Christopher Hitchens' "The Portable Atheist": Book Review

As many reviews on Amazon precede mine, I will offer a sample of the places I found most engaging. Christopher Hitchens received plaudits from some and suspicion from others, even fellow travelers, for what seemed in the wake of his "god Is Not Great" bestseller a cash-in with not as much editing of the inclusions as a rapid assemblage. Too many of the 47 excerpts drag on; a careful compiler would have excised portions and given overviews, while translating passages from other languages and footnoting arcane references as so much material is drawn from sources long ago.

His introduction, on the other hand, pleases. It's a joy to read Hitchens, whether you agree with him or not. Early on his contrast between god-like cats and dogs who treat us like gods (15) establishes his point memorably. His frank question why "semi-stupified peasants in desert regions" receive revelations of their Creator vs. those among the rest of mankind resounds. (18) His humility that whether innate or inexplicable, we can still laugh at our folly of invention humbles us against such faith-claims. (25) As he cites his friend Richard Dawkins, we are all atheists of some sort, for who among us still worships Jupiter? (20) Hitchens thunders against theocracy as the original totalitarianism, the tyranny exerted against anti-theists who take on a more active stance of opposition against the despots determined still alive among us who exact punishment against thought-crime. (23)
Hitchens pithily and typically sums up the struggle: "the main enemy we face is 'faith-based.'" (29)

Among the entries, I perked up with Thomas Hobbes' examination of the four causes for the "natural seed" of religion. (45) David Hume's extended foray into the contradictory elements of a deity demanding both praise and terror serves as an early examination of the force that compels our fealty. (61) Then the poet Shelley tackles both the argument by design (89), and the fact that even two centuries ago, "men of genius and science" championed atheism (94) attests to this venerable legacy.

Leslie Stephens' name may be less familiar than the three mentioned above, but he responds to Cardinal Newman's appeal to conscience for belief in God with the plain admission that such an appeal "has no force for anyone who, like most men, does not share his intuitions." (155) Anatole France wittily captures the conundrum at Lourdes, full of crutches "in token of a cure." His friend points "to these trophies of the sick-room and hospital ward" to whisper: "One wooden leg would be more to the point." (168) Emma Goldman reasons how in every age, God has been forced to adopt himself to human affairs, a petty meddler rather than an eternal, awesome force for goodness. (186)

Bertrand Russell earns his allotted span in this anthology. He encourages the dogmatic reader to read papers of opposing views, good advice still. "If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason to think as you do. (275) Carl Sagan wonders logically why God is so visible in the biblical world while so obscure in ours. (318) Dawkins conjures up Mt .Improbable, where the seeker can climb by a gentler back slope towards rational discovery rather than a leap up the front precipice, as a way towards clarity. (387)

Victor Stenger's chapter 37 on cosmic evidence is lengthy but rewarding, as he dismantles arguments. A zero energy universe, rather than a miracle, is exactly its "mean energy density" for one appearing "from an initial state of zero energy, within a small quantum uncertainty" initially necessary. (314) While John Updike's rambling conversation in his novel Roger's Version puzzled me at first, the explanation of how quantum fluctuations or tunnels via Higgs Bosons sparked what became time and space prepared the way helpfully for the learned astronomical discussions by scientists in later pages.

Ibn Warraq's in-depth exegeses from Why I Am Not a Muslim similarly fill out a need here to get away from a steady attack on the Jewish and Christian versions of an Almighty. He also debates the principle within Islam of supersession, a series of revelations urging departure from earlier forms of belief to higher and then single ones. "If there is a natural evolution from polytheism to monotheism, then is there not a natural development from monotheism to atheism? is monotheism doomed to be superseded by a higher form of belief, that is, atheism--via agnosticism, perhaps?" (396) Wise words.

H.L. Mencken, for those contemplating pagan or pantheistic retreats, lists outmoded powers above and below to illustrate the dead voices of forgotten or outmoded forces once called upon by millions of our ancestors. Michael Shermer's discussion of the legend of the Wandering Jew seems superfluous, but Sam Harris' "In the Shadow of God" states a fundamental warning. "Whenever a man imagines that he need only believe the truth of a proposition, without evidence--that unbelievers will go to hell, that Jews drink the blood of infants--he becomes capable of anything." (457) A twist on the Grand Inquisitor of The Brothers Karamazov (the latter tale not here) as to God and morality?

