Teddy Roosevelt Was A Socialist!!!!!

Teddy Roosevelt broke from the Republicans and ran as the "Bull Moose Party" (officially the "Progressive Party") candidate for President in 1912. The platform of the new party included a lengthy section on "Social and Industrial Justice." This included a pledge to establish "a system of social insurance".

See this article at the website politifact.com for a decent discussion of Barack Obama's claim that his Health Care Reform is in line with what Teddy Roosevelt envisioned almost a century ago. Their conclusion is "Clearly, Obama is on solid ground tracing the push for national health care back to Theodore Roosevelt."

Much of the Progressive platform was accomplished over the following years and decades. Women's Suffrage. Prohibition of child labor. Minimum wage laws. The establishment of a Department of Labor. Many of these reforms were actively opposed by the Supreme Court for many years based on the claim that they were all unconstitutional, and were only able to become law after FDR's famous showdown with the Supreme Court in 1937 (see the previous post The "Unconstitutional" Canard for more on that).

Here is the entire section of the Progressive Party 1912 Platform on "Social and Industrial Justice" and also the section on "Health" (link):

SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE

The supreme duty of the Nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in State and Nation for:

Effective legislation looking to the prevention of industrial accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurious effects incident to modern industry;

The fixing of minimum safety and health standards for the various occupations, and the exercise of the public authority of State and Nation, including the Federal Control over interstate commerce, and the taxing power, to maintain such standards;

The prohibition of child labor;

Minimum wage standards for working women, to provide a "living wage" in all industrial occupations;

The general prohibition of night work for women and the establishment of an eight hour day for women and young persons;

One day's rest in seven for all wage workers;

The eight hour day in continuous twenty-four hour industries;

The abolition of the convict contract labor system; substituting a system of prison production for governmental consumption only; and the application of prisoners' earnings to the support of their dependent families;

Publicity as to wages, hours and conditions of labor; full reports upon industrial accidents and diseases, and the opening to public inspection of all tallies, weights, measures and check systems on labor products;

Standards of compensation for death by industrial accident and injury and trade disease which will transfer the burden of lost earnings from the families of working people to the industry, and thus to the community;

The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use;

The development of the creative labor power of America by lifting the last load of illiteracy from American youth and establishing continuation schools for industrial education under public control and encouraging agricultural education and demonstration in rural schools;

The establishment of industrial research laboratories to put the methods and discoveries of science at the service of American producers;

We favor the organization of the workers, men and women, as a means of protecting their interests and of promoting their progress.

HEALTH

We favor the union of all the existing agencies of the Federal Government dealing with the public health into a single national health service without discrimination against or for any one set of therapeutic methods, school of medicine, or school of healing with such additional powers as may be necessary to enable it to perform efficiently such duties in the protection of the public from preventable diseases as may be properly undertaken by the Federal authorities, including the executing of existing laws regarding pure food, quarantine and cognate subjects, the promotion of vital statistics and the extension of the registration area of such statistics, and co-operation with the health activities of the various States and cities of the Nation.

Welcome to Pakistan?

It all started with those Town Hall meetings in the Summer of 2009. In case you've forgotten, here are some headlines:

• Health Care Town Halls Turn Violent (FOX News)
• Town Hall Meeting Turns Ugly (CNN)
• Health Care Town Hall Debates Stoke Outrage (ABC)
• Protesters Disrupt Town Hall Health Care Talks (Reuters)
• Rage Boils Over At Town Hall Meetings On Health Care (NY Daily News)

This was also the time when those ghoulish Obama "Joker" posters started popping up everywhere, with the caption "SOCIALISM."

Suddenly, a centrist Democrat, Barack Obama, was being labeled a "socialist" for supporting an idea first proposed by Teddy Roosevelt, a federal policy to provide universal health insurance for all Americans.

When Health Care Reform was finally passed, there were more yelling angry mobs, but now there were also physical assaults on Congressional offices, and death threats.

