August 21, 2008

First Georgia, now Tennessee. I know they just had a big church tragedy, but you have got to be kidding me.

Since I voted in my first presidential election—in the year 2000—Christians have been kvetching about how Democrats just don’t get religion. In 2004 we were told so-called “values voters” were key to George W. Bush’s re-election. And this campaign season we’ve seen Democrats go way out of their way to prove they care about religious folk and that they get religion.

Their latest gimmick is the “first-ever faith caucus” that they invited to the Democratic National Convention next week. (Though one of their big gets, Cameron Strang, the evangelical publisher of Christian pop-culture magazine Relevant, pulled out of the caucus yesterday because he didn’t want it to appear he was endorsing Barack Obama over John McCain.)

But now, proving that for action in American politics there is a comical reaction, atheists are upset, and hell hath no fury like an atheist’s scorn.

But what about those Democrats who are not “people of faith?” Are they not invited? Or invited just to watch others pray? Should their own outlook not even be acknowledged?

If the Democrats are trying to strike unifying chords among their entire kaleidoscopic range of liberals, moderates, and progressives, it should be obvious that secularists cannot dare be left out of the “big tent” event, and that it should be about beliefs and values, not solely about religion.

Secularists remember all too painfully one of the most dramatic presidential addresses in American history. At the National Cathedral three days after September 11, 2001, the president’s speech so filled with religious language that it was virtually a sermon.

As he delivered it, Bush stood flanked by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian representatives, with no one invited to stand alongside them whose presence might acknowledge the existence of the tens of millions of secular Americans.

At this most important collective moment in the recent history of the United States, it was as if their president was telling them that they did not exist. The United States had become a nation of believers.

Yet one of the most remarkable implications of the data presented in the new Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey is that atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and believers in an impersonal God or universal spirit—people who do not believe in God at all or who do not believe in a traditional God—will be a huge share, perhaps as much as 40 percent of Democratic voters in November.

Another Pew discovery: Two out of every three Americans say that their moral values do not come primarily from religion. In other words, whatever their faith, these are people who live largely or wholly secular lives.

First, this country has always been one of believers, just not one limited to believers. Additionally, atheists recently have made more of an attempt at being big-tent than Unitarian-Universalists. That number Ronald Aronson, who wrote the above op-ed and the book “Living Without God,” is really a stretch in that it includes many religious devotees who are uncertain of their God’s existence.

The Friendly Atheist further discusses this snub and points to an incredible op-ed from the Colorado Springs Gazette that compares Hitler’s vision for a Judenrein world to a billboard from the Freedom From Religion Foundation that stated “Imagine No Religion.”

Are you f—-ing kidding me?!

Since when are words on a billboard the equivalent of killing 6,000,000 Jews?

They go on to write about what would happen in a religion-less world — apparently, there would be more Pol Pots, more Stalins, far fewer charities, no Golden Rule, and we’d be rid of most hospitals and great universities.

As I read that, I wanted to respond to each point separately… and then I read the end of the piece:

Democrats will nominate a Christian gentleman who respects others. It’s likely they didn’t invite atheists to their faith service because they didn’t want embarrassing guests. Atheists might bring pseudointellectual proselytizers, who are intolerant, self-aggrandizing and rude. Atheists should fund universities and hospitals. They should feed and clothe starving kids. They should act more like Christians and Jews. If they do some of that — if they contribute to a diverse humanity — they might get better party invites.

I know you’ve heard this before… but you replace “atheist” with “Muslim” in that paragraph and lots of people would be out of a job.

Yeah, but, as everybody knows, only atheists—and Jews—eat Christian babies. (Speaking of blood libels—there’s a phrase I never expected to utter—Peter Manseau has a related excerpt from his new book, “Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter,” at nextbook.org. Will blog later.)

“A good newspaper, I suppose,” playwright Arthur Miller famously said, “is a nation talking to itself.”

A good blog, by contrast, often reads like one person talking to themselves. I often feel like I’m talking to myself, and its encouraging to be reminded that someone is listening in. Hence this post.

When Roy Rivenburg launched Fake L.A. Times, he wasn’t sure if it would be a dynamic organism. But I, and I imagine others whose input he considered more valuable, suggested he update it from time to time to keep the site fresh and us consumers of the fake news coming back.

LAObserved just directed me to the big news—that Sam Zell bought California and the real L.A. Times is adding a Playboy section. I also discovered the Vatican and Warner Bros are working together on a remake of St. John of the Cross as a Batman medieval prequel, “Dark Knight of the Soul.”

The Anteaters for Israel began setup at 7 a.m., long before most students at University of California Irvine (UCI — home of the Anteaters) had even crawled out of bed. Midterms be damned; the 60th anniversary of the modern Jewish state was a day away, and they wanted to celebrate. But even more, the Anteaters wanted to organize an inaugural response to the annual Palestinian Awareness Week, a parade of anti-Israel speakers that in May 2006 carried the theme, “Holocaust in the Holy Land.”

The Anteaters’ answer: iFest.

While vendors hawked art and clothes, hot links and Hawaiian coffee, Jewish students handed out postcards featuring a map of the Middle East placed over the body of a tanned, nearly naked man, with Israel represented by a Speedo-covered sliver: “Israel,” the card stated, “it’s not as big as you think.”

Non-Jewish students, lured by the possibility of winning an iPod Touch, spent 60 seconds in a tunnel memorizing Israel’s accomplishments. Sandwich boards lined Ring Road, the main walkway through campus, promoting Israel’s softer side: humanitarian aid, democratic principles, agricultural advancements, technological achievements.

