The funniest Barack Obama recording

Many people have heard this already, but still...

En français dans le texte: la réforme universitaire commentée:

Voici, finalement un petit "post" en français - je vais peut-être m'y mettre, qui sait?

Comme être malade laisse pas mal de temps libre, je lis beaucoup, sur le net - et voici que j'ai trouvé plein de petites choses intéressantes de mon ancien maître, Marcel Gauchet...

Alors, Gauchet a toujours les mêmes vertus, et les mêmes tares: côté vertus, une intelligence rare, un esprit capable de construire de vastes théories, et une causticité de premier ordre - les tares, un débit très monotone, une certaine capacité à se prendre trop au sérieux, et bien trop de foi dans les théories qu'il échafaude...

Quelques suggestions de lecture et d'écoute, donc:

- le "blog" tenu par (un de?) ses disciple(s) - pas vraiment un blog, plutôt une page publicitaire, mais quelques liens intéressants - just un peu choquant quand on compare aux intellectuels américains qui, eux, tiennent leur propre blog! allez voir celui de Robert Reich pour comparer...

- beaucoup plus intéressant, son "cours" à l'EHESS sur la réforme universitaire que le Gouvernement essaie d'imposer - vaut vraiment le coup d'être écouté, même si le débit monotone rend ça un peu soporifique par moments... Bien entendu, Gauchet choisit les faits qui l'arrangent et exclut ceux qu'il ne veut pas voir, mais dans l'ensemble ça se tient assez bien

- très stimulant, et beaucoup plus court, un papier sur la désorientation de la gauche (pas seulement en France) - pour une fois, la théorie n'est pas complète, mais en tout cas ça réveille...

A bientôt!

Link exchange

Still not feeling great so not posting much - just a few recommended readings:

- immigration as response to the crisis - Sarkozy should read it

- do things really look better in Canada? seems so...

- one more nice post from Matt Yglesias on how absurd regulation in DC stifles restaurant choice

- an interesting debate on food safety following the US peanut butter debacle

Fighting the liquidity trap???

The funniest take so far - but read it twice, or think it over - goes a long way into "how absurd is money" (and at the same time how would we do without it...)?

THROW MONEY OUT OF HELICOPTERS

(hat tip: the Economist's Free Exchange blog, as so often, a great source!)

Ending the "war on drugs"

Far more stupid, costly and counter-productive even than Bush's so-called "war on Terror" - the "war on drugs".

Two recent takes on how to end it, one more fun, one more serious:

- Israeli ad on legalizing marijuana

- a thorough paper on a "neo-paternalist" (read: liberal-paternalist, as opposed to conservative-paternalist) approach to drug laws offenders - the idea: "coerced abstinence" while leaving offenders (as long as they stay off drugs) out of prison. To me, sounds like a much less defensible and effective approach than simply legalizing the stuff. But then again, since there seems to be no prospect of any of it (even grass) becoming legal any time soon, this might be a step forward?!

Interesting links - on regulation, spanish influenza, China and beyond...

Very interesting link on better regulation and the environment - how (relative) de-regulation (or even tax cuts) can help fighting global warming (hat tip Matt Yglesias)

Some interesting posts about the spanizh influenza epidemic of 1918-1919, which killed more people than WWI, but is much less talked about...in fact, it is often so with epidemics - historic writing about them is not proportionate to their importance, maybe because they are frustrating for humans' sense of self-importance?? (and again it all started with Matt...)

Robert Reich writes some very interesting stuff these days - and I also recommend his book "Supercapitalism" - one of the few intelligent accounts I've read of what happened over the last 30-40 years, i.e. how we gained power as consumers/investors, and lost a lot as workers/citizens!

A good discussion by James Fallows of the paradoxical financial relationship between the US and China - a lot left untested inside (e.g. why China could not grow just as well with more internal consumption and less exports), but still well worth the read

A fun discussion of this horrid word compound: judeo-christianism (as one of my best - jewish - friends always says: how can two religions be more contradictory than these two...but read it, rather good)

Relaxation bonus - pseudo anti-meat-eating advertisement - absurd (a bit at least) but fun...

