"White people like Vance’s grandmother who are strongly anti-institution and don’t go to church but consider themselves very much Christian..."

"... were a huge part of the Trump base from the start and explain how religious conservatives could connect with him, [said Geoff Layman, head of the University of Notre Dame’s political science department and an expert on political behavior and religion]. This phenomenon was so common that Layman and a co-author of a 2020 book about new religious-political fault lines used the term 'mamaw' to describe nominally Christian Trump supporters, an allusion to Vance’s grandmother, by then well known because of his popular memoir 'Hillbilly Elegy.'"

Writes Michelle Boorstein, in "JD Vance’s Catholic conversion is part of young conservative movement/The Republican vice-presidential nominee and Ohio senator was raised nominally evangelical, then dabbled with atheism before converting in 2019" (WaPo).

"When my wife proposed that we stop being monogamous, she said it would make us stronger.... At the time, I was exiting a phase of my life perhaps best described as 'worship pastor bro.'"

"My Christian faith was undergoing a meticulous and scholarly deconstruction. I could begin to imagine a life without God, but with my new, expensive master’s degree in theology, I struggled to imagine a career without Him. By contrast, Corrie’s turn away from religion a year earlier had been quick, uncomplicated and annoyingly joyful.... Corrie started identifying as bisexual, then pansexual, then queer. It was hard to know how to feel about her transformation. On the one hand, it became harder to place myself and our heterosexual marriage on the new map of her sexual interests...."

Writes Jason Bilbrey, in "I Was Content With Monogamy. I Shouldn’t Have Been. Can exploring polyamory both break you and make you?" (NYT)(free access link).

"Even if belief in invisible watchers has its social uses, if such beings don’t exist it’s a pretty odd thing that societies the world over..."

"... have converged on the belief that we share the cosmos with them. To say nothing of the specific doctrines and miraculous claims associated with that belief: For instance, if Christianity disappeared from everyone’s memory tomorrow, it would be odd indeed for a modern Western thinker seeking meaning amid disillusionment to declare, 'what we need here is the doctrine of the Trinity and a resurrected messiah with some angels at the tomb.'..."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "Where Does Religion Come From?" (NYT). Douthat is contemplating the reaction to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's announcement that she has converted to Christianity. Does she really believe? She said, as Douthat puts it, "that atheist materialism is too weak a base upon which to ground Western liberalism" and "she found 'life without any spiritual solace unendurable.'"

Some critics were Christians who noticed a failure to say that Christianity is true, and some critics were atheists who were sorry she didn't see the truth that is atheism. 

Douthat goes on at great length and quite a bit of it is about UFOs and, more generally, weirdness.

The most obvious law school hypothetical when teaching the Good News Club case has come to life with the After School Satan Club.

I'm reading "Parents slam school’s ‘sick’ Satan Club for children as young as 5: ‘Disgusting’" (NY Post).

I got there via Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit:

WHOSE CHILDREN DO THOSE PARENTS THINK THOSE KIDS ARE? Parents slam school’s ‘sick’ Satan Club for children as young as 5: ‘Disgusting’.

Sorry, but this is exactly what was bargained for when by anyone who supported the after-school Christian club, approved of by the Supreme Court back in 2001.

Either you have a special rule excluding religion or you don't. In Good News Club, a Christian after-school club had been excluded and the Supreme Court saw that as discrimination against religion. Once you get that far, you can't have viewpoint discrimination. Viewpoint discrimination is worse than discrimination against religion in general. So there now you can't exclude the Satanist club.

I used to teach a Religion & the Constitution course, and I was teaching it when the Good News Club case came out. The first hypothetical that springs to mind is an After School Satan Club. Legal decisions have consequences, and sometimes they are perfectly obvious.

 

You think that's disgusting? Some people think all after-school religion clubs are disgusting, but they lost in the Supreme Court in 2001. And some people think government viewpoint discrimination is disgusting? Get your values in order and try to be consistent.

"[A]n unpopular hero to civil libertarians, the Devil incarnate to an unlikely alliance of feminists and morality preachers, a conundrum to judges and juries..."

"... and a purveyor of guilty secrets to legions of men slinking off from porn shops or the mailbox with brown paper parcels."

