Jay Reding.com

The American Prospect has an interesting review of books purporting to expose the imminent arrival of “theocracy” to America. Peter Steinfels takes a look at some of the arguments for this theory and finds them lacking:

But the idea, increasingly voiced by left-of-center activists and intellectuals, that religion is the driving force of the administration’s policies and the leading threat to American democracy is exaggerated and misplaced. Phillips, Rudin, and Goldberg themselves regularly stick qualifying phrases into their declarations of alarm. They know that fanaticism and nuttiness, including downright dangerous nuttiness, can be found all over the place in a religious and political landscape as vast and diverse as America’s. And they know better than to equate hardcore religious-right leaders and organizations, let alone the still smaller kernel of literal theocrats, with evangelical Americans in general, who constitute between 30 percent and 40 percent of the population and who have swung massively into the Republican camp in the last three decades.

The task, in other words, is not simply to shine light on faith-based anti-democratic currents but to map context, patterns, proportions, and trends, tracing not only real connections but also deep differences between what’s marginal and what’s central. This task, in the end, they fail to accomplish.

The “theocrat” slur is a particularly dumb one, and it’s being driven by the anti-religious bigotry of the secular left more than anything else. What passes for “theocracy” these days has been commonplace throughout American history, and yet America has never fallen into “theocratic” rule. Steinfels is quite right to point out that 30-40% of the American electorate consists of evangelical Christians — if the Democrats want to alienate all those voters, they’re going to have virtually no chance of ever winning an election in this country.

Steinfels also points out the larger theoretical problem with the anti-”theocrat” bandwagon:

Exaggeration and inaccuracy also matter because they decrease any chance of mobilizing the opposition to the country’s current course, as these writers ardently desire. They draw bold and broad lines between empiricism, science, tolerance, rationality, and democracy, on the one hand, and faith, theology, revelation, persecution, irrationality, and authoritarianism, on the other; and they assign whatever they like or dislike to one side of the divide or the other. This dualism disregards rational dimensions of faith and theology (as well as faith dimensions of science and rationality) and neglects the historical reality that the modern world of empiricism, science, and Enlightenment reason has produced its own irrational nightmares. Treating the moral questions that agitate conservative Christians as obviously settled beyond all reasoned argument does not just target theocrats. It sprays bullets widely into the ranks of moderate evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and even many centrist and liberal believers.

He’s exactly right on that. As much as the secular left hates the idea, religious experience has always been a major element in American life. The rhetoric of the left alienates not only Christian fundamentalists, but the evangelicals who make up a significant portion of the mainstream of American society. For all its allusions to the supremacy of logic and rationality, it really is based in the most naked bigotry. It rudely and arrogantly treats all people of faith as being stupid for believing in something beyond the sphere of human perception.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t groups that misuse religion — but the rise of secular fundamentalism alienates all those people of faith from making rational stands against the misuse of religion in the public sphere. It polarizes everyone into either defending or rejecting religion itself rather than having a substantive conversation about the place of religion in society. This causes problems, even for those who might share many of the same convictions as the anti-”theocracy” crowd:

At the end of her book, calling for a movement to oppose the theocrats, Goldberg runs up all the old banners of the war between secularism and religion, pitting “freedom and Enlightenment” against “stale constricting dogmas” and “holy books.” Reading those words, I question not only whether I — and a lot of people like me — belong in her ranks, but also whether she, or Kevin Phillips, or even my friend Jim Rudin, really want us.

It would seem that secular fundamentalism is no less arrogant, no less dogmatic, and no less immune to reason than its Christian counterpart.

I’m neck-deep in memo drafting, so blogging will be light for the next few days.

In the meantime, know that Hugo Chavez has become the next hero to left-wing nutballs everywhere. Heck, he even gave a plug to Noam Chomsky in the process.

