LILEKS (James) Screedblog

Monday, January 9 2006

From the Sunday Strib editorial page (not on the web, alas) a little mini-demi edit:

Does religion make you happy and successful? Or are happy, successful people more likely to attend church? Economist Jonathan Gruber recently studied the question – measuring religious observance while controlling for socioeconomic factors such as income. He found that regular formal worship really does seem to improve a family’s economic outcomes, increased children’s chances of graduating from high school and reduce the likelihood of getting divorced or going on welfare.

Bully for them. Now here’s where it gets good. And remember, I do not come at this from a Ned Flanders perspective. I am not Ned Flanders. But I would rather have him as a neighbor than anyone else in Simpsonland.

Gruber’s findings, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, can’t quite explain the link between faith and happiness.

Understand that to some people, this is like saying they can’t quite explain the link between water and wet.

But he has four theories about regular worship: it increases the number of positive social interactions; religious institutions provide a form of emotional and financial insurance against crises; children who attend religious schools might have an advantage in life (how? –ed.) and regular churchgoers might simply be less stressed-out than other people. (why? –ed.)

I don’t mean to pick on the author, who might have just decided to summarize without speculating beyond the conclusions offered in the report. But it does have that tell-tale tone of someone reporting on a strange mysterious tribe discovered in deepest Ecuador. The natives seem to derive happiness from their six-day orgies of feasting, games, and sex; why is this? Look, there’s another possibility that people who attend church regularly are happier: they believe in a benevolent God who governs the world and will grant them life after death, and hence they feel as though they belong to something larger and more timeless than the petty world of meat, sweat and strife.

Just maybe.

The other joy comes from the letters to the editors, which are a daily source of insight into the things that make people shout into the great dark barn that is the editorial page. You learn things. From a fellow in Moorhead:

Those Bush apologists who have been filling your pages with the claim that the president as commander-in-chief in the war against terrorism has the right to investigate without restraint or external oversight ought to consider this thought experiment.

Rest assured that the author believes that his ideas have never been considered by the other side, and will come as a crippling blow to their self-regard. (The letter was given the title “See the Problem?” Yes! The goggles, they do nothing!)

Assume that violent Islamic fundamentalism, like Nazism and communism before it, is completely marginalized.

And confined only to China? Great.

Further assume an American president as far to the left as George W. Bush is to the right.

That would be Joe Lieberman, right? No? Ah – forgot. Bush is waaaay out there to the Right, which is why he dissolved the departments of Education, HHS, HUD, ended federal ag subsidies, withdrew from the UN, ended affirmative action, and all those other things the far right wants. But of course the fringe right thought Clinton sacrificed babies to a shrine of Lenin and slept lashed to an inverted cross, so it works both ways.

This president decides to go after the second most successful terrorist movement in the country – the ultraconservative, antigovernment movement as represented by Timothy McVeigh –

Sigh.

. . . and allies like the anti-abortion bombers, arsonists and assassins as well as the violently racist Christian Identity movement.

Which do you think troubles the author more – the Islamists, whose patron nation is about to get a nuke, or 40 frothy-mouthed nutwads in an Idaho compound convinced, there will be a race war when the 15th anniversary of the O.J. Simpson case wakes up the nation to the perils of race-mixing?

How much latitude would Bush defenders allow such a president in investigating conservatives, abortion foes, and fundamentalist Christians?

This analogy is so spectacularly incoherent you don’t know where to begin; it’s like trying to eat moving spaghetti with a feather. The answer to the amount of latitude granted would be “not much,” inasmuch as it would be wrong to investigate a devout Lutheran in Nebraska who believes in a flat-rate tax and a partial-birth abortion ban simply because he holds those beliefs. These beliefs are perfectly legal, just like it’s legal to believe that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger. The latter remains insufficient as “probable cause.” It would be different if the Nebraskan was part of a cell devoted to blowing up abortion clinics, in which case “Bush defenders” would be perfectly happy to have the fellow tapped and taped. Law and order party, and all that.

Likewise, if President Clinton had used the same tools as President Bush, intercepted communications between McVeigh’s associate and, say, Philippine Islamist cells, and this nifty intel operation thwarted the OKC bombing, most Americans of all political stripes would have nodded approval, turned the page and forgotten about it. (Just as most forgot about the 1993 WTC attack.) That’s what we pay you guys for! Nice job. Some on the right would have shrieked about Big Brotherism; some of the left would have insisted the ACLU challenge the wiretaps. Most Republicans and Democrats – i.e., middle-of-the-road folks who share a desire for the continuation of this fragile American Experiment – would not be unduly troubled. Good faith would go a long way, and as long as the government hadn’t picked up on the bad actors as a result of the Total Human Observation Project, slack would be cut.

(Assuming we would have heard about the intelligence coup, that is. Sometimes you keep quiet about your successes, lest you tip your hand. Some things are more important than glowing atta-boy editorials in the Times. Not to say the NSA programs have stopped anything. Oh, perish the thought. Perish the possibility.)

I understand what the letter-writer is suggesting. But the analogy works only if you assume that the government has decided to waste its time “investigating” everyone opposed to the US on general principle, instead of targeting real threats. (Like a subliterate skinhead striking a blow for racial purity by slipping “88” thongs past the Café Press censors.) Not to put words in the fellow’s mouth, but you suspect he regards the Christian Identity Movement - a group that probably has more letters in its name than members - as a threat not only equal to the Islamicists, but one that somehow betrays a greater truth about the true nature of the right. And he seems to suggest that the hard left would decide to “investigate” everyone to the right of Noam Chomsky if they got in power. Thanks for the heads up!

But that’s not really what tickled me about the letter. It’s a fairly concise summation of a particular mindset that does not, to put it lightly, share the same peril-set I do. The arguments about the legality of the intercept programs are complex and fascinating, but – if I can overgeneralize – seem to trouble most those who are convinced that the entire point of the intelligence operation is to bring about some Panopticon nightmare with no rationale for its existence other than some nebulous, undefined notion of “security.” Those who are less troubled see the core problem as the threat to which these intelligence efforts are responding. And that’s why the letter amused. He said:

Assume that violent Islamic fundamentalism, like Nazism and communism before it, is completely marginalized.

Right. The Iranian sponsors, with their nuclear ambitions and support of international terror, are off the stage; the Saudi paymasters are likewise cowed or replaced with a government that seeks coexistence with Israel; Syria has had a revolution, Iraq makes the Swiss look like South Bronx (or a Paris Suburb), the Chechen rebels have disbanded in shame, the store-front sheiks of London have decided to join in the experiment of 21st century post-national continental identity, the various rag-tag bombers and separatists and fundamentalists from Indonesia to India to Pakistan have likewise stood down, and the most primitive, unreconstructed, antagonistic threat to modernity, liberalism, gender equity, religious tolerance, pluralism, and all the other right bonny boons of the Western Civ have been defeated, thwarted, or persuaded to change their ways.

Assume that, and we can get on to the issues the apologists never consider.

Give me a call when it happens. We’ll sit down and have a nice hot cup of worry. Some scones, too. If they’re fresh.

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