Stupak simplifications

Earlier this year I dipped my toe in the controversial waters of the abortion debate, expressing my conflicted feelings, as someone who sees himself as pro-feminist and generally on the left, but gets queasy about a good deal of abortion rights rhetoric. Now, at the risk of alienating my liberal-left and secularist readership (with whom, on most issues, I am at one), I’m going to get my feet wet again.

Here at Margins Manor we’ve been following the US health reform debate quite closely, particularly as we were in Washington when some of the key breakthroughs occurred. This week, the successful passage of the health care bill through the House, thanks in part to the inclusion of the Stupak amendment restricting federal funding of abortion, has brought the issue back into the centre of political debate – and to the forefront of my mind.

On MSNBC’s Meet the Press last Sunday, Rachel Maddow described the amendment as a ‘poison pill’ that would alienate women from the Democratic Party. I’m usually a huge admirer of Maddow – watching clips from her show on the laptop at the kitchen table is a regular tea-time treat in our household – but on this issue I’m tempted to agree, if only for a swiftly passing moment, with those who criticise MSNBC as a liberal mirror-image of the execrably one-sided Fox News. Whenever Rachel discusses this topic, she always describes opponents of abortion as ‘anti-choice’, a phrase that is just as loaded as the equally partisan ‘pro-life’ (who isn’t?), and which rides roughshod over the complex and conflicted views of the majority of Americans.

Those on the left, like Maddow, who are up in arms about Stupak, characterise it as the denial of state funding for a perfectly legal medical procedure. In theory they’re right. But can abortion really be treated like any other medical procedure - except perhaps when it’s a matter of saving the mother’s life? Defending the gains of the women’s movement is of the first importance, but isn’t it a massive simplification to see federal funding for abortion as only a women’s rights issue? Isn’t the difficulty with abortion that it’s an issue that involves a balancing of competing rights – crucially, the right of a woman to make decisions about what happens to her body, and the right of the unborn child to life? Pretending that having an abortion is as morally straightforward as having your appendix out, or casting aspersions on the genuine ethical concerns of your opponents, is disingenuous.

Looking for a perspective on Stupak that goes beyond the shouting match between the partisans of left and right, I turned to Michael Sean Winters. In a comment on an earlier post of mine, Martin M. voiced doubts about the possibilities for a liberal Catholicism. But Winters, who has attempted to (re-) build bridges between the Church and the Democratic Party, represents exactly the kind of thoughtful, engaged, left-of-centre Catholicism that one had thought extinct, even if he is something of a voice crying in the wilderness.

Writing this week about the amendment to the health care bill, Winters denies that it’s a vote against women:

No, the members who voted for Stupak sent a message to the entire country that abortion is an issue about which most Americans evidence profound ambivalence. Even those who think it should be legal do not think it is something to be encouraged. "Safe, legal and rare" was the formulation Bill Clinton provided in 1996 and it captured the way most Americans feel still, especially those in the center of the electorate.

Like Clinton, Obama has pledged himself to look for common ground on abortion and has identified reducing the number of abortions as an aim that people on both sides of this contentious issue should be able to agree on. I don’t pretend to understand all the details of the Stupak amendment, but it seems to be a step in this direction, and a pragmatic concession that will ensure that the larger, historic project of providing affordable health care for all Americans finally comes to pass. As Winters writes:

What should be clear, crystal clear, is that many of us who support health care reform, who backed the President in part because of his pledge to accomplish health care reform, also cringe at the prospect of health care reform being hijacked by Planned Parenthood to increase abortion coverage with our tax dollars.

I'd encourage you to read the whole article. Even if you disagree profoundly with Winters' position, and are deeply suspicious of the Church's role in American politics, it's important to acknowledge that there is a perfectly respectable left-of-centre argument against unrestricted abortion.

While we’re on the subject, you may find this video (via Red Maria) a little cheesy, and take issue with its implicit message, but it’s good to see the Catholic Church making the positive ‘pro-life’ case for a change, rather than indulging in horror stories and negative rhetoric:

Just go for it, OK?