Back to Dawkins, he notes how the Bible fails as a "truly independent guide to moral conduct," serving instead as a "Rorshach test" where people pick out what reflects their own morals and interests. (341) The God in this volume fails, he adds, to ultimately care about his creation. (336) Steven Weinberg seconds this. "But the God of birds and trees would have to be also the God of birth defects and cancer." (372) Salman Rushdie reflects: "Only the stories of 'dead' religions can be appreciated for their beauty. Living religions require much more of you." (381) A.C. Grayling denies that an atheist should label him or herself as one. "The term already sells a pass to theists, because it invites debate on their ground. A more appropriate term is 'naturalist,' denoting one who takes it that the universe is a natural realm, governed by nature's laws." (475) This spins back to Hitchens' start.

That is, he broadens the other contested term. "Religion is, after all, more than the belief in a supreme being. It is the cult of that supreme being and the belief that his or her wishes have been made known or can be determined." (loc. 393) This may be reductionist for scholars of the philosophy of religion. I aver so, but Hitchens tries to focus on the disputes among atheists over an "intervening" divinity. Men and women will continue, he avers, to create such. "We are unlikely to cease making gods or inventing ceremonies to please them for as long as we are afraid of death, or of the dark, and for as long as we persist in self-centeredness." (loc. 385) One last reminder, from the introduction again. "If anything proves that religion is not just man-made but masculine-made, it is the incessant repetition of rules and taboos governing the sexual life." (loc, 418) Hitchens, for all the scattered evidence marshaled here untidely at times against the presence of such a querulous God, endures as a presence. (Amazon US 1/5/17)

Ruth Francisco's "Amsterdam 2020": Book Review

This sequel to Amsterdam 2012 continues the resistance by a few against the Islamist takeover of Eurabia. That first novel focused on America, despite starting in Amsterdam, where murders sparked a worldwide revolt that led to much of Europe capitulating to Muslim regimes and submission to their demands by the remaining Jews and Christians and secular residents. Among these, as well as some liberal Muslims, the Dutch fight back against the Islamic Republic of Holland. Here, Katrien, who converts with her family--as many do---takes the name Salima, but goes underground as Lina.

Her dual existence is of course complicated. The first novel made links between Ann Aulis in Southern California and Anne Frank, and similarly, another young woman--younger than Ann--faces the predicament of an arranged marriage with a leading kingpin from a prominent Turkish-Dutch Muslim clan. Teenaged Lina must face the challenge of the Resistance to infiltrate this family as a new bride, while trying to figure out the true motives of her husband, fifty-two year old Kazan.

On her author's blog, Ruth Francisco tells of finishing the book, started in 2013, in the past year of the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan murders, and the San Bernardino CA shootings. While many reviewed her first novel on Amazon and dismissed it as far-fetched or needlessly provocative, readers intrigued by the dystopian scenarios of Muslim domination imagined in Robert Ferrigno's Assassin trilogy or Michel Houellebecq's similarly barbed Submission (both authors' works reviewed by me) may welcome this. I found the writer's voice for Ann earlier and Lina here engaging, even if in this 2020 installment, the choice to make a transition between her narration and a third-person indirect for another key character sometimes a bit bewildering, as chronology is no longer straightforward.

The supporting figures get fleshed out more, as in Kazan's school friend at a Swiss academy, and humor in the pranks played there, or the "plucked and marinated" chicken the oiled and depilitated virginal Salima feels herself on her wedding day, offer some needed levity to a tense thriller. The delight Ruth Francisco has in plotting out the geopolitical and practical ramifications of Islamist social power gives her details more depth here, and from inside the divided Dutch culture, we understand the difficulty the Muslim authorities have in getting even their fellow congregants to submit to sharia law and all the puritanical trivia enforced on the Westernized Muslims themselves.

I also liked the Resistance scenes. Many of these were pitched for action more than insight, but how the burkas are deployed by men and women alike against the Islamic police and military makes for clever encounters. I felt there was more of an attempt by Ruth Francisco to delve into the intricacies of how an Islamic imposition would play out in daily life, and how individuals react and endure. Again, the parallels to Nazi occupation are evident, and the Dutch setting draws out "secret annexes" and hidden rooms, traditions still clung to by some Netherlanders, effectively to enhance a setting.

