tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post8136943697034957018..comments2023-12-20T04:18:41.617-06:00Comments on The Hunting of the Snark: Our Moral EliteSusan of Texashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-56922634937456737212011-11-19T06:54:47.781-06:002011-11-19T06:54:47.781-06:00If Douthat wants to argue against the prosperity g...If Douthat wants to argue against the prosperity gospel and in favor of a moral obligation to make peace and care for the weak, that's OK. If, however, and as I expect, he argues only that governments are bad because they distract people from private charity, oh and wars are great as long as the people we're bombing are really, really bad, I'd rather he kept quiet.Lurking Canadiannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-73510267025497581542011-11-18T13:12:48.368-06:002011-11-18T13:12:48.368-06:00Paraphrasing what someone else once said, I only ...Paraphrasing what someone else once said, I only believe in one less God than Douthat does.zombie rotten mcdonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10601960953323752278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-14344190983923693952011-11-18T13:12:04.711-06:002011-11-18T13:12:04.711-06:00Ranging from Glenn Beck to Eat Pray Love, Joel Ost...<i>Ranging from Glenn Beck to Eat Pray Love, Joel Osteen to The Da Vinci Code, Oprah Winfrey to Sarah Palin, Douthat explores how the prosperity gospel's mantra of "pray and grow rich"; a cult of self-esteem that reduces God to a life coach;</i><br /><br />Oddly, all those arguments could also be used in support of atheism.zombie rotten mcdonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10601960953323752278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-71828731775943214792011-11-18T11:39:19.614-06:002011-11-18T11:39:19.614-06:00"The same insecure vanity that drives him to ..."The same insecure vanity that drives him to fight for gay acceptance also drives him to support the wealthy elite."<br /><br />I think you mean the <i>successful</i>.<br /><br />(and it's not even an adjective, no, it's a noun.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-65398067942999009622011-11-18T11:30:07.886-06:002011-11-18T11:30:07.886-06:00Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provoc...<em>Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation.</em><br /><br />Really?Tommykeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14751182125861177379noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-19572287857947205352011-11-18T11:04:11.506-06:002011-11-18T11:04:11.506-06:00Speaking of driftglass, he has a link to an articl...Speaking of driftglass, he has a link to an <a href="http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2011/11/good-stuff-conservatism.html" rel="nofollow">article</a> on Andrew Sullivan, in which Our American Hero devotes himself to a life-long battle for gay rights. It's kind of like a woman devoting herself to helping battered women while praising husbands who beat their wives. The same insecure vanity that drives him to fight for gay acceptance also drives him to support the wealthy elite.<br /><br />You can take the boy out of the power structure but you can't take the power structure out of the boy.Susan of Texashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-37831371801589294142011-11-18T09:58:16.700-06:002011-11-18T09:58:16.700-06:00I'll reiterate what I said at Driftgass' b...I'll reiterate what I said at Driftgass' blog.<br /><br />This fuckstick douthat couldn't lift Joe Poznanski's pen.Blotzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06993967190131485391noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-63382850648509636512011-11-18T07:07:51.766-06:002011-11-18T07:07:51.766-06:00His urgent call for a revival of traditional Chris...<i>His urgent call for a revival of traditional Christianity</i><br /><br />I suppose Indulgences <i>would</i> be useful nowadays.fishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01522672049371678717noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-77185257372328708482011-11-18T02:17:37.391-06:002011-11-18T02:17:37.391-06:00The proper question is: How can we ourselves overc...<i>The proper question is: How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive. That was the proper question after Abu Ghraib, Madoff, the Wall Street follies and a thousand other scandals. But it’s a question this society has a hard time asking because the most seductive evasion is the one that leads us to deny the underside of our own nature.</i><br /><br />The competition is stiff, but that may be the the most disingenuous thing David Brooks has ever written.Batocchiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02193752396025012825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-47371287140264095232011-11-17T15:37:14.268-06:002011-11-17T15:37:14.268-06:00"I don't know what the over/under on numb...<i>"I don't know what the over/under on number of child rapes would be for one of the 'good'"</i><br /><br />According to Douthat, it doesn't really matter if the number is 8 or 80, because whether one is a child rapist or not never enters into the equation when judging who is "good" and who is "wicked." You can rape all the kids you want if you're a good little servant (to God or the Catholic Church or whatever).atatnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-21921169932274658202011-11-17T13:41:15.817-06:002011-11-17T13:41:15.817-06:00Oh, look--Douthat wrote a book on religion.
