I'm not so sure Obama has seized the remote, but in the sofa ruckus he may have luckily hit one of the buttons. There are indications he may be creating broader acceptance of his proposals for Iraq and Afghanistan:
Sen. Barack Obama, on his first and likely only overseas trip as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has remade the campaign's foreign policy playing field, neatly sidestepping Republican charges that he has been naive and wrong on Iraq and moving to a broader, post-Iraq focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In essence, Obama has declared the war in Iraq all but over...
Obama's analysis has been buttressed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders who, to the dismay of the White House and Sen. John McCain, his Republican opponent, have publicly agreed with his call for completing a U.S. combat withdrawal from Iraq in 2010...
But the Iraqi government's newly stated position on troop withdrawals has put the McCain campaign -- and many congressional Republicans who have been on record opposing timelines -- in a difficult position...
But Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), a reliable opponent of withdrawal timelines, was not as dismissive. "If we're going to crow about the fact that 12 million [Iraqis] voted and elected their own leadership, we have to pay attention to their leadership," he said. "We can't have it both ways. We should say we're heading for the door."...
The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, in an interview last night with PBS's "NewsHour," said he shares Obama's assessment that the situation in Afghanistan is "precarious and urgent." The 10,000 additional troops needed there, he said, would not be available "in any significant manner" unless there are withdrawals from Iraq.
I'm impressed. Bold or lucky, Obama is due credit if this means progress toward peace. Having the media on your side, of course, mysteriously eliminates 95% of election bad luck. Yay for us.
But wait, this is confusing. The same paper's editors are now telling me that Obama's Iraqi support is overstated and an Afghanistan focus makes little sense.
What to think? Hmm... wasn’t it the Post who bombarded us with href=http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/23/clinton_invokes_rfk_assassinat.html?sid=ST20080524 00166&pos=>articles fantasizing that Clinton was hinting of an Obama assassination with unspeakably evil longing, pushing this incendiary talk nonstop while simultaneously blaming the one person who clearly WASN'T talking about it for "utter[ing] the unutterable"?
And now a CNN associate political editor is reigniting furor over Obama's Jerusalem remarks, the very journalist admired by so many Dems during the primary for pushing the War Room video hoax. who to this day has failed to correct the still-posted story.
Why am I now having trouble embracing good news, and why do my poor, confused eyes keep seeing ratings and dollar signs instead of journalism?
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Because there is no journalism in the MSM?
Just guessing, maybe there are other reasons, but that is what first leaps to mind.
It is interesting watching the gasbags spinning around in circles, unable to find a focus or a narrative that sticks. To me they appear frightened and confused, middle schoolers who are both fascinated and afraid of the new kid in class, wanting ever so much to be invited to his parties but not willing to give up their own petty authority by appearing too eager; needing to diss and flatter, both at the same time.
Good. I think Obama has their number. The more he ignores them, the more he treats them like appendages instead of the Most Important People In The World, the more they will sniff around after him trying to get noticed.
Why is it so difficult to accept that there might actually be something good happening? Been a while, hasn't it? Perhaps it is the unease of unfamiliarity, and will just take a few cycles to get used to.
I think this move by Obama is anything but luck. There is this study, for instance, conducted in part by one of McCain's pollsters but not being pushed by his campaign:
We on the Left have been agreed for some time that BushCo international strategy has been abominable across the board, serving perhaps the short-term interests of US Corporatism but only to the detriment of everyone else. The rest of the world is fed up, and so is most of the US military.
Obama has stepped into that void and is getting strong support from the two foreign leaders whose lives are most on the line, Karzai and Maliki, for what can only be described as a rational approach to their problems. Others will be close behind and the military, from the grunts to the top brass, will be very relieved to get the neocons off their backs and out of their hair. This move by Obama is completely deliberate and well-planned to take advantage of weaknesses the Republicans have created; it is not an accident at all.
Sad as it is, the only way this could have happened is by Bush abandoning his responsibilities and creating the vacuum in the first place. Obama has not just seized the remote, he is reprogramming it so that old fuddyduddy McCain can't figure out how it works. If the process were not so irregular and unstructured, I'd be jubilant.