Suffice to say that Ruth Francisco slows down here to let us understand Kazan better, and how Lina (under more than one name or identity) relates to her new spouse. While as before some leaps in the tale-telling and the jumbled order challenge the reader, headings break up the chapters and dates are there to guide the confused. It's not perfect, but it's intelligent. This expands in dramatic fashion, more smoothly in a narrative than 2012 if bumpy as a thriller. (Chance meetings and just-in-time interventions make this a bit melodramatic at times.) The inherent interest in how Islamists might expand their caliphate and how those within it and from the outside might oppose it sustains itself. I am not sure of more to come is on the way from the Amsterdam series, but this is enjoyable. 
(Amazon US 1-12-16)

Ruth Francisco's "Amsterdam 2012": Book Review

 
I was offered a chance to read Amsterdam 2020, but then I found out this was a prequel, setting up the Eurabian War between Islamists and secular forces, and the American response to the conflict, as well as the pandemic that weakened much of the world in this debut novel. So, while you can find reviews posted earlier that in 2010 often belittled the premises of a hostile Muslim takeover overseas and a subtler integration of Muslim values and standards into much of urban America, five years on, the premises may not appear as far-fetched to some. The extrapolations of politics, the speed with which the riots and the collapse of much of Western Europe takes place may seem the stuff of fantasy, but as with the blitzkrieg and the Anne Frank comparisons throughout Amsterdam 2012, there are parallels that show Ruth Francisco has cleverly embedded historical predecessors for this blitzkrieg.

As for her writing style, it moves the story along in a "you are there" fashion. There is a tendency to tell rather than show, as so much is reported from a distance. Ann Aulis' narration, that of a young woman barely in her twenties, feels serviceable. (Some typos mar this, and it needed editing.) Living a few miles from her residence in Southern California, I liked the places and references that added local L.A. color. However, I did not feel that much a sense of the region in the novel, nor did I get much characterization outside of her immediate family. The story is told from her perspective, and she is understandably self-centered. Her maturation, as she is separated from her boyfriend, feels awkward, but this is not a surprise, given that disease, death, and altered sensibilities challenge all in this suddenly dystopian scenario. The adjustment to this, as she tells us, no matter how far-fetched, is however a wise touch, for it shows her ability to withstand pressure. I thought the Feds would be after her more, but she escapes less unscathed or monitored than seems probable, at least from what we know now of the NSA, data mining, and mass surveillance.

The conclusion needed more depth. The epilogue could have been its own sequel. It speeds up events and the pacing of the previous adjustments to a strange new life and society are thrown off. This may be Ruth Francisco's intention, but the change in the last few pages deserved space and time for it to unfold. Still, for those who may have read Robert Ferrigno's Assassin trilogy about a partially Islamicized America, or Michel Houellebecq's philosophical or louche Submission (all reviewed by me), this story may provoke reflection. (Amazon US, copy provided for review 1-8-2016. See my review of the sequel, Amsterdam 2020.)

Michel Houellebecq's "Submission": Book Review

While the release of this book in its original French will be inevitably tied to the article about its author, Michel Houellebecq, featured in Charlie Hebdo the week of the Parisian murders of its staff and other innocents last January, the novel itself merits attention.

Readers of Houellebecq's previous fiction will recognize familiar elements. The discontent of his early middle-aged, educated, ornery French narrators in Whatever and The Elementary Particles repeats. The unease in {Platform} that lust brings to those with sagging bodies and ebbing desire persists. The longing for an escape from a declining European culture returns after The Possibility of an Island with its utopian fantasy, and aesthetic debates dramatized in The Map and the Territory.

After this newest novel's French publication, critics sought to blame, once again, its satirical author. Inevitably, Soumission entered the bestseller charts in first place. Some on the left regarded its themes as needlessly provocative. Many called them racist, appealing to baser instincts among French nationalists. Taken by English-language audiences at more of a distance, these issues may recede.

