As you may know the members of the Watcher’s Council each nominate one of his or her own posts and one non-Council post for consideration by the whole Council. The complete list of this week’s Council nominations is here.
Done With Mirrors, “This Is a ‘Moderate Voice?’”
I continue to think that Joe Gandelman, head honcho at The Moderate Voice, is the very soul of moderation in politics but, unfortunately, not so a number of his associate bloggers, in particular Indian journalist Swaraaj Chauhan, whom Callimachus takes to task for comments about the Bush Administration’s responses to the announcement of Fidel Castro’s retirement.
The Glittering Eye, “Ending the War in Iraq”
In my submission this week I examine the arguments made by a trio of progressive foreign policy heavyweights in a Washington Post op-ed.
Joshuapundit, “Why Don’t Jews Like Christians Who Like Them?”
I know so little about Jewish history and social thought that I can’t comment on it but I think I can help Freedom Fighter out on a few things on American history. First, the self-identification of members of American non-conformist religion movements with the “children of Israel” is well documented and goes back for centuries. The “evangelicals” of today are, by and large, their doctrinal descendants. Second, there’s a strain of non-conformist Christian thought in the United States, dispensationalism, which has grown significantly more influential in recent years and which has a strong interest in the present state of Israel on theological grounds. I also dispute Freedom Fighter’s interpretation of early twentieth century Jewish political thought in the United States:
There was never the equivalent of a Dreyfuss case here in America, but there was enough classical anti-Semitism in the 1920’s, `30’s and `40’s to make a substantial number of Jews identify with the Left, a process that was accelerated by Soviet penetration into various areas of American life.
Whatever the rationale for the thought (I think that there’s a strong basis for it in strains of Jewish social thought), I believe that a lot of the Eastern European Jewish immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th century arrived here with strong socialist leanings since those were, by and large, the beliefs of the intelligentsia in the countries from which they had come. All of the cool kids thought that way. As I’ve written before, that’s wholly consistent with the experience of other groups of immigrants who’ve come here—they’ve brought their political beliefs with them.
As to why some Jews may be mistrustful of American evangelicals, read FF’s post.
Rhymes With Right, “Where Have All the Male Teachers Gone?”
Greg reports on the hardships encountered by male teachers at the primary and secondary level in the United States. Unfortunately, I believe that everything he says here is true.
Wolf Howling, “The Dershowitz Questions”
I have a couple of quibbles with GW’s phylogeny of fundamentalist Islamic thought in this post. First, I think he equates Wahhabism and Salafism too closely and, second, I’m not 100% certain that Bin Ladenism (or whatever one wants to call the beliefs of the Al Qaeda members) is exactly the same as Salafism. Finally, I suspect that the influence of Deobandism on Bin Ladenism may actually be the other way around, with Osama bin Laden’s beliefs having taken shape in his contact with the Deobandism he encountered when he went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
At any rate GW’s post takes as its point of departure a question asked by Alan Dershowitz: “How do we deal with a religion that causes mothers to encourage their son’s to commit murder and suicide in furtherance of that religion?” My preferred answer is a little different from GW’s: the crazies, like the poor, we will always have with us but more hope and pride in legitimate accomplishment in the Muslim world via economic growth and political reform would go a long way towards providing alternatives to aspiring to be a suicide bomber. I don’t mean handouts by this, although I am sure there are plenty of people who would be willing to take them. I mean a harder-headed sort of diplomacy than we’ve been practicing targeted at encouraging economic and political reform.
Soccer Dad, “The Fine Art of Flying (with the president)”
Soccer Dad posts on Bob Geldof, journalist, with a particular view of his report of flying on Air Force One.
Bookworm Room, “Rape”
Bookworm posts on campus rape. She’s skeptical that there’s an epidemic.
Cheat Seeking Missiles, “The Rape of Rape On American Campuses”
I strongly recommend Laer’s informative post on the issue of campus rape. I find it unfortunate that the culmination of the women’s liberation movement seems to be empowering women to be just as irresponsible as men.
The Colossus of Rhodey, “Exchange Student Woes”
I’m quite familiar with the problem of American exchange students being starved by their foreign hosts, the subject of Hube’s post this week. The problem isn’t a new one. Two of my sisters, twins, were exchange students in Germany 40 years ago, and one of them was starved by her German host family. And it’s not just that Americans eat too much. She wasn’t fed as much as her German “sister” was.
Big Lizards, “Chicago Rules”
Dafydd ab Hugh combines the Tony Rezko scandal, Barack Obama’s rise to the political heights, and campaign law into what I suspect is a pretty likely game plan for the general election.
The Education Wonks, “Why We Don’t Give Money To The American Red Cross”
EdWonk highlights an article about the affair between the CEO of the American Red Cross and a subordinate. I think that one of the great silent scandals is the exorbitant pay rates of the top management of some not-for-profits. Not-for-profits should be treated differently because they’re, well, not for profit either personal or corporate. Any manager of a not-for-profit receiving more than four standard deviations from the average income is being paid exorbitantly. It’s not just the Red Cross and the United Way. For example, directors of thousands of allegedly not-for-profit hospitals are being paid exorbitant wages.
I wouldn’t object if they were, from a legal standpoint, what they obviously are in fact: privately held for-profit companies.
Right Wing Nut House, “The Terrorism Conundrum for Democrats”
Rick Moran wonders how Democrats will deal with the problems presented by terrorism when they’ve conducted their campaigns as they have. I think the answer is that they don’t consider it a real threat and won’t until it happens on their watch.
Well, I’ve decided which posts I’ll vote for this week. Which posts would get your votes?
Update
I swear I had not read FF’s non-Council submission, which devotes a considerable amount of attention to dispensationalism, before writing my comments on his own post.
In addition to dispensationalism, there is replacement theology and supersssionism, both of which involve such strong Christian identification with Israel that Jews are replaced or superceded by Christians. That seems to be what Ann Coulter was chanelling.