I am a bit addicted to anniversaries so I rejoiced to discover that 2012 marks the 800th anniversary of the Children’s Crusade. Reliable accounts of this incredible adventure are few, but it appears that a couple of charismatic teenagers gathered tens of thousands of children in Germany, France and Italy and led them towards the Holy Land where they would convert the Muslims. The Mediterranean was to part before them, allowing them to march dry-shod to Jerusalem.
By some serendipitous coincidence, I also watched Kony 2012, a 30-minute YouTube video which has been viewed by about 75 million people in a single week. It was produced by an American lobby group, Invisible Children, which tries to protect and rehabilitate Ugandan kids who have been kidnapped, raped and maimed by a mysterious warlord named Joseph Kony. As a marketing gimmick, it’s little short of miraculous.
This is a genuine humanitarian disaster. Tens of thousands of children have been enslaved by Kony over the past 20 years, although nowadays his forces, some of them child soldiers, have shrunk to a few hundred. He was one of the first persons indicted by the International Criminal Court.
The video shows American college students chanting demands to stop Kony’s senseless war and to arrest him for crimes against humanity. There are shots of brutalised Ugandan children and of local politicians agreeing that he should be caught. But the director’s adorable blonde 3-year-old son generates most of the moral outrage.
What’s the purpose of this noble-white-guys-save-backward-blacks video? Ostensibly to pressure the US government to provide troops to catch Kony. How? That’s the cool part: all you have to do is forward the video and click on Invisible Children’s website to buy some merchandise. It’s a classic case of self-indulgent slacktivism: feeling good about yourself by feeling sad about others.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, little of the video makes sense. The crocodile tears of American college students are unlikely to drown Joseph Kony. He wanders around in Uganda, Sudan, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, an area as large as France. In any case, he is largely a spent force, thanks to the Ugandan government. And his victims are but a small fraction of the 5 million who have died in the neighbouring DRC. But the college students may not even know where the DRC is.
The barminess of Kony 2012 is painfully similar to the barminess of Children’s Crusade 1212. But there is a difference. Most of the youthful crusaders died en route to Brindisi, on the Adriatic coast, where the survivors were sold to Muslims by enterprising locals. At least there is no danger of that for slacktivists.
One afternoon this week I escaped from the desk and joined a couple of friends at the movies. It was not a frivolous outing, though, more in the line of cultural enrichment since the film in question was Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, a documentary about an extraordinary exhibition of the great man’s paintings and drawings at the National Gallery in London. Seeing a few close-ups of such famous works as The Virgin of the Rocks (both versions) and the Madonna Litta, as well as the recently restored Christ as Salvator Mundi -- a portrait which, to my mind, has some of the mysterious power of the image on the Shroud of Turin -- on high definition film is as close as I will ever get to the originals, I figure.
The film confirmed for me the idea that Leonardo could be a great artist because he had a high view of both his art and his subjects. As the exhibition website says: “As a painter, Leonardo aimed to convince viewers of the reality of what they were seeing while still aspiring to create ideals of beauty -- particularly in his exquisite portraits -- and, in his religious works, to create a sense of awe-inspiring mystery.” In other words he saw art as something that discovers the nobility in human nature and raises our minds towards the divine source of human dignity. How different to the earthbound and cynical view of man that is so evident in much of contemporary “art”.
But how similar to the vision of Jose Antonio Abreu, founder of the Venezuelan musical education programme, El Sistema, which has raised the aspirations of hundreds of thousands of poor children and their families by placing free instruments in their hands, providing them with free tuition and forming them into orchestras where they learn the importance of striving, co-operation and solidarity. “From the minute a child’s taught how to play an instrument, he’s no longer poor,” says Abreu. “He becomes a child in progress heading for a professional level, who’ll later become a full citizen.”My article today notes how this idea is catching on in other parts of the world.
One bad idea that is spreading is examined carefully by Zac Alstin in his article on “lying for the cause”, another by James S Cole who looks at the trend in the US of state and federal executives ruling by decree. Kevin Ryan has had enough of bad ideas in education and suggests that Florida is heading in the right direction with school reform. And George Friedman gives us a Stratfor view of China which I found particularly helpful in understanding both its problems and its influence in the world right now.
I can’t close without making a plug for our Reading Matters contributor, Clare Cannon, and her amazing new website, The Good Reading Guide. Clare, who is also manager of Portico Books in Sydney, has posted a video review on Reading Matters, the first of many we believe, adding a lively personal touch to the blog. After you view the video I highly recommend taking a tour of The Good Reading Guide and subscribing.