Lack of consumer protection as one of the roots of the financial crisis - more evidence

I will continue posting on this, which to me is one of the most interesting aspects - in the meantime:

- an interesting link on the changes made in 2005 to the bankruptcy law, which made personal bankruptcy much more difficult in the US, thus encouraging subprime lending...

- an update by Robert Reich on how this could change as even Citi realizes that foreclosure makes repayment of anything even less likely...i.e. banks end up losing more money with this new system, whereas they thought they'd make even more...

"Lemon" socialism

In US-English a "lemon" is a bad second hand car or something similar - in other words, a really bad deal. (In French it would maybe be "une charrue" or sthg like that...am still looking for an appropriate translation - if you have one pls put it in comments). Here is (hat tip economist) a great take on how the US Gov't (and taxpayers) are getting stuck with all the "lemons" in the economy, through successive bailouts (I expect we may get the same situation all over Europe, though we probably will nationalize more, so the taxpayers might get a better deal after all...): Lemon Socialism by Robert Reich.

Evaluating public policies, regulation, growth...

It has been a while since I have been wanting to write this post...lack of time, and then bad health have prevented me from doing so. As a result, I'll at least start, even if it stays shorter than I'd like. At issue again: how to evaluate what we are doing in terms of public policy, and how we are doing in terms of economic development, with something else than GDP.

GDP is bad because of a number of reasons:

- it counts as "growth" any added monetary activity, even if the activity (a) is not a really new activity, but just something becoming monetary, that previously was done "in house" (e.g. outsourcing your child's care to a nanny adds GDP...) and/or (b) is actually noxious for the country (e.g. increasing distance between house and workplace means more mileage means more cars, fuel etc., means more GDP) - this is well known, and has been known for ages

- growth can be tremendously unequal and thus strong growth can lead to no improvement (or even a worsening) in conditions for the majority of the population (see most of the Bush years, or even most of the last 30 years in OECD countries - have a look at Robert Reich's book "Supercapitalism" on this, for instance)

- huge differences in GDP usually correlate well with differences in well-being (think: Switzerland vs. Bhutan) - but smaller differences (as, for instance, between north-western Europe, the USA, Canada, Japan) usually are less important than other factors (environment, health care, infrastructure, education etc.) in what people feel as well being

- the accumulated stock of wealth is just as, or more, important than this year's GDP - for instance, when I used to live in Italy, the GDP/capita was not much below France's (it was 10 years ago) - it was lower, but not that much. However, you could see that the country (particularly in Rome, where I lived) had had a significantly lower level of output than France for well over a century. The accumulated infrastructure was poor.

And I could go on and on...

Now, GDP is good for one reason: it exists, it has a clear definition, is measurable, can be aggregated, compared etc. (Well, there still is the thorny question of using purchasing power parity vs. current exchange rates, both being bad for different reasons, but then again...)

So what do we do? A few ideas:

- The UN has this crude instrument, the Human Development Index. It combines GDP, education and health statistics. But it is quite crude too, and relies a lot on GDP anyway. And it is difficult to use it to track policy outcomes and short-term changes, because the indicators used on education and health (life expectancy at birth) vary slowly...

- Cost-benefit analysis of specific policies: how much do they cost to implement (e.g. for a regulation, using the "standard cost model" to measure this - relatively reliable at least), and comparing this to what they bring (often far more tricky to evaluate...this is the problem)

- Looking at SEVERAL indicators simultaneously: GINI coefficient (inequality) or similar measures of inequality, health indicators, education indicators, crime indicators, environment, etc. - and GDP. Maybe this would be the most useful: having systematically, whenever there is a policy discussion, a set of indicators, and looking at the evolution of ALL of them...