It must be a sign of age. These days, despite my Eng Lit and Cult Studies background, I tend to find instances of linguistic innovation irritating rather than intriguing. Here’s a couple of recent examples that have raised my hackles:

A few weeks ago, at my place of work, I arrived early at a room where we were due to conduct some interviews, to find a young admin person setting out the furniture. When I asked if it was all right to come in, she replied – not ‘of course’ or ‘certainly’ - but ‘Yeah - go for it.’ Coincidentally, on another morning in the very same week, as I walked into the barber shop to have my hair cut, the equally youthful hairdresser invited me to take a seat with the same phrase.

What was it about the phrase that annoyed me? Partly it was the shock of the unfamiliar: hearing a saying I’d hitherto associated with the presenters of children’s TV programmes being used in ordinary adult conversation. Was it that my laconic middle-aged self simply felt exhausted by the phrase’s high-energy associations? Or maybe it was a cross-generational thing: the surprise of finding myself, a fiftysomething, being addressed by twentysomethings in the argot that they presumably use with each other. Perhaps I should have been flattered.

The second example occurred when I was travelling by train this week. Sitting across the aisle from me were two women, obviously catching up after not seeing each other for a while. As one of them recounted the familiar litany of children’s schools, holidays, new job, etc, the other punctuated her remarks not with the usual ‘really?’ or ‘I see’– but with a regular ‘oh - OK’. I’ve come across this conversational gambit before, and I’ve been trying to work out why it gets my goat.

I think it’s because I'm used to hearing ‘OK’ used as a response when one person is giving another a list of instructions, or inviting agreement. Used as my fellow train traveller was using it – to an interlocutor simply sharing items of news – it sounded as though she were giving her approval – ‘that’s OK, I approve of that’ – when it wasn’t asked for. Or perhaps the opposite was true. It’s difficult to convey tone of voice here, but there was a hint of questioning antipodean upspeak (maybe that’s where this useage originated?) in this woman’s ‘OK’, which made it sound like she meant ‘that may be OK, but I’m thinking about it before I give my approval’ . Either way, to me (as one not used to this conversational ploy) it came across as pushy and rude, as if the speaker were foregrounding her own (approving or disapproving ) response, rather than simply acknowledging her acquaintance’s statements - as would have been the case with the more usual – and more neutral - ‘really?’

I’d be interested to know if any of my readers – whether middle-aged grumps like me, or young things who recognise these verbal traits as part of their own repertoire - agree with my analysis of these neologisms.

Supporting Yoani

As a small mark of support for brave Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who was seized and beaten by state security agents on Friday, I've belatedly added the indispensable Generation Y to my blogroll.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

We were in London yesterday to see Anna Friel in Breakfast at Tiffany's at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. The play was directed by Sean Mathias, whose Waiting for Godot we saw at the same theatre earlier this year, and it was characterised by similarly imaginative and innovative staging. Although this production goes back to the original Capote story (which I have to confess, I haven't read), which is apparently grittier than the universally-known Blake Edwards film, it's really difficult to get Audrey Hepburn's iconic performance out of your head - and to avoid comparisons.

Anna Friel turns in a spirited and energetic performance, and she is always (as they say) easy on the eye, but she lacks the magical elusiveness and lightness of touch of Hepburn. I'm no expert, but I'd say her accent was a little strained at times, and as often happens, you get the impression that studied attention to the externalities of the character has meant less work on the more internal aspects.

Playing opposite her as the aspiring writer, Joseph Cross (seen most recently alongside Sean Penn in Milk) was also impressive, but one of the problems with the production is that there is insufficient contrast between the two main characters. Whereas in the movie the wry, if naive urbanity of the writer contrasts with the many-layered mystery of Miss Holly Golightly, here they are too similar in their out-of-town newness, pushiness and emotional flightiness.

The cast members worked their socks off, with most of them playing two or three parts. Thank goodness they decided not to repeat Mickey Rooney's offensive cartoon Chinaman in the portrayal of landlord Mr. Yonioshi. Among the supporting cast, Dermot Crowley's performance as dependable but Holly-obsessed barman Joe Bell stood out as particularly memorable..

All in all, it was an absorbing and thought-provoking afternoon in the theatre. And London itself looked autumnally beautiful yesterday, with the newly-restored whiteness of St. Martin in the Fields gleaming in the afternoon sunshine, and Quakers and soldiers mingling peacefully in contrasting Remembrance weekend demonstrations in Trafalgar Square, as we walked to the theatre. The woman who does those imitations of Renaissance paintings in chalk was, as always, on the pavement outside the National Gallery - and, as always, we didn't catch her actually doing any chalking. My son has the idea of setting up a webcam in the square to prove that she doesn't produce the pictures herself - but instead arrives before the crowds, tapes down the finished product, scatters a few chalks around and waits for the beguiled tourists to fill her hat with coins.

