Julian Sanchez provides a devastating take-down of this astonishingly bad article by Wesley Smith. Amazingly, Smith doesn’t even mention the conditions under which animals are raised in factory farms, which is surely one of the most salient motivating factors for vegetarians and vegans. Instead, he rests his argument, as Sanchez notes, almost entriely on a dubious moral calculus based on the number of animals killed by plant agriculture.
Month: July 2008
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Politics in 4D
Here’s an interesting multi-axis political quiz that scores you on social attitudes, economic beliefs, civil liberties, and war and peace. Mine seemed pretty accurate: I was a socially moderate/”social capitalist”/libertarian-pacifist.
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Dark Knight pre-blogging
I haven’t seen The Dark Knight, and probably won’t for at least a couple of weeks, but – while I enjoyed Batman Begins – the NYT review gives me pause:
This is a darker Batman, less obviously human, more strangely other. When he perches over Gotham on the edge of a skyscraper roof, he looks more like a gargoyle than a savior. There’s a touch of demon in his stealthy menace. During a crucial scene, one of the film’s saner characters asserts that this isn’t a time for heroes, the implication being that the moment belongs to villains and madmen. Which is why, when Batman takes flight in this film, his wings stretching across the sky like webbed hands, it’s as if he were trying to possess the world as much as save it.
To which I say: The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller’s seminal “reinvention” of the Batman character, came out in 1986. The whole “dark” Batman is nothing new. If anything, comic afficionadoes widely regard the 1990s as the reductio ad absurdum of “grim ‘n’ gritty” superheros with their flexible morality and high body counts. Haven’t there been any new ideas since then? Has nothing interesting been done with Batman in the last 20+ years that isn’t just a retread of Miller? (This isn’t a rhetorical question; I haven’t really followed Batman comics since high school.)
No doubt this is part of the ongoing campaign to convince us all that comics are Very Serious Literature that grown ups should see as Important and Significant (and, naturally, should fork over loads of cash to see the movies based thereon). Fine; good; I’ve been enjoying the renaissance of superhero flicks as much as the next geek. But can’t superheroes still be fun? For my money that was a big part of the appeal of Iron Man – the hero, while facing an existential crisis of sorts, wasn’t perpetually tied up in knots of angst. He was having a good time being a superhero!
And my impression, as a comics reader of only the most casual sort (I think the last thing I read was the collected paperback of vol. 3 of Joss Whedon’s X-Men), is that many of the stars in the current comics firmament are trying to recapture some of the fun, and the fantastic nature, of comics (Grant Morrison also comes to mind), instead of sticking exclusively to a grim and plodding “realism.” Maybe in 20 years the movies will catch up with these guys.
(I realize this is all a lot of criticism for a movie I haven’t actually watched…)
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Breaking news: Gene Robinson loves Jesus
So reports Giles Fraser.
Probably one of the more damaging criticisms made against the movement to recognize the equal standing of all baptized Christians is the notion that gay and lesbian equality must go hand-in-hand with a watered-down version of the Christian gospel. Interested observers have long known this isn’t the case. The writing of folks like James Alison, Eugene Rogers, Gareth Moore, etc.–not to mention the witness of countless gay and lesbian Christians in the pews–are ample demonstration of that. But it’s nice to read the report of Bishop Robinson giving what Fraser describes as “a fiery, almost revivalist, sermon, calling on Anglicans to take Jesus into their heart and to allow Him to cast out their fear.” The language of rights and justice has its place, but mainliners too often resort to it when they should be talking about Jesus.
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The limits of Berryism
A couple of liberal bloggers point out, apropos of the AmCon interview with Michael Pollan (see here for my ramblings), that Wendell Berry is, in fact, not a liberal. Rather, his criticisms of big agriculture, big business, and big government are rooted in a basically traditionalist worldview. I take it that’s why unconventional conservatives and traditionalists of various stripes like him.
I will admit to having only limited interest in Berry, which will no doubt destroy any crunchy cred I may have had. While he definitely scores some points in his criticism of the national security state/global capitalism/industrial food nexus, I don’t find his positive vision nearly as captivating as others seem to. Maybe it’s because I’ve never thought that the solution to the ills of modernity and the shortcomings of liberalism should – or could – involve their wholesale repudiation. And Berry seems to me to come close to this.
A Thinking Reed 