Robert Wright's new book The Evolution of God makes an interesting case that God changes his mood throughout the Bible (He evolves!) as the situation for the Hebrews change.
Wright writes, "One thing I found is that some of the most belligerent, vindictive scriptures in the Hebrew Bible were written when Israelites were in roughly the mindset that Palestinians are in today. And some of the most tolerant, benevolent scriptures emerged after a change in Israel's political psychology much like the change Obama is trying to engineer in Palestinian psychology.
"For much of its early existence, Israel was a small nation in a tough neighborhood. It got pushed around by such superpowers as Assyria and, most famously, the neo-Babylonian empire, which in 586 BCE destroyed the Jerusalem temple and exiled Israel's elites. Like Palestinians today, Israelites felt humiliated and dispossessed; they weren't in control of their destiny.
"The result was a thirst for revenge."
I love it! Makes absolute sense to me. Read the whole article about his new book here. If you don't already subscribe to the Huffington Post, what are you waiting for? Subscribe and it'll come to your email daily, but also visit the home page where there are links to every major news site on the web, and then some.
Showing posts with label Huffington Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Huffington Post. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Friday, September 19, 2008
Some Commentary Snippets
From: "A Nation of Idiots" by James Moore on the Huffington Post:
"Don't let them tell you this economic meltdown is a complicated mess. It's not. Our national financial crisis is readily understood by anyone who has seen greed and hypocrisy. Conservative Republicans always want the government to stay out of business and avoid regulation as long as they are making lots of money. When their greed, however, gets them into a fix, they are the first to cry out for rules and laws and taxpayer money to bail out their businesses. Obviously, Republicans are socialists. The Bush administration has decided to socialize the debt of the big Wall Street Firms. Taxpayers didn't get to enjoy any of the big money profits on the phony financial instruments like derivatives or bundled sub-prime paper, but we get the privilege of paying for their debt and failures."
From Gawker.com's Pareene:
This quote is the concluding paragraph of his article "Science Explains Why People Vote For Republicans" in which he summarizes several studies each of which tries to pinpoint the values or fears that motivates Republican voters.
"Conservatives respond instinctually, not rationally, to scary images, "facts," and institutions. Whether this is innate and biological or cultural seems still up in the air. Democrats can't with with logical arguments or even appeals to the innate rightness of concepts like "diversity" and "tolerance," because those aren't considered essentially good and important by the voters they're trying to appeal to. This does suggest that an appeal to old New Deal institutional concepts like the Welfare State might actually be effective, if they're wrapped in the flag and a sense of duty. Also scientists still consider the majority of Americans to be like a fascinating exotic backwards tribe and the fucking country is doomed."
From CBS's Katie Couric's interview with Joe Biden:
Katie: “Your vice presidential rival, Governor Palin, said “To the rest of America, that’s not patriotism. Raising taxes is about killing jobs and hurting small businesses and making things worse.”
Biden: “How many small businessmen are making one million, four hundred thousand–average in the top 1 percent. Give me a break. I remind my friend, John McCain, what he said–when Bush called for war and tax cuts–he said, it was immoral, immoral, to take a nation to war and not have anybody pay for it. I am so sick and tired of this phoniness. The truth of the matter is that we are in trouble. And the people who do not need a new tax cut should be willing, as patriotic Americans, to understand the way to get this economy back up on their feet is to give middle class taxpayers a break. We take the tax cut they’re getting and we give it to the middle class.”
"Don't let them tell you this economic meltdown is a complicated mess. It's not. Our national financial crisis is readily understood by anyone who has seen greed and hypocrisy. Conservative Republicans always want the government to stay out of business and avoid regulation as long as they are making lots of money. When their greed, however, gets them into a fix, they are the first to cry out for rules and laws and taxpayer money to bail out their businesses. Obviously, Republicans are socialists. The Bush administration has decided to socialize the debt of the big Wall Street Firms. Taxpayers didn't get to enjoy any of the big money profits on the phony financial instruments like derivatives or bundled sub-prime paper, but we get the privilege of paying for their debt and failures."
From Gawker.com's Pareene:
This quote is the concluding paragraph of his article "Science Explains Why People Vote For Republicans" in which he summarizes several studies each of which tries to pinpoint the values or fears that motivates Republican voters.
"Conservatives respond instinctually, not rationally, to scary images, "facts," and institutions. Whether this is innate and biological or cultural seems still up in the air. Democrats can't with with logical arguments or even appeals to the innate rightness of concepts like "diversity" and "tolerance," because those aren't considered essentially good and important by the voters they're trying to appeal to. This does suggest that an appeal to old New Deal institutional concepts like the Welfare State might actually be effective, if they're wrapped in the flag and a sense of duty. Also scientists still consider the majority of Americans to be like a fascinating exotic backwards tribe and the fucking country is doomed."
From CBS's Katie Couric's interview with Joe Biden:
Katie: “Your vice presidential rival, Governor Palin, said “To the rest of America, that’s not patriotism. Raising taxes is about killing jobs and hurting small businesses and making things worse.”