One word, bringiton
FISA.
If an acronym counts as one word.
If, and I do say if, what we're seeing is a consolidation and rationalization of Bush-ism, rather than a repudiation and an accounting, how can that be good?
That would make Obama, basically, the cigarette after.
On the other hand, I suppose Obama could be Augustus after the last days of the Republic. There are positive factors to that, no question, but let's be clear on what's happening.
And if that is is happening, then that has nothing to do with the hopes for the Democratic Party that we have so long entertained.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
You'll have to forgive me, Lambert
as I continue to insist on including more than one word - or acronym - in my considerations.
No "good" choice here, IMNSHO. Pity that, but the reasons are I think complicated and structurally imbedded in the hearts and minds of the American people as much as they are in the empty space where the corporatists once had hearts when they were babies.
Obama and Clinton didn't get chosen solely in the sense that we sometimes consider, as in our betters manipulated the press and the money so no one else could compete. I believe they did those things, but the people went along, again, without much of a whimper and here we are today. No one even close to a progressive candidate has made the cut for the Democrats since McGovern, and he got his clock cleaned by Satan's stepson.
There was no many-million person march on Washington demanding a progressive candidate, no strikes, no picketing, no letter-writing campaign, not much of anything at all. Edwards never got above 15% in the polls and then sank like a stone, and he wasn't all that much of a progressive. The truth is we've done such a lousy job of explaining ourselves that most of America thinks progressives/liberals are somewhere between a joke and a hazard.
We have no one to blame for our current situation but ourselves, and we are going to have to take our medicine - a big swallow of Obama, however bitter - while we regroup and figure out how to make sense enough that other people can understand us.
Phrase it in whatever comparator suits, but my choice this year is as between being hit by a car or hit by a freight train, between being shot in the foot and shot in the head, between an amputation and dying of gangrene. No good choices, but one is less bad and perhaps can be survived; FISA or no.
(And yes, I am still considering the last 1/5 of my FISA deal analysis; it is a puzzler.)
The thing is, BIO
The further we go down this road, the less able we'll be able to, as you put it, "regroup and figure out how to make sense enough that other people can understand us [liberals]." Take a look at my comment below where I'm describing a faith-based politics, using a secular definition of the word "faith."
The fear for holdouts like me is that each time we give in to faith-based politics, we degrade our future ability to use "sense" to persuade. At what point should we consider a short-term risk (a possible McCain presidency) to avoid this downward slide? We keep accepting a one-way ratchet effect driving us ever closer to a politics and media without reason or sanity.
Each person must decide when this breakpoint is reached. During a time of war, I tend toward sadly accepting another click of the ratchet while hoping for a less risky opportunity next time. But I can understand others believing that the time to "just say no" is now. We the faithless are ethically bound at a minimum to scream all the way to the Obama lever.
"The Thing Is" Bo
We have more than one "thing" to contend with.
That "short-term" McCain Risk would be one question if we had more than the short term to work with, but we don't. The End of the World is Nigh, my brothers and sisters, and there is no room left now for taking risks.
Even if it didn't mean immanent and absolute destruction of the planet, I still wouldn't support electing a Republican on both moral and practical grounds. Morally, I cannot get my head around the idea that punishing the sins of the Obama campaign, real or imagined, can best be achieved by rewarding the much more massive sins of the last 40 years of VRWC
Corporatist
Republicanism - does not compute. From a practical standpoint I've asked this question repeatedly here and never gotten a reply: How exactly is deliberately loosing a means to winning? Anyone who truly feels that way, let's you and I play some poker. Bring your pink slip, your deed and all your money, because that's what electing another Republican president will cost you. Might as well lose it to me first, and then we’ll shake hands and you can walk away feeling like a winner.
Read your faith comments, Bo, and those of others. Here's the "thing" about that for me. Faith is deeply rooted in the human psyche, has been since we gained sufficient self-awareness to recognize our individuality. The aspect of faith that manifests in religion is nothing more than recoil from the pure awful terror of that recognition. We long to relieve the horrific loneliness of our self by immersion in a conjured greater oneness, to be safely and reassuringly an inseparable part again of the pack and submerge the absolute alienation of "I" under a smothering security if "We". It is part of the price we pay for being Human.
