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Growing Up in the Universe

Copies of Growing Up in the Universe begin shipping today!

Growing Up features Oxford professor Richard Dawkins' five one-hour lectures, originally televised by the BBC, for The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children, founded by Michael Faraday in 1825. Dawkins offers "a series of lectures on life, the universe, and our place in it. With brilliance and clarity, Dawkins unravels an educational gem that will mesmerize young and old alike. Illuminating demonstrations, wildlife, virtual reality, and special guests (including Douglas Adams) all combine to make this collection a timeless classic."

Order your copy today.

We are growing up and growing old in a universe with Richard Dawkins. Get used to it. Buy the DVDs. What's not to like about science documentaries with cool animals brought in for the the studio audience and cool human animals present like Douglas Adams?

BattleCry - radicalizing US Christian teens

Jeff Sharlet (of The Reveler blog, listed under Religious Rigth Watch's "Good News" blogroll) writes in Rolling Stone (link to excerpt) about BattleCry, a project of a Christian fundamentalist, Ron Luce of Teen Mania, for radicalizing evangelical Christian teenagers through massive multi-media rallies and his Honor Academy. Luce "isn't just looking for followers -- he wants 'stalkers' who'll bring a criminal passion to their pursuit of godliness."

Both the rallies and the Honor Academy are marked by ultra-aggressive indoctrination and create an ask-no-questions atmosphere.

Luce calls his crusade a "counter-rebellion" or a "reverse rebellion" or sometimes simply "revolution." The Cleveland event, Acquire the Fire, only one stop in what is becoming Luce's permanently touring roadshow, is not meant to save souls...but to radicalize them. He's been doing this for two decades, but it didn't take off until days after the Columbine shootings of 1999, when Luce rallied 70,000 angry, weeping kids at the Pontiac Silverdome outside Detroit. In 2006, he brought his rallies to more than 200,000 kids. Overall, he's preached to 12 million.

They're the base. Of that number, Luce has sent 53,000 teen missionaries around the globe to preach spiritual "purity" -- chastity, sobriety and a commitment to laissez-faire capitalism -- in Romania, Guatemala and dozens of other "strongholds" that require young Americans to bring them "freedom" -- a Christ they believe needs no translation.

Sharlet's descriptions of the rallies are alone worth the price of this issue of Rolling Stone. But Sarlet also visits the Honor Academy for a week when it features special guest,

Rebecca Contreraas, a pretty, thirty-eight-year-old professional evangelist...who was a special assistant to President Bush in his first term. She was responsible for 1,200 presidential appointments, an impressive job considering she had not gone to college.

Sharlet continues, writing about the 800 annual interns who pay "$7,800 a year, plus mission fees, to attend Luce's Honor Academy." They

must log at least thirty-one hours a week working for the cause [of BattleCry]. Around seventy...learn how to produce visual media of sufficient quality that in the four years since Luce hired [former VH1 producer Doug] Rittenhouse, several of his proteges have started climbing the ranks in secular media, fulfilling Luce's "infiltration" dream. Most, however,...spend their days cold-calling youth pastors to sell them blocks of tickets to upcoming events or counseling would-be teen missionaries by phone on how to raise the funds to pay for a trip through [Luce's] Global Expeditions.

Sharlet's article is a must-read.

BattleCry was also the topic of an opinion piece--which while informed and interesting does utilize name-calling--on the website TruthDig.

Click here to view a video via the anti-Teen Mania site, Acquire the Evidence, of when former

Bush-Cheney campaign youth organizer Jordan Sekulow, speaking minutes before the Detroit "BattleCry" event on live television, described the political impact and eventual benefit his party gains from evangelical teens like those who participate in Teen Mania's programs.

Image: from The Brick Testament's depiction of Numbers 31:6.

(Two other Jeff Sharlet articles are linked to in this site's Introductory Anthology section, "Through a Glass, Darkly" and "Jesus Plus Nothing," both published in Harper's.)

Mock, Paper, Scissors

New blog added to the Views (blogroll) list at the top left of this site: Mock, Paper, Scissors.

History's Joys and the Cultivation of Humility

Garrison Keillor's recent essay, "Note To Politicians," on Salon.com about how reading histories can lead to the invigorating discovery that one is "dead wrong" about something, resonated with me particularly in light of last week's airing of the America At A Crossroads series on PBS . (It has not been without its detractors.)   The first episode of the America At A Crossroads series is a history about modern notions of jihad, and the history of American leaders--Bill Clinton and W. Bush included--who, it might be said, had not experienced the invigoration of discovery specifically in relation to Islam, Islamism, Iraq, and terrorism. It's a history of the failure to understand history--and the tragic result: crafting foreign policy while mired in American myopia and provincialism.

