It is the sixth anniversary of the Jamrud mosque bombing. It was a suicide bombing and at least 48 people were killed and roughly a hundred injured. According to witnesses, a boy of 15 or 16 climbed into a window, went to the main hall that was filled for Friday prayers, and he blew himself up. It was a complete horror as you can see in the photo on the left. But there are two issues that this raises in my mind.

The first is the use of children as suicide bombing. I once heard an interview with a teenage girl who was supposed to be a suicide bomber but backed out at the last minute. And her story was really tragic. Her boyfriend had been killed by the Israelis and so she was upset and mentioned that she would like to get revenge, and the people who lead these kind of thing jumped on her and pushed her into becoming a suicide bomber. It is so horrible. Like military leaders everywhere, she was just a resource to be used however they thought best in their war with the Israelis. All I can say is that warriors should fight their own wars and leave kids out of it. I realize this is not the way things work, and there is nothing any different between that and killing children. Still, I have a hard time not seeing this teenage boy as a victim as well.

The second issue is the bombing of a mosque. I’m just not clear where all our resentment of Muslims comes from. The Muslims who are politically radicalized are mostly in the business of killing other Muslims. So I just don’t see what the whole issue is with their religion. I keep coming back to Sam Harris’ line that “Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas.” Really?! It’s such a bigoted and ignorant claim. His depth of thinking on Islam is about as deep as Phil Robertson’s thinking on atheism. The may thing that occurs to me is that this kind of thinking (that many atheists are very open about) is very much blaming the victim.

With deep sadness and hope that the world becomes a better place, we mark this sixth anniversary of the Jamrud mosque bombing.

On this day in 1811, Percy Shelley was thrown out of Oxford for publishing a little book, The Necessity of Atheism. It’s a notable event in the sense that it shows something that isn’t widely understood: schools are used primarily for the purpose of constraining thought. I remember as I was making my way through college being shocked that many great scientific advancements seemed so obvious. But I eventually learned that, despite the propaganda of the academy, scholars are encouraged to fall in line. Like everywhere else, it is easier to go along to get along.

That doesn’t mean that scholarship doesn’t work. But our colleges are dependent for their very existence on the good will of the power elite. They don’t like academics to shake things up. In general, that doesn’t affect the sciences as much as it does other areas of study. But most of all, they don’t like anything that will challenge their power. That’s why global warming is a far more contentious issue than quantum mechanics.

Historically, religion has been one of the greatest tools for maintaining the status quo. Even today in America, I hear people justify the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the poor in moral terms. It’s a great way to stop people from asking questions, “Things are this way because God wants them that way!”

Of course, Shelley did a lot more than just question the existence of God. He questioned the existence of free will. That is a much more frightening idea to the power elite. If we are not responsible for our thoughts and actions, then there is no justification for massive inequality. The basis of capitalism is the idea that incentives matters. If that isn’t true, there isn’t much left to justify it.

I’m sure that Shelley would have agreed with me. He was a political radical. I still think it is amazing that these people living 200 years ago were miles past where most Americans are today in terms of politics. It speaks well of him that he got himself kicked out of college. Good job!

Happy birthday Percy Shelley’s expulsion!

On this day in 1919, fascism was born. It seems like only yesterday! Maybe that is because the United States has so many fascist elements to it — and I’m not just talking about the Republican Party. When the head of Whole Foods said that Obamacare was basically a fascist law, he wasn’t wrong. Neoconservatism is entirely in keeping with fascism in terms of nationalism and foreign policy. But neoliberalism has many similarities to fascist economic policies. I don’t know where we ever got the idea that the best way to improve the lives of Americans was for the government to “partner” with the private sector. I think neoliberalism has had a much greater negative impact on Americans than neoconservatism. Of course, the fact that most neoconservatives are also neoliberals (or worse) when it comes to the economy does tilt the argument quite distinctly away from them.

The reason that today is the birthday of fascism is because today is the day that Benito Mussolini started his political movement. Of course, fascism dates back much further than that. In fact, it is hard not to see fascism as fundamentally a movement trying to bring back the Roman Empire. I don’t think we should hold it against the Romans, given that they ruled roughly 2,000 years ago, but they had many of the same kinds beliefs and policies that we know and despise in modern fascism. I think there will always be fascists, the only question is how much power we will allow them to get.

The American right wing has a lot of fascist elements. The biggest way is in their nationalism. That is probably the single most important aspect of fascism. But there are other aspects: authoritarianism, imperialism, traditionalism, racism, and anti-intellectualism — all of which are alive and well in American conservatism. There is one way that the American right is not like fascism. In its early days, fascism believed in workers being combined as an important part of the power structure of the nation. So basically, you had labor, business, and government all working together. American conservatives are not on board with that kind of thing. In that regard, they are more believers in feudalism. So you can say that American conservatism is very much like fascism, but worse.

Liberals, of course, are not like that. But the New Democrats (who continue to control the Democratic Party) have a number of similarities. But it’s like everything about the politics of America: the New Democrats generally suck, but they are so much better than the Republicans (who have been completely taken over by the conservative movement). A better argument could be made that Democrats are communists, but that doesn’t make much sense either. I think that most people on the American left wing see themselves ultimately as being in favor of a kind of Swedish socialism. And the worst you can say about them is that their markets are not as efficient as they ought to be. I don’t agree with that criticism, but I’ll take it if the conservatives will accept that there really isn’t much they have to disagree with Mussolini.