Then Sarah Palin came out with her infamous "cross-hairs" map. Here is what Gabrielle Giffords had to say about Palin's map:

"the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district, and when people do that, they've gotta realize there are consequences to that action."
[Gabrielle Giffords on MSNBC, March 25, 2010]

But the 2010 election got hotter still. By June, Sharon Angle was thinking out loud about resorting to "second amendment remedies" in order to "take out Harry Reid."

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords managed to get re-elected, despite being targeted by Sarah Palin. Now she is fighting for her life, and six people, including a six year old girl and a Federal Judge, are dead.

"... bought it in an auction at the Mason's Lodge"

Opie Hendrix & the Texas Tallboys show how it's done on the mandolin:


Roger Allen shows how it's done on the guitar:


The Thunderbridge Bluegrass Boys show how it's done with only one microphone:


Chad Bentley shows how it's done with very low production values (this one is actually my favorite!):

Belief in Reincarnation in Sub-Saharan Africa

From the 2010 Pew study on Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa. The following are the percentages, by country, of people who answered "yes" to the question: "Do you believe in reincarnation -- that people will be born in this world again and again?"

Botswana 51%
Cameroon 43%
Chad 45%
DR Congo 38%
Djibouti 32%
Ethiopia 21%
Ghana 47%
Guinea Bissau 47%
Kenya 31%
Liberia 31%
Mali 28%
Mozambique 50%
Nigeria 37%
Rwanda 27%
Senegal 28%
South Africa 49%
Tanzania 32%
Uganda 51%
Zambia 17%

Consider this to be a follow-on to the post: A (very!) quick and dirty cross-cultural study of "supernatural" beliefs and experiences (with special attention to reincarnation).

Also, here is a handy map showing estimates for the degree to which there are "high levels of belief and practice" in African Traditional Religion in sub-Saharan Africa (reproduced from the post 200 Million African Pagans).

The "Unconstitutional" Canard

"We believe that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest charter of human liberty ever conceived by the mind of man."
[Article One, Platform of the States' Rights Democratic Party, 1948]

Prior to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Supreme Court had repeatedly torpedoed all attempts to pass federal legislation outlawing child labor, regulating working hours, establishing a minimum wage, protecting the right of workers to form labor unions, and so forth. These were all deemed to be "unconstitutional"!

Even after FDR's election, the Supreme Court continued to strike down many provisions of the New Deal on the same grounds. Finally, Roosevelt reminded the Court that the Constitution allowed him, in theory, to appoint as many Supreme Court Justices as he pleased. At first the Justices thought he was bluffing. But as the Judiciary Reorganization Act of 1937 (sometimes called Roosevelt's "court packing plan") began to work its way through Congress, suddenly the nation's highest court began to change its tune. Eventually that bill failed, but so did the attempted judicial activism of right-wing Justices opposed to the New Deal.

In 1948, President Harry Truman ordered the desegregation of the US military and established the President's Committee on Civil Rights. Worse still, in the eyes of some die-hard bigots, the 1948 Democratic Convention adopted a Civil Rights plank, at which point a number of southern Democrats walked out of the Convention. These southern Democrats soon announced the formation of a new party, the first plank of whose unanimously adopted platform states proudly: "We believe that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest charter of human liberty ever conceived by the mind of man."

But the Civil Rights movement continued to make progress, all the while being opposed by those who proclaimed their undying love for the Constitution. When the University of Alabama was ordered, by a federal judge, to allow black students to enroll, then Governor George Wallace delivered his famous "school house door" speech in support of segregation, in which he used the word "Constitution" 18 times.

After delivering that speech, George Wallace stood aside to allow Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood, accompanied by federal marshalls and Alabama National Guard troops, to enter Foster Auditorium and register as students.

Investigating Islamic radicalization in the U.S.

According to survey data from 2010, extremist ideas and extremist groups have significant levels of support both in majority Muslim countries, and in Islamic communities throughout Europe.