That drive won't be stopping any time soon. While I admire the effort to bring rational thinking and Enlightenment to the masses, I also think that very few people are emotionally equipped to be comfortable with the knowledge that each of us is the one and only one of our kind, different from all others and ultimately alone. That I am the only one of me that has ever been or ever will be is more than most people can bear to contemplate.
So, while we're waiting the endless millennia to come while atheists convince everyone that god is a fraud, there remains the practical matter of how to manage governance in a country where 80% of the populace professes to believe in angels and some form of eternal spiritual life.
For myself, given an increasingly limited mortal lifespan within which I can have an effect, I intend to focus on redirecting religious faith away from authoritarianism and the Apocalypse and towards practices that benefit life on earth in a positive way. Concepts like being a "good steward" of the Earth and rejecting gross materialism and being "my brother's [and sister's] keeper" and caring for the poor and the sick and the downtrodden, stuff like that.
Within that approach I am comfortable with faith-based expressions that shift the focus of American religiosity away from domination and war and destruction and entitlement-based ravaging of the environment and towards compassion and kindness and caring and inclusiveness and mutualist responsibility. I am in favor of universal love, and not at all picky regarding motivation.
The kind of religion that Obama embraces is not compatible with the kind of religion that has dominated American society for a very long time, nearly now a full hundred years. It is a mistake, I think, to try and describe it as somehow defined by either the antithesis of enlightenment or as a one-off of fanatical evangelicalism. The esthetic is best described as "Communitarianism" but with a rather more modern, scientific-based confidence that allows for a belief in a Higher Power without demanding a denial of intellect or the senses.
Communitarianism, Modern Communitarianism, is not the same as Haggee or the Pope or Falwell or Dobson or any of those sorts of hierarchical, top-down authoritarian, structure-based domination creeds. It is much closer in its esthetic to Puritanism (which gets a very bad rap) combined with a measured version of liberation theology. In what seems at first blush a contradiction in terms and is indeed a cognitive dissonance, it is both practical and delusional all at the same time.
If I must be surrounded by people of faith, and it appears that I must, I would prefer that they be benign and useful and non-judgmental and compatible with progressive goals. Call me a philosophical slut, I don't care; I will join my deeply agnostic hands in a prayer circle and do so gladly if it serves to feed the poor and house the homeless and bring succor and care to the sick and the dying.
If Obama (or Hillary) can accomplish all that while expressing faith, then I say more power to him/her and state baldly that I simply do not care if he/she is a cynic or truly believes. Judge not, lest ye be judged and all that.
Where exactly is the disagreement?
What part of my suggestion that we "scream all the way to the Obama lever" are you disapproving? We're agreed no one should vote for McCain.
As for "there is no room left now for taking risks," the suggestion that an Obama victory is risk-free is a bit, well, sweet.
Humanists have the same need to be immersed in a "greater oneness" as religionists; we just call it family, community, and the environment.
My post is not about atheism vs. religion. It is about a concern about politics where facts no longer matter, that one declares one's allegiance and faith replaces thinking. A concern that the blurring of church and state eases the way for unhealthy candidate devotion and feel-good politics. This is not proving to be strong enough to avert ecological disaster. Say what you will about humans' biological destiny; I think we can and must do better.
"Disapproving"?
And here all was aiming for was some nuance. Must be that tone thing again.
My comment was directed not just to you, but as I noted there were several down-thread comments I tried to address as well; one fell swoop as it were. A recurrent theme amongst several commenters here at Corrente and elsewhere is the suggestion that electing McCain instead of Obama is an acceptable risk - I disagree, and included that as part of a generalized discussion. If it doesn't apply specifically to you, then it wasn't directed specifically at you.
As for “there is no room left now for taking risks,” the suggestion that an Obama victory is risk-free is a bit, well, sweet.
I made no such suggestion. Of course it is a risk. Getting out of bed in the morning is a risk, staying in bed is a risk, it is all about trying to decide which one is the greater risk.
Humanists have the same need to be immersed in a “greater oneness” as religionists; we just call it family, community, and the environment.