Comments welcome!

Appointments, special elections, substitutes...

Lots of discussions these days regarding the right mechanism to substitute the current system to replace Senators (or Representatives) when they get another position (e.g. President of the US...) (or die etc.) - all the discussion in the US centers on special appointments (by Governors - see: ridiculous scandal in Illinois and ridiculous comedy in NY...) vs special elections. Latest take by Matt Yglesias here.

A simple system is the one in place in France, for instance: every representative (député) is elected at the same time as his/her replacement (suppléant) - funny that this does not exist in the US, and that no one even appears to be thinking about it...Funny on the other hand that the US has a system of substitutes for the executive branch (Vice-President, Lieutenant-Governors) - and France has none, but has substitutes for the legislative branch...

Economics, crisis etc. - a few links

To celebrate getting (slowly) back to blogging, a few good links:

- Matt Yglesias on the use of regulation vs. the use of direct government intervention to reduce inequality

- two takes on what else than massive gov't spending one can do to tackle the crisis - I mostly like this one, but that one is also interesting

- on the right use of the word "liberal" and "liberalism" - I love this one, really

Coming back

Have had health problems - still do, but starting again to blog a bit...more soon...

Link exchange - on GDP, left and right...

A few things I recommend reading:

A lot of good stuff from Matthew Yglesias some thinking on the issue of growth, resource allocation etc. Brings back to the issue that GDP measurement is awfully inadequate - maybe, since there is no better single indicator, we should start tracking a combination of indicators?? (like GDP, health data, income distribution, GDP composition etc.) - and also a nice post on health care...


And from the Dish on prohibition - reminding us that the desire to modify the other is not only from the right, but also from the left...

Enjoy!

Left and right - alternate edit

Here is the original version of my post on left and right, which I had lost...some few additional ideas, so I just post it too...

First, let me link again to this excellent description in Secular Conservative:

The Secular Left asks, why not?
The Secular Right asks, why?
The Religious
Left demands that we should, “Because god wills it!”
The Religious Right
asserts that we can’t, “Because god forbids it!”

Brilliant. Reminds me that in my opinion the pre-Enlightenment thinkers, in particular Montaigne and Pascal, were real temperamental conservatives: they could see all the evil with the status quo, but thought efforts to change it would likely make things worse. Many, but not all, Enlightenment thinkers thought the world could be improved, easily...Some were more realistic, in particular Voltaire: he cared, but was highly sceptical too...



Here is the post itself - sorry, not edited:



What are left and right? One of the smartest accounts of it is certainly Marchel Gauchet’s in the Lieux de Memoire, t.1 – unfortunately not available on line… In a nutshell, both are a lot about identity, memory, emotional links to one side or the other. One comes from a “left” or “right” family. In Italy, I have even seen this partly linked with and/or replicated by attachment to a football team. One supports the Roma or Lazio because grandfather did – and often this means also that one supported the Communists, or the (Neo-)fascists, etc. So, left and right as identity markers, taking partly over from the village, or religion, etc., in a time of urbanization and secularisation.
What might left and right otherwise really mean, in terms of politics and ideology. Two ways to approach this: “temperament”, or precise ideological contents. I tend to think temperament makes more sense (see in secular conservative the summary). Here is why: ideology-wise, what was left became right, and now maybe the opposite may become true…
Ever since the French Revolution occurred, and the terms made their debut, there has been a “race to the left”, or a gradual entry into the mainstream of ideas that were first thought revolutionary, but then were pushed “rightwards” by the emergence of more “progressive” ideas. This movement was essentially driven by the left becoming the party of “equality” rather than “liberty” (not necessarily against liberty, but with more emphasis on equality). This analysis is best seen in Furet- La Revolution Francaise.
There has always been a tension, however, and a return movement too. As the left became more associated with promoting/protecting certain social categories, it took a certain “corporatist” character, that was more in keeping with what the right had been in the early days of the French Revolution. This is not just a recent evolution, but one that was visible in the second part of the 19th century already.
Some transfers of ideas from left to right (or vice-versa) were also not just the result of the emergence of more radical proposals, and the “natural” push of previous radicalism “rightwards” as a result, but of a real “takeover” of ideas by the other side. This is most famously the case of nationalism which, while introduced in the Revolutionary times by the left (i.e. the Revolutionary movement), was taken over fully and with enthusiasm by the (far) right, and became a fantastic driver for it, in the late 19th century – and onwards, forever as it seems.
Interestingly, one could have assumed that, since the extremes of both left and right had demonstrated their essential similarity in results in the 1930s, the understanding of the misleading nature of left and right as ideologies would be understood. The Cold War, however, prevented this – but on what ideological delusion was it supported?
> some real issues: colonies, foreigners, sex, change?? Culture??
> Poverty/ what to do about it?
> Temperament
> At the end – Montaigne/Pascal/jansenistes vs. Lumieres (but maybe not all of them? Voltaire as right-wing libertarian or not even – conservative??) – in fact drawn both to the realism of the first and their attention to perverse unexpected consequences AND to the world changing enthusiasm of the 2nd (because otherwise nothing ever happens)