A couple of quotes on humanism and secularism

First, Austin Dacey (via B&W) on the futility of seeing secular humanism as a replacement for religion:

Humanists are right to think that there is more to life than atheism, but wrong to think that they are the ones to provide it. It is not the job of religion’s critics to organize a replacement.

Just to show you how serious I am, I’ve christened a new fallacy to give a name to this mistake in thinking: I call it the fallacy of decomposition. The fallacy of decomposition is the mistake of supposing that as the estate of religion collapses, there must be a single new institution that to arises to serve the same social functions it served—that the social space vacated by religion must be filled by a religion-shaped object. Instead, it could be that in the lot once occupied by faith there springs up a variegated garden, a patchwork of independent institutions, each of which fulfills one of those functions. Out of one, many.

Thus, for our education, we attend the university; for cosmological clarity, we visit the planetarium; for therapy, the therapist; for beauty, the museum, the concert hall. Good stories? We read the Good Book, sure, but also the good books.

After all, it was something like this phenomenon that characterized the secularization of Western Europe. The dramatic drop in regular church attendance in Europe was not accompanied by a dramatic spike in the membership of organized atheism or humanism, which remains marginal. For post-religious Europeans, the point was to not show up anywhere once a week to seek absolution, but to stay out late on Saturday nights and sleep in late on Sunday mornings.

When you think about it, organized humanism is a hard sell. Do you like paying dues and making forced pleasantries over post-service coffee cake, but can’t stand beautiful architecture and professionally trained musicians? If so, organized humanism may be for you. Greg Epstein (the “humanist chaplain” at Harvard and the author of Good Without God) is a lovely person, but I’ve heard him sing, and I think I’ll stick to Bach, Arvo Pärt, and Kirk Franklin for my spiritual uplift. Do we really need an institution for people who find Reform Judaism and Unitarian Universalism too rigid? Yes. It’s called the weekend.

Dacey concludes:

The promise and the peril of the open, liberal democratic society lies precisely in the possibility of a civility and a solidarity untethered from any unitary philosophy or community—it doesn’t all have to hang together. The secular house has many mansions.

Second (and I missed this when it appeared earlier this year), Thierry Chervel on the canard of 'Enlightenment fundamentalism'. Responding to the pessimistic fulminations of John Gray, Chervel asks:

Is there such thing as Enlightenment fundamentalism, a mirror image of Islamic fundamentalism? Is there a danger that these fundamentalisms will drive one another into a spiral of violence until a clash of cultures ensues?

He takes on on the argument that utopian political movements of the twentieth century were as fundamentalist as some religions:

But if real existing socialism was a fundamentalism, it certainly wasn't Enlightenment fundamentalism. It practised dogmatic exegesis like religious fundamentalism. It just used a different book. Fundamentalisms try to model reality according to a truth pronounced in a text. Anything that doesn't fit the model is lopped off. They promise a return to original purity, redemption from the corruption of alienating market developments, proximity to God, care in the community instead of the sad, isolated recognition of one's own mortality. No responsibility is accepted for collateral damage on the path back to this blessed state. Some want to reach it through terrorism, others content themselves with isolating a particular community and directing the terror inwards.

There is nothing in the reaction of Western societies to Islam or Islamism which bears any resemblance to such discourse or behaviour. There is intolerance, certainly, and indifference, racism, discrimination and a whole repertoire of grievances which not only Muslims are forced to endure every day. These cannot be called enlightened.

How is it possible to equate the Enlightenment with fundamentalism? Its principles are aimed precisely against the belief in fundamentals. It is only by "thinking for oneself" that one emerges from self-imposed immaturity. By thinking for oneself one frees oneself of dogmas and seemingly eternal truths which are imposed by the clergy. Thinking for oneself also means thinking about oneself, self-reflection, self-relativisation in relation to others. This is why the motto of the Enlightenment is often paradoxical: "Freedom is the freedom of dissenters." The Enlightenment does not believe in any automatism on this path to self-awareness. That would make it a progressive philosophy which turns people into marionettes of some externally-steered process.

