More good news: AP nixes obnoxious "-phobia" terminology

One of the most onerous terms ever invented by the PC thought police is "homophobia." At long last, the Associated Press (AP) has recognized the impropriety of the term and nixed it, along with the equally obnoxious "Islamophobia" and the euphemistic "ethnic cleansing" from its official Style Book.

The online Style Book now says that "-phobia," "an irrational, uncontrollable fear, often a form of mental illness" should not be used "in political or social contexts," including "homophobia" and "Islamophobia." It also calls "ethnic cleansing" a "euphemism," and says the AP "does not use 'ethnic cleansing' on its own. It must be enclosed in quotes, attributed and explained."

"Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism for pretty violent activities, a phobia is a psychiatric or medical term for a severe mental disorder. Those terms have been used quite a bit in the past, and we don't feel that's quite accurate," AP Deputy Standards Editor Dave Minthorn told POLITICO.

"When you break down 'ethnic cleansing,' it's a cover for terrible violent activities. It's a term we certainly don't want to [propagate]," Minthorn continued. "Homophobia especially -- it's just off the mark. It's ascribing a mental disability to someone, and suggests a knowledge that we don't have. It seems inaccurate. Instead, we would use something more neutral: anti-gay, or some such, if we had reason to believe that was the case."

"We want to be precise and accurate and neutral in our phrasing," he said.

The changes made to the online Style Book will appear in next year's printed edition.

Rod Dreher applauds the changes.

There has to be a more accurate word or expression to describe anti-gay animus. “Homophobia” carries within it certain assumptions that may or may not be true. I know people who hold animosity towards gay people, but who aren’t afraid of them. I know people who for whatever reason morally disapprove of homosexuality, but who are friends with gay people, and who aren’t the least bit afraid of them. To call either of these people “homophobic” is to misunderstand and misstate what they really believe.

Similarly with “Islamophobia.” Depending on who you are and where you are — say, an Orthodox Jew in a Paris suburb — fear of Muslims may not be a psychiatric disorder, but a rational response to the world in which you live.

To label these things as phobias is to psychologize what may be a rational moral stance, given the premises. Is an Orthodox Jew or Muslim “porkophobic” because their religion forbids consuming pork? Similarly, is an Orthodox Jew, Muslim, or traditional Christian necessarily afraid of homosexuals, or otherwise suffering from a mental disorder, because their religion forbids gay sex? To come think of someone who objects for whatever reason to homosexuality, to Islam, and so forth, as “phobic” is to see them not as people to be taken seriously, persuaded, or at least tolerated, but rather as people to be cured, or at least dismissed as crazy. “Homophobia” and “Islamophobia,” as the AP seems to understand, are inherently loaded terms and concepts.

H/T: Matthew Schmitz at First Things

NYC Food Police target homeless shelters

This is what happens when a government executive with an open disdain for all things religious shoves his benevolent fist down the citizens' charitable throats.

So much for serving the homeless. 

The Bloomberg administration is now taking the term “food police” to new depths, blocking food donations to all government-run facilities that serve the city’s homeless.

In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can’t assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans.

For over a decade, Glenn Richter and his wife, Lenore, have led a team of food-delivery volunteers from Ohab Zedek, the Upper West Side Orthodox congregation.

They’ve brought freshly cooked, nutrient-rich surplus foods from synagogue events to homeless facilities in the neighborhood. (Disclosure: I know the food is so tasty because I’ve eaten it — I’m an OZ member.) The practice of donating such surplus food to homeless shelters is common among houses of worship in the city.

DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond says the ban on food donations is consistent with Mayor Bloomberg’s emphasis on improving nutrition for all New Yorkers. A new interagency document controls what can be served at facilities — dictating serving sizes as well as salt, fat and calorie contents, plus fiber minimums and condiment recommendations.

The city also cites food-safety issues with donations, but it’s clear that the real driver behind the ban is the Bloomberg dietary diktats.

Diamond insists that the institutional vendors hired by the shelters serve food that meets the rules but also tastes good; it just isn’t too salty. So, says the commissioner, the homeless really don’t need any of the synagogue’s food.

Glenn Richter’s experience suggests otherwise. He says the beneficiaries — many of them senior citizens recovering from drug and alcohol abuse — have always been appreciative of the treats he and other OZ members bring.

It’s not just that the donations offer an enjoyable addition to the “official” low-salt fare; knowing that the food comes from volunteers and community members warms their hearts, not just their stomachs.

So you can imagine Richter’s consternation last month when employees at a local shelter turned away food he brought from a bar mitzvah.

