Motley Moose – Archive

Below the fold is Bruce Springsteen’s eulogy for Clarence Clemons.

David Frum posted an opinion piece on cnn.com regarding NY’s triumphant ratification of marriage equality in which the Heritage Institute cast-off and current “sane” conservative voice revisits his former opposition.

I was a strong opponent of same-sex marriage. Fourteen years ago, Andrew Sullivan and I forcefully debated the issue at length online (at a time when online debate was a brand new thing).

Yet I find myself strangely untroubled by New York state’s vote to authorize same-sex marriage — a vote that probably signals that most of “blue” states will follow within the next 10 years.

I don’t think I’m alone in my reaction either. Most conservatives have reacted with calm — if not outright approval — to New York’s dramatic decision.

Why?

The short answer is that the case against same-sex marriage has been tested against reality. The case has not passed its test.

Since 1997, same-sex marriage has evolved from talk to fact.

If people like me had been right, we should have seen the American family become radically more unstable over the subsequent decade and a half.

Instead — while American family stability has continued to deteriorate — it has deteriorated much more slowly than it did in the 1970s and 1980s before same-sex marriage was ever seriously thought of.

By the numbers, in fact, the 2000s were the least bad decade for American family stability since the fabled 1950s. And when you take a closer look at the American family, the facts have become even tougher for the anti-gay marriage position.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINIO…

Given Frum’s emerging stance as an intellectually honest truth teller, we should hardly be surprised.  And yet, even this supposedly bold concession lacks explicit recognition of the central fact of this debate.  He concedes that he was wrong, but not why.  

At dawn on June 16th, 1904, atop the Martello Tower in Sandymount, Dublin, two men engage in an argument about Irish culture and history:

STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

— Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:

— Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.

— Back to barracks, he said sternly.

He added in a preacher’s tone:

— For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.

He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.

— Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.

— The mockery of it, he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek.

He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily half way and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.

Buck Mulligan’s gay voice went on.

— My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn’t it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?

This really has gone a bit too far.  While I expect it of FOX and the wing-nut thug-o-sphere, not to mention the GOP and right wing pro-Israel organs, it seems that everyone is piling on in the aftermath of Obama’s speech.  The quote in question?

We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.

This is, as we all know, a well-established, consensus concept.  On what, alternatively, should borders be based?  A kabbalistic mandala super-imposed on the map?  A game of twister?  Numerological speculations based on suras of the Qur’an, funneled through a computer model and divided by values extracted from running a Bach Fugue through the same system, with the results imported into a graph in PowerPoint?  

The 1967 “border,” or “green line,” or “1948 Armistice Line,” (all it what you will) is the only logical starting point for negotiating final status.  Oslo used this template.  Camp David and Taba used this template.  Olmert used this template.  Ever internationally accepted map in the world uses it.  To get an idea of what this would look like with land swaps, see the Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo Geneva agreement.

(More detailed maps, including a sound proposal for how to deal with Jerusalem, can be found under the “Accord” menu at the official site: http://www.geneva-accord.org/)

The problem with the outrage is that we seem to be recapping the plot of Christopher Marlowe’s classic Elizabethan play Doctor Faustus.  Act I details Faustus’ almost methodical descent into nihilism.  A remarkably talented polymath, he despairs of Philosophy, then Medicine, then Law, determining that each is ultimately vain and meaningless, he turns to Theology.  He reads from St. Jerome’s Latin Bible (the Vulgate, as it’s known):

Stipendium peccati mors est. Ha! Stipendium, &c.

The reward of sin is death.  That’s hard.

Si pecccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla at in nobis

veritas; if we say we have no sin, we deceive

ourselves, and there is no truth in us.  Why,

then, belike we must sin, and consequently die:

Ay, we must die an everlasting death.

Faustus then decides to turn to necromancy and make a deal with the devil.  The problem here is that the initial biblical verse that he quotes, Romans 6:23, continues:

…but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This verse is one of the most pivotal in Christian history.  It’s the basis of Calvinist Gift Theology and served the scriptural rationale for the reformers rejection of justification through works (that is, that salvation can be attained through effort and performance of ritual rather than through the free gift of faith by God).  

Why [“the hell,” we might insert here with special resonance] doesn’t Faustus, a singularly remarkable scholar, read the second half of the Pauline verse, which promises “eternal life?”  Marlowe deftly slips an answer into Act V, when Mephistopholis confesses:

I do confess it Faustus, and rejoice:

‘Twas I that, when thou wert i’the way to heaven,

Damm’d up thy passage: when thou tookst the book,

To view the Scriptures, then I turned the leaves,

And led thine eye.

Beyond the delightful play on building a dam in the way of Faustus’s passage to heaven, effectively damning him through blocking his reading of a passage of scripture, it opens the question of Faustus’s culpability.  He didn’t reject the “truth” conveyed in scripture.  Rather, one of Satan’s lieutenants impeded his access to it.  What was he to do?

