In yesterday’s New York Times Book Review Will Saletan reviewed Embryo: A Defense of Human Life. Robert George and Chris Tollefsen, the authors of Embryo, have a response up on NRO.

A cult can be defined as a tight knit group of people who devote themselves to a charismatic leader who promises to solve all their personal or social problems by the power of his personality. Given that definition, I would argue that the Obama campaign has all the marks of a cult.

First, Obama promises to solve the problem of politics. People attracted to his campaign think that he can transcend the ordinary negotiations and conflicts of the political realm just by the force of his powerful optimism. If the political itself is the problem, and not the various social problems that must be negotiated within the political arena, then Obama himself is the answer. Somehow, magically, he will create a new political space that will save us from having to fight or even disagree with each other. And a politician who promises to put an end to politics must be subjected to the most stringent skepticism. What they want to put an end to, of course, is the politics they disagree with, while wrapping their own politics in a rhetoric of consensus and optimism.

Second, Obama promises to save us from racial conflict. After all, he is unlike any other black politician that we have ever seen. He is not really all that black, having a white mother and having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia. Obama is thus well placed to move us beyond race. Why? Because he is both black and white, an uncolored ink blot that can absorb and erase racial conflict. The problem is that Obama, who grew up without a father and without much of an American identity too, is able to have it all ways: he can play the race card while promising whites that he is above and beyond the color problem. His whole life has been a search for some kind of national and racial identity, and maybe he will find himself if he becomes President of the United States, but it is unlikely that he will help the rest of us find our way out of the thicket of political and racial correctness. Obama is the ultimate answer to white liberal guilt: a black man who makes people feel good for voting for him, regardless of whether they are doing anything about the very real problems of race in America.

Third, Obama promises to be the new JFK, which is absolutely fundamental to the revival of liberalism in America. Ted and Caroline have crowned him JFK’s second coming, thus completing the mythical cycle that began when liberals mourned JFK as the last great liberal. When JFK was assassinated by a quasi-communist nutcase, the left could not bear to think that their hero had been killed by one of their own. Liberals set out to mythologize JFK as the President who would have made America liberal if he had not been cut down in his prime. This is nonsense, of course, but this myth has laid the foundation for how liberals understand their own cultural and political demise. If only JFK had not been shot…but now he has returned, as a black man to boot! Never has fantasy been more important in driving a presidential campaign.

Just talk to anyone who supports Obama. They will say that he does have policy positions, but they will also say that he transcends all the typical policy options. Most importantly, they will talk about how Obama makes them feel. They will say that Obama represents the future, that he can heal the country, that he will create a new unity in America. And they will look a bit glassy eyed as they tell you all of this. Don’t argue with them. It is impossible to argue rationally with a member of a cult. Don’t even compare Hilary to Obama, because, like all cult members, they hate their rivals. Just be as clear eyed as you can, and pray that Obama does not get elected—not because he claims to transcend politics, which is merely empty rhetoric, but because, like all liberals, when he says he is transcending left vs. right, he is really being more leftist than ever. He wants to replace arguments over real differences with feelings of good will, and that is the real danger.

An Ellyn Von Huben has chosen to apply for the First Things junior fellowship on her blog rather than go the conventional route.

Allow me to reply in an equally unconventional manner.

Dear Ms. and/or Mrs. Von Huben:

Your application has been received. I found it both frightening and entertaining, just like lunch at TGI Friday’s. Your work in a steel mill and as an amateur plumber is exactly what is needed here. (You wouldn’t happen to know know anything about sand blasting, would you?)

Unfortunately, it is your writing “experience” that troubles me.

First of all, I know I have seen “Please Close Door Firmly Behind You” before—and from other authors. We frown on plagiarism here at FT.

As for “All Rectory Visitors Should Use Front Door,” I’m afraid I was intrigued by the opening but found that the middle sagged, the characters were self-absorbed and “thin,” and the apocalyptic ending was strained. (I find this to be very common in so much of modern literature.)

That you abandoned your first love, the Cedarburg Lutheran parish, with a precipitate violence that has left its congregants reeling to this day is nothing short of criminal. I’d have you arrested if I weren’t busy working my way through my fifth cup of coffee.

And writing that paper for your child betrays a dishonesty not seen in academia since I submitted The House of the Seven Gables as my term paper for eighth grade English—only to receive a B- for a supposedly “feigned style.” (My teacher also claimed to have counted only six gables, but he was, by all accounts, a moron.)

A bachelor’s in art history earned in the 1970s does your cause no good either. Four years looking at soup cans and blank canvases is no way to squander an education. Four years in film school watching the “cinema” of Douglas Sirk and being told it was a coded critique of the Franco-Prussian War—now that’s a way to squander an education!

You also misspelled the editor’s name. You spelled mine correctly, however, so I’m willing to let bygones by bygones.

Nevertheless, I must reject your application for the junior fellowship with extreme prejudice. (Please feel free to apply for the managing editor’s job.)

Sincerely,
Anthony Sacramone

Religious freedom inches forward in Egypt: While conversion to Christianity is still illegal, Christians who convert to Islam can re-vert back to Christianity. The story can be found here in today’s New York Times.