“I see a desert turned into an oasis, not only culturally or economically or politically but literally,” said Zack Sher, a self-described “Larry David, curly hair, matzah ball soup on the weekend kind of Jew,” who was promoting his spiritual homeland from inside a pink gorilla suit. “This is our chance to give Israel some positive visibility.”

At UCI, positive visibility is the least Israel needs. For those involved in college Jewish life across the country, Irvine has become synonymous with campus anti-Semitism — a holdover from the Second Intifada, a flashbang of anti-Israel speakers invited to campus by pro-Palestinian students.

Elsewhere the M.O. for attacking the Jewish state has evolved since anti-Israel campus activism first exploded onto the scene in 2002 during the Second Intifada. It has since taken root in academic departments and been emboldened by the outspoken criticism of a former U.S. president. Although many college campuses appear to have dropped the vitriol and the confrontational protests over Israel, the attacks on the Jewish state have moved deep inside the Ivory Towers. Despite an ethos that university students should question everything, many feel uncomfortable and unprepared in challenging their professors. Apathy, pro-Israel campus advocates say, is quietly eroding support for the Jewish state, even among Jews.

At UCI, the approach of Israel’s opponents has long been less subtle. And yet, this is not your big brother’s UCI.

When Daniel Alouan enrolled in 2000, he found campus life so uncomfortable he couldn’t conceive finishing his degree in Irvine. Each week, he said, the Muslim Student Union (MSU) would bring another speaker to campus who would trash Israel and slander its supporters as Nazis. Fliers for Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi and Hillel, apolitical ones that simply said “Shabbat Shalom,” would conspicuously disappear from approved locations. Jewish students showed the fear in their faces.

“Every time you would go somewhere, they knew you were a Jewish guy, and they wanted to know that,” Alouan said. “They never threw rocks; they would just call names and say stuff. They told me, ‘Go to Russia where you came from.’ My dad is from Lebanon and mom from Syria. But they think all Jews come from Russia.”

Alouan, now 26 and back in his native Brazil, left UCI after his sophomore year in 2002 and enrolled at University of Pennsylvania, where, according to Hillel, 30 percent of undergraduate and graduate students identify as Jewish.

But even Penn has had moments in recent memory that made members of the Jewish community cringe. Penn President Amy Gutmann still catches criticism for posing at her Halloween party two years ago with a student dressed as a suicide bomber, something she later said was a mistake.

Indeed, no school is immune. And during the next month, as thousands of Jewish students ship off to begin their college careers and many more return to continue it, they will be reminded that it really is different being Jewish.

Some will be surprised to hear Jewish professors condemn Zionism; others shocked that campus activism could be so uncivil. But many, many more will move from class to class and party to party without paying much mind to the din around them and having even less of an idea of what else they could do.

“The Jewish community is like a deer in the headlights,” said Charles Jacobs, president and co-founder of The David Project, which, along with StandWithUs, has been a grass-roots leader in raising awareness about and educating students to combat academic anti-Zionism. “Most of the stuff on campus is not a Jew getting hit over the head, but it is this slow build of Israel is bad, Israel is bad, Israel is bad.”

The challenges vary from campus to campus. Statistically speaking, no one knows just how pervasive anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are on American campuses. No one is keeping score. But many Jewish leaders say anecdotal reports of conflict with pro-Palestinian students and faculty have declined dramatically.

“The amount of anti-Israel activity on campus is so negligible that it is almost impossible for students to find unless they are looking on all but maybe three campuses a year,” said Jonathan Kessler, director of student programs for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

At the same time, though, scholarly criticism of Zionism and the American-Israel relationship has achieved new respectability. This is most recognizable in the popularity of the “The Israel Lobby” by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt and former President Jimmy Carter’s best-selling “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”

The effect is already apparent on many college campuses, where Palestinian awareness weeks are now called “anti-apartheid week.” At UCI, the old name remains, but the general themes and speech topics incorporate the apartheid paradigm.

“The reality is that verbal anti-Semitism spurred by controversial student groups unfortunately continues to exist on campus,” five UCI Jewish student leaders stated in a March letter supporting the administration. “However, Jewish student life is able to expand and prosper due to the constructive approach taken by Hillel Foundation of Orange County and Jewish Federation, in conjunction with the support of UCI Administration.”

Despite improvements in organized Jewish life, UCI remains far from a quiet campus regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Anti-Israelism there is unique from that alleged at other universities because, instead of emanating from left-wing Mideast studies professors, it begins with the students.

That much was evident from the presence of Muslim students along the edges of iFest, where they were handing out fliers for a speech that evening from Norman Finkelstein, the anti-Israel darling who wrote “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering” and in January praised Hezbollah as representing “hope.”

The Finkelstein lecture, which came at the midpoint of Israel’s campus celebration, would usher in the pro-Palestinian students’ own week focusing on that small slice of the Levant. Their events, anchored on Ring Road around a mock security wall from which a blood-stained Israeli flag hung, were promoted under the heading, “Never Again? The Palestinian Holocaust.”

“Freedom of speech on this campus is a little over the line,” said Ryan Stomel, a third-year student from Westlake Village who never wears his Alpha Epsilon Pi letters. “I can handle myself, but at certain times it is intense and hostile. I’m not going to go around wearing a Jewish star because you never know what is going to happen.”

Muslim Student Union attempting to protest during a presentation by Daniel Pipes at UCI