If treated as another in a series of Houellebecq's jabs at coddled liberal sensibilities, Submission loses some sting. Houellebecq proves rather, once again, he delights in the novel of ideas. He places his narrators within unbearable situations. We then watch them try to wriggle free. Within a French situation where the thought-police seek to patrol the sensibilities of all who reject secular platitudes as much as they may religious ones, the topics Submission investigates enrich its suggestive title.

Suffering from "andropause," our forty-something narrator encounters the steady decline of literature, values, culture and his libido. The teller of Submission is an expert on J. K. Huysmans, who over a century ago startled an earlier French readership with decadent novels, considered "sodomitical" and Satanic. Like Houellebecq, Huysmans' erudition enhanced his fiction's barbed, bohemian contents. Unlike Houellebecq, Huysmans began a gradual conversion to Catholicism; he eventually lived, if in less than austere style, as a lay oblate attached to a Benedictine monastery. Houellebecq had drafted this novel with a template of a protagonist emulating Huysmans' path; this story becomes in the revised version we have its sub-plot. Meanwhile, the main plot dramatizes French Islamization.

For an acerbic author regarded as unsentimental, Houellebecq begins this novel with a tender, if bitter, homage to the power of literature. It channels for the living the voices of the dead. Directly, by no other means, a reader can enter by a book into the mind of its creator, the spirits of the departed.

The narrator loves this quality. In his dissertation on Huysmans, he sums up an outlook in common with Houellebecq. "Even as he grew to despise the left, he maintained his old aversion to capitalism, money, and anything to do with bourgeois values." The professor avers that "the only thing left to people in their despair was reading," but that solace is chosen by far fewer than in Huysmans' era.

Instead, much of the initial action in this fiction, concerned more with lofty concepts than realism or politics, takes place in languid dialogue or heated exchanges between the narrator and a louche colleague at the University of Paris, Steve. The protagonist spars with him often, in "that odd ritual,. part buggery, part duel" that is "conversation between men." When the teller is jolted enough by the violence breaking out as the far-right spars with Islamic factions during the Presidential primary, the empty rural roadscape he sees, static on the radio, a clerk shot dead at a convenience store, feels less real and more contrived. It is akin to horror as glimpsed in a J.G. Ballard novel, drained of emotions.

After all, Houellebecq detaches himself from his narrator--and through him. He leaves enough of the Huysmans-driven plot to move him along, as he attempts a retreat himself at a Catholic monastery. But this fails. He has no deep contempt for his former "fellow believers" who cling to the Church. Rather, he blames "laicism" and "atheist materialism" for the death rattle of Western European values. This critique carries more weight in France than in the U.S. Despite Lorin Stein's flowing translation, readers of Submission distant from the issues that divided France after the Charlie Hebdo shootings and those limits or liberties of freedom to mock any religion may feel that this novel's impact fades.

What international readers, who may be baffled by the dense if understandable references to French media pundits and political maneuvers, are left with is a more classic contribution to a French model. The narrator who employs satire to comment on his homeland from abroad, reporting from a fabled or foreign land, emerges. As Montesquieu's Persian Letters or Voltaire's fiction transported French concerns to imaginary lands, to sidestep censorship and clerical reaction, so Houellebecq places his nameless narrator within a French polity a few years into the future. In Submission to counter a threat by Marine LePen and National Front, other French parties cast their lot with the Muslims. We hear far too little about what follows in practical terms. This lack weakens the novel's impact. Yet the tale-teller laments, typically, the loss of the ability to admire women, now that so many are veiled.

The indulgence granted such a sly teller of edgy commentary enlivens comparisons between French and Muslim mores. Late in the story, the scholar's supervisor--who has converted to the faith that has bought the Sorbonne with Saudi money and rewarded those faculty who give in--links "woman's shamanism to man, as it is described in The Story of O, and the Islamic idea of man's submission to God." The appeal of bonus brides as recruited from two or three female students from the realm of Islam, who are the few remaining who enroll in literature classes at the University of Paris, beckons the narrator to contemplate joining the favored elite of Muslim converts. Huysmans' path diverges from those 120 years later in this French novel, but Houellebecq and his narrator agree. If he submits to God's call, this dissolute intellectual will find favor in the eyes of the pious, and the well-endowed.