Articles from this weekend (just a portion, hardly exhaustive) that may interest anyone interested in religion, culture, and public life:

Catholic vote and Hilary Clinton (NY Times)

Rabbis criticizing the revised Good Friday prayer (NY Times)

James Dobson and John McCain (Wall Street Journal)

FT-contributer Ross Douthat on the future of the GOP (NY Times)

The gap between rich and poor—for consumption (NY Times)

The Science of Fetal Pain (NY Times Magazine)

Review of Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (NY Times Book Review)

Review of two books about the Religious Left (NY Times Book Review)

Two reviews (here and here) about three books on the future of the GOP (NY Times Book Review)

“Child-Men,” “emerging adulthood,” “extended adolescence,” “Odyssey Years,” “decade of wandering” (City Journal)

More on Rowan Williams and Sharia Law (NY Post)

4 Inconvenient truths for party loyalists (Weekly Standard)

Religion and Violence (Roger Sandall)

Slate has published its list of the 60 Biggest Charitable Donors of this past year.

You know who’s missing? You don’t know their names. Neither do I. But I bet if you picked the average congregant from the average African-American storefront church, that person probably gives as much if not more in terms of percentage of income or net worth every year than most of the people on this list. But because the dollar figures are so small relative to the numbers listed here, the generosity of those churchgoers remains known only to God. (Which is probably as it should be.)

That is not to underestimate the great good that can be done with the huge numbers that make lists like these. But those sums shouldn’t be read as the sum total of the generosity ledger sheet in America . . .

A usage question for all you legal types. In an article about a misused government informant, I came across this line: “prosecutors are asking a federal judge to dismiss charges including conspiracy and cocaine trafficking against most of the defendants, even some who pleaded guilty.” And, for some reason, that particular use of pleaded made me realize I’ve been uneasy about the past forms of the verb to plead for a while now.

No dictionary entirely settles the point about what a publication should use today. The more descriptive sources list pled as the primary form in the United States. The more prescriptive name it an American (and Scottish) colloquialism that the correct pleaded should abolish.

On grammatical questions, I tend to be a prescriptive Americanist. I like the old school-marm distinctions: Children are reared, while crops are raised; clothes are hung on the clothes-line, while people are hanged on the gallows. But I reckon I ain’t about to say pavement when I mean sidewalk, autumn when I mean fall, or any other of them fancy-pants Latinisms the British use. The fact that in England pleaded is the sole correct form don’t carry much weight for the likes of me.

You have to admit, however, that there’s something more etymologically consistent about pleaded. Of the long-e verbs in English form that form weak past tenses simply by adding an -ed on the end, some are Germanic in origin (bead, knead, weed, etc.) and some are French Latinate (the whole family of -cede verbs, for instance). But all the long-e verbs that form strong past tenses by shortening the vowel are Germanic: feed becomes fed, lead becomes led, and bleed becomes bled, with read and breed galloping along beside.

All the long-e verbs, that is, except plead—which stands as a French-derived verb with a Germanic past form if we allow pled.

Still, there’s something that sounds prissy and forced about pleaded that puts my back up, particularly when, as in legal contexts, it takes a direct object: He pleaded guilty.

More, it adds to the general decline of the strong forms of past tenses, as irregular verbs get forced into greater regularity. The pattern is common in English, but we’re in the midst of a great linguistic push right now that probably ought to be resisted. (Try Nexis searches for breeded or waked, if you want some examples.) The increasing replacement of shone with shined has particularly begun to annoy me.

Add it all up, and isn’t pled preferable to pleaded? It’s shorter, it’s a strong irregular form in a context of increasing weak regularity, and it’s distinctively American. What more do you want from a verb?

In response to my posting about civility, Alexia Kelley, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, has sent this response:

In a diatribe riddled with false claims and smug mischaracterizations, Robert T. Miller’s recent blog post attacking Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good exemplifies an ugly style of argument at odds with a journal that prides itself on intellectual fairness.

A professor of law, Mr. Miller sets aside judicious analysis to show his outright contempt for Catholics who insist—as our own Church does—that unjust war, torture and poverty are moral scandals. Challenging our president on these issues apparently shows our “ideological drift” and “far-left” agenda. By these measures, the positions of Catholic bishops and centuries of Catholic social teaching are also suspect.

The priests, religious sisters, theologians and lay Catholics from around the country that comprise Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good work to build a culture where immigrants are treated with justice, the voices of the poor are not forgotten in Washington, and peacemakers are heard in a world shattered by war. These men and women deserve our respect, not mockery or trite labels.

Mr. Miller takes particular delight in maligning a statement released last fall by prominent lay Catholics —including eleven former ambassadors and former chairmen of the Republican and Democratic National Committees—that called for greater civility in public life. Thomas P. Melady, a former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, and Timothy J. May, a trustee emeritus with the Catholic University of America, worked together as Catholics from different political persuasions to launch this effort. Like most Americans, those of us who signed their statement are tired of a toxic political environment that the U.S. Catholic bishops recently described as “a contest of powerful interests, partisan attacks, sound bites and media hype.” After decades of mean-spirited quagmire in Washington, the signers believe that open and civil discourse desperately needs to be restored for government to function and for fundamental policy needs to be addressed.

