Bad Sex Awards! -- The year's most notably execrable passages of sordid prose. Includes Jonathan Franzen, whose honored passage contains such pungent wonders as

He was kneeling at the feet of his chaise and sniffing its plush minutely, inch by inch, in hopes that some vaginal tang might still be lingering eight weeks after Melissa Paquette had lain here.

(Link from Arts & Letters Daily.)

Man, so close!

More on Embryo Rights! -- Instapundit gives a shout out to Bryan Peterson and his new blog, JunkYardBlog, where Bryan laments that anti-cloners are unfairly cast as reactionary laggards, while cloning advocates picture themselves as the rational vanguard. Bryan's remains agnostic about cloning, but he does have views about the qualifications for Full Moral Standing. Turns out there aren't many:

I'm a Christian, but my reason for being pro-life is only partly based on my faith. It's also based on science--DNA, the genetic code that determines hair color, eye color and some basic aspects of our personalities, is present at conception. The presence of DNA means that even at the earliest stages the fertilized is destined for birth as a human child. To draw lines of legality at the first or second trimester is, to me at least, an arbitrary solution brought about for political expediency. Nothing wrong with that per se, democracy is founded on the notion that most questions can be settled that way. But we're talking about defining life here, and in my mind it's best to draw clear, bright lines and discourage people from crossing them.

Bryan, your DNA is present in every cell of your body, but you're not made of billions of little people. DNA is just a molecule, almost indiscernible from the molecules that code for monkeys or dogs. A fertilized human egg is not destined for birth as a human child. There are a great many supporting conditions neccesary for an embryo to develop into an infant. In fact a great many fertilized eggs are spontaneously aborted. A fertilized egg might become a human infant if lots and lots of pieces are in place.

Now, if you're not going to be theological, you have to tell us what so special about humans such that they have a right to life, while monkeys and dogs don't. There's something that makes us different and special. Whatever it is, it's not yet there at the big-bunch-of-cells stage. Until it is there, whatever it is, then there is no reason to regard bunches of cells with human DNA any differently than bunches of cells with monkey DNA. The potential to turn into a person is the potential to turn into something that one day will have rights. But before that happy day arrives... nada. Rights are something one grows into. You don't - POOF - have them all at once. Five year olds have very, very few rights (can't buy liquor, can't decide where to live, can't buy a Glock, can't get married) and for good reason. If you back up far enough you get to a stage in human development where the organism has no rights at all.

And the issue isn't one of defining life. Cabbages are life. The issue is defining the criteria for personhood , for what it is to have Full Moral Standing (or even Partial Moral Standing). To ascribe FTM on the basis of the presence of a not-very-remarkable molecule that might one day, if countless other things click, give rise to an independent, rational, reflective, empathetic, communicative, and productive being -- that seems arbitrary. Bright lines are sometimes nice, but you don't want them so bright that you're blinded to crucial distinctions.

Man, I could have this debate forever. Wait! I have been having this debate forever!

Thanks to Tony Adragna, Paul Orwin and Jen Klocke for a most stimulating comment box discussion about my prior post. Pop down and check it out! (Start from the bottom of the comment box and read up.)

Glenn Reynolds admiringly reproduces this letter to the editor from Sheldon Cohen, a U of Tennessee philosophy prof:

Regarding the declaration by British Liberal Democrat Graham Watson, "Terrorist organizations in one country can be freedom fighters in another," in a Nov. 27 article:

I have heard this true but inane statement, or a variant, one time too many. Yes, one man's terrorist can be another man's freedom fighter, and the man who to the jury is a murderer, to other people might be a meal ticket or perhaps a beloved nephew. None of which changes the fact that the murderer is a murderer, and the terrorist a terrorist. To some people Attila the Hun was one of the best-dressed people of the Fifth Century. So what?

Mr. Graham should attempt to substitute actual thought for mindless slogans. It's hard, but with discipline and application, can be achieved.

While Mr. Watson may not be expressing himself with the utmost perspicacity, I think Cohen, for all his discipline and application, may be missing the underlying point.

The point is, at bottom, linguistic, having to do with the conventional pragmatic force of the word 'terrorist.' 'Terrorist', like 'murderer', is not purely descriptive, but is also a moral category. It implies wrongdoing, that we are justified in condemning the subject. However, by the dictionary definition, any violent political insurgent, whatever the justice of their cause, is a terrorist.