We leave this predicament as the protagonist mulls over his choice. Will he embrace "a chance at a second life with very little connection to the present one?" He admits, "I would have nothing to mourn." Christian France is dying. With the nation under Muslim leadership, in a coalition with the Socialists and a center-right party, such are parliaments in a strange land of the near-future, those who wield power and issue paychecks have changed. At this point, the novel sidles away. Submission chooses to remain chary about the full force of such momentous transitions. It prefers to stay coy, and like the delights of the women hidden behind gowns and veils, it retreats into its own fantasy again. (Amazon US 10-20-15; Spectrum Culture 11-8-15 a few days before the [latest] Parisian massacres.)

From Venice

In Venice, we saw a striking image. The near distance in the haze looked entirely drained of depth, and we thought it for a moment a matte painting or overlay. The Rialto, unfortunately, under repair, featured such a fake archway, with a gender-bending Asian fellow posing in a full-frontal (if clothed) stance, under a Diesel slogan "This is a guy sitting on a bridge." For me, that lost a helluva lot in translation. None of the thousand (!) photos I searched demonstrates this flattened perspective, but I tried to mimic it if slightly at the left, via this photographic view.

At Santa Croce in Florence, Stendhal had a similarly unsettling sensation. Overcome by the art, he fell into dizzy disorientation, called since then the Stendhal Syndrome. If you ever want to earn credit for this malady on an insurance form check off the box "hyperkulteremia." When reading his account, earlier this year, however, his psychosomatic reaction in his narration for me so muted that I had to check when in his tale it happened. A modest endnote referred to it offhandedly. Our encounter was probably less bewildering, but still, gazing out in the open on a vast sight you are not sure is real or contrived remains memorable. Venice, for many, appears a mirage, a place conjured up from magic.

Certainly, this city, built on sticks and marshes after refugees fled Attila, has no roots of its own from ancient times. No ruins, no Roman forum, no archaeological treasures. Instead, a true creation of the collision between Byzantine and Romanesque, the blur between Renaissance and Baroque, these islands separated from the normal cause of events cause its residents as well as its tourists to mingle. As Mary McCarthy's 1963 Venice Observed remarks, cohorts must jostle, and there's no place that is undiscovered and left only to the locals. I would pass the shop girl who with a British accent sold me a shirt, and the man who ran the gallery where we'd find our souvenir mask, both later walking along from work, to a meal, or to their home. With no cars, all are pedestrians, for once, reduced as equal.

Well, to a point. She also loosely links the flight of the founders of Venice to that of the Exodus, to another people who seek to start over, to another group involved in trade and mercantile enterprise. But, in the Old Foundry where the word ghetto originated, as we visited there our first full day, the situation of the Jews confined there nightly, as the gates and bridges closed them up on their island, attests to the other legacy of this realm. While the theme-park air draws all, permanent or transient, to jostle its dank passageways and navigate its funnelled paths over the Rialto magnetically, the isolated ghetto represents the hidden Venice. Not one only the locals know, but one the Most Serene Republic for centuries contended with, the raspy underside, the irritant beneath carnival masks or gilt mosaics.

This raspiness hit me on arrival. A loud woman materialized out of the Piazza S. Bartolomeo, the first stop in our video pilgrimage (see the paragraph after the next). She zeroed in on pale blue-eyed me, tugging two suitcases and hoisting a backpack, bent over like Simon of Cyrene helping Christ carry his cross. Somehow I was selected out of the crowd to sign her petition against drugs. A second day, she accosted me, this time mocking my disdain in Italian "insegnate" and then in broken English, "teacher" (how did she know?) and "No terrorist" post-Paris. A third time, she singled me out. By now, I let loose, telling her this was the third time (as in Jesus falls, although by now I bore no burden on my trudge through streets recalling those of old Jerusalem I imagined), and that I was not interested. She apologized slightly, and then Layne chirped "We like drugs." Believe it or not, on our departure that same day (we get around the same places, this being Venice), a man now accosted me, this time with a British accent. I speculated silently if this was not part of a certain "church" founded in Hollywood and part of a tax-avoidance scheme filling its coffers in ways that made Peter's Pence look angelic by comparison. The "faith communities" may change, but a pilgrim's still an easy mark.

