t describe identical phenomena.

Ray Fisman "The Pilgrim's Progressiveness" (Slate.com) April 25, 2008 * *

Pilgrims may not return from the Hajj harboring warm feelings for America, but it's heartening to find that the Hajj may help to undermine support for the violent methods that have been so devastatingly deployed against Americans in the past. And if we're to bring an end to violence in Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim world, it is imperative that Iraqis and others believe that they can peacefully settle differences among themselves. According to this study, the Hajj may help to achieve both of these objectives. Rather than worrying about the hate-mongering extremists that seem to exist on the fringes of the Hajj, perhaps the United States should consider redirecting some of its aid to Pakistan (and perhaps Iraq and Iran) to help more pilgrims make the trip.