To borrow from Voltaire, thank God for such ridiculous enemies…

UPDATE: There’s video of Chavez’s rant here. I agree with Glenn Reynolds on this one, the fact that madmen like Ahmadinejad and Chavez are out there will only remind voters why they can’t trust a party that remains rightly perceived as being fundamentally weak on issues of national security.

Anne Applebaum has an absolutely essential column on the flap over the Pope and Islam. She argues that the Pope shouldn’t be apologizing for a speech which is perfectly reasonable and that the Muslim reaction to the speech only proves that Muslim society is acting in a way that is fundamentally incompatible with human freedom:

By this, I don’t mean that we all need to rush to defend or to analyze this particular sermon; I leave that to experts on Byzantine theology. But we can all unite in our support for freedom of speech — surely the pope is allowed to quote from medieval texts — and of the press. And we can also unite, loudly, in our condemnation of violent, unprovoked attacks on churches, embassies and elderly nuns. By “we” I mean here the White House, the Vatican, the German Greens, the French Foreign Ministry, NATO, Greenpeace, Le Monde and Fox News — Western institutions of the left, the right and everything in between. True, these principles sound pretty elementary — “we’re pro-free speech and anti-gratuitous violence” — but in the days since the pope’s sermon, I don’t feel that I’ve heard them defended in anything like a unanimous chorus. A lot more time has been spent analyzing what the pontiff meant to say, or should have said, or might have said if he had been given better advice.

All of which is simply beside the point, since nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all. And maybe it’s time that it should: When Saudi Arabia publishes textbooks commanding good Wahhabi Muslims to “hate” Christians, Jews and non-Wahhabi Muslims, for example, why shouldn’t the Vatican, the Southern Baptists, Britain’s chief rabbi and the Council on American-Islamic Relations all condemn them — simultaneously?

I think she’s right. We can’t keep giving Muslim radicals a pass because they embody the post-modernist concept of “the Other” and therefore are somehow beyond reproach. Either human rights apply to everyone or the whole concept is utterly worthless. We can’t ignore the doctrine of human rights just because the right people are violating them. Either the suppression of legitimate criticism is an affront to human dignity or it is not: there is no wiggle room to argue that Catholics have an ethical duty not to criticize Muslims because it might offend them.

Years ago, Jesse Jackson ran around the Stanford campus with a group of postmodernist radicals shouting ”Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture’s got to go.”. Indeed, the doctrines of multiculturalism have taken Rousseau’s idea of “the noble savage” to their illogical extreme — fetishizing non-Western cultures and ignoring the systematic deprivations of basic human rights that go on throughout the undeveloped world. This kind of simplistic moral relevance is coming home to roost as butchers from Baghdad to Burma can easily exploit Western nihilism and guilt to buttress their own bloody claims.

Sooner or later the West is going to have to take a stand in defense of its own values. Each day we fail to do so only encourages our enemies and leads to the spread of more violence and oppression. We cannot allow that to happen, not for our own interests, and not for those who live in the shadow of violence and oppression.

The only thing we should be apologizing for is not taking action to stop this madness much earlier.

It appears as though the state of Thailand has just suffered a military coup as the opposition Party of Democratic Reform has announced that they have joined with the military to overturn the government of current Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thailand recently went through elections in April that were tainted by accusations of fraud. Prime Minister Thaksin had called for new elections to be carried out this November to try to resolve the impasse. It looks like the opposition party didn’t consider that to be good enough for them. Thaksin’s rule had been embattled for some time over allegations that he was using the power of the Thai government to benefit his own personal and family business interests. Currently Thaksin is in New York at the meeting of the UN General Assembly and is not in the country.

Thailand has been a staunch of ally of the United States, going as far as to commit some Thai troops to Iraq. It’s not at all certain how these events may effect that relationship. There’s also no certainty what repercussions this event may have on the region, especially the Asian financial markets. Certainly we wouldn’t want to see a return to the Asian Flu of 1997 which sent worldwide financial markets into disarray.