He’s a former city Housing Authority employee, and his wife spent 35 years as a South Bronx public-school teacher, so they’re no strangers to bureaucracy and poverty. But an exasperated Richter says, “This level of micromanagement is stunning.”

Says Rabbi Allen Schwartz of Ohav Zedek, “Jews have been eating chulent and kugel for a long time, and somehow we’ve managed to live long and healthy lives. All we want to do is to continue sharing these bounties with our neighbors.”

This is very different from another recent high-profile food-police case. When a North Carolina prekindergarten aide took away a 4-year-old’s home-packed lunch last month, the school defused the incident by blaming a teacher’s bad judgment.

Here, there’s no teacher to scapegoat. The ban on food donations is the direct result of work by many city agencies, all led by a mayoral task force.

Fine, the city’s making enough nutritious food available to our homeless. (Court mandates require it.) But that’s no excuse for turning away charity that brings a tiny bit of joy into these lives.

The Bloomberg administration is so obsessed with meddling in how we all live that it’s now eating away at the very best that New York citizens have to deliver.

Where is Socrates when you need him?

Victor Davis Hanson offers a much needed critique of the "new sophists" who are polluting our culture with their pearls of wisdom on everything from climate to economics to the U.S. Constitution.

In classical Athens, public life became dominated by clever and smart-sounding sophists. These mellifluous “really wise guys” made money and gained influence by their rhetorical boasts of having “proved” the most amazing “thinkery” that belied common sense.

We are living in a new age of sophism — but without a modern Socrates to remind the public just how silly our highly credentialed and privileged new rhetoricians can be.

Take California, which is struggling with a near-record wet and snowy winter. Flooding spreads in the lowlands; snow piles up in the Sierras.

In February 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist, pontificated without evidence that California farms would dry up and blow away, because 90 percent of the annual Sierra snowpack would disappear. Yet long-term studies of the central Sierra snowpack show average snow levels unchanged over the last 90 years. Many California farms are drying up — but from government’s, not nature’s, irrigation cutoffs.

England is freezing and snowy. But that’s odd, since global-warming experts assured us that the end of English snow was on the horizon. Australia is now flooding — despite predictions that impending new droughts meant it could not sustain its present population. The New York Times just published an op-ed assuring the public that the current record cold and snow is proof of global warming. In theory, they could be, but one wonders: What, then, would record winter heat and drought prove?

In response to these unexpected symptoms of blizzards and deluges, climate physicians offer changing diagnoses. “Climate change” has superseded “global warming.” After these radically cold winters, the next replacement appears to be “climate chaos.” Yet if next December is neither too hot nor too cold, expect to hear about the doldrum dangers of “climate calm.”

In 2009, brilliant economists in the Obama administration — Peter Orszag, Larry Summers, and Christina Romer — assured us that record trillion-plus budget defects were critical to prevent stalled growth and 10 percent unemployment. For nearly two years we have experienced both, but now with an additional $3 trillion in national debt. All three have quietly returned to either academia or Wall Street.

There is also a new generation of young sophistic bloggers who offer their wisdom from the New York–Washington corridor. They usually have degrees from one or more of America’s elite colleges and navigate an upscale urban landscape. One, the Washington Post’s 26-year-old Ezra Klein, recently scoffed on MSNBC that a bothersome U.S. Constitution was “written more than 100 years ago” and has “no binding power on anything.”

One constant here is equating wisdom with a certificate of graduation from a prestigious school. If, in the fashion of the sophist Protagoras, someone writes that record cold proves record heat, or that record borrowing and printing of money will create jobs and sustained economic growth, or that a 223-year-old Constitution is 100 years old and largely irrelevant, then credibility can be claimed only in the title or the credentials — but not the logic — of the writer.

Dovetailing with my observation from a few days ago, these "new sophists" appear to be the prime beneficiaries of a hyper-sensitive society's inability to laugh at ridiculous ideas. Where is Socrates when you need him?

The 12 Days of Winter (or, What did you learn in school today?)

Sing a song of political correctness run amok!

From the "Somebody needs to get a real job" department

This "sensitivity" garbage has gone way beyond the point of utter absurdity. Via Todd Starnes:

A ban on singing “Happy Birthday” lasted all of four days at Chesterfield Elementary School in Missouri after angry parents bombarded the school with complaints.

“Singing is not permitted due to the sensitivity of all student beliefs,” wrote Principal Jodi Davidson in a letter to parents dated August 13.

On August 23 Davidson sent another letter reversing the policy noting that students “are permitted and encouraged to sing the happy birthday song in the classroom.”