But history (and historiography, which I define as the study of the disciplines and activities of crafting--usually writing--histories, either professionally or otherwise) is a tricky thing, slippery thing, and the older I get, the less likely I am to judge the topics of histories, even when (especially when?) the histories are invigorating in how they may introduce me to a new idea or change a preconception of mine. Increasingly, I encounter a history--a book or documentary usually--and am more inclined to judge the historical or journalistic project itself--the book or documentary--than the topic it covers.

Histories have the benefit of hindsight. That’s why the best histories, the best examinations of the past, are not pat, are not smug as they attempt to inform. That's why the best ones may contradict themselves at times. And because of the opinion and commentary breeding farm that is the blogosphere and online publishing, and because of the ease with which cable channels like The History Channel can use computer-generated graphics (CGI) to create visually compelling though highly impressionistic depictions of the past (and use, God knows, the super-abundance of stock film footage that no documentary producer ever seems to bother to annotate), there is an increase, I think, in the number of horribly done histories--articles, books, and documentaries--in circulation.

In general, many of these bad projects aren't history so much as they use a cursory view of the past merely as a backdrop, a stage set really, in the service of low-brow entertainment ("Cue for the 1,000th time that clip of the Stuka strafing that train in Poland, or is it France, or is it Russia...who cares?") or ideology ("Churchill good; Chamberlain bad. Bush good; Democrats bad.") or both.

Will America at a Crossroads itself look narrow-minded or ill-informed 2, 10, or 20 years from now and itself become part of a history of discredited histories about American failures to understand history? (!) I think that the documentary will mostly stand the test of time, especially insofar as it looks at the history of modern jihadism and Islamism.

Time will tell us. And there's the rub.

Time is the one thing each of us has so little of--time to read or examine history, time in which to act or correct actions, (including bad foreign policy), time to consider and think before taking major action. Thus, the humility that Keillor writes about--a virtue every human should cultivate, especially in light of the history of human failings..including failings to understand history. I've come to believe that history is the grandest academic discipline, but also one of the most accessible for non-academics. We all should find some way to participate in the discipline that is history—reading it, writing about it, even if just our own personal histories—for history is not something dead, but an on-going, never-ending, dynamic process of interpretation, documentation, correction, discovery, speculation, skepticism, and--hopefully--articulate self-doubt.

(There are 10,000's of historians in the world. Some of the hard-working ones toil in obscurity. A mere handful will ever be relatively famous in their lifetime or afterwards. A few, past and present, shown here: Ibn Khaldun, Maxine Berg, Jakob Burckhardt, Niall Ferguson, Barbara Tuchman.)

USPS to 1st Amendment: Drop Dead

From The Nation:

America's founders understood the First Amendment would be worth little without a postal system that encouraged broad public participation in America's "marketplace of ideas." Thomas Jefferson called for a postal service that allowed ideas to "penetrate the whole mass of the people." Along with James Madison, he paved the way for a system that gave low-cost mailing incentives to small publications.

The postal policies that resulted have helped spur a vibrant political culture in the United States by easing the entry of diverse political viewpoints into a national discourse often dominated by the largest media organizations.

Now, this is all about to change, putting the future of The Nation, along with many other publications, at risk.

Postal regulators have decided to extend special favors to the nation's largest publishers, like Time Warner and Hearst, while unfairly burdening smaller and independent magazines with much higher postal rates--The Nation is being saddled with an unexpected increase of $500,000 in annual postal costs and many smaller publications could be forced to the brink of bankruptcy.

The only way to reverse the decision is if you - and many others - take a minute to sign a letter demanding that the rules are changed. This is not a right/left issue, which is why The Nation and William Buckley's National Review are teaming up in this instance to demand that the Postal Board of Governors reverse its decision.

Please join us in urging postal regulators and Congress to convene public hearings, determine how these rate increases were decided, and reverse the ruling. We only have until April 23--the end of the public comment period--to respond, so please take action today:

Write the Postal Rate Commission and Congress.

Learn more about the issue.

Help promote the campaign.

Activation point: getting people to act (and vote)

Some interesting work via an "expert panel and teams at Spitfire Strategies and the Communications Leadership Institute"-- ActivationPoint.org.

They:

examined literature from the worlds of science, commerce, politics and journalism that explores what evokes responses in Americans. We conducted an in-depth review of eleven case studies of successful -- and not so successful -- persuasion efforts to determine what techniques work best in the nonprofit world.

