Who cares about human rights! Business as usual in DC.

“You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose” the late Mario Cuomo often said.  And what wonderful poetry we had from Barack Obama when he was the candidate. There is poetry and then there is prose.  The dull and boring prose of the reality of  governance and international realpolitik.

Case in point: the Armenian genocide.

“As president I will recognize the Armenian genocide,” Barack Obama vowed in January 2008. He even had his top campaign foreign policy adviser, self-styled “genocide chick” Samantha Power, issue a plaintive YouTube vow to the Armenian American community that this time they wouldn't be double-crossed.

But, that was the candidate sweet-talking with poetry during the courtship of campaigning.  After the election, the title Senator was replaced with President, which then meant that old campaign promises are meant to be broken:

In his annual statement on the mass death of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, President Barack Obama once again declined to use the term “genocide” — breaking a campaign promise he made eight years ago.
In his commemoration on the mass killings, which may have claimed as many as 1.5 million lives, Mr. Obama paid homage to the victims and vowed to “to learn from this tragedy so it may never be repeated.”
His lengthy statement released Friday, however, did not use the term “genocide” — the source of a major geopolitical dispute between Turkey and Armenian about the historical context of the massing killings.

As I noted in this post from six years ago, the victorious candidates apparently lose their testicular fortitude and elections are nothing but castrations!

Why care about something that happened in 1915?  Well, the actor who has all the good looks and presence that I don't have says the very thing that I would like to say:

Take the case of George Clooney. The irrepressible actorvist feels so strongly about the recognition issue that on April 24 — officially known in the U.S. as the National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man — he will be in Yerevan to award the inaugural $1 million Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, presented “on behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors.” You can't prevent tomorrow's genocide, Clooney plausibly argues, if you can't even use the G-word to describe something that happened 100 years ago.

If the leader of the mightiest government on the planet does not have the balls to label the incidents from a hundred years ago as "genocide"--the term that he boldly stated during his campaign days--then how confident can we be that the leader of the free world will lead the fight against ongoing crimes against humanity?

Meanwhile, the developing situation in Burundi has people worried.  "Today in Burundi, many people hear echoes of 1994" notes the Economist.  We can expect poetry from the Democratic candidates.  Only from the Democratic candidates because the wannabes from the other side author nothing but toxic prose even while campaigning!

Ah, democracy!

Governors without marriages. It is bi-coastal :)

So, a little over a month ago, I blogged about an irate letter in the local newspaper; the writer was upset that our governor, Kitzhaber, is living with his significant other, instead of being married to her. 

News that the governor has been living what I consider an adulterous life hurts, because voters hoped for a person who would lead Oregon to higher ethics.
History has long proved that nations with low ethics soon collapse, and is showing in our country.
Either the governor and his girlfriend get honorably married or people must recall him from office. Already people are noticing how nature is showing signs of distress by damaging storms. What is real?
God's laws still apply, even to top-level officials. They should look inside those Bibles they put their hands on and put those words into action again.

What I didn't know then, and I know now, was this: the governor of the Empire State, Andrew Cuomo, has been shacking up as well.

Over in New York, it is not the fear of earthquakes as a result of this arrangement that hit the news, but the fact that Cuomo is a practicing Catholic and, therefore, how dare he receive the holy communion!

The strange contrast though:  In Cuomo's case, it is not a letter in a local newspaper.
He has the Vatican upset.
Yes, the Pope apparently doesn't have better things to do.

Heather Mac Donald writes:

An advisor to the Vatican’s highest court had called for the denial of communion to Cuomo on the ground of his “public concubinage”—a perfectly reasonable interpretation of Catholic doctrine.  
The New York hierarchy, however, immediately closed ranks around Cuomo and brushed off this pesky Vatican busy-body.  The leader of the Albany diocese, Bishop Howard Hubbard, assured Cuomo and the world that the Church fathers would not dream of judging Cuomo’s domestic arrangements:

“There are norms for all Catholics about receiving communion and we have to be sensitive pastorally to every person in their [sic] own particular situation,” Bishop Hubbard said. 

"Public concubinage?" OMG! In what medieval century do these people live? A hysterically funny phrase!

Mac Donald adds:

I suppose I should thank Archbishop Dolan for indirectly buttressing the argument behind secular conservatism.  Not only is religious faith not required to justify traditional morality, religious leaders do not even have the backbone any more to stand up for traditional morality in the hard individual case, leavin’ jes’ us secular conservatives to stick our necks out.  If, after centuries of accumulating scientific triumph in understanding the causal mechanisms of our world, we still must have relics, amulets, magical potions, and incantations, the one indisputable benefit that religion could provide would be fearlessness in stigmatizing anti-social behavior.  Instead, we get an Archbishop who calls concern over a Catholic’s carnal sin a “tempest in a teapot” and who thanks God for cooling down said “tempest.” 

Yes, we can have morality without religions.
And that is precisely what Sam Harris argues in The Moral Landscape. 
(BTW, Harris looks like he could be Cuomo's brother!)

I, for one, point out to that rare student who engages me about my atheistic views that while the stereotype that people prefer is that those who are irreligious, or of the wrong religion, live immoral lives, hey, in my case I am an atheist who doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs, eats very little of animal products ... and no "public concubinage" either ....

The scientific question then is whether we can make moral, value, judgments in "scientific" ways.  I am not sure.  Most arguments I come across, and perhaps even Harris', tend to be variations of utilitarian thinking.  But, as much as I incorporate utilitarian analysis in the courses I teach, there is always something about utilitarianism that bothers me.  It could be a reflection of the religious and societal contexts in which I was raised.  In any case, to live the life that I now live, religion is unnecessary for moral judgments.

So, leave 'em governors alone!