For a decade or so, much of Australia was in the grip of a terrible drought because of global warming. Now climate change has brought the rain. The other day, tourists were huddling under umbrellas watching the Warragamba Dam, which supplies most of Sydney’s water, spill over for the first time in 14 years. Residents of Wagga Wagga, an inland city, are being winched off the roofs of their cars and houses.
I discovered the reason for the downpour the other day when I paid a quick visit to the local church. Christine, the local Chinese bag lady (possibly Australia’s one and only Chinese bag lady) grabbed me by the sleeve and announced that she had been praying hard for rain for the last five months to help the farmers. “Well done, love!” I said, “but don’t you think it’s time to stop?” Christine obviously didn’t. “Can I have five dollars?” she said. I demurred and she wandered off looking for someone who wanted to see the roofs of Wagga disappear under her prayers.
That’s what I like about churches. They are full of Christines. Well, full of all sorts of people, including the crazy people: academics and council workers; bank managers and home managers; restless toddlers and bored teenagers; young fathers shushing their kids and shuffling old men. It’s the ultimate democracy; everyone there knows that they are all equal in the sight of God. Most environments are elitist, segregating the wealthy from the poor, the educated from the uneducated, the well-connected from the unhinged -- but not churches.
This is one reason why marginalising Christianity, as the US and UK governments seem determined to do, is a pretty dumb idea. It would only heighten our natural tendency to live in gated communities. There would be no place where we could chat with Christine.
So far this week, the MercatorNet home page is a bit sombre, but very informative. Oliver M. Tuazon and Angelo S. Porciuncula explain why the Philippines has such a low rate of AIDS, even though conditions seem ideal for an epidemic. Two leading bioethicists, Trevor Stammers and Margaret Somerville, discuss a proposal to make infanticide “ethically permissible”. And Robert Reilly argues that extending the privileged status of marriage to homosexuals would undermine its foundation.
It took no time at all for Professor Steven Schwartz’s lecture (“The dangers of knowledge without wisdom”) to reach the top of our most-viewed list this week. Readers love an article that stands back from the madcap and dangerous ideas of many newsmakers to talk about topics like wisdom and how to cultivate it in an increasingly pragmatic world.
For the same reason I was delighted to meet (online) Louise Kirk, Oxford graduate, mother of four and UK co-ordinator of a values education programme called Alive to the World. At the time, she happened to be making a lengthy submission to the British government on a curriculum that includes sex education, and I invited her to talk to us about that. Today’s interview is the result.
It is a fact of life that some things have to be criticised because they are simply no darn good, and Louise thoroughly pans what they call PSHE in Britain. But, more importantly, she gives us a glimpse of a programme that looks very good and that has succeeded in places as unpromising as a Venezuelan school that was in the grip of endemic violence. I recommend a visit to the UK website and also to an article (online) in the current issue of Philanthropy magazine about Alive to the World -- links in Louise Kirk’s article. Obviously there are other good programmes around, but we just happen to know about this one.
In other new articles: Michael Cook finds it difficult to swallow the idea of a morality pill; Izzy Kalman returns to the subject of bullying; and George Friedman argues that the US will have to come up with a more purposeful foreign policy.
I am off now to prepare for the “weather bomb” that is supposed to strike New Zealand tomorrow -- straight from Eastern Australia, much of which seems to be under water as I write. NZ’s Maori name, Aoteroa, means “Land of the long white cloud” and we are used to that turning grey and dumping on us, but Oz is meant to be the land of blazing sun and bushfires. Climate change strikes again…
Last week Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said American colleges “indoctrinate” students with secularism. “I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely,” he said. “The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.”
To tell the truth, although I like Mr Santorum’s views on life issues, this seemed rather exaggerated. No wonder New York Times columnist Frank Bruni heaped ridicule Santorum’s “obstacle course of unsavory influences”.
After reading Carolyn Moynihan’s article about America’s most famous university, perhaps Santorum’s on to something. Some academics are unsavoury influences upon impressionable college students.
It appears that the House Master of one of Harvard's twelve undergraduate residential communities, Erika Christakis, a woman who is responsible for the well-being of 400 young adults, is campaigning for “a Porn housekeeping seal of approval”. This is a way for students to rate their favourite pornography so that they watch only the stuff which was made ethically. “We don't need more Rick Santorums policing our fantasies,” she writes.
Well, maybe we do. Erika Christakis is one of those unsavoury influences. With people like her running Harvard, no wonder Mr Santorum is convinced that some colleges are indoctrination mills.