In fact, this data (gathered by the Pew Research Center) suggests that Glenn Beck's claim that 10% of Muslims support terrorism is likely to be too low. Pew found that fully 18% of those surveyed in 6 Muslim-majority countries openly (at least to pollsters) proclaim their support for Al Qaeda. And the level of support for imposing the death penalty on apostates was found to be much higher than that.

Among Muslims living in Europe, Pew found that the extremist Muslim Brotherhood (the progenitor of most modern day Sunni Muslim terrorist groups) is extremely, if you will, popular. In fact, the Brotherhood is often viewed by European governments as a de facto representative of Muslim sentiment in Europe.

But we don't have to take the word of the Pew Research Center. We need look no further than Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan, both of whom have repeatedly warned about the dire threat of Islamic extremism. Daisy Khan has gone so far as to state plainly that Islam "has been hijacked by the extremists." Not to be outdone by his wife, Imam Rauf is currently touring the United States sounding the alarm about the dangers of extremism.

And it's always good to keep in mind the prophetic words written by Fareed Zakaria (a consistently liberal American Muslim journalist whose father was a respected Islamic scholar) just a few weeks after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (although we now know that he was two orders of magnitude off in his estimation of the size of the problem): "The problem is not that Osama bin Laden believes that this is a religious war against America. It's that millions of people across the Islamic world seem to agree."

If one were very naive and had been living under a very large rock, then, one might suspect that a proposal to investigate "the radicalization of the American Muslim community and homegrown terrorism" in the US would be met with a combination of praise and sighs of relief. After all, the United States is not only home to approximately 5 million Muslims and 2,000 mosques, it is also the primary target for all Islamic extremists around the world.

But Peter King's announcement that he intends to conduct just such an investigation under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security has been met with a predictable chorus of denunciations both from prominent American Muslim organizations and from prominent liberals.

Unfortunately we have quickly gotten to the point where this knee jerk reaction from "progressives" is only to be expected. But think about it. Why are liberals so blindly opposed to investigating the extent to which the world's most arch-reactionary terrorists are operating right here in the US under our noses? Why are liberals opposed to investigating the extent to which the most illiberal ideology imaginable, Islamic extremism, has gained a footing in the US, and is being actively spread by people with sympathies for and organizational links to terrorist groups openly at war with the US?

In fact, we not only have every right to know, but we desperately need to know the extent of Islamic extremist sympathy, organizing, recruiting, and other activities in the US. For examples: How many mosques in the US were not only bought and paid for in Saudi Arabia, but are staffed and run by Wahabist clerics? How many "Islamic Community Centers" are being used as meeting places for people who are actively planning terrorist activities in the U.S.? And so forth.

But let's not limit this to Islam. Let's also investigate every other religious denomination whose members are known to advocate and be engaged in such things as bombing Synagogues, massacring religious pilgrims, calling for a new Holocaust, hunting down and murdering cartoonists, killing anyone who wants to change their religion, etc.

Links:

On widespread Muslim support for extremist groups and extremist ideas:

• Who Supports Al Qaeda? Over 100 Million Muslims. That's Who.
• What Does the Muslim Brotherhood think of the new Pew report?
• "Islamism" widespread, deeply rooted among Muslims in Europe, according to Pew study

Daisy Khan, Imam Rauf and Fareed Zakaria on the dangers of extremism:

• Imam Rauf: Extremism a Global Threat
• "Our religion has been hijacked by the extremists." Daisy Khan
• "The Islamic Exception"
• Do Muslims really bear no responsibility at all for 9/11?

"The totality of the Gods" (Lies, Damned Lies, & Pagan Monotheism, Part Deux)

In 1957, French scholar Gilbert Francois published a massive (nearly 400 pages) study of all occurrences of the singular nouns ὁ θεὸς (ho theos, "the God"), and ὁ δαίμων (ho daimon, "the daemon") in Greek literature from Homer to Plato. The title of the work is Le Polythéisme et l'emploi au singulier des mots ΘΕΟΣ, ΛΑΙΜΩΝ dans la littérature grecque d'Homère à Platon.