"Larry Flynt, Who Built a Porn Empire With Hustler, Dies at 78" (NYT). 

Hustler’s June 1978 cover caught the enigmas of a magazine that was at once salacious, satirical, perverse, decadent, gleefully immoral and hypocritical. It portrayed a woman upside down and half gone into a meat grinder, with a plate of hamburger below. A “seal of approval” noted: “Prime. Last All Meat Issue. Grade ‘A’ Pink.” A caption quoted Mr. Flynt, “We will no longer hang women up like pieces of meat.”... 

"I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death."

Wrote Irina Slavina on Facebook, quoted in "Russian editor dies after setting herself on fire" (BBC).

Irina Slavina was editor-in-chief of the small Koza Press news website. Its motto is "news and analytics" and "no censorship". Its website went down on Friday, as news of her death was confirmed. She was one of seven people in Nizhny Novgorod whose homes were searched on Thursday, apparently as part of an inquiry into [the pro-democracy group] Open Russia. Last year, she was fined for "disrespecting authorities" in one of her articles.... In a Facebook post on Thursday, she said 12 people had forced their way into her family's flat and seized flash drives, her laptop and her daughter's laptop as well as phones belonging to both her and her husband....

The investigative committee insisted that Slavina was only a witness in their case - "and neither a suspect, nor accused, in the investigation of the criminal case", a spokesperson told Ria Novosti. That criminal case appears to focus on a local businessman who allowed various opposition groups to use his spoof church for forums and other activities including training election monitors. Mikhail Iosilevich created the so-called Flying Spaghetti Monster church in 2016 whose followers were dubbed Pastafarians....

Here's the Wikipedia article "Flying Spaghetti Monster." There's no mention of Iosilevich, and activities go back to before 2016. It wasn't invented in Russia, but presumably people all over the world take up Pastafarianism as they see fit. In the U.S., it seems to be a way to make fun of serious religion, to make atheism less grim, and to litigate about freedom-of-religion issues. Try to imagine how it would be used in Russia, where the landscape of freedom is completely different.

Irina Slavina was 47 years old, according to Wikipedia, which gives some insight into the seriousness of humor:

BLM describes itself as explicitly atheist?

You can’t be a Christian and an atheist at the same time. BLM describes itself as explicitly atheist (and neo-Marxist). Fundamentally incompatible world views. https://t.co/4ZjT0vcy4s

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) July 25, 2020

I googled my question Does BLM describe itself as explicitly atheist? I'm not seeing that. Is this just an inference from the idea that it's Marxist? The phrase "explicitly atheist" should be based on more than an inference. And it's an inference on an inference on an inference if we have to infer that Black Lives Matter is Marxist and to be Marxist is to be an atheist.

I googled Is Black Lives Matter explicitly Marxist and I'm not getting a clear answer that it's Marxist, so my working assumption is that the group is not explicitly Marxist.

It does seem to be the case that 2 of the founders have described themselves as "trained Marxists." Here's an editorial from a month ago in The Washington Times, "The matter of Marxism: Black Lives Matter is rooted in a soulless ideology" that reports the quotes and makes some inferences:

"At the end of the class, inmates are asked 'is there a God?' The only permitted answer is 'no.'"

"Every waking moment is an onslaught on their cherished beliefs and traditions. The half-starved inmates are even forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, in defiance of their Muslim faith. Afternoon brings interrogations. To break their mental resistance, inmates are forced to watch others being tortured before their own sessions of questioning. They are made to denounce friends and family, to confess to fictitious crimes such as bomb-making and espionage, and to express abject contrition — even for such harmless acts as having a copy of the Koran. Any resistance brings beatings, electric shocks and sleep deprivation. Nakedness is another dehumanising tactic. Nudity is taboo in Islam, but prisoners of all ages are made to parade before each other and in view of the guards. For women, humiliating gynaecological inspections are mandatory. Rape is routine. The prettier younger women disappear at nights and weep silently during the day. An injection every 15 days appears to be forced contraception — monthly periods cease. Worst of all is the dreaded orange tabard. Prisoners assigned these soon disappear, never to be seen again. Rumour has it that they are murdered for their organs — kidneys, corneas, hearts and livers are looted from their bodies, to fund the lucrative international black market, or serve the needs of the Communist Party elite."