"...Oh, look--Douthat wrote a book on religion.<br /><br />"As the youngest-ever op-ed columnist for The New York Times and the author of the critically acclaimed books Privilege and Grand New Party, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. Now he offers a masterful and hard-hitting account of how American Christianity has gone off the rails—and why it threatens to take American society with it. <br /><br />In a story that moves from the 1950s to the age of Obama, Douthat brilliantly charts traditional Christianity's decline from a vigorous, mainstream, and bipartisan faith—which acted as a "vital center" and the moral force behind the Civil Rights movement—through the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s down to the polarizing debates of the present day. He argues that Christianity's place in American life has increasingly been taken over, not by atheism, but by heresy: Debased versions of Christian faith that breed hubris, greed, and self-absorption. Ranging from Glenn Beck to Eat Pray Love, Joel Osteen to The Da Vinci Code, Oprah Winfrey to Sarah Palin, Douthat explores how the prosperity gospel's mantra of "pray and grow rich"; a cult of self-esteem that reduces God to a life coach; and the warring political religions of left and right have crippled the country's ability to confront our most pressing challenges, and accelerated American decline. <br /><br />His urgent call for a revival of traditional Christianity is sure to generate controversy, and it will be vital reading for all those concerned about the imperiled American future."<br /><br />God forbid we should have self-esteem. Literally.Susan of Texashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-62963919934775719222011-11-17T13:24:48.270-06:002011-11-17T13:24:48.270-06:00I think DocAmazing has it backwards.
"There ...I think DocAmazing has it backwards.<br /><br />"There were no pagan gods. Athena, Zeus, Ishtar, Mithras and all the rest are fictional."<br /><br />I was going to claim that Ishtar is not fictional, but <a href="http://movies.netflix.com/WiSearch?oq=ish&ac_posn=-1&ac_rec=true&ac_count=-1&ac_match=false&v1=ishtar" rel="nofollow">Netflix</a> agrees with you.Ken Houghtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01440837287933536370noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-84975264694693140092011-11-17T13:18:21.165-06:002011-11-17T13:18:21.165-06:00To sum up: We are talking about one of the most vi...To sum up: We are talking about one of the most vile crimes that exists--the brutalizing of the innocent and the defenseless. Compared to pedophile rape (i.e., brutalizing a child *simply for your own physical pleasure*), crimes against property are misdemeanors and even murder itself seems a little less dire. And what do Brooks and McMegan do?<br /><br />They criticize THE READER. They say either, you're as potentially evil as the rapist or those who cover for him (Brooks), or you're no better than those who didn't do enough in response to the crime, and you'd probably do just as little (MM).<br /><br />Brooks does it because he's taken as his bailiwick conservative apologetics via pop sociology: No injustice is so heinous, that it can't be mitigated by draining the personal responsibility from it via the catheter of pop science generalizations. <br /><br />McMegan does it because her vanity is such that she thinks her "libertarian" standpoint means she has insight into the human condition--and (hilariously) she fancies herself a truth-teller, as befits a writer for the Atlantic, with its knee-jerk, tedious contrarianism.<br /><br />Both end up where Susan identifies them: in defense of authority. As for Douthat, he's a young, milk-fed amateur intellectual striving to imitate a seasoned, existentially mature sage. How else to keep that cushy, lucrative Times gig?<br /><br />He's like Emmet Tyrell pretending to be Mencken. It's the grad student equivalent of girls dressing in mommy's clothes and daubing themselves with makeup. He has no idea of evil apart from what he's read about. As others here note, he's not even an accurate Catholic. He's just a young fart imitating his (literal) elders and betters.Mr. Wonderfulnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-24914633354771499592011-11-17T12:02:51.539-06:002011-11-17T12:02:51.539-06:00Brad-
As I see it, he's arguing that if a man...Brad-<br /><br />As I see it, he's arguing that if a man meets some arbitrary standard of 'goodness' based on public piety or football, than he should get a mulligan, or several if necessary, on child-rape. or other heinous acts, I guess. I don't know what the over/under on number of child rapes would be for one of the 'good', as Ross doesn't get into that level of detail. I presume it is more than however many children Sandusky raped.