Francois' findings were summarized in a review of his book by Joseph Fontenrose, published in vol. 55, no.1 of the journal Classical Philology (Jan., 1960), from which the following is excerpted:

"Gilbert Francois [has] devoted a fairly big book to a thorough and painstaking study of every passage of Greek literature from Homer to Plato in which the singulars (ho) theos and (ho) daimon are used without obvious reference to an individual deity; and along with these singulars he studies every occurence of the substantives to theion and to daimonion.

"Francois shows that in most passages where the unspecific theos and daimon occur the singular is equivalent to (hoi) theoi and (hoi) daimones, when these plurals mean all Gods or all supernatural powers together. It is used exactly as "man" is used in English as a collective singular to mean "makind" or "(all) men." Theos, therefore, often means "godkind" as simply another term for all the Gods in one, divinity in general. Taking one by one every Greek author who lived and wrote before 350 BC, he shows by quotation of parallel passages as often as possible from a single work of the author concerned, that again and again (ho) theos and (hoi) theoi are used to express identical thoughts, and that no distinction can be made between them. Often singular and plural alternate within a single passage or argument, both obviously indicating one and the same divine power, the totality of the Gods."
[Classical Philology, Vol. 55, No. 1, p. 55]

Also see this previous blog entry where there is an especially relevant passage from Plato's Timaeus that offers a clear example of not only the plural and the singular of theos being used interchangeably, but even of the phrase "Gods and Goddesses" being explicitly used as well:
Pagan Cosmology: not quite random thoughts on Platonism, polytheism, monism, and so forth

And in this post are discussed (somewhat bluntly) the current crop of "Pagan Monotheism" peddlers (descendants of a long and prestigious line of Christian apologists going back to Eusebius & Co.), headed up by Stephen Mitchell:
Lies, Damned Lies, and Pagan Monotheism

Last, but not least, in this post there is a moderately detailed presentation of primary source material from a number of late-antique Pagans often wrongly identified as "Pagan Monotheists":
Hic sunt dracones

Full citation for the review of Francois' book quoted above:
Joseph Fontenrose
Reviewed work(s): Le Polythéisme et l'emploi au singulier des mots θεός daimwn dans la littérature grecque d'Homère à Platon by Gilbert François
Classical Philology
Vol. 55, No. 1 (Jan., 1960), pp. 55-58
(review consists of 4 pages)
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/265449

Enlightened Paganism: We are getting there.

[this post can also be read at Pantheon: The Pagan Blog At Patheos here]

Question posed by Star Foster at the Pantheon blog:

Why do you think Paganism has had a revival over the past 100 odd years? Is it simply due to the decriminalization of Witchcraft and divination? After 1500 years of oppression, why now?

My Answer:

In 1755, Jean Jacques Rousseau published his Discourse on Inequality, in which he argued that equality is the natural state of humanity, while inequality is something artificially imposed by human beings upon each other. This sentiment was echoed 21 years later when American Independence was announced to the world with the declaration that "all men are created equal." Four score and seven years later, Abraham Lincoln emphatically rededicated the United States to "the proposition that all men are created equal."

But a century after Lincoln's speech, inequality continued to be the law of the land in the US. And even though we have made a great deal of progress since then, genuine equality remains an aspiration that we still strive for, rather than an accomplishment that we can boast about.

The Enlightenment (exemplified by Rousseau and Jefferson), was not only a time when the ideal of human equality was declared. It was also a time when a full-throated critique of Christianity began to be heard openly in the western world for the first time in 1500 years.

As with human equality, it has been a long and difficult road from articulating the rejection of Christianity to making that rejection a reality. But we are getting there. I don't think it is any coincidence that the same historical period ("the 60s") that gave birth to social movements intent on eradicating, once and for all, all vestiges of inequality based on race, sex and sexual orientation, also witnessed the modern Pagan revival reaching never before imagined levels of success.