From "'A naked brutality worthy of the Nazis': EDWARD LUCAS on the harrowing evidence of Beijing's concentration camps dedicated to 're-educating' a million or more Muslims" (Daily Mail).

What's the most depressing religion in the world?

That's a question I had after writing the previous post, which made me think: This is like religion, but it's the most depressing religion in the world — no salvation, no joy....

Isn't it characteristic of religion that there's something rewarding for you, the believer — some uplift in the present or bliss in the afterlife? No, maybe sometimes there's only compulsion for fear of pain and punishment.

I googled my question — What's the most depressing religion in the world? — and here's some of what popped up:

1. "Are religious people more depressed?/A new study finds a high correlation" — by Amanda Marcotte (Salon): "Certainly there’s some reason to believe that if society protects people against some of the worst causes of depression, such as the fear of falling into poverty, that society will have more atheists in it. Stable, egalitarian societies repeatedly prove to be places where the atheist message takes off really well. We know that on a national level, if people feel like they have control over their lives and there’s hope in the here and now, those nations tend to have more atheists. So why wouldn’t that be true on an individual level?"

2. "'Spiritual But Not Religious' Is Associated With Depression/Recent research shows that spirituality predicts depressive symptoms" (Psychology Today): "The risk of depression was over a third greater than for those in whom religious belief was higher than spirituality.... While religion represents deeply rooted belief and practice, usually coming from family and cultural background, spirituality represents a departure from that traditional, familiar support. People seeking spiritual answers may be coming from a position of distress, searching for answers or looking for relief from mental suffering.... Directed spiritual practices which include optimistic and other-oriented approaches, for example those emphasizing gratitude, forgiveness and compassion for self and other, are more useful when it comes to improving overall well-being...."

3. "Religious affiliation and major depressive episode in older adults: a cross-sectional study in six low- and middle- income countries" (BMC Public Health): "We observed no association between having a religious affiliation (vs. no affiliation) and the odds of [major depressive episode] in older adults. In most cases minorities had higher odds of MDE as compared with the majority religion, but the associations were only significant for Muslims in Ghana and for Muslims, Hindus and Other in South Africa."

4. "Hidden Brain: Does Going To Church Improve Your Mental Health?" (NPR): "[I]ncreasing religiosity by one standard deviation - which is going from not going to church at all to attending church once a week - decreases the probability of being at risk for moderate to severe depression by as much as 20%.... And... if religiosity does help your mental health, why is that? Is it being part of a religious community? Is it the rituals? Is it the belief? Can atheists get some of those things outside of religion?"

5. "Afghanistan is the most depressed country on Earth" (BigThink): "As suggested by Afghanistan's abnormally high rate of depression, decades of armed conflict and economic misery can have a devastating effect on the mental health of a population. The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for Libya, Honduras, and Palestine. A bit more puzzling is the strong representation of Middle-Eastern countries that are relatively peaceful and affluent: Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Jordan and Kuwait. With just over 8 percent of its population clinically depressed, the Netherlands is the only European country to make the Top 10."

None of that is much help answering my question, but I'm not surprised there's so little discussion of the topic. It's generally bad etiquette to go beyond saying your religion is a source of joy and onto the topic of why someone else's religion is dark and dreary and only makes life worse. But I'm trying to talk about religion substitutes, notably this "White Fragility" cult practice, which is snowballing in our country and on the verge of becoming a compulsory state religion.

"He grew up in Bethel, Connecticut, a poor rural village in which survival demanded cunning, wit, and ruthlessness—traits known collectively at the time as 'Yankee cuteness.'"

"Barnum was proud of his upbringing, which encouraged in him an insatiable appetite for wealth from the moment he learned to count.... At Barnum’s christening in 1810, [his maternal grandfather] 'gravely handed over' a gift deed to 'Ivy Island,' five remote acres that his grandson was to inherit upon reaching his majority. For the next decade, as Barnum tells it, he was 'continually hearing' about how he owned 'one of the most valuable farms in the State'—from his grandfather, parents, even his neighbors, all of whom warned him against the perils of immodest wealth. 'Now Taylor,' said his mother, 'don’t become so excited when you see your property as to let your joy make you sick.' When Barnum finally treks to his inheritance at the age of ten, he discovers that Ivy Island is a waste of muddy bogs plagued by hornets and snakes. He shrieks and runs home."