However, students will not be permitted to sing the traditional song in the cafeteria and all birthday treats must be individually inspected by the school nurse.

“We have lots of students who celebrate birthdays on the same day and we just didn’t want to have the loud chaos that happens in the cafeteria,” Davidson told KSDK television. “That should be a calming environment so that it’s safe for all students and they can celebrate their birthdays with their classmates and friends.”

Kim Cranston, a spokesperson for the Rockwood School District, told FOX News Radio, the initial ban on the birthday song was meant to protect the students.

“One of the things that she (Davidson) had explained to me is they always want to be sensitive to all children,” Cranston said. “And there are some children in their school – as there are in many schools – who don’t participate in holiday or birthday celebrations.”

Cranston said to her knowledge there had been no prior complaints about the singing of the “Happy Birthday” song.

As for the inspections of the birthday goodies?

“We have to be especially careful with children with allergies,” she said.

While cupcakes and other pre-packaged treats are allowed, the school also encourages non-food related items to be distributed for birthday celebrations.

Among the “non-food” related items suggested by the principal are pencils, erasers, book marks, and book donations to the class library.

The school district acknowledged the situation could have been handled a bit more delicately.

“Mrs. Davidson has freely admitted that she didn’t communicate that very well,” Cranston said. “She has apologized.”

Beckwith: "Rhetorical McCarthyism" undermines rational discourse

Francis Beckwith introduces a new term to describe a tactic often used by politically correct elitists to dismiss those who disagree with their enlightened opinions.

This week, Time magazine published this question on its cover, "Is America Islamophobic?," inspired by the debate over the building of the Ground Zero Mosque. There is, of course, no actual ailment called "Islamophobia," as there is with claustrophobia and arachnophobia. The latter two are diagnosable irrational fears that people acquire for a variety of reasons. The first is a rhetorical invention intended to marginalize factions of the American public so that the rest of us will feel shamed into believing we should not take our fellow citizens seriously. It is, in short, an argument stopper, and thus is meant to undermine and not advance rational discourse on a matter of public controversy. This is not say, of course, that there are not people who in fact hold false and bigoted beliefs about Islam, just as there are people who hold false and bigoted beliefs about Catholicism, Protestantism and Mormonism. But it should go without saying that offering critical comments about a religion or its beliefs and practices is not automatically the result of inaccurate observations and/or bigotry. For if that were the case, then the worst bigots in the world would be the New Atheists who maintain that all religious beliefs and practices are not only false but harmful. Because the New Atheists seem to be the darlings of the Time magazine set, one can only conclude that the difference between a bigot and a respected intellectual is that the former rejects one less belief than the latter. This results in the amusing judgment that it is intolerant and bigoted to believe one religious belief is true and all others false, but the pinnacle of tolerance to believe that none are true and all are false. This is, of course, perfectly stupid, though considered the height of sophistication by the most cerebral custodians of our public culture. This is why they prefer power over reason; they can only win with the former but not the latter.

If there's one thing you can always count on in contemporary America, it is this: some enterprising political spin doctor will invent a short-hand insult (disguised as an assessment of your sub-rational motives, as if they can actually be known) in order to insulate his own opinion from legitimate criticism. In fact, I have a name for it: "Rhetorical McCarthyism." Now, if anyone calls you "Islamophobic," you can then accuse them of "Rhetorical McCarthyism." That evens the playing field so that perhaps a rational discussion may break out. It can happen.

I've not published anything about the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, simply because I'm still trying to think about it in a detached and objective manner. As a strong proponent of religious liberty, I can see the reasonableness of the pro-Mosque position. But as someone who will never forget what happened on September 11, 2001--the consequence of Islamic terrorists putting their beliefs into practice--I fully understand the objections raised against the Mosque. However, when a magazine like Time attempts to paint one side of the debate as consisting of nothing more than bigots moved by an irrational fear, I see Rhetorical McCarthyism. It is a shameful and undemocractic way to conduct a discussion in a Constitutional republic, since its purpose is to end the discussion rather than to advance it, to shut people up rather than to treat them with equal respect and dignity. It is the plagiarized cultural cliff notes of the intellectually lazy.

Grinch: The Sequel

From Mere Comments, a brilliant sequel to a Christmas classic!