More on the coup as the story develops…

UPDATE: The International Herald-Tribune has some more background information on Thailand. The Thai King, King Bhumibol Adulyadej is wildly popular in the country, and the military has been stating that they are acting out of loyalty to him. It appears that this coup has been long-expected and is thus far non-violent.

Thailand has been facing a Muslim insurrection in the south of the country that some believe may be connected to the Southeast Asian al-Qaeda offshoot Jemaah Islamiah. The military has been at odds with Prime Minister Thaksin over how best to handle the problem, and their response has been widely criticized as heavy-handed. What this coup portends for that conflict is not yet known, but it could mean that the violence in that region could get worse.

In a victory for science over hysteria, the World Health Organization has endorsed the use of DDT to control the explosion of malaria cases in Africa.

WHO says there is no health risk, and DDT should rank with bednets and drugs as a tool for combating malaria, which kills more than one million each year.

“The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment,” said Dr Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, WHO assistant director-general for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria.

“Indoor residual spraying is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes; it has proven to be just as cost effective as other malaria prevention measures, and DDT presents no health risk when used properly.”

The scientific case against DDT was never that strong, but environmentalist hysteria ensured that the use of DDT was eliminated through much of Africa, which caused malaria to reach endemic levels and led to the deaths of perhaps millions of people worldwide. Countries such as South Africa refused to go along with the ban, and their malaria rates were dramatically lower than countries that did not allow for the use of DDT.

This decision by the WHO will make it easier for Third World nations to launch effective malaria control efforts — and it will also save countless lives. This finally puts hard science ahead of scaremongering — exposure to small amounts of DDT is quite safe, and malaria is a deadly and dangerous disease. The cost/benefit analysis on DDT has always led to the firm conclusion that DDT is a safe and effective method for mosquito control, and it’s high time that international aid institutions stopped placating the environmentalist lobby at the expensive of hundreds of thousands innocent lives.

Rich Lowry has an interesting piece in National Review Online on why Michigan’s economy is one of the worst in the country as a direct consequence of decades of liberal social policies:

Michael LaFaive of the Mackinac Center calls Michigan “the France of North America.” Economically competitive states might have a personal income tax, or corporate income tax, or sales tax — Michigan has all three. It has long been the only state with a European-style, value-added tax — the Single Business Tax. A company can be in bankruptcy and still have a tax liability, making Michigan a bad state even to lose money in. In a 2002 filing for relief from the tax, General Motors explained that it would operate at a loss, but one of its projects would still create a $7 million-a-year tax liability.

Michigan recently repealed the Single Business Tax effective at the end of 2007, but has punted the decision about how to replace it. A relative moderate, Gov. Granholm has resisted general tax increases, but levied new fees, sin taxes and other “revenue enhancers.” The state still insists on trying to target tax incentives and other special breaks to favored businesses, in a doomed replay of 1970s-era industrial policy.

Michigan is one of the states that has no one to blame but itself for its incredible economic failure. Michigan assumed that a single industry would be enough to support its entire economic base — and that’s never true. The combination of technological change and foreign competition has altered the economics of the auto manufacturing industry in fundamental ways. The economic and political control exercised by the unions ensured that Michigan’s government remained largely wedded to that one industry.

Just as only a fool would invest their entire savings into one thing, an economy based on one single industry is constantly under threat. As Lowry points out, Michigan’s high-tax, low-growth policies are now coming home to roost in a state that’s seen massive job losses due to poor public policy. He’s also right in pointing out that Michigan is a state that has done nearly everything that liberals think would make the US economy stronger — and it simply hasn’t worked.

Michigan’s lack of economic diversity, punitive levels of taxation, and incredible inflexibility have caused innumerable suffering as workers lose their jobs and are forced to move to states with more opportunities who don’t embrace the same set of failed policies. The lesson here is obvious: those states that attempt to enact the same set of principles risk coming to the same negative outcomes.

John Hodgman (who plays the PC in the Apple commercials) delivered this moving speech just after the September 11 attacks that’s well worth reading. (Hat tip to Mitch Berg)