Back to the other center of a far older faith, we saw scowling rabbis on a Chabad poster, a windowed guard kiosk, a few shops selling Judaica or kosher snacks, and plaques to those murdered. A series on a stone wall, faded in bronze to verdigris, depicted the torment of the Shoah. One portrayed two figures crucified. We traversed the center square where schoolchildren ran to visit, and we went the whole half-circle into and out of the district barely speaking. It seemed, as we'd seen in Siena and Florence in miniature, a testament to European Jewry today. And after the recent Paris murders, it felt stained. (When I got home, I learned on the radio that the Bataclan was targeted as its Jewish owners had hosted pro-Zionist gatherings. Why this was absent from any press, BBC or CNN coverage we'd been inundated with for a week was somehow telling. I add that snippet here, to an funereal litany. Even as I revise this, headlines of more innocents targeted by fanatics, perpetrated an hour's drive away, near the college my wife and older son attended, fills airwaves, papers, and the Oval Office.)

Our stay had begun with a video we'd watched over and over, downloaded to the Kindle. The hotel warned one had to learn the way to it, and we did. So much that over three days, we could traverse it on our own. But one false turn and you end up at St. Mark's Square. Instead, after a train from Florence and hauling our luggage a ways, we made it at nightfall to the Ca' Bragadin Carabba, where none other than Casanova lived from 1746 to 1755. Strangely, only a plastic sign in the bare lobby on the first floor told of this connection, and there was no other context. Talk about underselling a place.

Curious, on arriving home, I sought to find out more. My Penguin Classics abridgement of Casanova's voluminous memoirs lacks an index or timeline, but a visit to Wikipedia reveals that the young libertine saved the life and came under the patronage of the household of a scion of the noble Bragadin family. Perhaps he used their quarters largely as a base, for in this decade he roamed Paris, Dresden, and Parma among other locales. 1755 marks of his arrest as a Mason and freethinker by the tribunal and his incarceration in the Leads atop the Doge's palace, from whence he escaped to Paris.

The Ca' overlooks the small square of Santa Marina, nearer the Rialto than San Marco. As with the nearby Santa Maria Formosa church and square, these appeared neglected (even if the restaurant on the former was overpriced yet full) much of the day and night, and bereft of allure. A logical novelty of Venice is that it often lacks visible landmarks. You wind around alleys, under tunnelled passages and suddenly it's a tiny piazza or a vast square, a dead end at a canal with no railing, or a memorable vista of gondolas, water taxis, and motorcraft under clouds or gray skies, full of churches and fading facades. While many illustrations, painted or photographed, display Venice as very colorful, we encountered chillier weather, so I was glad for the change in temperature, although the humidity as I expected persisted. We even had to bundle up for the first time since Ireland. Around us, whether sporting man-buns or scarves, mini-skirts and leggings or wool overcoats, chic pedestrians strutted.

We ate at Mani, a little pizzeria that turned out once we got our bearings on the same route we came in on. Full of tourists as anywhere, but the food was fine. Lots of British, lots of noise. By the time we ate, and left, the lines were out the door and we were glad that the stereotype held for early birds.

I tried finding other news, but except for a BBC segment that kept covering Africa, no matter the language, news seemed all about Paris. Instead, I peered at the two maps I had, as they did not match in the streets covered, as they changed every twist and turn across the city's labyrinth, and tried to get a spatial sense. Once I imprint this, as elsewhere on my thousand miles driven in Ireland and the thousands of steps in Italy, I can function better. Not that I don't make a first-timer's mistakes, still.

But these were fewer. After the ghetto, we crossed a bridge and went into the flow. Look around you and see where the others walk. Out of a square, therefore, you get the hang of the main direction, even if it is a three-foot-wide cranny, it will expand into a street lined with shops and restaurants. The fish market offered a lot I'd have loved to try, and the vegetable vendors enticed Layne's eye too.