What talent?

The Economist is full of discussions on executive pay. Many interesting points. But I would strongly raise doubts about this: yes, you certainly want the best talent you can get to run your financial industry. But how do you get the best talent? Is it always a matter of money? do you really believe that the top bosses who miserably failed were so much clever than their staff? (I take staff just to keep this within a group of people with the same technical background) And: do you believe that the “best” people (whatever that means) make their decisions based only on the pay package? Once you earn “more than enough” (say, a couple of hundred, or of millions, if you will), will you really be primarily motivated by more if you have any kinds of brains? Even taking star executives, do you think Bill Gates, Larry Page or Steve Jobs were/are motivated primarily by making more billions?
Sounds just silly to me. Supposing that if you can’t pay outrageously more than what is needed even to live a very lavish lifestyle, you won’t get talented people, is an insult to the word “talent”, and to intelligence. This post by Matt Yglesias makes far more sense! If you deserved the reward, you deserve blame - if you don't deserve the blame, you did not deserve the reward...Read it!

Allocation of resources – the invisible hand, socialism, and the mystery of social life…

The economy may have become slowly the most fascinating mystery around…
Physics and biology have made so much progress as to render the natural world at least understandable enough that we can work on it in a way our ancestors would not have imagined possible: flying, going to the moon, curing many diseases (or blowing ourselves up, big time).
Psychology is frustrating, but at least at the individual level there are many cases when patterns can be understood, and help given. And when not, at least you can always take pills – they will never be enough to eradicate urangst, or despair. But you can track their action, however limited or short-lived.
Not so in economy. It still seems that even economists mostly make wrong predictions and propose solutions, which don’t work. And non-economists generally appear lost, mostly resorting to fully inadequate tools: morality (“the modern economy is bad”), childish voluntarism (“let’s just create jobs and/or distribute money and/or whatever”)…What is exactly the matter?
Until “recently” (two centuries ago, even for most of the world a couple of decades ago), the issue of producing and allocating goods was relatively simple: shortage was the rule. There was mostly not enough food, not enough non-food items, not enough luxuries of course. This did not mean that there was no economy to think about: it took a long time for the right concepts to come around, but slowly emerged the ideas of specialization and comparative advantage, the notion that free trade could benefit both parties, and some understanding of that most vexating of all issues, currency. At least, on the latter, it was understood that the supply of currency had as much impact on the price of goods as the supply of goods themselves. And there was much thinking about resources allocation and privat property, from Rousseau to Marx, for instance. And still, not much was understood at all, and “solutions” proved worse than the ills in many times – just think about the Soviet Union as an experiment of solution…
Now, what gradually happened was that the very underpinning of the world so far was changing radically: penury was on the wane. Productivity and machines made such progress that there is now more food than we can eat overall (or at least there is the potential for it) and there are certainly more goods than we can “reasonably” consume (hence the constant product “innovations” – and don’t think it would be any different if we were to add more poor countries: markets saturate rather quickly in a world of such productivity as ours). There is no real shortage of food or non-food, there can only be a shortage in some places where the economy is too little developed, and of course there can be a shortage of land, which is a rather special good in that respect! What we have not developed, however, is any understanding of what to do with this…