Just suppose Minneapolis is conquered by evil occupying Manitobans who forcibly evict all the citizens from their homes and buildings and push them across the river into St. Paul. The overpowering Manitobans establish a cruel and tyrannical regime, denying dignity and basic rights to the Minnesotans. Wishing to loose themselves from the chains of the wicked northern horde, but lacking an organized military, the Minnesotans have little choice but to enact a campaign of guerilla violence to instill terror in the hearts of their dark northern overlords.

Now, because the Minnesotans' insurgency amounts to "the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons," they are dictionary-terrorists. Yet ever since the word acquired an unmistakable moral valence, the use of 'terrorist' implies moral illegitimacy, which is flat wrong in the case of the Minnesotans. 'Freedom fighter', on the other hand, implies something noble, worthy and just. Being both a murderer and a favorite nephew is like being both green and round. But, pragmatically, being both a terrorist and a freedom fighter (in virtue of performing the same acts) is like being both beautiful and hideous (in virtue of the same disposition of features).

Applying 'terrorist,' like 'murderer', requires a moral judgment. To pretend 'terrorist' to be purely descriptive while using it for moral effect is a sophistical tactic for forestalling careful reflection on the appropriateness of the underlying judgment. 'Terrorist' is one of those words, like 'fascist', that tempts the substitution of loaded language for actual thought.

Natalie Solent offer the following prefatory disclaimer to her post sympathizing with Scientologists for their persecution by the French state:

I have not the slightest belief in L Ron Hubbard's foolish and occasionally sinister made-up religion of Scientology.

But of course all religions are made up! (Did Mohammed & Joseph Smith really talk to God or were they just saying that?) And most of them are frequently foolish and occasionally sinister.

Natalie gets it spot-on when she says, "Christianity, my religion, was once a cult."

Brian Linse harps on the implied equivalence: "I'm no fan of Christianity, but to compare it to Scientology is way off base."

Well, in terms of numbers, age and social acceptance the comparison is way off base. But Christianity was indeed a cult (small, new and socially ostracized), and it's really just as likely that the best among us will arrive at a dimension beyond space and time to live alongside an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being as it is likely that the best among us will transform into pure energy at one with and comprehending the entire universe (or whatever it is Scientologists think). But in terms of terror wreaked and lives lost, Scientology cannot begin to compete. But maybe someday!

Anyway, Natalie's exactly right that we need to defend the right of people everywhere to commit their lives to unpopular and wildly implausible ideas. I for one daily give thanks to Thomas Jefferson and the cold, immutable laws of physics that I live in a place where I can spout off derisively about incredibly popular but still wildly implausible ideas without being stoned or tossed in the tank.

Thanks to Matt Welch for (1) excerpting my comment about Johnny Taliban and thereby creating a happy spike in my traffic, and (2) calling me handsome. Now, if I could only get a hot French wife like Matt's!

Dawson assures me that he'll be getting around to the cloning debate soon enough. Problem is, he's got a life. No worries, dude. Good luck on those papers! You know where to find me.

My Favorite Israeli -- Great little interview with Gene Simmons at the NYT. He has a number of sound insights about the relation of art and commerce. Responding to the point that KISS never won great ciritical acclaim, Gene says:

But that's the great notion of America that appeals to me -- of the people, for the people, by the people. People vote for Kiss with money! Try to argue with that. When we come off tour $158 million later and someone tells me it stinks, I'm going, ''Well, why did I make all this money?''

Indeed. And then a questionable aesthetic judgment followed by an historically accurate observation:

Art is highly overrated. Michelangelo, Mozart, Rembrandt -- they were all on commission.

Gene, what's KISS's "larger legacy"?

You know, in America, if people like what we do, that's enough. I don't think it has to mean anything. I don't know what a hamburger means, but it makes life worth living. I'm about to embark on a Broadway show. And there's going to be a Kiss superhero show. The vistas are endless.

Beautiful. KISS: Reason # 303,223,4905 why America is so great.

It ain't easy being Taliban-American -- Earlier this evening I saw John Walker's dad, Frank Lindh, on CNN. He was barely composed. He said John was a good kid. He pleaded for Americans to be merciful. I wonder if we will be. He's not the only Taliban-American. Apparently there are now three. (By the way... John grew up partly in, yes, Montgomery County, MD.)