Happy birthday fascism!

On this day in 1621, Plymouth Colony signed a peace treaty with Massasoit, the leader of the Wampanoag people. It was thanks to this tribe that the Pilgrims managed to not die their first year in the new world. And that’s according to the Pilgrims themselves. But you know the old saying, “What have you done for me lately?” Within a couple of years, tensions increased. But Massasoit maintained his alliance with the colony for the four decades that remained of his life.

Massasoit was under siege from all sides. The Mi’kmaq were encroaching on the Wampanoag’s land from the north. The Pequot were encroaching from the west. And increasingly, the colonist were coming from the east. I think that Mel Brooks had it wrong: it sucks to be king. People are horrible. Eventually, Massasoit just sold land to the colonists rather than have them take it.

This all reminds me of one of my most visited articles, Ayn Rand and Indians. It involves Rand’s authoritarian and racist comments that it was right for western settlers to take the native tribes’ land because they had no concept of property rights. I actually don’t know of any example of people who didn’t have the concept of property rights. But the experience of the Wampanoag people should be clear enough. That’s the problem with basing a philosophy on ignorance and racism.

Ultimately, Massasoit led his people admirably. Things kind of fell apart after his death, however. But it is sort of a miracle that he was able to keep it together that long. It’s hard for me to imagine any of our leaders today guiding us through such difficult times.

Happy birthday Wampanoag-Pilgrim treat signing!

[I’m a little behind today because of other pressing work. So I’m going to rerun my birthday post from last year. It isn’t just the time thing. I think that William Jennings Bryan is wrongly vilified today. People ought to know the truth about him: he was a hero of the people. And it was a lot more sensible to be a creationist in 1925 than it is today. -FM]

On this day in 1860, the populist icon William Jennings Bryan was born. It’s sad that today he is almost entirely remembered for his anti-evolution views in the Scopes Trial. Because he was a lot more than that. And I mean that in a good and a bad way. But I think he stands as the ultimate example of populism. If you look at what actual Americans think about political issues, you will find that they are somewhat conservative on social issues and somewhat liberal on economic issues. That’s what Bryan was, except without the “somewhat.”

What boggles my mind is that the modern day everyman archetype is Sarah Palin: socially and economically conservative. But that’s not populist at all! What is populist about thinking that you should get less money and billionaires should get more? What obviously as gone on is a very successful marketing campaign. I’m with Thomas Frank in What’s the Matter With Kansas? The conservative movement has convinced large swaths of America to vote against their best interest in the name of a bizarre kind of identity politics.

I should be clear where I stand: I would give up pretty much all of the socially liberal policies for strong economically liberal policies. Make same-sex marriage illegal in exchange for a $15 inflation adjusted minimum wage? No problem! Make abortion illegal in exchange for a wealth tax and an end to the payroll tax cap? No problem, other than the fact that I’m a man and I don’t have the right to negotiate away a right that belongs to women. But you get the idea: I place a far higher premium on economic issue than I do social issues.

As a result of this, I’m pretty happy where Bryan came down politically. What’s more, let’s face it: he was a smart guy and times have changed. But regardless, this is all Maslow “hierarchy of needs” stuff. People need jobs. And check out what he has to say about the gold standard in 1896. “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” There are plenty of conservatives today who want to do just that. And there are plenty of “populists” who would cheer them on.

Here is the end of the speech, via NPR:

Happy birthday William Jennings Bryan!

Fifty-six years ago, President Eisenhower signed into law Hawaii becoming a state. Now I haven’t giving a lot of thought to that usurper in the White House and the fact that he is not qualified to be president. But now I see just how deep this conspiracy goes. So apparently, Obama’s mother (while still in high school) got together with his father — a full year before they officially met. And somehow, they got to Congress and eventually even the president himself to make Hawaii a state because they knew that they were going to have a child that would go on to become President of the United States. This conspiracy is so deep that I’m almost inclined to think that I made the whole thing up. But this a fact: I’ve never actually seen Obama’s birth certificate. (Not that it matters, because clearly the lobbying done by Obama’s parents was illegal and we shouldn’t even consider Hawaii a state.)

But in all honesty, why was Hawaii the last state? I remember getting into a twitter argument with a guy. He finally decided to ask me a question that would settle the issue of whether I was a decent human being, “What’s your position on Puerto Rican statehood?” I responded, “Honestly, I don’t know enough to have a public opinion. But personally, it seems an outrage that it isn’t already a state.” That satisfied him. But what is that all about, anyway? Why do we leave all of our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico and Guam and many other places in a kind of limbo?

I know the reason. I often find that Americans have a certain kind of privilege and feel that others shouldn’t be included. And it is sad. To me, what’s great about the America of my aspirations is that it says, “Come join us!” But especially (but in no way, exclusively) among conservatives, the more exclusive America is, the better. So it has been 56 years since we last expanded the franchise. It doesn’t speak well of us.

Happy “birthday” Hawaii!