Don’t get me wrong. We know a couple of things which don’t work: centralized planning (too few people to decide too many things just cannot work – it is like trying to handle complex processes with one old processor, instead of a massively parallel computer, to take a tech-analogy – and in addition central planning gives too much power to a few, and this is a great source of corruption), for instance. And we also know (more or less) that there appears to be a few economic “laws” that you ignore to your own risk: inflating money devaluates it, say, and a lot of other good things on interest rates, public borrowing, administrative barriers etc. Even so, it seems most people have never heard of them. Recently, in a rare display of intelligence, Sarkozy’s government announced that they were considering re-introducing economics teaching in high school (whoever was the moron who took out the miserable 2 hours that used to be taught during only one year, as if even this was too much!?).
But more fundamentally, the tools, both mental and factual, are still the ones developed for a world of shortage. And so is the vision of income allocation. The interesting situation is that:
- We have a world of potential sufficient supply of pretty much everything for pretty much everybody, if the best technology were used everywhere
- Given the number of more or less idle people around (unemployed or underemployed, in rich and poor countries alike), there is the potential to produce really a great deal more
- The few problems on the way are:
o If you produce these additional goods and potential clients do not have the resources to buy them, you lose money, and you have to find this money somewhere (see “does not grow on trees”)
o If you first distribute money around to poor people so they can purchase something, you create inflation
o Experience has shown to whoever cares to look that full-scale “socialism” (in the sense of state property and state-ordered distribution of income) corrupts ethics absolutely, ruins the economy and destroys freedom – if anyone has doubts, I volunteer to organize tours of the worst bits of the former Soviet Union.

Looks like a pretty evil conundrum: we have the resources to feed and clothe all, but we don’t know how to allocate them better. Should this not be a topic for research? How to do it in a way that works, that is…and without going back to closed borders where you make people everywhere worse off.

A couple of small bits of elements for potential ideas:
- Probably not the best approach to throw millions of money at some executives, as if they were such a rare resource – I mean, good management skills are rare, but that rare?? Rising inequality is kind of not exactly what seems to make the most sense in terms of allocating resources better (I mean better here not from a moralperspective, that it would be better if poverty were to disappear, but from an effectiveness perspective, that a better distribution would be one that reduced crises, by having more spread consumption and more stability in the system…I am dreaming!)
- Maybe at least part of the answer (and also part of the expanation of why the “financial world” has looked so out of control in recent years…) is in this fundamental innovation of the last 30 years: capital has grown increasingly mobile, across borders and inside borders. This is great, it has allowed considerable innovations, and massive growth in a number of countries that once looked desperately poor. But this has not been accompanied by more freedom of movement for labour. Quite the contrary, with all rich countries clamping down on immigration. It means poor countries workers are “locked in” and have a bad bargaining position, while rich countries workers can resist salary changes, but then see their jobs move overseas…Not that it is so simple, but I guess part of the answer lies there somewhere.

Just thoughts. I have no theory and I think the problem is so complex that it may largely lay beyond our capacity to solve it. After all, this is about psychology, compounded billions of times. What makes people work, strive, etc. The total failure of the large-scale experiment to replace private property and market by state property and planning should make us humble and careful – but it should not prevent from asking the questions…

The fetichism of life?