How the Grinch Stole Back Christmas

‘Tis a tale often told, and every Who knows,
How the Grinch first descended from Mount Crumpet snows
And stole away Christmas (its trappings, at least)
Then had his heart changed, and came back for roast beast.
Not everyone knows what has happened since then;
How the Grinch came to think he must steal it again –

For Grinches are grinchy, and grinch-genes will tell –
And in some ways, he wasn’t adjusting too well.
Though his heart grew three sizes, his brain had not shrunk
And he tired of buying up masses of junk
And dealing with hassles and hustles barbaric
For “holidays” swiftly becoming generic.

The customs traditional, which the Grinch loved
Were watered-down, fluffed-up, or “new and improved”.
Why, at one Christmas feast, by one misguided Who,
The roast beast itself was a glob of tofu!
And the songs which reformed him with simple Who joys
Were increasingly drowned out by “noise, noise, noise, noise.”

And deep in his heart, underneath his green fur,
The Grinch knew that things weren’t right as they were.
His ponderer once more was sore as could be
In the checkout line near the HDTV’s,
When the half-hearted clerk with a faraway gaze
Blandly muttered to him, “Happy Holidays”.

Well, the Grinch’s lips curled in a most Grinchy smile
(More grinchy, perhaps, than he’d been in a while!)
He remembered his heritage, cunning and sly,
He thought, “I was made this way – p’raps this is why!”
Then he fixed his eyes on the unfortunate knave,
And regarded him mildly, and told him, “How brave!”

“Brave?”, asked the clerk, “Why, what did I say?”
“My good man, you have wished me a fine Holy Day!
“I thank, good sir, and return it sincerely;
“For you wished for me, sir, not a merry day merely,
“But a day blessed with favor from our Lord divine –
“I return it; may your Holy Day, too, be fine!”

“No! I just said ‘holiday’,” stammered the clerk,
“For that is the policy here where I work…”
“Delightful!,” the Grinch interjected with glee.
“Such corporate boldness – it overwhelms me!
“A spiritual awakening – that’s what it means!
“Now, sir, sell me some cards with nativity scenes.”

There were no such cards, for he’d sold his last few
But he did have a Santa. The Grinch said, “He’ll do,
“That old Bishop Nicholas, merry and stout.
“He once punched the heretic Arius out!”
And the clerk looked about – and no bosses he saw -
“Merry Christmas!,” he whispered, and shook a grinch paw.

The Grinch strode from the store and out into the street,
“Merry Christmas!”, he said to each Who whom he’d meet,
And he said to himself, “Why, this really is nice!
“A good deed which has gained all the thrill of a vice!
“This holiday season need not make me blue;
“For with each ‘Merry Christmas’, I break a taboo!”

Some heartily answer, returning his greeting;
And others more shyly, ere swiftly retreating –
Some say “Happy Hannukah” back with a grin,
Which the old Grinch returns, and calls that a win/win.
Some never quite notice; too stressed and engrossed.
But some look offended – and these he likes most.

“Now, don’t kid a kidder,” he tells such a one –
“I stole Christmas once, and I know how it’s done.
“But I stole it with style; I stole it with flare.
“You aren’t that clever, or else wouldn’t dare;
“To my exploits, your Christmas theft can’t hold a candle –
“You’re not even a thief – just a wannabe vandal.”

For a Grinch is a Grinch, at the end of the day
(And as he observed, Someone made him that way)
As wise as a serpent (and almost as green)
And not really worried if folks think he’s mean.
He stole Christmas once, but he made his amends –
Now he’ll steal Christmas back, for his more timid friends.

So when you’ve the chance (if, that is, you’ve the guts)
Please join me and the Grinch, driving PC-folks nuts.
Reclaiming the Holy Days, joyous and rightful,
From the purely commercial or pettily spiteful.
Co-conspire in this bold holiday counter-crime –
Committed one “Merry Christmas” at a time.

— Joe Long

Jihadism, Liberalism, and Perversion

Stephen Rittenberg makes the connection which no one else seems to want to make.

Ideas are perverse when they seek to undermine distinctions that are necessary for thought itself to exist. When such distinctions are eliminated, anything goes. When liberalism asserts that al Qaeda and America are equal threats to the world, it is being perverse. In fact, when liberals argue that modern Christianity and Islam are both ‘religions of peace' they are being perverse.

When language is debased by perverse thinking war becomes peace and all distinctions are rendered meaningless. Socialism embraces perverse thinking when it argues for a utopian egalitarianism that constitutes an assault on human differences, the differences that exist -- of talent, motivation, achievement, skill, and worth. It is perverse in ultimately reducing the vitality of difference in favor of deadening sameness.

