And another thing. I replied to Taner’s “We do have proposals to this effect, and they come down to communities having a good deal of autonomy in regulating their own affairs…” with “But again, that treats ‘communities’ as if they were people. ‘Communities’ don’t have affairs; people do, one at a time.” Taner replied with “I find it perfectly sensible to talk about the interests of a corporation, the affairs of a university, or the internal rules of a bridge club. And so with communities.”

Ah yes – but there is a difference. It’s not ‘and so with communities,’ because ‘communities’ are different from corporations and universities and even bridge clubs. The difference is part of what makes them so … Read the rest

Good old Beeb – make sure not to be too polite to atheism, won’t you. Yes of course you will.

Headline: ‘Atheists meet in Melbourne to celebrate lack of faith.’ Subhead: ‘More than 2,000 atheists from around the world are gathering in Melbourne, Australia, to celebrate their lack of religious belief.’ They couldn’t be there to talk about it, to explore issues related to it, to meet people who are interested in it; no, they’re there to celebrate it, and the thing they are celebrating is a lack, which makes them doubly stupid and pathetic.

All 2,500 tickets were sold out earlier this year, but a religious gathering at the same venue in December attracted three times as many delegates.

And also – Danny Postel on the role the Iranian Left played in its own immolation:

An account of this self-defeat can be found in Maziar Behrooz’s book, Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran, a salutary and, indeed, definitive reconsideration of the history of the pre-revolutionary Iranian Left.

As Maziar explains, the Iranian Left, or at least certain key fractions of it, helped fashion the noose the Islamists ultimately hung them with. According to Behrooz, the Khomeinites were able to do this in large part because the Tudeh party, the Fadaiyan Majority, and many other Iranian Marxist parties, whatever their differences with the Islamists, shared with them a profound hostility toward liberalism. Like

Further to the discussion of multiculturalism and autonomy for ‘communities’ and family law – Martha Nussbaum’s ‘The Feminist Critique of Liberalism’ is relevant throughout, and particularly relevant in this bit (Sex and Social Justice, pp 63-4):

[A]s many feminists have long pointed out, where women and the family are concerned, liberal political thought has not been nearly individualist enough. Liberal thinkers tended to segment the private from the public sphere, considering the public sphere to be the sphere of individual rights and contractual arrangements, the family to be a private sphere of love and comfort into which the state should not meddle. This tendency grew, no doubt, out of a legitimate concern for the protection of choice –

The latest from Taner Edis on multiculturalism.

Liberal language about “choice” and “force” is very misleading here. No one chooses who they are. Our choices take place in a context of unchosen circumstances, and unchosen but organically acquired loyalties. Particularly conservative religious people (a pretty large chunk of the human species) are very much embedded in unchosen traditions and communities. It’s not so much that they are forced into anything as that belonging to a community is an integral part of who they are.

Yes, but again, they don’t all simply accept everything that results, and they don’t all want simply to accept everything that results. We’re not obliged to just assume that everyone is happy with whatever slot … Read the rest