In other articles so far this week, I have written about developments on the abortion front. David J. Peterson reviews a lively book on the defects of capitalism and the head of an Australian university, Steven Schwartz, defends the value of a liberal education.
Don’t forget to check out Conjugality, our new blog on the true nature of marriage and the challenge posed by same-sex marriage. We’ve had rave reviews.
This week we have fulfilled another of our New Year’s resolutions: to launch a blog on same-sex marriage, Conjugality. Check it out – it’s chock full of fresh stories. We will be topping it up regularly with articles from a range of contributors. The editor is Michael Kirke, an Irish journalist who writes from Dublin.
Although same-sex marriage, or if you want to know my true feelings about it, same-sex so-called marriage, is an immense challenge, we do want to be constructive in our criticism. Another purpose of Conjugality is to highlight the dignity and joy of genuine marriage between one man and one woman. There are many reasons why SSM has captured the imagination of “progressives”, but one is that respect for the traditional variety has been eroded by decades of divorce, infidelity and contraception.
Have a look. Leave some comments. We’d love to hear from you.
We close the week with four compelling essays. Anne Morse, a college student at Berkeley, makes a fascinating critique of contraception. George Friedman traces the conundrums of today’s international affairs to the dramatic years 1989, 1990 and 1991. And in two articles from Canada, Rebekah Hebbert (another college student, at McGill) asks why Quebec parents are being forced to send their children to an objectionable ethics program and Peter Jon Mitchell asks whether Ontario will ever succeed in stamping out bullying.
So much apocalyptic news nowadays. Will Israel bomb Iran’s nuclear sites? Will Obama’s healthcare act crush conscientious objectors? Will the Eurozone collapse? These are global or national apocalypses, of course, but they remind me of a personal encounter.
Some time ago, as I walked to work in a leafy suburb of Sydney, I often crossed paths with Geoff. He was English and had been a teacher of something or other. In retirement, he looked like the dishevelled younger brother of Neville Chamberlain, with a grey moustache hiding his upper lip, a frayed and funereal black suit and wispy grey hair combed back and matted down over his pate. On the back of his head there was an enormous wen, as big as an egg. He was unmistakable.
We greeted each other now and then on the footpath, discussing the weather mostly, nothing remotely personal. One day, to my surprise, he accosted me in a lather of distress.
“Michael,” he said. “Never in my whole life have I been so insulted.”
“Ah, is that so?” I responded cautiously.
“I was just in the dry cleaning shop,” said Geoff in a fury, “and the young woman there was dressed all in black.”
“Ah,” I said. I recalled the lass – she was probably a university student working part-time.
“She looked quite charming in black and I said, my dear, I am deeply grateful and I would like to invite you to dine with me. No one else has ever acknowledged that I am the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.”
“Ah-ha,” I said. Geoff’s real identity was news to me and no doubt to the young lady as well. It may not have inclined her to accept Geoff’s invitation.
“And do you know what she said to me? Do you know how she responded to my kindness? She told me to…” and here Geoff uttered an expression which sounded even more incongruous on his lips than on the young lady’s.
“Ah, Geoff,” I said. “I really am quite busy. I’ll have to run.” And that was nearly the last I saw of him, although one of my friends was on a train when Geoff spied a woman in a red dress. “Behold the Scarlet Woman,” he shouted. “Behold the great whore of Babylon.” There was a certain lack of tact about this which probably impeded further discussion of this interesting theological point.
I suppose that the lesson is that excessively apocalyptic language can shut down communication. It is advice which we have always tried to follow at MercatorNet.
Anyhow, enough of the personal stuff. So far this week we have posted three articles. Zac Alstin discusses a new book by Alain de Botton under what may be the best headline we have ever had in MercatorNet: “God is dead. Can I have his stuff?” (His headline, by the way, not ours.) Ronan Wright reviews Carnage, a new film by Roman Polanski about parental pride. And a distinguished new contributor, Angelo Codevilla, detects a shift from rule of law to rule by decree in the controversy over the health care act.
What a busy week! So much happening and people popping out of the woodwork with articles and ideas. It’s wonderful and a bit dizzying at the same time. The blogs look after themselves thanks to Sheila, Marcus and Shannon, Katie, Jennifer and the Reading Matters team but pretty well everything else goes through the brain and computer of Michael Cook or myself before it gets published. Golly, we could do with some more staff on this site, and money to pay them -- a thought for when you are revising your will. Or sooner.
