Hypocritical? Moi?

I read the interview this morning.

As a mother, I was rather surprised but frankly delighted to learn that I hold such power in my hands. But I have to admit I was puzzled by an apparent contradiction: staying home with your children makes all the difference in the world, but if you want to make a difference in the world you will of course not stay home. But perhaps it’s just me: maybe I need to get out more.

No, it’s not bias. It’s a mixture of fear and stupidity.

As little as 15 years ago, any reporter worth their salt would have followed up with “Don’t you see it as an inherent contradiction that you work full-time away from home, yet admonish other mothers that they must stay home with their children?”

But today’s reporters are too stupid to realize they have been presented with such a contradiction. Or, if they do reallize it, are too afraid of confrontation to make the follow-up. I know this because 1. I was an investigative reporter 15 years ago; 2. I now spend my time hectoring reporters to go follow up on such obvious stuff; and 3. being on the receiving end of interviews these days, I’ve found I can tell a reporter ANYTHING and they’ll just print it without comment or complaint.

Nice, huh?

There really is a long tradition of female anti-feminist activists taking this position. For some reason (which baffles me a little since anti-feminist activists really really piss me off) I’m inclined to be generous in my jdugment of this apparent hypocrisy.

My sense is that their rationale is that they personally are truly exceptional. I think they’re wrong, but there’s no reason they _must_ be wrong. Maybe they are exceptional. Suppose we accept the validity of their assumptions—i.e., that work and home are different spheres of influence, that men and women are naturally differently drawn to and competent in them, and that the external “work-centric” portion of society (legal, cultural, economic institutions) has imposed an artificial distortion of the natural order that forces women to neglect their natural competency to the detriment of all—then it’s reasonable that exceptional women could be drawn to work rather than home, either because that’s their inborn competency, or because their commitment to the betterment of the domestic sphere compels them to a meta position intended to improve and safeguard it for all, rather than just their own.

As a liberal, I accept the apparent hypocrisy because, to me, regardless of generalized natural inclinations and idealized social order, I value individual choice. (And, as I detail above, as a liberal I’m willing to recognize the validity of arguments of which I disagree with their premises.) As social conservatives, the anti-feminists, however, likley don’t greatly value individual choice—their rationale is deeply dependent upon their personal sense of exceptionalism. Which, it seems to me, is a common conservative trait.

Hi, Keith,

I’ll cut to the chase, and then elaborate.

Ms. Combs was asked: What do you think “American foreign policy should aim for” in Iraq?

She said: “In the new country, under the new democracy, why should the official religion be Muslim? I think as Iraq becomes a democracy, there are going to be a lot of churches springing up.”

As you say: A very important American and human rights value is freedom of religion.
So, I object to her answer to the question on the grounds that it was regarding “American foreign policy.” I don’t think our foreign policy should “aim for” the building of churches, temples, synagoges, mosques or other places of worship. The worshipful will take care of that on their own. Always have, always will.

First of all, the new country will still have the same old inhabitants. (at least most of them.) The majority of the people are Muslim. Why does she bring up the question of an “official” religion in a democracy? To the best of my knowledge, democracies don’t have official religions. But I’ve been wrong before.

Iraq has Christian inhabitants, though they are in the minority, and to the best of my knowledge, they have had Christian churches they are able to attend. Here in the U.S.A., Muslims are in the minority, but ‘of course’ they have mosques for their religious services.
I go back to: The question was: Jews, Christians, Mustlims. The answer was: Jews, Christians, Terrorists.
Perhaps Ms. Combs hopes there will be a lot of missionaries converting those Muslim Terrorists to Christians that she can “love”. It doesn’t seem she can “love” them otherwise. I don’t think think she understand that freedom of religion thing you talked about. I don’t know. That’s the way it “sounds” to me.
I recall early on in this war, that the U.S. wanted the new democratic Iraq to “recognize” the state of Israel. What if a democratic Iraq doesn’t WANT to?

Thanks for listening.

Dan, I guess you ARE the man — Well, like I said, I’ve been wrong before, — so why should today be any different? Thank you for your response. I hadn’t thought of the U.K. and official religion. I don’t think of religion and country in the same thought. I don’t think we should.

But you have an excellent point. Thanks.

Irritating? Yes. But also extremely funny.

IIRC Iraq under Saddam was not an islamic state, it was only after the GW1 that Saddam tried to sway the muslim opinion beyond his border with religious claims.

Baath was a nationalist party, not a religious one. It aspired to unite all the Arabs, without regard to their religion.

DSW

“Baath was a nationalist party, not a religious one. It aspired to unite all the Arabs, without regard to their religion.”

Hussein is no friend of the fundamentalists. That I’ve been aware of this for longer than I can recall is part of why I’ve never given the speculation about a Hussein-Al Qaeda link much credence.

But, you know, it occurs to me to wonder what percentage of the American public is aware of this very salient fact. 0.5%? Less?

Sigh.

What an amazingly ignorant woman!

FWIW, Iraqi christians and their churches were very much privileged by Saddam – in fact many are Baathists (eg Tariq Aziz, his foreign minister). Not that Saddam believed in freedom of religion. It was more that they were an educated middle class and that they shitted off the mullahs.

There is consequently now resentment against the Christians in Iraq – when the troops leave they will be in a precarious position. The invasion has done them no favours at all.

Let’s face it, the real problem wasn’t with the interviewer but with the unbending format she was stuck with: the one-page Q&A, most of whose text is marginalized by the big picture. I blame the Magazine rather than the reporter.

The UK does have an official religion. The C of E has its own court, automatic membership of the upper house for some of its bishops, tax breaks galore; the head of state is the official head of the church and (officially) appoints the Archbish of Canterbury. Very common too –don’t a bunch of Scandanivian countries have the same arrangement (different church)? On top of this, the State colaborates with the C of E (but also with the RC church) in running schools which it (the state) funds.

The biggest supporters of disestablishment are within the C. of E. — protestant radicals. Among the biggest opponents of dis-establishment are heads of OTHER religions, who believe, rightly, that the C of E gives them an ‘in’ to public debate and policy formation they would otherwise lack. This is largely because the C. of E. heirarchy has played an enormous role in integrating leaders of other religions into the policymaking establishment in the past 30 or so years (much to the chagrin of lots of C. of E. laity).

The UK is a far more secular society and has a far more secular political class than the US, the Establishment clause notwithstanding. For me the principle is secularity, and anything that might disturb the secularity of British society — as disestablishment might — I would view with great caution