You noticed I put a question mark. I am not sure myself. Is it an obsession, a wrong one – or also partly a good one.
Let’s start by some of the facts:
- The Greek and Roman would not fret about ending their lives early (the suicide of choice was drinking poison) – on the contrary, living on when all was lost would have been seen as cowardly. They also had no major issues with abortion, or infanticide, when socially appropriate…Myths are full of (usually failed) infanticide attempts targeting heroes foreseen to supplant the current ruler…
- The Old Testament took already a much more restrictive view (abortion and infanticide were not condoned, and there was a general prohibition on murder…but Jewish resistants against the Romans are known to have committed suicide when it was clear that all was lost, in the last rebellion). On the other hand, many parts of the Old Testament are full of divine orders to eradicate the enemy down to women and children, or to retaliate one to one…
- Jesus did not (if my memory does not fail me) speak specifically of either suicide, abortion or whatever. I don’t even recall him speaking about murder. It was too obvious for him, probably. But he stopped a crowd from stoning a sinner. And he refused to fight when arrested. He refused the sword.I would suggest his message could be summarized as: (i) violence is to be relinquished, (ii) pardon is stronger than violence, (iii) do not judge, only preach by your own example…
- The different so-called “Christian” churches (I would strongly argue as to whether they really preach, and practice, “Christian” virtues) developed their dogma in different layers, but over quite a few centuries and thousand of pages of theological writings, ended up with a strict prohibition of (i) suicide, (ii) abortion, (iii) supposedly, all kinds of murder. Except that at the same time the churches also developed a huge “arsenal” of justifications for (i) individual murder in the form of the death penalty (with or without horrendous tortures, depending on the times) and (ii) mass murder in the form of war. Let me be provocative and not go into all the justifications that were developed for each of them – just state the point…
- Now, what about our times? A contrasted situation, I would say:
o After having had the deadliest wars in history, Europe and the US moved to wars, where we aim at having not more than a couple dozen casualties, or if possible none at all – but wars everywhere else are deadlier than ever, and we have more than a hand in many of them…
o Most democraties and most developed countries (and, in fact, a number of other countries in the world!) have abolished the death penalty. And at least proclaim their faith in international law, meaning that they relinquish the right to start a war. All interesting steps, because they mean that one does not apply anymore a double standard to murder, some licit and some not – all murder becomes forbidden, so even the state can not order it anymore. As is well known, the US has a “complex” relation with internaional law (repeatedly going to war without international agreement or being attacked) and with the death penalty (legal in most of the states, but not all).
o Abortion is legal in most of the developed world, and much of the developing one. But at least the christian churches are fighting hard against it (most prominently the catholic one).
o Torture, well, is supposed to be illegal in most of the developed world…for what this means…
o What is just as interesting is the attitude to life saving: in rich countries at least, one will go to extreme lengths to save lives – not only through medical care, to extreme costs sometimes even when there is little hope, but also through “prevention”, which increasingly rhymes with “prohibition”, attempting to avoid harm by avoiding all “risky” behaviours, from walking on cliffs, to driving too fast, to drinking and smoking etc.

Now, what puzzles me is how to interpret all this. Should we read it as a general line of progress, that is not yet fully perfected, whereby life is increasingly “sacred” (even, interestingly, to atheists), and should be saved at all costs – but with strong disagreements remaining on suicide, abortion…and war (and the death penalty, to some extent, though this is only a serious debate in the US – in Japan and Europe, it gets discussed little, though both are on different sides of the issue).
Now, let’s think provocatingly:
- There are some human beings who are so far beyond the borders of social life, and are so clearly without any hope of any pshychic improvement, that one can wonder whether locking them up for life is appropriate – think, on obviously different scales, Hitler, or Fourniret (a particularly horrid French serial killer who murdered in particularly gruesome way dozens of young girls). Should they be executed?
- Since war appears to be just as much a part of human life as it ever was, in spite of all pretence to the contrary, does it make sense to always refuse it – or is it better to keep the possibility to intervene, as it is clear that sometimes it will result in lessharm, not more (think WWII, Bosnia, or a number of other cases, where non-intervention was unfortunately shocking, say Cambodia, Rwanda…)?
- Should we really forbid people to end their own lives? Should we keep people “alive”, when their mind is already dead, and their body cannot move anymore, and they live only through the tubes, connected to them?
- Is abortion murder? Even when the embryo is a small cluster of cells? Who should judge?
- Should safety always trump freedom?
- When will we simply reach the economic limit of over-medicalization of the last months of life?

