Some late-Friday stuff, including: How “love for Israel” can be a kind of anti-Semitism; worshipping the bronze serpent; bearing false witness against our neighbors; updating that infamous Lee Atwater quote; and the dangers of holistic medicine.
• Apparently, in Glendora, California, you can be fined $500 if your lawn grass turns brown. This is in a water-scarce region, during a drought.
Stupidity like this is often defended as a way of protecting “property values.” Nonsense. You know what keeps property values high in the suburbs? Good schools, roads, and other public infrastructure. Refusing to water your lawn during a drought is not harmful to property values. Under-paying teachers and refusing to pay adequate taxes is.
Did the citizens of Glendora vote to force themselves to water their lawns? If so, why? If not, then where did this “law” come from?
• Michael Schulson explains what Warren Throckmorton doesn’t understand about David Barton’s “love for Israel.”
“At its core, philo-Semitism has much in common with anti-Semitism.” Yep.
• $800 million museum honoring “Nehushtan” to be opened in Washington, D.C.
• “Today’s book review is from a guest writer, who has asked for his name to be withheld because his family is still staunchly pro-life.”
It’s easy to understand why rank-and-file members of the pro-life movement are so opposed to abortions when these fictions are taught and accepted as fact. Re-reading now, and recognizing what I’ve learned about women’s health in the past few years, I was incredibly appalled. More than that, I was saddened. All these lies provide the foundation for “conservative values” in the evangelical community. The amount of misinformation is staggering. It’s just a shame.
• That and this story from Colorado remind me of the infamous Lee Atwater quote:
You start out in 1864 by saying, “Barefoot, pregnant and under control.” By 1968 you can’t say “under control” — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, best for the children, protecting the unborn, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about religious liberty to oppose imaginary abortifacients, and all these things you’re talking about are totally abstract things and a byproduct of them is, keeping women under control. … “Religious liberty” is much more abstract than even the “protecting the unborn” thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Barefoot, pregnant, and under control.”
• “Holistic medicine” can be dangerous. Especially when you spill it on the cat.
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