The stickiness of the climate persisted even in cooler times, so we headed back to our room. Later, we sought out the Basilica of San Marco and marvelled in the dim twilight at every inch covered in gold tile. The present structure is over a thousand years old and claims to have the body of the evangelist, stolen back from Alexandrian infidels. As in Florence and Siena, the darkness inside made the church more rather than less appealing, although to the finicky smartphone snapper, probably not. We sat in the side chapel awhile, taking it in, among worshippers. No craned neck or diligent archivist could do it justice. Plastered and fussed over, it symbolized the enviable position the city occupied, a portal for the plunder from the failing Greek empires and Ottoman successors, combined with the crusading avarice and the financial acumen under the Doges, and their uneasy terms of rule.

Somewhere along our walks, we'd seen on the Calle Guerre a cat mask that reminded us of Gary. That proved too big and too pricy, but the owners ran a studio making such for carnivals and movies. Ron Wood had shopped there, a small cutout of a newspaper on the front door noted. We were able to give a photo of our black-and-white feline to the painter, and she a day later produced a small papier-mache replica, sans green eyes, of our companion. Layne had to protect it, so she bought an owl-patterned bag to do so, and with the room left over, found an orange leather purse to suit her. I completed my magnet collection; Venice was by far the best and the cheapest of vendors for souvenirs. Even if I supposed all else was much ore, as all had to be brought in by dolly carts and porters. We made the same check-out mistake at another CONAD, forgetting to weigh the onions and tangerines, but a stop at the grocery stand across the lane on St. Lio near our hotel made up for that.

That second night, we had intended to find a more Venetian place to eat. But the "oldest" such restaurant near the cat artists did not appeal as much as the Osteria Antica ai Tre Leoni. The fish there was outstanding, and the gnocchi the tastiest we'd had. Layne watched through a gap at a Chinese couple. They never looked up from their phones, they slurped their noodles, they never conversed.

We talked, and she asked me if I'd live in Venice. The waiter at that moment came with our food, but if you want to know, I'd say, yes, if I had a lot of cash for upkeep. I'd also "divide my time" with Siena. Or maybe Lucca and Ravenna but they must wait for a return ticket and a cheap exchange rate. I'd read in Tim Parks about his adopted Verona, and Layne wants to visit the fashion and design mecca of Milan. For me in my romantic daydreams, the seaside of one location and the hilltop of the other balance well. As for Ireland, I keep responding that I have not as yet seen enough to call it, but somewhere in na Gaeltachtaí entices me. I'd take classes there to bring my Gaeilge up to fluency--even if my Californian accent would likely never vanish. So I imagine an ideal retirement.

Layne remarked from the moment we saw the Campo dei Fiori in Rome how the country instantly resonated with her. She warmed to its food and its ambiance, and indeed the weather did her well. She looked radiant, walked until she could no more, and loved window-shopping and dining (well, sometimes, but far more often than in Ireland). For me, I guess it's as atavistic as it is Layne as she surmised to her "swarthy" complexion ("olive" may be more anodyne) and her Levantine attraction. My skin enlivens and my nose sniffs out the turf. My older son, as I entered the house back home the other night, marvelling how it smelled outside of fires and chill like Ireland, sniffed, "you mean, like shit and sheep"? Deadpan. Perfect timing. He inherits my mordant wit and his mother's culinary joy.

Our final full day in Venezia, although we were "churched out" as Layne accurately diagnosed our affliction, we walked to the Scuola de San Rocco with its splendid fifty-plus Tintorettos. Too much for me, but Layne admired their contrasting colors and imposing angles. The wood carvings in the choir stalls intrigued me more, each contorted and realistic. The church across the lane, where we'd later reward the fiddler who'd been playing all day into the night, featured more of the same, as well as the Basilica dei Frati. Since about 1230, Franciscans have preached there, and the mish-mash of tombs, plaques, paintings, and ornament proved engaging if confusing, as again, the efforts of centuries combined into a jumble. Consider the reliquary, with so many tiny labels affixed to so many little bits of bone and skull that they were illegible. Some lacked any identification. Oblivion is their fate, perhaps, as holy relics and pious crafts, unless scholars better skilled than I summon miracles.

For the quotidian demands, pizza and pasta satisfy me. At our second pizzeria, Pommodoro, as avoiding beasties and birds means carbs abroad, we sat next to an Antipodean couple with a very well-behaved and articulate two-year-old, Rowan. They told us they'd been holed up in a Paris hotel for days, and were glad to have gotten out. In retrospect, I am glad Layne and I made it out of Istanbul before the subsequent tensions between Turkey and Russia. But I might see Turkey one day. U.S. security currently advises travellers now to avoid "crowds": how a tourist does this is a mystery.

