The French are right (again)

In the United States, we almost always have some complaints against the French, but the French often turn out to be right.

From Salon.com: The French are right (again) by Joe Conason

If the world is no longer enthralled by the “old Washington consensus” of privatization, deregulation and weak government, as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown proclaimed at the London G-20 summit, then now it is surely time to reconsider what that consensus has meant for us over the past three decades. We could begin by looking across the Atlantic at the “social market” nations of Europe -- where support for families and children is less rhetorical and more real than here.

Most coverage of the summit failed to observe the stinging irony of the debate over stimulus spending that brought the United States into conflict with France and Germany. Today’s American demand that the French and Germans (along with the rest of wealthy Europe) should spend much more on government programs and infrastructure contrasts rather starkly with the traditional American criticism of Europeans for spending too much.

Not that the Obama administration’s complaint about the French and the Germans is necessarily wrong; the Europeans and especially France and Germany should overcome their fear of inflation and spend more to help relieve the global recession. But then we almost always have some complaint against the French -- and the French often turn out to be right, as they were when they objected to the invasion of Iraq.

So when the French and other Europeans note pointedly that their societies routinely spend much more than ours to protect workers, women, the young, the elderly, and the poor from economic trouble, they’re merely making a factual observation. (France spends as much as 1.5 percent of GDP annually on childcare and maternity benefits alone.) Different as we are in culture and history, we might even learn something from their example, now that the blinding ideology of the past has been swept away.

By now, most Americans ought to know that Europeans treat healthcare as a public good and a human right, which means that they spend billions of tax dollars annually to insure everyone (although they spend less overall on the medical sector than we do). What most Americans probably still don’t know is that those European medical systems are highly varied, with private medicine and insurance playing different roles in different countries. Expensive as universal quality care has inevitably become, as technology improves and populations age, the Europeans broadly believe in their social security systems -- because they provide competitive advantage as well as moral superiority.

Read more here.

A Christian Progressive Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin

Yesterday, February 12, marked the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. The naturalistic view of life that Darwin introduced during his time has changed the way we see our world. His controversial theory of evolution through natural selection has survived for 150 years, amidst the constant deluge of attacks from conservative religious groups and theologians, and has become the foundation of the many new biological sciences we know today.

I found this very interesting article on the Washington post yesterday about a christian progressive's view of Charles Darwin. It talks about the clash between Theology and Darwinism. It is a very good article, and well worth reading.

From the Washington Post: A Christian Progressive Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin

In my own work as a Christian progressive, I have found evolutionary biology, and especially the Human Genome Project, a source of rich dialogue between theology and science. As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, however, the norm for the relationship between religion and science is anything but productive and respectful. Instead, anti-Darwinist views in conservative and even moderate-to-conservative Christianity have been increasing, especially in the last quarter century.

As a Christian, an advocate of human rights, and a person strongly committed to democratic ideals, I believe Darwin's work was of consummate importance for human progress. I further believe that religious progressives need to speak out more directly against a religious campaign against evolutionary biology. We need to say clearly that this targeting of evolution by conservative Christianity is far more political in origin than it is purely theological.

There is no doubt that Darwin's legacy in science has been vast; the theory of natural selection that gave rise to the Darwinian revolution underlies both theory and method in science. The Darwinian upheaval is just this: the origin of species is bottom up, through natural forces, rather than top-down and fixed like conservative Christian theology in particular would contend.

This is where all the trouble arises. The idea that human life is continuous with other creatures and indeed with the whole planet is a profoundly destabilizing idea for religious and political practices of dominance and control. This whole struggle is more about politics than it is about abstract issues like religious faith and secularism. In the 200 years since Charles Darwin's birth, this has changed very little.

Read more. It is very good.