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A professor who was going to teach a course debunking the “sicence” of Creationism (aka Intelligent Design) has cancelled his plans. No doubt, his words (”fundies”) were poorly chosen. But how does the University President get away with such strong condemnation of this professor’s words, without any condemnation of the repeated insanity preached by Fundamentalists?

I take serious issue with this idea that fundamentalism is just another acceptable point of view. It’s not. Fundamentalism demeans every other point of view. It demands the conversion or the extermination of those who do not agree. Fundamentalism in every form, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, should be fought, for if it isn’t, it will attempt to overwhelm and destroy those who do not agree.

So I am very happy to see that some are starting to fight this. Moderate and Progressive Jewish leaders are speaking out against Christian fundamentalism. It’s also very good news that Europe is offering an alternative to the US’s ridiculous abstinence-only sex education program. It is nothing less than criminal for the US President to declare, on AIDS day, that abstinence will help alleviate the AIDS crisis. The facts are clearly in contradiction with such an approach. Promoting such insanity is pure fundamentalism: blind religion before basic logic.

We cannot be tolerant of blind intolerance. We must fight fundamentalism. Every single one of us, in every way we can. Most importantly, it is the job of those closest to the fundamentalists to fight them. As a French/American mostly-Democrat Jew, I have a responsibility to fight Jewish extremism, far-left nutty theories, and stupid anti-Americanism in France. Moderate Republicans should take it upon themselves to fight the radical right. After all, my words don’t carry much weight with Republicans, but if moderate Republicans actually stood up for their principles of moderation, progress towards reasonable middle-ground positions would be far more likely.

If we all took it upon ourselves to fight the fringe elements of the groups we belong to, the world would be a far better place. More on this point sometime in the next few weeks.

Just a quick thought I just had about voting, inspired by a recent brainstorm within our research group.

In an election, your ballot remains secret, so that you cannot be unduly influenced by others. When elected representatives vote on laws, however, their voting record is supposed to be public (let’s discount those sleazy hand votes Congress holds every now and then). The idea behind the public voting record is to inform the people of their representative’s work. In this case, voters *do* influence their representative, and that’s a good thing.

But of course, there are other types of influence. Public voting records inform lobbyists on how their effort (ahem, money) is affecting politics. If elected representatives were to cast truly secret ballots, lobbying would be far less effective. But then, of course, representatives would be accountable to no one, not even the people they represent. So the “fix” here is to control the lobbyist influence. It would be impossible (and seriously problematic from a privacy standpoint) to scrutinize a voter’s cash flow to detect undue influence, but it is certainly doable to scrutinize political campaigns and ethics laws to ensure that politicians are not unduly influenced.

So what’s my point? Just that extracting an honest vote from a human being is a difficult thing, and the dynamics of secret ballot, public voting records, and campaign finance are intricately linked. Which shows, yet again, the importance of the current debate on campaign finance reform. We’re talking about nothing less than the very basis of our democracy.

A couple of days ago, Mitt Romney, our Massachusetts Governor, joined the Bash-France club. Meanwhile, the right-wing movement RightMarch has just released a song called “Bush Was Right,” whose lyrics include (PDF), out of nowhere, the line “France was wrong.”

My Litmus Test continues. If you bash France for no particular reason, as a diversion, as an off-the-cuff remark, there’s a really good chance that you’re a crazy right-winger. No cauasl relationship, I don’t think, but this test is proving to be surprisingly accurate.

“But if you look at the streets it wasn’t about Rodney King,
It’s bout this fucked up situation and these fucked up police.
It’s about coming up and staying on top
and screamin’ 187 on a mother fuckin’ cop.”
– Lyrics from “April 26, 1992″, by Sublime

A friend gently poked me yesterday to write about the Paris Riots. I’ve lived about half my life in France, and half my life in the US, so this is obviously a topic of involved discussion. To many (and in a way, even to me), these riots came out of nowhere. In retrospect, of course, they’re not entirely surprising. In these riots, and in the government’s response, lies one of the major differences between France and the US. How should one respond to violence? Through the exploration of root causes? Through the swift reestablishment, by extreme force if necessary, of public order?

The Riots

Some wingnuts would like you to believe that the riots are indicative of a massive failure of french socialism, what with the high unemployment, bureaucracy, etc… Yet the LA riots were far more destructive and deadly.

Others are calling this a French Intifada, some massive showdown between secularism and religious extremism. Yet the ridiculous anti-science movement in the US that promotes Intelligent Design, fights against stem cell research, and struggles to keep the Plan B contraceptive off the shelves seems far more effective in its religious extremism.

