Tag: discourse

Heart Desmond Tutu Liek Whoa.

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Archbishop Desmond Tutu is my hero. Really, truly, properly. I just think he’s one of the best men to ever have lived. I got to meet him once, when he was the Archbishop of Cape Town, as my Nan and Aunt worshipped there and knew him a little. It’ll probably be one of my favourite memories till I die.

Anyway, it turns out that he has been in Chicago, where he was giving a talk called, “The Dawn of a New Moral Awakening,” at a breakfast given at Chicago Center for Cultural Connections.

This is some of what he said, from Cathleen Falsani at God’s Politics

“The other day, we were traveling and went through one or another of the airports,” Tutu told the diverse audience that included several other Christian bishops, rabbis, imams, Sikhs, and Buddhists, among others. “And the [television] screens showed some illustrations or cartoons of Barack Obama wearing Arab clothes, Muslim garb. I didn’t see all of it because we were passing through, but there was something about it … he was holding a gun and ‘terrorist’ was something that was put down there.”

“I felt incredibly sad for this country,” Tutu said, his sparkly eyes flashing with emotion behind wire-rimmed spectacles. “I thought, how obscene. How repulsive. And also, how dangerous! You know what’s happened already? There are people in this country and in many other countries who are saying, ‘Islam is a religion that propagates violence. Islam is a religion that propagates terrorism.’ It’s an offensive, repulsive, obscene [mischaracterization] and dangerous. And they say this because one of his names is ‘Hussein’? They forget that the other name means ‘blessing.’”  Read more...

: News,Politics
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time to take back the discourse

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These people need to be stopped from being allowed to claim that they are speaking for Christianity as a whole, right about now.

I am horrified that this is actually a serious advert, though not surprised. I am sick of the way that this kind of thing makes a lot of militant athesists assume that this is what I think and believe just because I’m a Christian. I’m sick of the way the Christians who believe and promote this kind of thing get to tell me I’m going to hell because I don’t think like they do. And I am absolutely disgusted by things like Focus on the Family’s Letter from 2012 which not only misinterprets Obama’s policies and views and the amount any president can get done in one term, but which seeks to make people vote based on fear, and which condems young evangelicals for voting for Obama.

It is way past time for those young evangelicals to reclaim their faith from these people, and to say, “No, I think you’re getting it wrong.” It doesn’t have to be a condemnation of the beliefs – though it certainly should be of some of the methods of spreading them – but an explanation of why we believe what we believe, and why it’s ok for us to believe it. Kudos to Jim Wallis and Co. at God’s Politics and Sojourners who try and drag Christian social concerns into a non-partisan-specific but politcally active field. We need to stop the fundamentalist religious right from dictating the discourse about the Christian faith. They don’t speak for all of us, and they shouldn’t be allowed to.

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: Media,News,Politics
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Contradictions…

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I got annoyed by Sarah Palin’s speech last night.  That’s probably fairly noticeable. It was a well written, well delivered piece of work, and it was bitchy and partisan as hell.

It’s one thing to disagree with your opponent, it’s quite another to dismiss their career path with a sneer.  ”Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organiser”, except that you have actual responsibilities.”
Bada-bing-bang-boom.  Community Organisers *so* lack a sense of responsibility.  That’s why they took the job, rather than getting straight onto the political ladder by becoming mayor of a small town.

But then we get this little gem.
“I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion – I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people. Politics isn’t just a game of clashing parties and competing interests. The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.”  Read more...

: Arts,Musings,News
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the circularity of politics

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I now have a footnote in my thesis citing Matt Yglesias and George W. Bush’s speech to this year’s Republican Convention.  The footnote lurks in a chapter on the Philippics right now, although it will move, in the final showdown, towards the conclusion as I chat happily and not at all ominously about the problems of the existence of multiple understandings of political concepts in the Late Republic.  Basically my line of argument, at the moment goes something like Cicero says so-and-so is a good citizen because the things that so-and-so has done benefit Rome, which begs the question of who gets to decide what actually benefits the Republic.  Answer, pretty much no-one, they all just fight about it, which is all pretty much fine until someone rocks up with an army to back up their side.    That someone in this case being Mark Antony, whilst Cicero, having attempted to push Antony out of Rome as a non-citizen ended up with his head and hands cut off and nailed up in public.

So this is me on Cicero on good citizenship: ”Nonetheless, this remains Cicero’s own understanding of the good citizen, not a universal one, and his tendency to define other understandings of political concepts, as wrong and dangerous for the Rome, rather than accept the possibility of their validity in a different understanding of the nature of the res publica precludes the opportunity for negotiation and compromise that might have enabled Rome to avoid civil war.”  Read more...

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