David Foster

Important–Please Read

by

Once again, I am reminded of W H Auden’s lines:

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help, and no help came

Kobra Rahmanpoor, an Iranian woman in her mid-20s, faces imminent execution by hanging. She was convicted of murdering her mother-in-law; however, she says that it was a matter of self-defense, and that she had previously been abused by both her mother-in-law and her husband.

Here is the eloquent plea of Kobra’s father:

Read more

Like Swimming in Glue

by

The Washington Post has a really depressing story on the status of the program to issue unforgeable ID cards to workers at ports and other key transportation facilities. President Bush signed the worker-ID program into law in November 2002 as part of broader maritime security legislation. The program would streamline checks of criminal-background files, terrorist watch lists and immigration status for designated workers, and cards would be issued using biometric data to prevent anyone other than the cardholder from using the ID. Homeland Security officials initially told port operators that they expected to begin initial issuance of the cards by the end of 2003.

Read more

It Shall Be Sustained

by

Annika posted two Edna St. Vincent Millay poems from the World War II era–which inspired me to look up a Stephen Vincent Benet poem from the same period. I think it’s something we could all benefit from reading right about now.

This poem, Listen to the People, was read over nationwide radio on July 7, 1941–five months before Pearl Harbor. The full text was also printed in Life magazine. Here it is…

Read more

Of Witchcraft and Weaponry

by

An old copy of Forbes ASAP (2/22/99) has an article on supercomputing which includes this quote from a nuclear weapons designer at Los Alamos:

Weapons designers play the societal role of witches in fairy tales–we scare people into behaving.

This captures very well the Cold War image of nuclear weapons–they are of the supernatural rather than the natural world; they belong to the realm of fevered nightmares rather than waking thoughts.

Read more

Israel and the Evangelicals

by

Liberals often assert that Evangelical support for Israel is based on Evangelical theology, specifically those aspects having to do with the Second Coming of Christ. This assertion is generally made in a manner which is contemptuous of both Israel and of the Evangelicals, and is intended to portray the opinions of the latter as irrelevant to those who do not share their particular religious beliefs.

I’m sure some Evangelicals support Israel for theological reasons. But I don’t think that theology is the primary factor at work here.

The truth is, most Americans instinctively tend to support Israel. Where hostility to Israel exists in this country, it usually arises from leftist politics and worldviews–and these, in turn, are closely connected to the universities.

Evangelicals are largely outside the force field of attitudes centered on the academy. I suspect it is this, rather than any specific theological factors, which account for the high support for Israel among this group of Americans.

I’d hypothesize that people who come from the same social groups as the Evangelicals, but who are themselves atheists or agnostics, tend to share Evangelical attitudes toward Israel.