From "American Humbug" (NY Review of Books).

This is a review of a book called "Barnum: An American Life." The review ends:

The great danger to democracy today comes not from marks slow to spot a humbug but from a public made cynical to the point of believing that everything, and everyone, is a humbug, especially the humorless class of credentialed experts whom Barnum took such joy in ridiculing. In the end, though, it’s a distinction without a difference. Too credulous or too incredulous—you’re a sucker either way.

So... I guess... in a world of uncertainty, you've got to get your credulousness somewhere in the middle. That made me think — vaguely — of a famous quote that appeared in my head as He who will believe in anything believes in nothing. Google understood my groping and set me straight. It's the other way around! Those who believe in nothing believe in anything. I considered believing that it's one of those A = B so B = A situations, but that's the kind of mistake you can only make if you dabble in logic.

I kind of like my version. What's the bigger problem — believing in nothing or believing in anything? I say it's believing in anything. Nothing is a good start. (Better than nothing is a high standard.)

Anyway, the famous quote is about a specific belief in nothing: "When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything." The quote tends to be misattributed to G.K. Chesterton.

Yesterday, I was listening to the car radio and this came on — Chris Cornell singing the old Prince song "Nothing Compares to You":



The singer's love interest is comparable only to nothing. It's intended as the supreme compliment.

When a politician says he's "profoundly religious" and that explains what he is doing, do we shrink from the question of sincerity?

I'm asking the general question, which I've thought about a lot (having taught a course on Religion and the Constitution for more than a decade). But you know the prompt for my question, Mitt Romney's assertion:

"I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential... I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the president, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced. I was not wrong."

When religion is used like this, does it silence critics? Does it cheapen religion? If you're skeptical and think he's parading religion, being sanctimonious, do you hold your tongue, because you worry that you'll look bad or offend some people if you question the sincerity of a profession of religion? Religion is a strong force, and it can motivate political decisions, but if your political argument is a religious argument, what can be said? Does the politician successfully put himself on the high ground, deserving admiration and fending off debate?

Now, Romney is different from a politician who says his religion gives him the answer to a particular question. He's only using religion to emphasize that he takes the oath seriously. Presumably, he means that for him, violating this oath would wreck his afterlife, so he needs to make this decision exceedingly carefully and without any element of hoping for worldly benefits. He then goes on to analyze the law and the facts and the arguments and to present his decision as based on what the oath said, and it's not as if the oath required him to vote the way God dictates.

[M]y promise before God to apply impartial justice required that I put my personal feelings and political biases aside. Were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience.

I’m aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters I will be vehemently denounced. I’m sure to hear abuse from the president and his supporters. Does anyone seriously believe that I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?

That last question is very strange! It implies that a highly principled atheist would not follow the process demanded in the oath but would necessarily yield to the pressure of partisan politics. Only religion is enough to keep people on an honest, dutiful path?

That's a rather offensive thing to say about nonbelievers, yet you can see why he said it. He said it to vouch for his own profession of profound religiosity: Only a profoundly religious person would do X, I am doing X, therefore, I am profoundly religious.

Can we question the sincerity? Or must we stand back in awe of the great man? God help us if the answer depends entirely on whether you wanted to see Donald Trump continue as President or be out on his ass.

"He’s been changing the lyrics 'I’m not here to turn atheists into believers' to 'We’re here to turn atheists into believers."

Kanye West performs “Jesus Walks” on a plane for James Corden’s karaoke bit

He’s been changing the lyrics “I’m not here to turn atheists into believers” to “We’re here to turn atheists into believers”
pic.twitter.com/ipHcpo4WSJ

— An0maly (@LegendaryEnergy) October 29, 2019

"These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism..."

"... because they’re choosing to live that life. That’s bullshit. I mean, what the f*** are we really talking about here?"

Said Kyrsten Sinema back in 2006. She's now the Democratic Party's nominee to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate.