No, the one who gets it right is Atrios:

France treats its immigrant populations (which include, of course, 2nd and 3rd generation “immigrants”) like shit.

In my experience, that is exactly right. Racism runs deep in French society. I’m often shocked, on my various trips back to France, by the off-the-cuff racist remarks. The unemployment rates within these ethnic minorities is telling: more than twice the national average. Clearly, there’s an education problem, but, just as clearly, there’s discrimination by employers.

The cause of these riots is none other than disenfranchisement. The French have failed to integrate various ethnic minorities because they’ve insisted on maintaining a rigid, French monoculture. As has been well studied, in France, you’re either French quite a few generations back, or an immigrant.

Now the question is: what’s the government to do? And this is where it gets interesting.

The Response

Nicolas Sarkozy, the Minister of the Interior, has unapologetically called the rioters “thugs.” Supposedly, the riots got worse as a result of his comments. Immediately, the Communist and Socialist parties called for Sarkozy’s resignation and for the police to withdraw from troubled areas in order to stop the “provocation.”

This is typical of the French Left ivory-tower elitist reasoning. These people think incredibly carefully about root cause, to the detriment of justice here and now. The Palestinians have suffered greatly, thus their bombing of innocent civilians is understandable. Jose Bove destroys a McDonald’s restaurant, but since he means well, he should not be punished. Young people burn 1200 cars in one night, but since they’re disenfranchised, we should look the other way and hope for the best.

That is the trap of over-intellectualizing the issue. At the end of the day, these disenfranchised people still burned cars, cars that belonged to their equally-poor neighbors. Do these neighbors deserve no protection?

Of course, the US Right Wing is guilty of the opposite crime. It’s all about immediate justice. Shoot first, ask questions later. If you even consider the possible root causes of terrorism (say, for example, the invasion of a sovereign Arab country), you’re a traitor, you’re “with the terrorists.” The terrorists are evil, they are wrong, there can be no logic to their actions. We must kill them all. You’re either with us, or against us.

That is the trap of under-thinking the issue. There are root causes, and there are lessons to learn about how our actions today affect violence, terrorism, and the state of the world 20 years from now.

Interestingly enough, Nicolas Sarkozy is the one politician who’s proposed and implemented a harsh response to the riots while being a long-standing proponent of American-style integration, with programs like affirmative action. This is a man who, it seems, understands that the riots require two reactions: reestablishing public order in the short term, and planning structural solutions for the long term.

There cannot be one without the other. The French Left and the American Right, it seems, have a lot to teach one another.

Right about now, CNN’s US homepage features the riots in Paris. Meanwhile, Le Monde’s front page features the secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe. I guess we’re all the same: denial, denial, denial, focus on someone else’s issues.

So Libby is indicted, and the politicians and pundits are already saying “it’s never the original scandal, it’s the coverup” that gets politicians in trouble. That may well be true, but it misses something truly fundamental about the flow of information from politicians to the public. It assumes that the public learns fairly rapidly about every scandal, either through admission or investigation. I just don’t think that’s the case.

In other words, I suspect most politicians have a number of skeletons in their closet, a number of potential scandals. Do you expect them to admit to all of them? No, of course not. Politicians all have scandals (of varying degrees, of course, some much worse than others), and they all cover them up. Except every now and then, some coverup gets investigated, and the shit hits the fan.

So it’s not surprising that politicians get in trouble for the coverup. Every scandal they have, they’re covering up. A politician that doesn’t cover up a scandal? Now that would be surprising.

“If you are nothing but an accident of nature, then nothing you do is dependent on objective truth,” he says. “You can set your own rules. There is no life after death. There are no set moral codes. If you go to bed, and if you die its OK, you’re just another piece of matter bouncing around and you’ll change into something else. That’s why, even if 100 million scientists say we are unplanned, that we’re just purposeless beings in this universe, the general population won’t buy it. And neither will I.”

“What is science, and what is not science, is merely a convention,” he says. “It can be challenged and changed at will by scientists themselves. And scientists are the products of their culture, too.”

What perfect timing. A few days ago, I claimed that rabid, irrational, anti-French ranting is a good litmus test of crazy extreme right-wingers. Tonight on the Daily Show, Bill O’Reilly (yes, Bill O’Reilly on the Daily Show) says “The French! How can you like the French! They’re the enemy!” And later “What are you, from Marseilles? Oh, yes, geeve mee some more wine!!”

I rest my case.

In a few weeks, we can discuss Bush’s responsibility, global warming, whether it’s a good idea to live in New Orleans, and all sorts of other long-term issues that will be important to consider.

But for now, give money to help the recovery effort. That’s all.