As for the cultural-relativist argument that Enlightenment values are simply a 'western' imposition:

The ideas of the Enlightenment are [...] not meant as "Western values" that stand in opposition to Islam. For a start they presuppose a distance from one's own religions and traditions. Paradoxically, the democracy that was born out of the Enlightenment became the only regime which allows a coexistence of religions. Of course the Enlightenment throws doubt on beliefs of every kind, but it also allows them as a freedom of the dissenter. Belief becomes a personal avowal, quite separate from tradition or priestly compulsion. It is the freedom to lapse that makes belief real.

This freedom to practise religion – rather than "Enlightenment fundamentalism" – is what really attracts the hatred of the fundamentalists. They are not interested in religion but in the control of the individual. In the case of Islamism, the most powerful symbol of this will to power is the headscarf. Of course women are free to submit, as long as they do so of their own volition.

Four days in DC: final reflections

I've just been re-reading my posts about last week's trip to Washington, and I was disappointed to find them overly descriptive and stripped of my usual reflective asides about politics, history, culture, etc. Partly, I think this is because I was (and to some extent still am) jet-lagged and exhausted after a rather draining week.

But it's also because I was wary of making broad generalisations based on a few days' experience of a strange city in another country. However, I can't end my account of our stay without sharing a few of the thoughts that occurred to me while we there. So here goes.

Once again, I was impressed during our time in DC by the easygoing patriotism of Americans. Whether it was the habit of raising impressive monuments to their elected representatives, or the mingling of the Stars and Stripes with flags supporting the troops at the Marine Corps Marathon, this sense of an unforced, shared pride in the nation offered a jarring contrast with the apologetic and guilty nationalism of the British - and made me, for one, rather jealous.

Going along with this, Americans' continuing and largely unabashed faith in the democratic process, and general lack of cynicism about politics, was also much in evidence - whether in the reverential tones of tour guides at the Capitol, or the intense and mostly serious debates about health care reform and Afghanistan on TV (no, we didn't watch Fox while we were there). Americans themselves may not agree with this assessment - but they should come over here and spend a week imbibing the tired and cynical treatment of political issues in most of the British media.

As always, we found America and Americans extremely welcoming - from the guards at immigration through hotel reception staff to waiters, shop assistants and people we met as we moved about the city. On one ride on the DC Circulator Bus, an elderly black man looked up from his Sudoku puzzle to see us struggling with our map, and spent the rest of the journey explaining to us the best way to approach the Capitol, and what we could expect to see en route.

Which brings me to my final comment. It's only when you leave the mostly white enclave of Georgetown (but see this article), and especially when you ride the bus routes, that you realise how much of an African-American city Washington is. You only have to linger a while in the cafe at the downtown branch of Borders on a Sunday afternoon, watching a young black mother helping her son with his homework, or older black men poring over volumes on history and politics, to realise who makes up the true majority of this city's population, once all the interns and lobbyists have gone home to the suburbs. Maybe on our next visit, with the monuments and memorials now under our belts, we'll explore the black and civil rights heritage of the District.

Four days in DC: Part 3

On Tuesday we'd planned to visit Arlington National Cemetery, walking across the bridge that symbolically links the Lincoln Memorial with the former home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. But we woke to a blanket of mist and drizzle that forced us to reconsider.

After some desultory wandering around Georgetown - which meant, however, that we got to see some of the smart houses on 'N' Street, including Jackie Kennedy's former residence - we hopped on the Circulator Bus and returned to the Mall for a visit to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

Then, en route back to the bus stop, we found ourselves outside the recently re-opened Ford's Theatre, site of Lincoln's assassination, where you can see an exhibition about the great man, as well as the box where he was shot. Across the road is the Petersen House, where we saw the room in which Lincoln passed away. For H. and me, having recently read Doris Kearns Goodwin's brilliant book, this was one of the highlights of our stay in Washington.

Our final morning in Washington saw a return to glorious autumn weather, as we took a final stroll down 'M' Street to Barnes and Noble, where H. bought Jon Meacham's biography of Andrew Jackson and I came away with Joseph Ellis' book on Jefferson. We then turned down towards the waterfront and came across the new Washington Harbour development, with its stunning views along the Potomac (including the Watergate, as seen below), before heading back to the hotel to catch our lift to the airport.

All too quickly, we were back at Dulles and our brief but enormously stimulating visit to Washington DC was at an end.