I haven't been following the Sinema drama, so anything about her is news to me. But I was motivated to read her Wikipedia page because I wanted to know if she had children. If you stay home with children, you probably don't see yourself as "leeching." Some facts:

Sinema married, and later divorced, her BYU classmate Blake Dain.

On November 17, 2013, Sinema completed an Ironman Triathlon in a little more than 15 hours. Sinema was the second active member of Congress—behind Senator Jeff Merkley—to finish a long distance triathlon, and the first to complete an Ironman-branded race. On December 25, 2013, Sinema summited Mount Kilimanjaro.

So, her idea of doing difficult things is way beyond the average person's. But if you're running for office, it's not a good idea to reveal to ordinary people that you basically think they're not working hard enough. The normal bullshit is to butter them up continually, calling them "hard-working" and blaming government and corporations for their insufficiently affluent condition. But Sinema wants to call bullshit on that bullshit. Okay, Sinema. It won't get you into the Senate, I don't think, but it's kind of wonderful, shouted from the top of Mount Kilamanjaro.

Sinema is now the only openly non-theist or atheist member of Congress, although she herself has rejected such labels. She is also the first openly bisexual member of Congress.

Okay with me.

"12 Rules sets out an interesting and complex model for humanity, and it really has nothing to do with petting a cat or taking your tablets or being kind to lobsters."

"It is about strength, courage, responsibility, and suffering, but it is deep and difficult, and it is not easy to pigeonhole. In a sense, 12 Rules contains a number of hidden structures and hidden processes, and confusingly, these are not always made explicit in the text. The first of these is Deep Time. We are biological creatures, evolved beings who can only be truly understood through a model that encapsulates the notion of geological time.... Quite apart from the immensity of Deep Time, our story must take into account indescribable spans of historical time... His message is far from a 'Christian' one: it is a Jungian one...  Like Jung, Peterson senses a secret unrest that gnaws at the roots of our being, because we have forgotten too much from our long and dangerous journey. We must listen to our myths, understand them, and learn from them.... This leads to a second hidden concept: the Unconscious. Here Peterson recaptures ground that’s become unfashionable in modern psychology. His model is heavily influenced by Freud and Jung. 'You don’t know yourself,' he says. We are not who we thought we were. We carry secret, shameful knowledge that’s scarcely accessible to conscious exploration (Freud). We also carry elements of a Collective Unconscious (Jung) that’s glimpsed via our myths and creation narratives. If you think you are an atheist you are wrong, says Peterson, because your mind has been bent and shaped and molded by a god-fearing past stretching back into the unfathomable abysm of time."

From "Jordan Peterson and the Return of the Stoics/His book in part is about accepting the ubiquity of human suffering. No wonder reviewers don't get it" by Tim Rogers in The American Conservative.

You can buy the book at Amazon, here.

And here's Jordan Peterson doing a nice job on Bill Maher's show last Friday:

Billy Graham talks to Woody Allen in 1969.

The obituary for Billy Graham is discussed in the previous post. Please use the comments section here only to discuss this wonderful conversation, which includes a debate over the rule against sexual intercourse before marriage, Woody's idea that he might convert Graham to agnosticism, and Woody and Billy's shared rejection of drugs and alcohol:



There's also a discussion of their "greatest sin." Woody makes an inconsequential joke, and Billy cops to "idolatry" (but the conversation moves on before he says exactly what god he's put before God).

I don't think the word "Jesus" (or "Christ") ever comes up. Graham is elegantly and discreetly inclusive.

Who, when asked what religion are you now, said: "Now? Nothing. I'm a writer. I like doing things alone"?

Answer: James Baldwin.

I'm reading about James Baldwin as a consequence of reading something in the current news — Vulture — which is almost too scurrilous to mention. Quote from The Vulture (to go from the highest quality to the lowest quality remark): "Brando used to go cha-cha dancing with us. He could dance his ass off. He was the most charming motherfucker you ever met. He’d fuck anything. Anything! He’d fuck a mailbox. James Baldwin. Richard Pryor. Marvin Gaye." That's Quincy Jones, who also said: "Trump is just telling [people] what they want to hear. I used to hang out with him. He’s a crazy motherfucker. Limited mentally — a megalomaniac, narcissistic. I can’t stand him. I used to date Ivanka, you know.... Yes, sir. Twelve years ago. Tommy Hilfiger, who was working with my daughter Kidada, said, 'Ivanka wants to have dinner with you.' I said, 'No problem. She’s a fine motherfucker.' She had the most beautiful legs I ever saw in my life. Wrong father, though."