Biden: “How many small businessmen are making one million, four hundred thousand–average in the top 1 percent. Give me a break. I remind my friend, John McCain, what he said–when Bush called for war and tax cuts–he said, it was immoral, immoral, to take a nation to war and not have anybody pay for it. I am so sick and tired of this phoniness. The truth of the matter is that we are in trouble. And the people who do not need a new tax cut should be willing, as patriotic Americans, to understand the way to get this economy back up on their feet is to give middle class taxpayers a break. We take the tax cut they’re getting and we give it to the middle class.”
Monday, September 3, 2007
Labor Pains on Labor Day
Speaking of labor: of chores that I don't enforce, of the labor I give to students that goes unappreciated, the labor and delivery of the teenager in my life, the labor of my forebears in the feminist and civil rights movement that I forget to appreciate now and then, the labor that my fellow Americans deliver to bosses who tell them that unions are evil, the labor it took to get unions at all in this country, the deaths of labor organizers, forgotten by workers, and to the labor of doctors and nurses ensnared in the American medical mess who are as much victims of insurance companies as the rest of us. Speaking of all this labor gives me pains.
How can workers in the country still believe that unions are anti-American? Unions are the only way for workers in a capitalist system to have any kind of check on the power of CEOs. And workers give this power away because of the fear of name calling. Oh, yeah. It's the high school bully's tactic, and we all know there's some power in it. Defying that kind of behavior takes real courage. It's words like "un-American," "Pinky," "Red," or "Commie" that makes an otherwise sound man weak in his knees. But selling your country's wealth to the man in the suit or selling your children's economic future to the CEO or to the discumbobulated, misinformed, or, worse, aware-of-what-he's-doing politician-in-someone's-pocket all because if you don't get in line, someone might point to you and call you a name is not only lazy reasoning, it's yellow-bellied treason in my book. Now that's unAmerican.
Scanning the blogs, I read Andy Stern on the Huffington Post. Stern thinks unions are the only hope for restoring the American Dream. "Unions have always been the best anti-poverty, best pro-health care, best pro-family program around. Unions have done more to help working people experience economic success than any other program." He reminds us, "Private equity CEOs are making on average more than $650 million -- or more than 22,000 times what the average American worker brings in." Will workers ever get this? Do they care? What's up with that? Maybe we all need to get out to Wal-mart and make it a personal goal to get Wal-marties unionized. Lord knows, they won't be able to do it themselves. Forgive me good people, but you're living in the monster's mansion.
Labor's not the only thing giving me a pain today. That people are demanding universal health insurance drives me crazy. That's like demanding a middle man to take a cut and a profit from some travesty you've experienced. There is no way to curtail the profit-mongering from the insurance hierarchy. There is no answer except that which gives the insurance-scheming industry a quick death. Socialized medicine is the only way to go. That's it, and it's not un-American. Actually, it's the same thing. It's still paying into a system in which if something bad happens you'll be treated. The only difference is that instead of pitching into a private, profit-centered system, it'll be a public, non-profit one.
Time for a Tylenol.
How can workers in the country still believe that unions are anti-American? Unions are the only way for workers in a capitalist system to have any kind of check on the power of CEOs. And workers give this power away because of the fear of name calling. Oh, yeah. It's the high school bully's tactic, and we all know there's some power in it. Defying that kind of behavior takes real courage. It's words like "un-American," "Pinky," "Red," or "Commie" that makes an otherwise sound man weak in his knees. But selling your country's wealth to the man in the suit or selling your children's economic future to the CEO or to the discumbobulated, misinformed, or, worse, aware-of-what-he's-doing politician-in-someone's-pocket all because if you don't get in line, someone might point to you and call you a name is not only lazy reasoning, it's yellow-bellied treason in my book. Now that's unAmerican.
Scanning the blogs, I read Andy Stern on the Huffington Post. Stern thinks unions are the only hope for restoring the American Dream. "Unions have always been the best anti-poverty, best pro-health care, best pro-family program around. Unions have done more to help working people experience economic success than any other program." He reminds us, "Private equity CEOs are making on average more than $650 million -- or more than 22,000 times what the average American worker brings in." Will workers ever get this? Do they care? What's up with that? Maybe we all need to get out to Wal-mart and make it a personal goal to get Wal-marties unionized. Lord knows, they won't be able to do it themselves. Forgive me good people, but you're living in the monster's mansion.
Labor's not the only thing giving me a pain today. That people are demanding universal health insurance drives me crazy. That's like demanding a middle man to take a cut and a profit from some travesty you've experienced. There is no way to curtail the profit-mongering from the insurance hierarchy. There is no answer except that which gives the insurance-scheming industry a quick death. Socialized medicine is the only way to go. That's it, and it's not un-American. Actually, it's the same thing. It's still paying into a system in which if something bad happens you'll be treated. The only difference is that instead of pitching into a private, profit-centered system, it'll be a public, non-profit one.
Time for a Tylenol.
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