Who is godly enough for Asheville’s city council?
Did you hear about this? Unitarian Universalist (and “post-theist,” whatever that is) Cecil Bothwell gets elected to the Asheville, NC city council. This frustrates the conservative Christian community, who insist his election is illegal under North Carolina law which states you cannot “deny the being of Almighty God.” Of course, the US Constitution—which says there can be no “religious” test for holding office—trumps that. But I am sure that the plaintiffs would argue that the US Constitution also has no jurisdiction over the states.
Sounds like an uphill battle to me.
Atheists are clearly out. What about polytheists? I’m guessing most of them are out, too, unless their polytheism includes an “Almighty God” (and some do). Buddhists who believe in an impersonal and non-sentient spiritual ground of being would be left out as well, I guess. Maybe not agnostics, though, since they don’t straight up deny the existence of God.
Of course, you could be really strict about it. It’s amazing what some people consider “denying God.” You could make the case that any monotheist who believes in a god other than the Judeo-Christian god is banned, since they believe some other, lesser almighty god than THE “Almighty God.” And if you say, well, that means the Muslims can’t serve, I guess that also throws into doubt the service of Jews. That should make Joe Lieberman glad he represents Conneticut instead.
The Freemasons are a little more clear here than the North Carolina constitution. They only insist on monotheism, the theory being that only monotheism offers a powerful enough God to enforce oaths.
But I’m not sure we need that degree of certainty for public office. Clearly Almighty God does not enforce political oaths for us, which is why we have to censure, try, convict, and imprison politicians who take bribes.
A shame really, since lightning would be far more efficient.
Hat tip to The Wild Hunt, which has all the links you would want for this story.
Conservative Outrage
Sesame Street is under fire for being politically incorrect, while Canadian right-blogger Mark Steyn gets really darn confused about speech codes. Photo: Oscar the Grouch, the secret face of leftist propaganda aimed at your children.
Anything Worthwhile is Easy
Designer Frank Chimero writes:
In a time when the final result is placed on a pedestal and obsessively consumed, I think it’s wise to discuss process. By putting so much of our emphasis on the product and not on the process, I think we’ve led our younger practitioners to some false assumptions:
- Good work is always easy, and is usually the result of a lightning bolt of sudden inspiration.
- Everyone that’s successful has some secret bit of information that they’re not sharing.
- Everything before the final stroke is magic. If the work isn’t easy, you’re doing something wrong, or you’re just not cut out for this type of thing.
I don’t know how this became my frame of mind years ago—thank goodness it’s not any more—but this describes exactly how I used to think. If something was difficult, I wasn’t cut out for it. And the difference between my capability and someone else’s capability could always be put in a book and sold to me. I have a shelf (or three) of books on how to write that’s a testament to my belief that if I only learned the secret passphrase, I could snap my fingers and it’d all get done for me.
Now that I think about it, there are a lot of places I could have gotten that attitude from. The hero-worship of innovation. The Ayn Randian cults of individualism. The literary theory of New Criticism which often implies that the authors of great literature are people apart from the rest of us. Cultural taboos that make it difficult for you to say you worked hard and did a good job. Universities that offer speed-degrees in fields (like user interface design) where apprenticeships would be more effective. And, of course, publishing industry that relies on you believing that if you just buy this book (or this one more book) you will learn the secret that will make you successful.
Gary Hustwit’s films Helvetica and Objectified help tell the other side of the story a bit. By focusing on tiny details and getting designers to talk about some of the very finer points of their design thinking and process we can start to see that the people who are the leaders in the design industry are people who have a monomaniacal devotion to what they’re doing. We need more of this.
It’s hard to think—perhaps we just don’t like to think—that behind every success is an ocean of failure, months or maybe years of feeling stupid, useless, and unproductive. But without that there is no earned success. There is only the success that has been handed to you by someone else.
Hat tip to my colleague Wes.
CAPTCHA
CAPTCHAs are excellent at filtering out humans from machines, but they’re better at something else: shifting the work from you to your visitors. Photo: Spam Musubu by LeeLeFever, used under a CC license.
Core of Conservatism
Andrew Sullivan doesn’t much like Fox News; he sees it as an enemy of conservatism and an avatar of the malign political spirit that’s likely to doom the movement. Sullivan says:
At the core of real conservatism is a distinction between theory and practice, a deep resistance to ideology, a respect for free inquiry and the philosophic spirit, a respect for social stability and coherence, a moderation in governance and a deliberation in action.
Sullivan can’t find this in Fox News’ conservatism, however, because he hasn’t described conservatism. He has described centrism and pragmatism. Or, perhaps, “democracy.” These are the principles on which our form of government was founded, not a political movement.
He’s right to recognize that modern conservatism in general and Fox News in particular are a threat to those ideals. But they are not the core of conservatism. They are the core of something larger.
That’s a lot of boxes
If you want to make the place you call home seem alien, just drag everything out of the corners and put it in cardboard boxes. Photo: Boxes in the Sprout’s room by me.
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