Quite a lot of questions, because I am torn. On the one hand, I think the increased respect for all life is one of the defining strands of human progress, if there is such a thing. On the other hand, maybe, as the Greeks believed, measure is key in all things, and maybe we are on the edge between respect and fetichism of life?

Abortion – never ending…

Again a post reacting to one of Andrew’s readers: this time the reader objects against Andrew considering that a true believer/Christian/Catholic should stand up against torture at all costs, but not making the same point about torture. In other words, for the reader, abortion=torture.
Interesting that the debate rages so intensely in some countries, and not at all in othes. Interesting how different the perspective.
I agree actually that there is an analogy, particularly if you think about late abortions. But I would strongly disagree that partial analogy means identity.

On a related note - I completely agree that women should be rulers of their own bodies, and not someone else for them! But the question again: when does the small other inside become her/his own body as well? To me, clearly, not before s/he can move! That's all for now on this topic I hope...

M/B-u/o-mba-i/y

One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers, technically correctly, disagrees with Rushdie’s vision of Mumbai-the-new-name as being a product of Hindu nationalism (and by the way the reader seems to miss the attribution: the source is Rushdie, not Hitch, who just relayed Rushdie’s point of view…). When I say “technically correctly”, I mean that my limited knowledge (and lack of time to investigate) mean that I assume this reader is probably right in saying that Mumbai is the ages-old name of the city in Mahrati. And of course Mahrati is the language of the majority of inhabitants, and of the country around the city.
Now, remember, that was not quite the point. In fact, Rushdie’s point is that the city was (still is) a cosmopolitan metropolis, formed of many (really many) ethnicities, religions and what not. And that the name of this melting-pot was “Bombay”. “Mumbai”, indeed, brings it back to its Mahrati name. Yes, it can be seen as a decolonizing gesture, as this reader argues. It can also be seen as de-cosmopolitizing. Probably both are somewhat true.
Just reminds you how complicated it is (and risky, when you do too little research!) to write about India!

Excommunication, yet again

I was struck by this post – Catholic fundamentalists in the US are continuing to say Obama voters are in a state of mortal sin. Sorry, correction: mainstream Catholic clergy is saying this. Yes, they are fundamentalists in a way, but not as a splinter group.
It is so unthinkable to have such a situation in France now that I somehow understand why the French, from the right nearly as much as from the left nowadays, have kind of become obsessed with our “laïcité”, i.e. the very strict separation of religion (not only churches, religion itself) and state. It verges sometimes in the (to my mind) ludicrous or fundamentalist or weird, when for instance the French media and chattering classes suddenly talk of nothing else than a couple teenage girls trying to wear a scarf at school (and unvaryingly failing).It took hundreds of years of hard fighting to take out religion from politics, and many are scared that it is just waiting around the corners, awaiting any opportunity.
Probably much of the irrational reactions to Islam have to do with this (the other source, of course, is plain fear of the other, a.k.a. racism). The splitting of religion from state, as all pseudo-pundits are wont to say, is impossible in Islam. Well, sort of. Let’s say, it runs against a long and powerful tradition. But it was exactly the same in Christianity for 1500 years and some…Until it finally happened, but not with the churches’ blessing (!), you can be sure! It happened against them – so it will happen in Islam, eventually.
What puzzles me, in that context, is that many well-meaning Americans seem to think Islam is particularly threatening, or something. At the same time, their churches remind me of the worst they see in Islamic fundamentalists…Go figure...