To read this civility statement as an effort to get Catholics to “shut up” about abortion is absurd. As Catholics, we believe in the sanctity of human life. The inviolable dignity of the human person is the foundation for justice. Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good takes a back seat to no one in our opposition to abortion and in our support for building a culture that values life in all stages. The U.S bishops have now twice explained—in Catholics in Political Life (2004) and most recently in Faithful Citizenship (2007)—that our sacraments are blessed signs of God’s life among us to be canonically administered (including 915) with pastoral care and love. To involve the sacraments in electoral politics is shameful.

Mr. Miller mocks Catholics who call for civility as sensitive types not tough enough to take an intellectual punch. This is condescending. We welcome the challenge from those who are eager for a robust debate about the common good. These are serious matters that deserve thoughtful and mature reflection. How we as Catholics should conduct ourselves in the public square during these times of grave moral and political challenge is a profound question. Our bishops, in Faithful Citizenship, have responded with welcome courage. So, too, have the signers of the Call for Civility. Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good endorse both. We encourage the editors of First Things to a take up these questions with respect, seriousness, and—yes—civility.

Reading Ms. Kelley’s letter, you may have forgotten what this dispute is actually about, so I’ll remind you. Last year CACG issued a statement that said in effect that pro-life Catholics are engaged in uncivil discourse when they question whether pro-choice Catholic politicians should be denied communion. In responding to this statement, I first pointed out that CACG is a leftwing organization that generally agrees with pro-choice Catholics like John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi, including with respect to their opposition to outlawing abortion, and I then argued that, although CACG’s statement purports to be about civility, its true purpose is to disable some very effective criticism of politicians friendly to its cause by branding such criticism “uncivil.”

I was thus making a kind of argument we often hear in the public square: I was showing that someone had an ulterior motive for taking a certain position. Such arguments are clearly legitimate, for information about the possible ulterior motives of a speaker in the public square is obviously relevant to people who are listening to the speaker’s arguments and trying to evaluate them.

This was the context in which Ms. Kelley responded to my blog. If she was to say anything responsive to my argument, she would have to argue either that, in fact, CACG does not have the ulterior motive I attributed to it, or else that, even if it does have such a motive, its position is nonetheless correct on the merits. In fact, she does neither.

As to the first, Ms. Kelley does not dispute the key point that CACG does not seek to outlaw abortion. Its position is thus almost certainly inconsistent with Catholic doctrine as set forth in no. 2273 of the Catechism and is largely indistinguishable from the position set forth in the Democratic Party’s platform that abortion be safe, legal, and rare.

Such a coincidence of views between CACG and the Democratic Party is not surprising given that, before she founded the CACG, Ms. Kelley was the Director of Religious Outreach for the Democratic National Committee—a fact she omits to state in her biography on the CACG site. Ms. Kelley says that CACG “takes a backseat to no one in [its] opposition to abortion,” but the reality is that CACG is sitting in the back of the pro-life bus, right next to Hillary Clinton.

As to showing that questioning a politician’s fitness to receive communion is indeed a breach of civility, Ms. Kelley says nothing at all except that “to involve the sacraments in electoral politics is shameful.” This, however, is not always true. For, suppose a Catholic like John Kerry is running for president, and it turns out that because of his public views or actions related to abortion, he ought to be denied communion under Canon 915. Then, as Cardinal Ratzinger explained to Cardinal McCarrick, this is a matter not of the individual’s subjective guilt but of his public unworthiness to receive communion. The matter is thus one of public concern within the Church, and Canon 211 provides that Catholics have a right, and sometimes even a duty, to manifest to their pastors their views on matters that concern the good of the Church. Exercising this right is not a breach of civility, and it is certainly not shameful.

So, apparently because she has no genuinely responsive answer to make, Ms. Kelley provides us instead with an excellent example of how not to argue in the public square. For, most of what she says has two salient characteristics: It is irrelevant to the point under discussion, and it sentimentalizes issues of policy.

Usually, these two characteristics work in conjunction. For instance, we’re told that members of CACG are noble sorts, that they’re priests and religious and lay people from around the country, and that they care about immigrants and the poor. All of this may well be true, but it’s not remotely relevant to the issue at hand. It does, however, form the basis for a sentimental appeal—We’re nice people. Agree with us, not that nasty old law professor! Or again, we’re told that the organizers of the statement on civility care about the quality of our public discourse, that they have the finest intentions, and that they have spent their lives in public service. Again, this is not remotely relevant, but it does form the basis of another sentimental appeal—We’re good people trying to do good. Disagreeing with us is just plain MEAN!

I could go on like this, but you get the idea. I have just one final thought. Ms. Kelley says that I’m condescending towards CACG because I said that it can’t take an intellectual punch. I’m sorry, Ms. Kelley, but with a response like this, you’ve proved my point better than I could ever have done on my own. Rather than answering my arguments, you just complain that I’m a mean guy—a sure sign that you have nothing of substance to say on the issue. Thanks for the assist.