Previous phenomena like Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Deism, Theosophy, etc, were all imperfect and incomplete attempts to break free of Christianity and to re-establish the unfettered religious freedom that was taken for granted in the ancient world. Warts and all, Wicca and many of the other forms of Paganism that have arisen since the middle of the 20th century are significant improvements over those earlier efforts.

The tremendous religious freedom, and the resulting incredible range of religious diversity, that was characteristic of ancient Paganism is the goal toward which modern Paganism, properly understood, continues to struggle. Paganism is not yet another rival religious sect to be placed alongside Christianity, Islam and the other so-called "great religions", much less is it's place next to Raelianism, Scientology, and other "New Religious Movements." Rather, Paganism is simply what people do naturally, in terms of religion, when we are free to do as we please.

Freedom and equality are not imposed according to someone's grand scheme. Freedom and equality are the naturally resulting conditions that exist in the absence of oppression and inequality. But if oppression and inequality have reigned overly long, then it is only with great difficulty that the natural state envisioned by Rousseau and Jefferson is discovered once again. The same kind of difficulty is evident in our still halting attempts to return to a more natural kind of religion that is free of all coercion and that naturally and spontaneously manifests the innate spirituality of homo religiosus.

But we are getting there.

Dear Paul Krugman: Voodoo is a religion, not another name for evil irrational bullshit.

Everyone of a certain age well remembers the arrival into the English language of the phrase "voodoo economics".

30 years later, though, isn't it time for critics of "trickle-down" theories to decouple their economic polemics from religious invectives? Voodoo, you see, is a religion. In fact, it has at least as many adherents as Judaism.

Voodoo is more properly spelled Vodou, as is done in Haiti, or Vodun, as is common in West Africa. In the Western Hemisphere, Vodou is not only widespread in Haiti, but is also found, among other places, in the US states of Louisiana, Florida and New York.

In the Americas, Vodou is closely related to the Candomble religion found in Brazil, and the Santeria religion of Puerto Rico and Cuba. Like Vodou, both Candomble and Santeria are found elsewhere, including in many parts of the US. Most major American cities now have Botanicas, shops that cater to practitioners of Afro-Carribean religions generally, as well as to all sufficiently curious spiritual seekers, or just people interested in buying prayer candles, books by Alan Kardec, incense, etc.

In Africa, Vodun is just one of many surviving strands of African Traditional Religion. Benin, Togo, Nigeria, and Ghana all have large populations of adherents of Vodun. Estimates of the total number of practitioners of African Traditional Religion go as high as 200 million (or even higher), making it one of the largest religious traditions in the world.

It is especially galling to see fuck-the-poor/let-them-eat-cake economics characterized as "Voodoo", when the fact is that Christianity, and this should hardly be news to anyone, is the religion most closely associated with the supply-side crowd.

So whatever value there might be in Paul Krugman's most recent editorial, titled "The New Voodoo", everything that he says is irrevocably tainted by Krugman's egregious callousness toward a religion he unthinkingly derides.

The most dangerous and pernicious forms of bigotry are those that pass as socially acceptable. And this acceptance is due to the fact that people are perfectly comfortable engaging in and perpetuating certain kinds of bigotry because, in their ignorance, they do not take the targets of their bigotry seriously.

Links related to Vodou and African Traditional Religion:

• Vodou Priestesses & Priests Being Lynched in Haiti
• Blood Libel Against Africans & African Traditional Religion
• Al Jazeera's New Racist Documentary: "Magic & Murder"
• Support Haiti. Support Vodou. Buy Barbancourt Rum.
• Angelique Kidjo on Voodoo and Catholicism
• "What exactly is it about traditional religion that we fear?"
• "Witchcraft holds out against modern age"
• "Africa became Christian by submission, not by conversion"
• "The first thing Christianity did in Africa . . . ."
• More on Traditional African Religions
• Fela Kuti and traditional African religion

[the above image is from the Robson Khalaf's blog Povo do Santo.]