Yes, and still I assert that one aspect of the need for faith manifests itself in religion. Both are true, but secular humanism thusfar has not found the great number of adherents that are comfortable with religiosity. I'm suggesting that (1) we need a better pitch, and (2) while we work on that there are other ways of promoting progressive goals that do not involve dismissing every single religious believer as somehow bad.
It is about a concern about politics where facts no longer matter, that one declares one’s allegiance and faith replaces thinking.
Can you cite a presidential campaign where the successful candidate actually governed as he promised? Since none of them ever do, does it not actually make some sense for the electorate to base their decisions on matters other than policy? And does this not then result in a negative feedback loop that the MSM is more than happy to facilitate? America has gotten the government it chose, in a manner of its own choosing.
A concern that the blurring of church and state eases the way for unhealthy candidate devotion and feel-good politics.
authoritarian aims. Otherwise, it was all just part of the political game of dividing the elctorate into camps and each party exploiting its adherents. Obama may well be a part of that pattern, probably he is, but I don't see him or the Democrats as being somehow planning to make theist governance more integrated than it already is. By all things apparent, I expect them to cut back in some areas but not eliminate all church/state collaboration. Pity, but the closeness is a political reality we as progressives will have to do a better job at overcoming than we have.
Or the other way around. Cult of personality politics is a similar phenomenon, and often the two overlap, but one is not the same as the other. Even a supposedly theocratic oriented government like BushCo only implemented those "religious" issues where they coincided with Corporatist
This is not proving to be strong enough to avert ecological disaster.
No it is not, thus the need to lead the true believers in a better direction for us all, in the name of God if that is what is required.
Say what you will about humans’ biological destiny; I think we can and must do better.
; that's our problem.
Agreed. I'm only wanting to talk about how, and to point out that the challenge is much bigger than one person or one political party. When it comes to magical thinking 80+% of the country is FITH
There Is No Process
It's not just irregular and unstructured, the MSM have left us with no real process for picking a president. There is no discussion of policy. There is no reporting. If Obama wins, it won't be because he's convinced people about all the wonderful policies he's going to pursue. It will be because the media and McCain haven't figured out a narrative to personally destroy him. That is a victory, but it's still scary as hell to live in a country that selects its leaders this way. It doesn't add to my confidence level that this is the way we selected the current leader, who is the worst we've ever had.
By November of this year most Americans will still not have any damned idea what Obama is actually going to do as President. We "hope" he'll be an improvement, it's certainly hard to see how he wouldn't be, but he has such a modest record and the coverage of him is so shallow, we're not going to know jack shit about him or what he intends to do. Into the vaccuum the candidates will push photo ops, fake press events, and commercials that deal in personal narrative over policy. I've been watching this campaign for more than a year and I could not tell you what Obama's number one domestic priority is. How is that possible? How is that a good thing? How can the MSM get up in the morning and not feel so much shame that they want to kill themselves?
Obama may end up being a terrific president, but that won't be why he got elected. He's going to get elected for the same reasons Bush got elected. So if it works out, it will be more of a fluke than any affirmation of the process (though I'm betting the media pat themselves on the back for picking such a winner).
It all comes back to the media for me. It is thoroughly corrupt and until that changes, this country is going to be a very scary place to live. You can't expect a democracy to work when there's no place its people can turn to get accurate and truthful information. The entire system falls apart without a functional media.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
Well, one question is answered, BD!
"How can the MSM get up in the morning and not feel so much shame that they want to kill themselves?"
Michael Shermer in Scientific American::
The book referenced above, which is fun and amazing reading, is Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. It includes a great discussion of the Milgram experiment. Plus a relevant discussion as to how, when we feel we may have wronged someone (e.g. denying Clinton supporters the first woman President), we build that person into a demon to reduce intolerable guilt.
Everybody should read that book!
It's well written and fun and yet research-based and it certainly illuminates aspects of our behavior that we've all engaged in at one time or another.
It applies to all levels all behavior, from one's interactions with close relations to political stuff.
Lambert, how about a book club, here at Corrente? :-)
Go Global!
A book club....
.... is an interesting idea.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Faith-based culture = faith-based politics
At the risk of sounding like a raving, paranoid atheist... oh, I forgot, I AM a raving, paranoid atheist...
