Welcome to CotL # 82. Accidental Blogger is pleased to host the very first Carnival of the Liberals of 2009. At this time, this year, liberals are in a mental flux. The curtain is about to come down on the eight nightmarish years of Bush-Cheney - surely a time to rejoice. A new guard is poised to take over but the fate of liberalism under the coming administration is uncertain.Therefore it's premature to celebrate too exuberantly. The economy has gone Humpty Dumpty, wars are raging and people are nervous. After a bruising Democratic primary and a nasty general election campaign, I am not surprised that the minutiae of domestic politics are not on the minds of many bloggers. They are probably exhausted and are in a "wait and see" mode. The majority of the posts featured here dwell on broad liberal issues, mostly independent of who is in power. A couple of bloggers have a bit of fun with fantasy and one presents us with a slice of political history.
Paul was only a blogger! Allen at The Whited Sepulchre is irritated that conservatives adamantly cling to a notion of marriage as defined by a now defunct society and ancient men who didn't think too highly of marriage.
Here's the Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 7, verse 1: "Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry."
Paul goes on to write about how marriage is no better than a necessary evil, and how he has chosen to remain celibate. In verse 6, he says "I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that."
Is her bite worse than her bark? Angry Max at Pterodactyl Puke reviews a book that has not yet been written - It Was Nice to be Out of Alaska by Sarah Palin.
You might think the Barracuda’s memoir is filled with a mix of cute little folk-isms and divisive rednecky slogans, but you’d be wrong. On the whole it’s a scathing indictment on our political system and a biting critique of our national character.
The limits of naturalism: Science Blogger Greg Laden argues that when it comes to our ethics and morals, nature does not dictate what should be. It may only tell us what can reasonably be.
Naturalism is a potential source of guidance for our behavior, morals, ethics, and other more mundane decisions such as how to build an airplane and what to eat for breakfast.1 When it comes to airplanes, you'd better be a servant to the rules of nature or the airplane will go splat. When it comes to breakfast, it has been shown that knowing about our evolutionary history can be a more efficacious guide to good nutrition than the research employed by the FDA, but you can live without this approach. Naturalism works when it comes to behavior too, but there are consequences. You probably would not like the consequences.
Florida - where the nightmare began in 2000: Joshua Lee at Politically Orange delves into the history of Florida's politics. The post is Part I of a twenty part series. I expect Josh has posts for the next nineteen CotL editions lined up already!
Besides knowing the structure of the Florida political system (discussed earlier here), knowing it’s history is equally as important. Without learning from the mistakes of the past, we can never move forward and learn from them, so without further ado, my series on the history of Florida politics from 1920 to today. This guide should be easily understandable to anyone with a basic understanding of United States history.
Obama, the crypto-Muslim: Zeno at Halfway There gives us a taste of Conservapedia where shameless partisanship always triumphs over intellectual honesty.
The well-known liberal bias of reality seriously irks conservatives. They have responded by declaring that they make their own reality, but that didn't pan out too well. They have worked to build an alternative universe where Fox News is the voice of truth and the GOP is God's Own Party. Conservapedia is part of that alternative universe, the conservative counterpart to Wikipedia.
Finding common ground: Greta Christina advises atheists to seek alliances with progressive non-atheists to further the atheist cause.
How can atheists be good allies? I think it behooves the atheist movement to make alliances with other groups that we have affinities with: groups that aren't atheist- specific and that are made up of both believers and non-believers, but that have goals we support... and in some cases, progressive ecumenical religious groups who recognize the validity of atheism.
Ann Coulter - as ubiquitous (and equally useless) as a bad penny: Doctor Biobrain is convinced that television news is not really news but a clever ruse aimed at addling our brains.
If you watch television news, I hate you. Now, I suppose if you only watch it for ironic value, I won't hold it against you; though I would recommend that you seek professional help (and I say that as someone who has literally spent hours reading the ramblings at RedState...and enjoyed it). But television news is really just the pits when it comes to covering actual reality and anyone who supports it is the enemy.
When the big boys meet: Steve fantasizes, comic book style, what may have really happened when all five living presidents met recently in the Oval Office.
“No, Mr. Obama — I Expect You to Die!”
Yesterday at the White House the three living former presidents of the United States answered an invitation to tea, along with the president-elect, from the outgoing President George W. Bush. The guests arrived individually and were directed to the Oval Office to await their host. Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton each came alone, and each made the same joke as they were escorted down the corridor. All three turned to the page accompanying them and quipped, “You’d think I would know the way!”
Editor's Note: Steve's post above got me wondering how this meeting yesterday at the White House may have unfolded.
The Carnival post has been put together by the joint efforts and opinions of all six authors of Accidental Blogger. My thanks to them for pitching in and to Leo Lincourt, the organizer of CotL, for trusting me with the duties of hosting the Carnival.
A nice selection! And nice to see this blog too. A new one for me.
Posted by: Blue Gal | January 14, 2009 at 09:39 AM
Hmm, I had a submission about Sarah Palin, and the Tripp Palin brouhaha, sent via Blog Carniva.... guess it didn't make it even with less than 10 featured submissions.
Posted by: SocraticGadfly | January 14, 2009 at 12:01 PM
Context for Paul of Tarsus, for naturalism and moral discourse
** Paul, an unhappy conjunction of mental illness and narrow historical reality
Paul writes to widely scattered, small underground cells of xians. His opinions deviate entirely from mainstream Roman and Jewish opinion about marriage -- that it is good to marry and better to add children.
Paul’s praise of celibacy and sexless marriage arises from his view that the world would soon end -- the ruthless judge would return and bring about a complete reordering of nature and humanity. (Only a supernatural Christ could overthrow the invincible armies of imperial Rome.)
Unfortunately, apocalyptic visions were all the rage in occupied Palestine during the mid-first century run-up to Rome’s total destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Each world-ending revelation is a product of an impotent desire for revenge which cannot be expressed in action, but only in words, words veiled in obscure symbols and arcane references.
Paul’s death impulse manifests itself in hatred of the world, irrational inverted snobbery, fear of sexuality, misogyny, anti-intellectualism, anti-Semitism. See 1Cor1:19-26.
sources:
Cohn. Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come. 2ed. 2002
Onfray. Atheist Manifesto. eng trans 2006
** morality, neither from on-high nor deep within
There are altogether no moral facts, there is only a moral interpretation of facts. -- Nietzsche
Nature is silent. There is no concept of truth in nature. (Indeed, there are no concepts whatsoever in nature.) Nature *knows* nothing. Nature is neither meaningful nor meaningless. Neither a source of comfort (natural theology) nor a source of despair (existentialism).
Both views are rooted in the same mistaken presupposition that supernatural *meaning* can be ascertained by searching the heavens for gods or quarrying human inwardness for moral laws. No moral order can be found in the universe other than the ancestors put into it. And so-called moral *laws* belong to cultures, not to nature.
Nietzsche. The Anti-Christ. 1888.
Harris. Cultural Materialism. 1967.
Posted by: bipolar2 | January 14, 2009 at 03:05 PM
Woohoo! I'm the best!! Another win for the ubiquitous Biobrain!!!
Posted by: Doctor Biobrain | January 14, 2009 at 04:01 PM
Just in case you were wondering what an ILLIBERAL society would look like:
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=157177
Posted by: omar ali | January 15, 2009 at 03:36 PM
Congratulations to all of the bloggers who contributed to CotL 82, and thanks for sharing your blogs with us!
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