The “Is Obama Christian?” Question

by Russ Douthat

FEBRUARY 24, 2015 5:35 PM

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/the-is-obama-christian-question/#commentsContainer

This is so typical Douthat - pretending to be even-handed in discussing the crazies in the GOP.

The point is, that no one would ask these silly questions of Republicans, if Republicans had not opened the topics of Obama's birth (is he American), religion (is he Muslim?), patriotism (does he love America as much as [I] do? - insert any number of nutty Republicans) in the fist place. The purpose, as always, of this pseudo-intellectual garble is purely as a means to continue the discussion of these irrational and vicious doubts about Obama.

Mr Douthat should be much more concerned about the doubtful cast of characters who are auditioning for the GOP Presidential nomination, and the fact that the Congressional GOP is showing no signs of actually stepping up to the responsibility of governing the country. For example, they have for ever been belly-aching about "securing our borders" and "protecting the homeland", and their solution is to defund DHS. They have no credible, strike that, they have NO, none at all, alternative to ACA, yet are perfectly happy with having "activist judges" torpedo that law, using very dicey legal tactics.

Right now, as for so long, Republicans are their own worst enemy.

In Defense of Islam

by Russ Douthat

FEBRUARY 18, 2015 3:50 PM

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/in-defense-of-islam/?comments#permid=14182439

The current debate on whether ISIS represents a significant theological stream in Islam or is just a perversion of Islam, is really missing the point.
ISIS is just the latest manifestation of a centuries long split between Sunnis and Shiites within Islam itself. That split has been smoldering beneath the surface in the "balance of power" among Middle East states. Only with the blundering intervention by the US into that conflict, with our ill-fated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even before, with our unquestioning support of Saudi Arabia (for purely economic purposes, nothing to do with "fostering democracy" and "advancing the cause of human rights") did that internal Islamic conflict explode to the surface again.
We, "the West", cannot resolve that conflict - we cannot "defeat ISIS". The best we can do is to insulate ourselves as much as possible from the collateral damage (terrorist attacks, hostage takings, etc). Resolution of the Sunni/Shia conflict can only be brought about in the Islamic world itself - hopefully by some implicit, or better, explicit coexistence, similar to the coexistence between Orthodox and Protestant Christian beliefs. The problem right now is that, similar to the long wars among Orthodox and Protestant dominated empires in the Middle Ages, the Sunni/Shia conflict currently still has strong political overtones. Thus, only when religion/Islam is relegated to a non-political sphere in Islamic countries will there be any hope of "defeating ISIS".

President Obama and Whig History

by Ross Douthat

FEBRUARY 17, 2015 3:47 PM

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/president-obama-and-whig-history/?comments#permid=14167513

This whole prayer breakfast/Crusades hype is a prima example how pundits like Douthat and others justify their existance to over-intellectualize, to the point of the rediculous, simple, and more that likely well meaning comments by Obama: don't judge all Moslems (or minorities in general) too harshly, for "we" (yes, Conservatives, Obama is a Christian), the judeo-christian countries have our own baggage. The intent was simply to calm the waves of irrational indiscriminate "reprisal" for the attrocities of a miniscule minority. The reference to "Crusades" is not unique to Obama, and I don't remember a long intellectual debate when Bush called from a "Crusade".
The use of "Crusades" may have been clumsy, but in effect, most Western leaders who joined the march in Paris, with the embarrassing absence of a meaningful representative from the US, made the same point, both during the Paris march and later, back in their respective homes.

Democracy Is in Recession

by Thomas L. Friedman

FEB. 18, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/opinion/thomas-friedman-democracy-is-in-recession.html?comments#permid=14167279

Part of the problem, at least, is the pernicious influence of "market economy". The case is often made that democracies can only exist with "free" market economies, and visa versa, that market economy supports the ideals of democracy.
Especially during the Cold War it was fairly easy to make that case - Western, non-communist countries had greater wealth, seemingly more equally distributed, and had much greater individual freedoms.
However, it is becoming ever more obvious that market economies are extremely powerful tools to concentrate wealth, and thus power, within a tiny minority of the polulation. The supposed "freedoms" of democracy are increasingly misused to facilitate ever more concentration of wealth and power within this small minority.
The US is a prime example for this trend, where the Supreme Court ruled that money = freedom of speech, and thus opened the floodgates for the wealthy few to usurp more and more power through the supposedly egalitarian democratic institutions. And the economic religious dogma of "The Invisible Hand" supposedly ensuring a "optimal" distribution of income, is complete fiction, used primarily to justify the excesses of the rich and powerful - "greed is good".
In China they exceute powerful leaders who misuse their position, private or public, for insane personal gain. In the US the heads of Chase and Bank of America, whose greed and stupidity ruined millions of lives, are given government subsidies to continue their greedy activity.

Obama the Theologian

by Ross Douthat

FEB. 7, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-obama-the-theologian.html?comments#permid=14070568

This controversy about references to the Crusades and the Inquisition is just complete nonsense, and contrived by people like Douthat, with the sole purpose of adding to the flood of nonsense GOP heckling of Obama.

What Obama, like other responsible and thoughtful leaders in countries with Moslem minorities (like France, Germany and Great Britain) are doing is to mitigate against the tendency of "Conservative" elements in such multi-cultural and multi-religious countries to use atrocities committed by tiny but extreme minorities for the purpose of fanning racially motivated hate among their constituents.

There is indeed a very strong and troublesome tendency, especially among Americans, to discount our own shortcomings (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Enhanced Interrogation and Special Renditions to name just a few in our recent past) when dealing with terrible deeds by others.

It is indeed a very valid effort by a President, indeed any responsible leader, to use examples from the past to cause our own people to take a deep breath, pause and reflect, before summarily casting the blame of a terrible, extreme islamic minority like ISIL upon all Moslems. For that is the thrust of Obama's comment, and not, as Douthat suggest, to pose some sort of equivalence between past Christian atrocities and today's ISIL atrocities.

Don't always over-intellectualize, Mr. Douthat -- we got it, you graduated summa cum laude from Harvard...

Dying Shouldn’t Be So Brutal

By IRA BYOCK

 

JANUARY 31, 2015 2:30 PM

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/dying-shouldnt-be-so-brutal/?comments#permid=13996527

Dying can be easy, or it can be very hard.
My father lived a full life. At 84 he got up one morning, had breakfast. An hour later, he died of heart failure. That, to me, would be an ideal way to die.

My mother, now 94, is still living independently. She hopes to pass in a way similar to my father, but there are no guarantees. 

On the other hand, my mother-in-law died this past Monday after years of moving to increasingly intensive dementia care facilities, with a few short stays in lock-down psychiatric wards in between. Finally she ended up in a very nice care facility, where she was well taken care of on Medicare only (we were lucky). By this time, though, her quality of life was reduced to nothing, confined to a wheel chair, unaware of where she was and who was around her, and more or less in constant pain.

I would wish that voluntary end-of-life planning be extended to all States, and that the conditions for voluntary end-of-life would be extended to include other than incurable diseases with only a few months to live. I realize that there are a lot of difficult ethical, medical, legal and social issues involved with no easy all-purpose answers. But if we look at the other end of the spectrum, the seemingly endless variations of non-traditional conception and birth, with equally difficult ethical, medical, legal and social issues involved, which have not all been addressed, much less solved, it seems to me we could allow a little more freedom at the other end also.