Sorry to burden you with all that, but I was interested in the idea that to be a writer means doing things alone — and that means not wanting it in your head that God is with you (which is a different  issue from whether there really is a God).

Why do the French vote on Sunday?

Is this an aspect of French secularism? Does Sunday voting date back to the French Revolution? (I haven't found the answer myself and would like to know.)

ADDED: Many countries have chosen Sunday as election day. It's the most common day for voting, by far. I thought it was odd, because of the ancient idea of keeping the Sabbath holy, but apparently, government has seized on the day as being one that's convenient, with more free time available. People cleared the day for the Lord, and government saw an opportunity to horn in.

I guess a better question then is why does the United States vote on Tuesday? In 1845, Congress set a uniform date for the nationwide selection of presidential electors:

In 1845, the United States was largely an agrarian society. Farmers often needed a full day to travel by horse-drawn vehicles to the county seat to vote. Tuesday was established as election day because it did not interfere with the Biblical Sabbath or with market day, which was on Wednesday in many towns.

ALSO: The French Revolution actively obliterated Sunday:

As an added measure against the church, an atheistic belief was established in France in opposition to the Roman Catholic Church. It became a doctrine of the official government policy in 1792 when the First French Republic was declared and was called the Cult of Reason.... Although not specifically instituted by the cult, France adopted a new calendar that was based purely on the decimal system. Year 1 of the new calendar corresponded to 1792. The year consisted of 12 months that were divided into three 10 day weeks. One purpose of this calendar was to erase any possibility of people remembering when to go to mass on Sunday, a day not defined in the new calendar. All references to the Sabbath, Saints' days or any reference to the Church were outlawed. The new calendar was in use for 12 years.

The 10-day periods were called décades, and the days of the décade had boringly/rationally numerical names: Primidi, Duodi, Tridi, Quartidi, Quintidi, Sextidi, Septidi, Octidi, Nonidi, Decadi.

"Cornell University Students Vote Against Intellectual Diversity, on Grounds It Would Harm Diversity."

A funny headline on a piece over at Reason.com by Robby Soave. At Cornell, the Student Assembly voted down a resolution that called for a committee to look into the lack of political diversity in the Cornell faculty. The arguments against the resolution were summarized as:

(1) conservatives have not been historically oppressed as have other groups; (2) spending resources on intellectual diversity diverts resources from promoting other forms of diversity; and (3) conservative students are free to speak out in class if they find something disagreeable or wish to argue their own point of view....

The headline isn't very fair to that 3-point objection to having this committee. It focuses on #2 and distorts even that. I rather doubt that the cute, clickable headline was written by Soave, because he disapproves of campus conservatives acting like leftist students by "playing the victim" and inviting speakers who are "provocateurs" and not serious experts in "philosophy and policy."

I don't agree with Soave's disapproval. I think you can have philosophers and policy wonks and also lively provocateurs, and I think it's worth exploring victimology — who's really the victim? I've spent enough time around conservatives and libertarians to know that their pretensions about neutral, egg-headed reason feel hollow and deceptive much of the time to those of us who aren't already on their side. I believe it's unreasonable to deny that emotion is part of human reason, and I have seen Reason magazine philosophy/policy types boil over with anger at the expression of that belief.

But I want to get back to that headline, inapt as it is for Soave's brief essay on the Cornell committee that was not to be. It seems like an argument through stating a paradox: They voted against diversity on the ground that it would hurt diversity. (It's reminiscent of that old Vietnam War line: "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.")

But it occurs to me that there are some ideas that are destructive of intellectual diversity. I don't mean ideas put into practice, such as censorship or discrimination based on viewpoint. I mean the ideas themselves. Within a free-speech approach, you can argue that censorship or viewpoint discrimination is a good idea. It would be censorship or viewpoint discrimination to exclude those ideas. People can see those arguments in the marketplace of ideas and decide for themselves if they want to buy them. You might say, but if people do accept those ideas, they might put them into practice, but if you believe in the overarching idea of free speech, you are trusting people to consider and reject the bad ideas, and you think the idea of free speech will win in the marketplace.