Ideas do have consequences. Mass murder, idealized by Sade, became mass murder carried out by Hitler. Civilization is a fragile thing, and once perversion rules, there are no limits to the human imagination. We thought Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot were the worst, but now we see Islamic Jihadis strapping bombs to babies and blowing them up. Once again, we are in a struggle between civilization and perversion. Some remain puzzled by the alliance between modern day left-liberalism and jihadism. Perversion explains the puzzle.

To the perverse jihadis who constitute large numbers of Muslims, the existence of the female sex is threatening, hence women are treated as little more than cattle, with fewer rights than some lower animals. Why do Western feminists keep their mouths shut? Because many are themselves leftist utopian perverts, who also cannot tolerate the existence of two sexes and secretly long to submit to the appealing sadism of the jihadis.

One of the great fascinations of the Marquis de Sade was with child murder. In Justine he offers a lengthy argument for why parents should sexually assault, then murder their children. The most primal human bonds exist to be destroyed to the accompaniment of erotic pleasure. Deriving pleasure from sexual assault on and murder of children is the ultimate denial of God, the moral distinction between good and evil, and the distinction between humans and animals. It is ultimately the assertion that man is no different from the lowest form of matter.

What Sade imagined and longed for has come to pass.

God and Christoper Hitchens

Peter Berkowitz finds a fair amount of amusement in the articulations of Christopher Hitchens and other heralds of the "new new atheism," but ultimately finds their simplistic rejection of piety unhealthy for the current politcally polarized climate.

In making his case that reason must regard faith as an enemy to be wiped out, Mr. Hitchens declares Socrates's teaching that knowledge consists in knowing one's ignorance to be "the definition of an educated person." And yet Mr. Hitchens shows no awareness that his atheism, far from resulting from skeptical inquiry, is the rigidly dogmatic premise from which his inquiries proceed, and that it colors all his observations and determines his conclusions.

Mr. Hitchens is by far the most erudite and entertaining of the new new atheists. But his errors and his excesses are shared by the whole lot. And these errors and excesses have pernicious political consequences, amplifying invidious distinctions among fellow citizens and obscuring crucial differences among believers world wide.

Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today, the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America. At the same time, by treating all religion as one great evil pathology, today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to America's destruction.

Like philosophy, religion, rightly understood, has a beginning in wonder. The most wonderful of creatures are human beings themselves. Of all the Bible's sublime and sustaining teachings, none is more so than the teaching that explains that humanity is set apart because all human beings--woman as well as man the Bible emphasizes--are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).

That a teaching is sublime and sustaining does not make it true. But that, along with its service in laying the moral foundations in the Western world for the belief in the dignity of all men and women--a belief that our new new atheists take for granted and for which they provide no compelling alternative foundation--is reason enough to give the variety of religions a fair hearing. And it is reason enough to respect believers as decent human beings struggling to make sense of a mysterious world.

Public Invocation or Private Meditation?

Yesterday's fiasco in the Senate was hardly a shining example of Christian love and charity toward an unbelieving neighbor. As I said yesterday, there are probably a dozen better ways to make the point that the Senate chamber is not an appropriate venue for giving such prominence to a religion practiced by a miniscule number of American citizens just to make a statement about religious tolerance. The protest certainly fell under the category of "Yelling 'Fire' in a crowded theater" and the protestors were, appropriately, ejected from the chamber and arrested. Quietly humming "Amazing Grace" would have been far more appropriate, more effective, and, in all likelihood, an acceptable breach of Senate decorum.

That being said, the decision to invite a Hindu spiritual leader to offer the opening prayer is not an illustration of religious tolerance on the part of the Senate leadership. It is, rather, a glaring illustration of religious indifferentism and ignorance. The prayer offered by Hinu religious leader Rajan Zed was nothing if not benign.

We meditate on the transcendental glory of the deity supreme, who is inside the heart of the Earth, inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of the heaven. May he stimulate and illuminate our minds.

What should be immediately apparent is that the prayer is purely introspective, calling upon some vague "deity supreme" who is "inside" the earth, sky, and heaven. He has no name to honor, no face to seek; only a "transcendental glory" on which to "meditate." It is, in other words, not a public invocation but a private meditation. It is for this reason, moreso than the fact that it was offered by a non-Christian cleric, that this prayer was inappropriate for so public a setting.

Yeah, It Was Rude, But . . .

A couple of Christian protestors shouted down the Hindu "guest chaplain" invited to give the opening "prayer" for today's session of the U.S. Senate. It was rude, a bit obnoxious, and there were probably a dozen better ways to get the point across . . .

But . . .

. . . you have to admit, the prayer offered by the protestors was far superior to the mush emanating from this poor fellow's mouth.

Watch the video.