My conjecture is that Frank will get much of the sympathy he wants for his son. One of the repellent parts of war is the way it seems to compel us to define an "other" -- a them to our us -- considered part of the same species only by courtesy. Seeing an American kid among the Other screws with the categories that dictate our sympathies. Is he us or them? Do I hate him or feel sorry for him. Additionally, it shows that there is a psychological path from us to them, that there is a continuity, not a categorical divide. If we want to consider ourselves human, we may have to consider them human too. What then?

Though I do think John will get a fair amount of sympathy, it would be perverse to give it to him while witholding it from other Taliban fighters. For John is more culpable by leaps and bounds for his association with the Taliban than the natives, for he made a series of explicit, conscious decisions within the context of a plurality of open alternatives unavailable to most Afghans.

Those kids "educated" in Taliban madrassah, rocking back and forth chanting the Koran -- they should elicit our sympathy. Sympathy for lives permanently stunted by mandatory fanatical mysticism. They don't have many options, aren't aware of most of the options they do have, and have been educated to despise any option that might really make them better off.

But John Philip Walker Lindh, aka Abdul Hamid, a kid from Maryland and California, knew what he was doing when he read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and converted to Islam. He knew what he was doing when he moved to Yemen to study Arabic. He knew what he was doing when he joined a Pakistani madrassah. And he knew what he was doing when he joined the Taliban to become a jihadi. That's not a lifestyle choice we can approve of. And if he fucked himself up because it, that's not something we should feel sorry for.

I don't feel like I know enough about the history and details of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to make strong, categorical moral judgments. I don't think that most of the people making strong, categorical judgments know enough either. However morally complex you think it is, it's probably more complex than that. I was helped a little by this essay by one of my favorite former professors, Tomis Kapitan.

The topic of Palestine v. Israel does not move me to take sides. I find the whole hoary affair a textbook example of the relation of faith to force. Disputes based in revealed religious claims cannot be rationally adjudicated, for the convictions driving the disputes are not rationally grounded. There is no common ground of public evidence to which disputants can appeal. There is, in the end, only the subjugation or elimination of your foes or the subjugation or elimination of you.

Unless, that is, you don't take religion all that seriously. The nice thing about the west is that our free, pluralistic, scientific, commercial culture has, just like Osama suspects, badly undermined truly serious commitment to religious ideals. People aren't dying for their conception of God, because their conception of God doesn't really matter much to them (despite what they might say), which is a really, really good thing.

Or if we do allow ourselves to take our conception of God really seriously, it is because we've adopted a conveniently toothless and benign remnant of our theological tradition. Which is fine. (And also a symptom of ultimate religious unseriousness.) Sugared, part-time religion gives some people the good and hopeful feeling that there's a point to all this, that the universe is meaningful, that there's a big payoff at the end of all this trouble, and so on. Swell! If what Jesus says is "Be nice to people!" then by all means be nice to people!

The religious tradition of my youth, Mormonism, recalls a time when Americans still killed each other over religion. I'm glad that time's long gone. And nowadays, when I see religious tribes slaughtering each other, I have a hard time sympathizing with either.

I find Sharon's intention to conduct "a war on terror," -- implying Arafat to be the moral equivalent of bin Laden -- disingenuous, dishonest and despair-inducing. Yes, some Palestinian radicals blew themselves up and took a fair number of Israelis with them. But many of these folks do have legitimate grievances, even if they're expressing them by illegitimate means. The Israelis literally colonized another people's homeland, displacing thousands. And they treat their Palestinian citizens as second-rate. Would you take it lightly if you got kicked out of the family home, and then had your remaining unviolated rights treated with arrogant disregard by the people who did it? This is not a story of bad people against good people.

And Arafat just isn't a terrorist. Well... at least not any more than Sharon, a man pegged by his own government for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians. Arafat may look the other way at times, as his people don't have a high-tech military backed by the world's most powerful nation. Terrorizing attacks are the only way for them to retaliate against Israeli agression and injustice. No doubt some Palestinians have simply turned into fanatical anti-semites, wishing the destuction of Israel more than Palestinian independence and autonomy. But this hatred is stewed in a cauldron fired by so much intermingled agression that it is difficult to segregate the just from the unjust passions. And some Israelis are their mirror image. I really have difficulty avoiding moral equivalence here.

Interesting piece in Reason by Shika Dalmia and Henry Payne reporting, against the CW on the left, that most blacks are against college admissions standards prejudiced in favor of blacks.