I agree to an extent that the media is the more fundamental and serious problem than politics. But I think one can also view both as symptoms of something even deeper.
It's my fear that the Obama presidency is the logical and inevitable outcome of a faith-based culture. It's a somewhat testable notion. With little knowledge of European politics, my thesis predicts that in that godless continent, issues are more likely to trump candidate sexiness and marketing. I'd love to hear from anyone who can tell me how my prediction stacks up against the real world.
By faith, I mean the idea that there is virtue in belief without evidence. Americans equate faith with virtue, and not just religious faith. It's a powerful meme so core to our thinking we rarely question it.
We're talking on P_luk's feminism thread about partisan and candidate "purity," which has strong faith overtones:
Obama AND the media are playing pitch-perfect to the kind of society uniquely obsessed by religious and civic faith. I can produce links if needed, but Europe's religiosity, while still very low in comparison to the U.S., is increasing as a result of globalization and America's influence. Obama's popularity among younger Europeans is a result. A similar outcome, a cynic might note, is the Putin youth.
I've no doubt that power brokers the world over are studying Obama's rise and American media response closely.
Truthy and faithy
A post on the Putin Youth would be interesting and useful, Mr./Mrs/Ms. Gardiner. Would you do that? (And, now that I think of it, the Serbian and Ukrainian movements. Interesting if that social technology, first applied over there and funded... who knows how... came here.)
In any case, I agree. And the faithiness* idea may account both for the vehemence of the OFB
(remember the personal conversion narratives?) and for the repulsion that others feel. And the Crusades, if I recall correctly, ended badly. Every single one of them.
NOTE * This is not faith, I would argue, but like faith. I'm connecting that to the idea of cheap grace. With faithiness, what's important is a feeling. With faith, there's a call for some sort of change to your way of life (one that goes beyond bombarding your friends with emails for campaign contributions and wearing Obama gear). Now, that puts FDLS firmly in the faith camp, not the faithy camp, but so be it; faith is a morally neutral category.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Faithiness. Eww. (sorry)
I'm going to protest "faithiness" -- your coinage? Here's why. One: I don't see a meaningful difference between its definition and that of faith. Two: by paralleling faithiness with truthiness, you create an equivalence between faith and truth. Which I find oxymoronic. It's uncomfortable to challenge faith itself as a virtue, but many secularists and philosophers are trying to do just that, and I'm with them. Meanwhile, we're fine with co-opting religious language for smaller civil uses, like "yours is a kind soul," "bless her heart," "I've got faith in you." But faith as a generic virtue? Let's overturn that meme and elevate truth.
I'm just Bo. Ms. Bo.
I'll play around with a Putin youth post. But what a challenge! The idea that a post of mine, even though I know it's really only read by three people max, might be used by the GOP against Dems induces overwhelming nausea. Not sure if I can bring the delicate touch that would be needed, but will try. You can always delete if needed.
The truth is party invariant
Eh?
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Amen.
So's faith. Despite how we liberals view ourselves.
Faithiness?
Western Wall??
Odd behaviour for a person who actually has any faith, faithiness pegs the guy well I think.
Horselover Fat
"A lie told often enough becomes truth."
- V. I. Lenin
H F
Better sourcing, please
I know the press sucks, but World Nut Daily isn't even the press. A little research, please! And the only other place I can find this is the American Spectator. Ick. The best I can do is this, which seems pretty innocuous, and doesn't match the Spectator description. Surprise.
Consider the source (World Net Daily)
They are nutty, and the article lead is misleading. If you read further (link repaired), you find, as you might expect given that no rioting by Israeli Orthodox was reported in the mainstream news, as it surely would have been, that the posters were not on the wall, but on police barriers. The article does contain some information:
Asked if it was traditional practice for politicians visiting the Western Wall to bring along posters or campaign materials, [police spokesman] Rosenfeld replied, "No."
