Alex O'Neal: "Stephen Gould, possibly the pre-eminent Darwin scholar of the 20th century, laid it to rest along with many others."

What is it with some liberals and references to the opinions of Stephen J. Gould? I regularly see Gould's statement on "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" (i.e. religion and science being investigations into separate realms) invoked like holy writ by certain liberals uncomfortable with the messy, un-PC business of applying reason and evidence-based criticism to religious beliefs.

The guy was arguably "the pre-eminent Darwin scholar of the 20th century" in some people's minds because of his (self?) promotion in the mainstream media, meaning he was palatable to church-going middle-Americans.

Having read Vollmann in the past, I read this review with relish and was not disappointed.

What struck me most:

Vollmann writes of himself having a "positive fetish about equality" but is described by the reviewer as "make[ing] quite a show of refusing to ‘come out against’ the gender apartheid of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan because some charismatic old tribal patriarch once explained to him that Muslim men show how much they 'cherish' and 'respect' their women by keeping them locked up safe at home."

That is the hypocrisy of multiculturalism laid bare: the failure to hold certain cultural or religious traditions to the standard of critical assessment applied to other groups. Particularly in Europe that is the cancer eating away at the intellectual and political underpinnings of society (and a reason I left).

This is seen most pointedly in persons who savage Christianity both on theological and political levels and yet make endless apologetics for Islam as misunderstood, oppressed by ‘racism’, manipulated by external agents (e.g. Israel, George Bush, Wahabbis), due some innate respect (because it has lots of followers apparently?), etc. It is a trans-Atlantic phenomenon and disturbs me because it comes from the minds of otherwise educated, intelligent people.

All this occurs especially it seems when influenced by personal relationships (‘well, I have friends from Lebannon…’) or a more general, romanticized and/or politicized notions of the other (a.k.a. ‘any enemy of Western hegemony and crass materialism must be good, right?’). Vollmann succumbs to the former and it was refreshing to see Laura Miller call him out on it in the pages of Salon no less. Now if Salon only addressed the later issue more for the sake of liberalism's future.

***

But let me just get this straight, Vollmann has a young daughter and yet globe-trots from Thailand to Nairobi to Russia while often pursuing paid sex? The perversity of that combination alone probably equals anything written in his book.

"Anyone with an IQ over 40 knows you never, NEVER do anything even slightly over the line until your Moral Character & Fitness Application comes back approved. Get arrested at a protest, even for a good cause? NO. Pose nude and be videotaped getting spanked? NO. NO."

Anyone with an IQ over 40 can see that getting arrested at a protest implies illegal conduct whereas her appearing in the video is perfectly legal. To determine a legal activity with no ill effect on others as 'unfit' would be grave injustice.

Has anyone considered how a male lawyer appearing as the stud in some porn video would be treated in this regard? It wwouldn't even make the news. Deep down this is all about her being a woman with Abrahamic views on women's sexuality at the heart of it. There is no rational reason to disparage or censure this woman's conduct; it says nothing about her fitness a lawyer.

I'm with the first letter, which pointed out the larger issue of the need to label his sexuality at all. Moreover, my view is that many people focus on rationalizing their tolerance like Cary does to an extent, rather than simply observing how irrational intolerance of varying sexuality is. Those may sound similar at first glance, but recognizing irrationality in our actions is far more profound and likely long-lived than often glib notions of 'tolerance' for something we label as different.

Hey, Joan, please explain how profiling someone based upon their avowed ideological beliefs be it Islam, white supremicism, or Wicca is comparable to "racial profiling" i.e. profiling because of in-born, immutable physical characteristics?

And since Islam as we all know is practised by every major ethnicity, then profiling a Muslim would have no racial dimension. I mean do you seriously think people like Malkin who advocate profiling Muslims are less worried about 'white' Muslims be they Bosnian or German convert as oppossed to predominantly-Muslim ethnicities like Arabs, Malays, etc.

People kill because of what they believe, not because they have different amount of skin pigment. People who are supect of Muslims find concern with what they perceive as a uniquely violent religious doctrine, one which emmanates from the supposedly inerrant revelation of god that is the Qur,an (I am not a Jew or Christian, so don't bother bringing up violence in the Bible). It is time liberals defending Islamic 'civil rights' consider how they are playing the same victimhood game on behalf of Muslims that many Christians use and that defending a grossly illiberal ideology will come back to haunt us in time (just like the use of Muslim extremist by the US in the Soviet-Afghan conflict).