I would honestly say, without hyperbole, that The Passion of the Christ is one of the most powerful films I’ve ever seen. What follows is my review, which contains spoilers, so don’t click the link below if you don’t want to read this before you see the movie.
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Several people have pointed out to me that John Kerry has gone on the record opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment. The comments I linked to below are, in context, in reference to a Constitutional Amendment in Massachusetts. That’s not much better, but I stand corrected on the facts.
“In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an’ they gave me a lethal dose.
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn.
‘Come in,’ she said,
‘I’ll give you shelter from the storm.’”
– Bob Dylan, Shelter From The Storm
I was thinking about philosophy the other day. I guess that seems pretty deep and somewhat circular…but a couple thousand years ago, you had philosophers that were interested in science, in math, nature and how everything worked. They would conduct experiments, travel to other parts of the world and think about how the world worked. Yes, they did some deep thinking about religion, and the nature of man too, but they were curious and inquisitive.
So, being on that train of thought, I wondered what philosophers today do. The world is mapped. Academia has split off into thousands of specialty fields - a philosopher is no longer solely the educated elite and would not stand a chance against a trained engineer or scientist.
So what do philosophers do anymore? Is there even a need for them? If you walk out of college with a philosophy degree, what can you expect to do? Are you doomed to a life of teaching others a meaningless trade? I do think philosophy serves a purpose in getting people to think more deeply about issues - outside the box, if you will - but the mysteries that philosophers used to unravel are no longer there to be investigated. There’s only so much you can do with nebulous topics like religion and man’s inner turmoil because it can’t - as we’ve seen so far at least - really be condensed into a conclusive argument. Sociologists, psychologists, physicists - the list of people that do what a philosopher used to goes on and on. That’s not saying that these “new” philosophers can’t be curious, that’s what drives science. But it seems to me that the people we label “philosophers” today are just people that like to sit around and think, and that’s about it. They have no ultimate purpose. The fundamental definition of a philosopher has changed so much that perhaps the job has become outdated.
As an open question to you out in blogland - what purpose do philosophers serve today, and have the true philosophers of our past moved on to become the scientists and engineers of today?
Those calling President Bush a bigot, or who say he’s homophobic and that he doesn’t like gays aren’t doing so because of qualms over states’ rights. They’re doing so because he wants to define marriage as between a man and a woman, the same as Senator Kerry so I stand by the conclusion that he’s getting more heat than a liberal for the same opinions.
Well, yeah, Bush is getting more heat then Kerry for the same opinions. And there are four reasons why:
1) Bush’s support for the gay marriage amendment fulfills the caricature of Republicans, and Bush in particular, as being rabid religious rightists, which fuels the fires of his political opponents.
2) Speaking for myself, and probably, I think, a lot of libertarians/independents, I think we expected better from Bush. This is the guy who refused to visit the Christian Coalition convention during the 2000 campaign. The guy who had meetings with Log Cabin Republicans. The guy whose VP’s daughter is a lesbian. A guy who, for awhile at least, seemed completely uninterested in pandering to the religious right. But then over the past year he did start pandering more visibly, and this Amendment is the nail in the coffin. Frankly, we’re disappointed in Bush. We expected better of him.
3) Kerry taking a waffling, incoherent, unprincipled stand is, well, typical Kerry. We expect Kerry to put his finger in the wind and take the course he thinks is politcally expedient. We expect him to have no backbone. So when he does something politically expedient that shows him with no backbone, nobody’s surprised.
4) Because the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES is calling for a group of people to be treated like second class citizens, that’s why!
Jeez. And John Kerry has said that he’d support a Constitutional Amendment outlawing gay marriage, so long as it allowed for civil unions.
Is it so much to ask for a Presidential candidate — or President, for that matter — to just say that the Constitution shouldn’t be amended to promote social policy? Especially amending it in such a way that enshrines a class of people as second class citizens?
To their credit, Republican congressmen, including Tom Delay, aren’t really expressing support for an amendment banning gay marriage. Would only that the President showed the same courage.
“When people tell me that, in weighing the political choices, the war on terror should trump the sanctity of the Constitution, my response is therefore a simple one. The sanctity of the Constitution is what we are fighting for. We’re not fighting just to defend ourselves. We are fighting to defend a way of life: pluralism, freedom, equality under the law. You cannot defend the Constitution abroad while undermining it at home. It’s a contradiction. And it’s a deeply divisive contradiction in a time of great peril.”
– Andrew Sullivan
Matthew Yglesias misstates some facts about Bush’s free trade legacy. Matt says:
Fair enough, but what of the competition? Bush favors free trade, except he doesn’t do anything to make new agreements go through, subsidizes favors industries, sometimes imposes tariffs to benefit politically-important constituencies, and slaps down his own economic advisor when he speaks the truth on the subject.
Bush certainly hasn’t been a perfect free-trader. To my knowlege, no President has. The steel tariffs were rotten, and he’s certainly maintained subsidies, such as agricultural subsidies. But it’s not like he started them.
Where I really take issue with Matt is on this point” “he doesn’t do anything to make new agreements go through…”
Except that under Bush’s watch, the United States has eagerly pursued the FTAA and CAFTA, made a free trade agreement with Australia and Jordan, and is pursuing free trade agreements with many other countries. Additionally, it was under Bush’s watch that the United States pushed during WTO negotiations a complete elimination of industrial tariffs, successfully negotiated broader protections for intellectual property globally, and actually began negotiations to eliminate agricultural subsidies (although Europe’s refusal to do so made this a politically unsustainable position.)
Bush ain’t a perfect free trader, but he ain’t bad, either. Give credit where credit’s due. From a free trade perspective, I’d much rather have Bush at the helm than Kerry or Edwards.
The Pentagon is investigating Halliburton.
The Pentagon has launched a criminal investigation into possible fraud connected with Halliburton Co.’s assignment to truck fuel into Iraq.The Defense Criminal Investigative Service agreed to examine Halliburton subsidiary KBR and its relationship with a Kuwaiti subcontractor, Altanmia Commercial Marketing Co., at the urging of Pentagon auditors who had identified possible “irregularities” related to the gasoline purchases.
Auditors from the Defense Contract Audit Agency had alleged that KBR, formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, might have overcharged the government as much as $61 million for trucking fuel from Kuwait into Iraq.
I don’t know enough about the situation to pass judgment, but this is a pretty awful “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” situation for the Bushies, isn’t it? The Pentagon finds out some shady happenings going on, and that whole Bush/Cheney/Halliburton smear gains a lot of credence and hurts them for re-election. And if the Pentagon clears Halliburton of wrongdoing? “It’s a cover-up!”
Don’t get me wrong–if something did happen, it should be investigated and charges should be filed as necessary. I just never bought into that Bush/Halliburton bullshit, and so I’m going to be annoyed when Bush gets smeared for something he probably wasn’t involved with. Call me a stickler for principle, but I want people to not like Bush for his actual record, not his made-up one!
Roger Simon isn’t looking forward to this election. Neither am I.
We need someone who can represent the millions of Americans who back a militant stand against violent religious fascism abroad in order to uphold genuine human freedom here at home. Now that George W. Bush has formally elected to throw the weight of his presidency behind the same-sex marriage-ban amendment he is no longer seems to be that. Personally, I am at a loss. With the Democrats poised to nominate a mealy-mouthed phony who thinks (or pretends to think) there is no War on Terrorism and the man in the White House acting in entirely unnecessary self-righteousness, I feel at a loss. It’s going to be a long 2004 for me.
He’ll get no argument from me.