In further sterling reporting, WND claims Obama's $845 billion U.N. plan forwarded to U.S. Senate floor. A quick read of the Library of Congress information on the bill (search for S.2433) as reported shows that this bipartisan bill -- Mr. OBAMA (for himself, Mr. HAGEL, Ms. CANTWELL, Mrs. FEINSTEIN, Mr. LUGAR, Mr. DURBIN, Mr. MENENDEZ, Mr. BIDEN, Mr. DODD, Mr. FEINGOLD, Ms. SNOWE, Mrs. MURRAY, Mr. HARKIN, Mr. JOHNSON, Mr. SMITH, and Mr. KERRY) -- requires the President to submit some reports to Congress. Scary!
Facts are stupid things. And (update) time-consuming; consider the 20 or so minutes it took me to assemble these modest facts while Lambert was making his parallel comment.
Policy not party!
I think my broader point
holds though - I don't think Obama got religion in his early twenties for any reason other than the TUCC congregation's social and political connections.
Sorry I can't stick around and actually contribute, but this is the only time of day I can tolerate going outdoors here in Phoenix. When I have time, I will see if I can find a link to Charles Lemos' thoughts on mob behavior.
Horselover Fat
"A lie told often enough becomes truth."
- V. I. Lenin
H F
Faith is always utilitarian
Faith, religious or secular, is adopted because it serves a purpose, whether consciously or subconsciously, not because of its inherent, empirical truth. Some just hide its utilitarian nature better, which is why I'm never comfortable judging whose faith is more "genuine."
Looks Like a Cool Book
Thanks!
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
This grossly understates
the magnitude of the tort
when we feel we may have wronged someone (e.g. denying Clinton supporters the first woman President), we build that person into a demon to reduce intolerable guilt.
working class and real progressive voters were denied a progressive leader in favor of a shallow poseur by chicanery and outright Democratic Party rules flouting. Motivated, in appearance, by base considerations such as the party leadership desire to get telcom immunity passed.
Horselover Fat
"A lie told often enough becomes truth."
- V. I. Lenin
H F
Agreed
As to the ultimate cost.
But I think the initial liberal guilt for not supporting a woman may have been key in triggering the cognitive dissonance feedback loop I'm describing. It was vital to prove to their own liberal consciences that HRC was the ultimate "wrong" woman.
They'll never forgive her
for what they did to her
-- as a friend of mine put it (in another context).
Seen it many times.
Policy not party!
Precisely!
n/t
Agreed that we can't read minds.
But guesstimating what motivates people is a social skill evolved over millions of years.
'Some just hide its utilitarian nature better, which is why I’m never comfortable judging whose faith is more “genuine.”'
I think I am missing the train of this thought.
Horselover Fat
"A lie told often enough becomes truth."
- V. I. Lenin
H F
We nearly can read minds
I agree.
What I meant is that if we stuck McCain and Obama in a mindreading machine, or for that matter any religious person, we wouldn't see much difference in "genuineness."
All are similarly motivated by what religion can do for them. All are, at the deepest level, disbelieving. The only difference is that most would be shocked to learn this about themselves. Obama is probably one of those who wouldn't. If this view is correct, than who is more "genuine"?
Mine is a controversial view, I realize, and pretty off topic.
We definitely would agree that Obama cynically exploits this human trait.
The Purpose of a Higher Education
Once had a law professor tell me the purpose of a higher education was to give you the tools to be able to rationalize that what you want to do is what you should do. I don't know if I'd agree that is the purpose, but it often is one of the products of a higher education.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
Ouch
Tavris and Aronson, the behavioral psychologists who wrote the book above, believe we can transcend rationalization by understanding it. Which takes education. Guess we're damned either way.
Well, I sure hope
that that's not the message I unintentionally convey to my students! Yeesh.
Go Global!
Faith
The notion that faith and belief and core components of religiousity is grounded in a Christianized worldview. (in turn influenced by the needs of the late Roman Empire and early Christian church).
Believing stuff on faith is much less central to other religious traditions - even another Abrahamic religion (Judaism).
John Dominic Crossan in his books discusses the difference between what Jesus meant by the word he used and what Christians mean by the translated word "faith." (Which had more to do with conscientious, loyal, honorable action than *belief*.)
Horselover Fat
"A lie told often enough becomes truth."
- V. I. Lenin
H F
Faith*
*Used in this post as American English.