And now, it seems like Mephistopholis is trying to thwart Obama’s attempt to move negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians forward based on a consensus concept by doing the same thing.

Obama (in the role of Paul) says:

We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.

But what is received is:

We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines…

Is Mephistophilis flipping the leaf again, i.e., turning the page?

Are those who are now screaming condemnations based on the most elementary form of irresponsible reading in the sway of Satan’s minions, or are they themselves playing the part?

(PS For one of the best responses to the speech, I recommend Peter Beinart’s piece, entitled “Obama’s Moral Universalism” in the Daily Beast: http://www.thedailybeast.com/b…

Here’s the statement:

After considerable deliberation and reflection, I have decided not to pursue the office of the Presidency. This decision does not come easily or without regret; especially when my potential candidacy continues to be validated by ranking at the top of the Republican contenders in polls across the country. I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and ultimately, the general election. I have spent the past several months unofficially campaigning and recognize that running for public office cannot be done half heartedly. Ultimately, however, business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector.

I want to personally thank the millions of Americans who have joined the various Trump grassroots movements and written me letters and e-mails encouraging me to run. My gratitude for your faith and trust in me could never be expressed properly in words. So, I make you this promise: that I will continue to voice my opinions loudly and help to shape our politician’s thoughts. My ability to bring important economic and foreign policy issues to the forefront of the national dialogue is perhaps my greatest asset and one of the most valuable services I can provide to this country. I will continue to push our President and the country’s policy makers to address the dire challenges arising from our unsustainable debt structure and increasing lack of global competitiveness. Issues, including getting tough on China and other countries that are methodically and systematically taking advantage of the United States, were seldom mentioned before I brought them to the forefront of the country’s conversation. They are now being debated vigorously. I will also continue to push for job creation, an initiative that should be this country’s top priority and something that I know a lot about. I will not shy away from expressing the opinions that so many of you share yet don’t have a medium through which to articulate.

I look forward to supporting the candidate who is the most qualified to help us tackle our country’s most important issues and am hopeful that, when this person emerges, he or she will have the courage to take on the challenges of the Office and be the agent of change that this country so desperately needs.

Thank you and God Bless America!

Donald J. Trump

http://politicalticker.blogs.c…

Gotta love that he refuses to acknowledge his plummet in the polls and continues to assert that he could win, a hypothesis that can only be defended by refusing to test it.

In other news, I want you all to know that I could play center field for the Yanks, make the hall of fame, and be a Beatle.  But my passions lie elsewhere.

So now that Obama has finally released his long form birth certificate, after a suspicious delay that might have fooled those 9 doddering black-robed ivy-league intellectual elitists on the Supreme Court but certainly couldn’t pull the wool over the eyes of salt-of-the-earth, heartland-loving, small-town-fantasizing ordinary Americans, the patriots are satisfied.  Right?  

It’s well-known that some southerners still refer to the US Civil War as “The War of Northern Aggression.”  It’s an odd rhetorical trick, given that 150 years ago today some South Carolinians fired on Fort Sumpter, manned by Federal troops, and sparked the armed conflict that would claim over 600,000 lives.  Some southerners have tried to read this conflict as more about “states’ rights” than slavery.  

This effort is as old as the history of the conflict itself.  In his inaugural address as President of the CSA, Jefferson Davis avoids even alluding to slavery, suggesting that his movement knew its primary rationale for secession was awfully difficult to defend, though others tried with passion.

So I received an email from my friend and President Barack Obama this morning.  He has announced his intention to pursue another term as presiding executive of that circus of dysfunctional acrimony that passes for the US government.  I was immediately reminded of the headline in The Onion on the morning following his election: “Black Man Given Worst Job in the World.”  

I have supported Obama since the primaries.  But I can no longer do so.  What kind of nut job would ask for a second helping of what he’s received?  I have come to question his sanity.  Do we really want a pathological masochist with his “finger on the button” to “answer the 3AM call?”

Opening day today Mooseses.  Every team in in first place.  The boys of summer take the field today in an annual ritual of renewal.  Who will throw a no hitter this year?  What rookies will come into their own?  Which players will fall to tragic injury or decline?  Who will make an astounding comeback?  Which owner will have the most obnoxious moment?  Which team will exceed expectations?  Which will tumble below them?

Happy Opening Day to one and all!

Use this as an open thread for anything baseball related.  Best baseball memories and stories.  Your hopes and dreams for this season.  Favorite players and hated villains.

We’re all in first place at the opening of the next chapter in the long unfolding story made up of stories that is baseball.

Not really a diary.  I just read on the BBC that the Red Cross is pulling out of Benghazi while pro-Qaddafi forces are advancing.  

Hear HRC from Tahrir Square on NPR on my drive home tonight.  People were begging her for the US to help the Libyans.  I’m not saying we should have sent in a division or anything.  But I really wish we had found more meaningful ways to support these people.  I mean, when the Arab League requests a no-fly zone over a member state…

It’s not over.  But things look very very scary, and I’m already very very sad.