Eye on the Watcher’s Council

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.

The Council has a new member this week. Welcome, Hillbilly White Trash. Those others of you who applied for membership and didn’t get a seat please keep trying. I think I applied for membership to the Council three times before I got a seat.

Done With Mirrors, “Or Not”

Callimachus’s submission this week is a rather sadly ironic one on the contrasting, conflicting views of what’s going on in Iraq.

Rhymes With Right, “CD22 Runoff — Shelly Sekula Gibbs Vs. Pete Olson”

Greg comments on the run-off election for the Republican nomination for the Texas 22nd Congressional District seat, making no secret of whom he is backing for the office. I hasten to add that Greg’s implicit views on the nature of elective office generally and the House in particular seem pretty close to my own. I don’t think that elective office should be a career nor, particularly, that House seats should be lifetime appointments. Representatives should remain close to their constituencies and the needs of their districts and it’s impossible to do that from your permanent residency in the District of Columbia and its suburbs.

Joshuapundit, “Black Liberation Theology”

Freedom Fighter chronicles the history and nature of black liberation theology. You might find the Vatican’s observations on liberation theology interesting, for example this passage:

The feeling of anguish at the urgency of the problems [ed. e.g. poverty, racial prejudice] cannot make us lose sight of what is essential nor forget the reply of Jesus to the Tempter: “It is not on bread alone that man lives, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4; cf. Deuteronomy 8:3). Faced with the urgency of sharing bread, some are tempted to put evangelization into parentheses, as it were, and postpone it until tomorrow: first the bread, then the Word of the Lord. It is a fatal error to separate these two and even worse to oppose the one to the other. In fact, the Christian perspective naturally shows they have a great deal to do with one another.

Caution: it’s written in Vaticanese.

The Glittering Eye, “Interpreting the Events In Basra”

In my submission this week I, groping in the dark like practically everybody else, try to make out what’s going on in Iraq. Frankly, I don’t much like what I think is a needlessly risky game.

The Colossus of Rhodey, “The Repeated Historical Falsehood”

Hube notes that whatever people believe the government did not infect black men with syphilis. I’m rather surprised at how many people don’t realize that the idea that the U. S. government created and spread AIDS deliberately is a mainstream belief. Crackpot but mainstream (which tells you more about the mainstream than you probably wanted to know).

Bookworm Room, “The Messiah-Shtick”

Bookworm critiques the messianic tones of the Obama candidacy noting that it’s not merely his supporters but the candidate himself who’s cultivating it.

Soccer Dad, “Sticks and Stones”

Soccer Dad is gratified with the New York Times’s taking Hamas to task for its bigoted rhetoric, noting that Fatah isn’t a great deal better.

Wolf Howling, “Another UN Obscenity (Updated)”

GW condemns the notion of laws against criticizing a religion, producing a bill of indictment against the Wahhabi sect of Islam. Much as I tend to like GW I’m chary of commentary of this sort since I believe that it lends itself to overgeneralization. However, it’s hard for me to imagine something more likely to further sour Americans on the United Nations than codifying restrictions on speech of the nature proposed into law. I also note in passing that after reading the constitutions of every single Middle Eastern country, I’ve found that individual liberties are extremely weak in all of them with each assertion of liberty qualified with the negating phrase “except as provided by law” e.g. “Freedom of the press shall be guaranteed except as provided by law” as meaningless a phrase as is imaginable.

The Education Wonks, “’Tis The Season For Parents and Kids To Be Scammed”

EdWonk cautions against scams offering to put your child on the national honor roll.

Cheat Seeking Missiles, “Answering Yasmine”

In a similar vein to GW’s above, Laer answers the criticisms of a Muslim correspondent. In the process he illustrates my concerns about amateur religious critiques:

As for salvation, in Christianity it’s simple; it is based on faith, not works.

This is untrue. That’s an expression of the sola fide tenet which characterizes many (but not all) Protestant denominations. It’s a minority view in Christianity as is the legalist view (that works alone are a path to salvation). The view held by the majority of Christians is that both faith and works are required. My point here is not to dispute doctrine but to note that if, as a Christian, you don’t have the breadth of knowledge required to characterize Christianity accurately, you’ll probably be at a greater loss to describe Islam accurately.

Right Wing Nut House, “Can We Just Walk Away From Iraq?”

Rick Moran questions his own assumptions about Iraq in a post I urge you to read. As a rule I do my best to limit my assumptions and I can’t say I entertained any of the assumptions that Rick discusses. Very nearly my only assumptions are that projections of what will happen in the future need to be based on some credible interpretation of human behavior and that human beings are quite similar the world around.

Hillbilly White Trash, “The Moral Blindness of the Left”

Lemuel Calhoon, in his maiden submission for the Council, is pretty harsh in his fisking of a column by Jonathan Alter on Hillary Clinton’s resume padding. The sad fact is that Sen. Clinton is an habitual resume padder—she’s been doing it for years and gotten away with it. But that’s a subject I’m just not that interested in posting about.

Well, I’ve decided which posts I’ll vote for this week. Which posts would get your votes?

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