But there is one type of idea that just as an idea is destructive of the diversity in the marketplace of ideas. Do you see what it is? It's an idea that is so good it wrecks the market for all the competing ideas, the completely convincing idea. There are many ideas like that — problems where the solutions have been discovered. We needn't puzzle over the possible answers anymore. We know (or feel sure that we know). That's the one type of idea that you should exclude if intellectual diversity is your most sacred goal. That shows why intellectual diversity can't be your highest goal. Why would you exclude the most devastatingly obviously correct ideas?

I'll pose one answer to my question and let you decide whether you want to buy it: You'd exclude those ideas when you have other ideas you want to protect from competition. So then there's this corollary: To genuinely love intellectual diversity and to want to exclude one of the ideas is to admit that it's devastatingly better than those other ideas.

And, yes, yes, of course I know that "they" do not really love intellectual diversity. It's a hypothetical. Assume genuine love for intellectual diversity. Assume it is really and truly your highest value. If you had 10 ideas about how to solve a particular problem and a new idea came along that was so obviously true that no one would bother with the other 10 anymore, you would suppress the 11th idea, so that you could continue to benefit from the vibrancy of 10 living, breathing ideas.

If that's all too abstract, think it through in the context of a culture with 10 thriving religions and the question whether to ban the discussion of atheism.

The anti-Trump Festivus pole, installed next to the 100-foot-tall Christmas tree in Delray Beach, and the Satanic pentagram in the park in Boca Raton.

It's interesting reading about these 2 displays the morning after my last law school class — which was about how sometimes the government gets itself into the position where it has to accept displays like this. (There's a Supreme Court case that said the city of Columbus, Ohio violated freedom of speech when it refused to allow the KKK to put up a cross on the statehouse grounds.)

The pentagram display in Boca Raton doesn't seem to be from an actual Satanist:

The man behind the display is Preston Smith. The city of Boca Raton gave him a permit to put up the display and the Freedom from Religion Foundation provided a Bill of Rights banner that accompanies the pentagram. In a statement, Smith said in part, "Love trumps hate. The First Amendment must be protected, including the freedom to offend."

Local "interfaith clergy" put out a statement saying they believe in freedom of speech but:

The use of satanic symbols is offensive, and harmful to our community’s well being. We find it a shameful and hypocritical way to advocate for freedom from religion. 

I think what we need here is for some real Satanists to step up and object to the hate speech against them. Why is their tradition being appropriated by nonbelievers as a symbol of hate? The proponents of non-hate seem to be hating on a minority group that has traditionally been marginalized and subjected to opprobrium. How is kicking this group around a call to love? Twisted thinking!

Meanwhile, in Delray Beach — a quick 9-mile drive — you've got your Festivus pole — wrapped in an upside-down American flag and topped with a "Make America Great Again" hat and stuck with a safety pin. The man behind the pole, one Chez Stevens, characterizes the pole as an anti-Trump statement.

Unsurprisingly, the hat has been stolen. The pentagram, for its part, has attracted spray paint.

Random skirmishes from the Florida front of the war on Christmas.

"I think, perhaps, we may have some difficulty in calling her St. Teresa..."

"... Her holiness is so near to us, so tender and so fruitful, that we continue to spontaneously call her Mother Teresa."

Said Pope Francis at the canonization ceremony.

ADDED: From the archive:

She tried her best to believe. Her atheism was not like mine. I can't believe it and I am glad to think that it is not true, that there is a dictator in the heavens. So the fact that there is no evidence for it pleases me. She really wished it was true. She tried to live her life as if it was true. She failed. And she was encouraged by cynical old men to carry on doing so because she was a great marketing tool for her church, and I think that they should answer for what they did to her and what they have been doing to us. I think it has been fraud and exploitation yet again....

ALSO: To clarify the previous quote, which is (obviously?) from Christopher Hitchens, here was the news from 2007:

The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."

That made me think of:

I'd like to conclude with a passage from 1 John, Chapter 4. You know it? See, most groups I speak to don't know that. But we know it. If you want, we can say it together: "No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us." And that is so true.