<br /><br />Does explain the RCC's attitude towards Hitler, though. They thought he was basically good.zombie rotten mcdonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10601960953323752278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-73661600596913888602011-11-17T11:40:52.986-06:002011-11-17T11:40:52.986-06:00DocAmazing: Yeah, I thought the exact same thing. ...DocAmazing: Yeah, I thought the exact same thing. This is a weirdly Calvinist attitude to see coming from an alleged Catholic.DFSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-58237804883280332042011-11-16T17:51:59.465-06:002011-11-16T17:51:59.465-06:00Elite sociopaths(and their publicists) project the...Elite sociopaths(and their publicists) project their vileness on "the masses". It's a built in justification for exploiting those they deem "less deserving". Makes it easy for them to "not care about wealth inequality". Read any ante-bellum defense of slavery. You'll see the same bullshit used to legitimize Slavery as an institution "despite bad masters". <br /><br />The elite's Heaven requires a well populated Hell on Earth. Douthat, Brooks, and McArdle write the elect's gospel. <br /><br />Randroid Calvinism.Anatole Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09475202797984385346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-42980364117847322212011-11-16T15:22:28.174-06:002011-11-16T15:22:28.174-06:00I can't even see what his argument is here, ul...I can't even see what his argument is here, ultimately. Bad things happen (x), and there are good people (y) and bad people (z). x + y = mistakes were made, they're still good people at heart. x + z = there's eeee-eeevil in the world, we need good people to stop it (unless they fail to, in which case see previous). Conclusion, ummmmmmm?<br />If that were a paper for an ethics class it would only pass because of grade inflation and the use of proper grammar and punctuation in a post-literate age.bradhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06907349163323395529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-66714180722567657872011-11-16T14:22:54.276-06:002011-11-16T14:22:54.276-06:00I guess they were wicked because they were vain--t...I guess they were wicked because they were vain--that is, they thought well of themselves instead of abasing themselves humbly before God. <br /><br />So the priests and bishops who were not vain ignored the rapes and molestation in a good way--with humility. A humble Catholic priest admits he's a sinner because he didn't put God first, goes to confession, is forgiven, and then evidently is passed around to some other parish.<br /><br />Public display of obedience to authority. Private disobedience that is ignored.Susan of Texashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-82096491199209906312011-11-16T13:57:15.691-06:002011-11-16T13:57:15.691-06:00This bit of insane reasoning just stopped me in my...This bit of insane reasoning just stopped me in my tracks:<br /><br /><i>"I also believe that most of the clerics who covered up abuse in my own Catholic Church were in many ways good men. Of course there were wicked ones as well — bishops in love with their own prerogatives, priests for whom the ministry was about self-aggrandizement rather than service."</i><br /><br />So the bishops and priests who were "wicked" weren't wicked for covering up sexual abuse, they were wicked for being vain?atatnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-65938817004460159242011-11-16T12:44:07.903-06:002011-11-16T12:44:07.903-06:00Douthat is an idiot. He really believes that cover...Douthat is an idiot. He really believes that covering up the heinous acts of pedophiles was to protect the Church's good deeds? What a load of bull. It was done to protect their public image and nothing more. Besides, what use are any of those good deeds when they come at the price of traumatizing children and knowingly arranging for them to never find justice? I was raised Catholic, and that somehow has not made it impossible for me to offer no excuses, no justification, and nothing short of complete and utter condemnation of the way that scandal was dealt with.Clever Pseudonymnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-34561643627067990392011-11-16T12:07:35.826-06:002011-11-16T12:07:35.826-06:00It's difficult to control someone with a stron...<i>It's difficult to control someone with a strong sense of self-worth and self-esteem.</i><br /><br />So our clergy & elites tell us were All Sinners!<br /><br />The Media tell us we're too Fat, too Dumb, too Poor, etc.Kathyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03176801494652946278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-12643502564793829002011-11-16T11:57:50.734-06:002011-11-16T11:57:50.734-06:00Douthat's not much of a Catholic; the argument...Douthat's not much of a Catholic; the argument that salvation proceeds from faith alone and not from works is pretty much pure Martin Luther.DocAmazingnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-33426262117944113022011-11-16T11:56:05.598-06:002011-11-16T11:56:05.598-06:00There are no witches, zombies, giants or gods, des...<i>There are no witches, zombies, giants or gods, despite what we read in the Bible.</i><br /><br />Hey now.zombie rotten mcdonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10601960953323752278noreply@blogger.com