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Tonight, Freya and I decided that whenever someone tells Win something that he doesn’t understand, we’ll teach him to ask for clarification with the question “Is that a euphemism?”
Parenting is the best.
How Much Military Is Enough? -
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This is a world in arms. This world in arms is not spending money alone; it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… . This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
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I think for, you know, the moms and dads out there, the people who give money to Christian advocacy groups, to the RNC, what they want is something really, you know, important. They want to try and make America better. And they’ve been led to believe that somehow all of that can be achieved through politics. All of if can be achieved particularly through conservative politics. And you fast from something not because it’s evil, but because you want to step away and focus on something more spiritual.
And I really would love to see a period of time for a couple of years where evangelical voter stopped giving to all these political groups and started giving to the poor, you know, started giving their time to after-school programs, started, you know, doing two things that Jesus said, like loving your neighbor and — and again, redirecting that money towards the poor. And I think that it would provide some much-needed perspective on the political environment.
” — The late David Kuo talking to Terry Gross in 2006 about his call for a fast from politics for evangelicals. Kuo, the Deputy Director of President George W. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, became disillusioned with the politics of the Bush White House. He died on Friday at age 44. He had brain cancer. (via nprfreshair)[video]
Harlow’s empathy for the perpetrators signifies a classic move in the rhetoric of rape: victim blaming. Blame it on the victim’s clothes. Blame it on the victim’s sexual history. Blame it on the victim’s initial arousal. Shouldn’t we also consider what those accusations say about men: That if women’s clothing prompts men to rape, our culture holds very low standards for masculine self-control? Instead, we treat men like animals who can’t help themselves, and we expect women to police themselves to protect themselves from men as if they were beasts. All to avoid assigning blame where it actually belongs. Consider this, if any woman with a sexual history is “asking” for rape, then most women of age in this country are asking for it. Do we really want to live in a culture where we don’t offer women the right to change their minds in the midst of amorous engagements, and where we don’t consider what kind of men need a sexual conquest without consent? Shouldn’t we contemplate why two young men would drag a barely conscious female around, penetrating her and abusing her body while joking and taking photographs?
Beyond Steubenville: Rape Culture and Complicity
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I don’t really think the humanist verities are quite enough. Because that would be crazy if they were. It would be so weird if we knew just as much as we needed to know to answer all the questions of the universe. Wouldn’t that be freaky? Whereas the probability is high that there is a vast reality that we have no way to perceive, that’s actually bearing down on us now and influencing everything. The idea of saying, ‘Well, we can’t see it, therefore we don’t need to see it,’ seems really weird to me.
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