(Illustration's from the site.)

Spine-find

From a Washington Post article noted by my friend Wayne with the simple comment, "Get a spine, Democrats!"

Democrats appear to be standing on firm political ground, as they work toward a final bill. A Washington Post-ABC News poll of 1,141 adults, conducted April 12-15, found that 58 percent trusted the Democrats in Congress to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq, compared with 33 percent who trusted Bush.

Mary Chapin Carpenter tells it like it is

Wow. Mary Chapin Carpenter is pissed off. (Hat-tip to MUG.)

This isn't for the ones who blindly follow
Jingoistic bumper stickers telling you
To love it or leave it and you'd better love Jesus
And get out of the way of the Red, White, and Blue
.....
No, this is for the ones who stand their ground
When the lines in the sand get deeper
When the whole world seems to be upside down
And the shots bein' taken get cheaper, cheaper

This isn't for the ones who would gladly swallow
Everything their leader would have them know
Bowing and kissing while the truth goes missin'
"Bring it on," he crows, puttin' on his big show

Tax season: distraction and disenfranchisement.

Under Bush, the rich got tax breaks far beyond what commonsense calls for. If you're middle-class, you probably really feel the rising costs for health care, energy/fuel, education, and services, and your real income may very well have remained stagnant. If you're part of the working poor...forget it. Actually, Rev. Bu$h&Co., Inc. actually hopes you will forget...and therefore not vote.

In such a season, it's fitting to revisit this Krugman op-ed column (emphases mine; click images to enlarge) --

.....
In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people.

Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

And voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income distribution tables, but they do know that today’s rich are building themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren’t going anywhere: according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that it’s harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
.....
But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won’t let them. [The GOP] can’t offer domestic policies that respond to the public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

The answer, for a while, was a combination of distraction and disenfranchisement.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were themselves a massive, providential distraction; until [9/11] the public, realizing that Mr. Bush wasn’t the moderate he played in the 2000 election, was growing increasingly unhappy with his administration. And they offered many opportunities for further distractions. Rather than debating Democrats on the issues, the G.O.P. could denounce them as soft on terror. And do you remember the terror alert, based on old and questionable information, that was declared right after the 2004 Democratic National Convention?

But distraction can only go so far. So the other tool was disenfranchisement: finding ways to keep poor people, who tend to vote for the party that might actually do something about inequality, out of the voting booth.

Remember that disenfranchisement in the form of the 2000 Florida “felon purge,” which struck many legitimate voters from the rolls, put Mr. Bush in the White House in the first place. And disenfranchisement seems to be what much of the politicization of the Justice Department was about.

Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under pressure to pursue allegations of voter fraud — a phrase that has become almost synonymous with “voting while black.” Former staff members of the Justice Department’s civil rights division say that they were repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia’s voter ID law to Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters.

The good news is that all the G.O.P.’s abuses of power weren’t enough to win the 2006 elections. And 2008 may be even harder for the Republicans, because the Democrats — who spent most of the Clinton years trying to reassure rich people and corporations that they weren’t really populists — seem to be realizing that times have changed.

[Recently,] Republican candidates trooped to Palm Beach to declare their allegiance to tax cuts, the Democrats met to declare their commitment to universal health care. And it’s hard to see what the G.O.P. can offer in response.

Religious Conservatives in Iowa

Here's an article on the power of religious conservatives in Iowa.

I was there when the religious right in Iowa first flexed their electoral muscles, revealing the strength of their years of patient, persistent organizing. That was 1988...when Pat Robertson nearly won the GOP caucuses. The minister of the Evangelical Free Church my family attended was the country chairman for Jack Kemp for President. But, certainly Robertson had a lock on the local Pentacostals and conservative charismatics.

From the article:

It was religious conservatives who propelled Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and the Christian Coalition, to a second-place finish in Iowa's 1988 GOP caucus, ahead of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. They also were responsible for conservative pundit Pat Buchanan's surge in 1996, holding Republican front-runner Bob Dole to a surprisingly narrow victory.

I would have called myself a Republican and conservative at the time, though I wasn't old enough to vote, and was truthfully enamored less by any particular ideology than by politics as a whole. I enjoyed going from event to event to catch glimpses of the candidates. Growing up in Iowa allows for that. (I even pitched horseshoes with George H. W. Bush once.)

It's interesting to hear this assessment from the article:

"Religious conservatives and social conservatives in the Republican Party are like the driver's education instructor," said [Drake University political science professor Dennis] Goldford. "He has a brake, but he doesn't have a steering wheel or an accelerator. They can pretty well say who is not going to be the nominee."