Michael has dashed off to another commitment this afternoon but not before posting a brief but moving comment on the winner of the 2011 World Press Photo.
From the Muslim subjects of the photograph to a Muslim British Baroness: unlikely as it sounds, there is such a person. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, born and bred in Britain, is co-chairman of the British Conservative Party and the first female Muslim to serve as a minister in a UK cabinet. Even more surprisingly, she spoke at a conference at the Vatican this week saying “Europe needs to become more confident in its Christianity”! Do read what she has to say; it’s very encouraging.
In other articles at this end of the week: Thomas Patrick Burke, a libertarian born in Brisbane and living near Philadelphia (but very sane for all that) tackles the idea that the government should get right out of marriage. William West looks at research on the effects of regular date nights among couples, and Mary Rice Hasson is indignant at a new development on university campuses.
We are always grateful for tips, especially if they involve humour. Washington resident Matthew Mehan, who is keeping a close eye on the Obama “contraceptive mandate”, found this video in which there’s a great line about the president’s definition of when life begins. You probably won’t want to watch the whole thing so just go to the 4 minute mark…
As I took the train after work today, it was charming to see all those young women cradling bouquets of long-stem red roses from their sweethearts. However, I’ve got to be honest and confess that there is no day in the year that hones out my killjoy instinct more keenly.
In elementary school, this was a day of dread. I could never make sense of the annual ritual of cutting hearts out of coloured paper, sticking them down with liberal lashings of non-toxic paste, sprinkling them with glitter, and composing gooey messages. Not for one or two friends, but for everyone in my class, plus everyone at home. It was real drudgery.
Besides it doesn’t seem to do a lot of good. So many millions of Valentine’s Day cards and so little genuine, lifelong romance, as new contributor Shirene Urry points out in her feature on love among college students and Carolyn Moynihan suggests in her article on on-line dating.
Anyhow, I must be wrong. On this one I get outvoted year after year. The US National Retail Federation estimates that Americans will spend US$17.6 billion today on Valentine’s Day gifts – more than the GDP of Afghanistan. This figure includes $630 million on Valentine’s Day gifts to pets, something that never actually entered my head as a child. That is, by the way, more than the GDP of East Timor.
It does seem a bit excessive, doesn’t it? If we donated half of the pets’ share of gifts, we could build a splendid hospital for poverty-stricken East Timor.
Our lead story examines some hollow statistics used by the Obama Administration to bolster its push to force contraceptive coverage onto all health insurers, including conscientious objectors.
Another new contributor, Thomas Clark, discusses the ethics of parking – why should people who can afford a Prius get priority parking? And Rebekah Hebbert examines a tragic “honour killing” in Canada.
If you are not American and spend most of your time absorbed in the things that the majority of ordinary people do, such as holding down a job and caring for your family, you may not have noticed how the mercury is rising in the US human dignity barometer. In the five or six years since I began paying close attention to the United States I don’t think the pressure has ever been higher.
I don’t mean the roller-coaster of the Republican primaries, which are almost a sideshow right now to what used to be called the culture wars but now seem more like civilisational wars: the mammoth struggles going on over marriage and human fertility. Dr Jennifer Roback Morse, who is right in the thick of the action and whose instincts about this I mightily respect, describes the infamous White House “contraceptive mandate”, for example, as not only an attack on freedom of conscience but the establishment of a new state religion. (And remember, there is no old state religion in the US.) Read her powerful piece on our front page and see if you don’t agree.
Even if this attempt falls over it won't be the last one. What’s just as important as the current political struggle for human dignity is passing on the attendant values and virtues to the younger generation. This is the challenge Tom Lickona outlines in the conclusion of his review of a book about young adults and their tenuous grasp on moral principles. Mary Santangelo suggests that parental nagging, judiciously applied, can help. Rebekah Hebbert, from within the young adult camp, defies the gender equity brigade and finds that “Lego cupcakes totally rock”. That’s the spirit!
War, particularly as conducted nowadays, is a thorny moral issue. Jacob Shively, a PhD candidate in political science and a new contributor, examines the US campaign against al Qaeda in Pakistan and throws some light on the justice (or otherwise) of the cause.
We await your comments on these issues, whether heavy or lightweight. But just to end on a nice note I recommend the video we currently have up on the front page. The Military Wives Choir (sent by Mary Cooney - thanks) is another perspective on war, and very moving.
A thought experiment about marriage
24 May 2012
A world in which sexual intimacy could not produce children would never have come up with the idea of marriage.
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