Our departure, this time with a porter, and the train proved smooth. Again I contended with an Italian newspaper on political parties and Parisian terror, and we stayed in Rome at an Hilton airport hotel. Its plugs had been bashed into the wall by countless chargers, its staff seemed indifferent, and its ambiance was undistinguished. But unlike in Dublin, we could walk to the terminals. I watched a channel from the Middle East. Women in hijabs praising Tide. Pampers. Pert. KFC. "Pearl Harbor" played, as I tuned in on a scene of American sailors drowning under CGI Japanese bombardments. It seemed ill-timed and ominous, given the global jitters. Layne and I found a Cuban station. A young woman with a lovely voice even as an opera-phobe I liked sang as cats (again) or kids in masks (again) as such cavorted without reason. A video followed, an elderly folksinger with "Amigos" as his pals kissed the camera lens to show off their certificates from school or work, not sure which. B/w photos of them as younger comrades on labor details or at parties contrasted with them now. This was followed by a documentary on native plants. I wondered how long such fare will fare in today's Cuba.

Up early, we left on Turkish Airlines. Layne had calculated that one-way fares saved us a lot, so we flew counter-intuitively from Rome to Istanbul, and then back from Istanbul over the polar route to LAX. Our layover plunged us into a maelstrom, complete with a vast bazaar as chaotic as that outside the terminal, I feared. I later read that a Detroit woman on a layover here in 2013 had vanished, found dead in time, or not in time. (She "scuffled" with passport officials there, never a wise idea in this Midnight Express realm.) For my needs in time, there was one unisex toilet open in the whole wing. It had the standard functions and it was clean enough. Around me, half the world trundled past, until the near El-Al-level of a security triple check slowed us to board. I stared out a window by the gate, the strait not far away, trying to find which of the minarets and domes signalled Hagia Sophia.

On the flight, I learned from a documentary that there are at least eight grand mosques in the city. So, I had no idea which I surmised. I needed to stay awake to fight jet lag, so much of the marathon fourteen hours were spent gazing at the screen. A documentary about invisible Rome, another on Istanbul, another on owls. I chose rather than Skyfall to watch Goldfinger. Layne called up Boyhood for the fourth viewing, but I opted for the one Irish film, Jimmy's Hall, Ken Loach's biopic about leftist James Gralton's attempt to import jazz and modern mores into 1935 Leitrim. It tried, but could not rise above its conventional showdown of scandalized parish priest and indignant activist. To its credit, it did feature Jimmy back from Depression NYC to lecture his flock on the dangers of what we could relate to as avaricious bankers and precarious labor, and it attempted to complicate a simple story of good rebel vs. evil clerics with finally a little nuance. But I realize the love scene, that had been rapidly terminated with "the other woman" lamenting in gauzy dusk, cut to the next day without transition. Turkish censors made sure everything we watched was "formatted." I wondered what the well-upholstered, glaring old women under scarves watched on their little screens under hawk eyes.

We came home to find a dead bonsai (Nestor could not handle SoCal drought) and a dying cat. Gary had held out but three days before our arrival, he lost his appetite and retreated away from humans. We spent the equivalent of a flight and took him three times to the vet, but the fourth time was his last. I held him until the end. His green eyes gazed out, and his fur remained soft and sleek. One of the best memories of my Venetian promenade was seeing a cat-and-dog chess set, all hand-painted.

Window displays in Venice's small lanes prove magnificent. Paper, pens, fashion, glass, leather, crafts. I kept lingering over the faces on the little porcelain pets. They almost made me cry. They conjure up innocence and play, childhood and dreams. Impractical as a chess set nobody even would play with against me, expensive as it was, it represented a loving attention to art and beauty--even dignity. So, our mask in Gary's honor proved prescient. It will hang in the room where we loved him. 

Terry Eagleton's "Culture and the Death of God": Book Review

I figured, despite the difficult content, that hearing these lectures on audiobook might ease their delivery. I like Terry Eagleton's work, and I always mean to read more. The Meaning of Life, for instance, is on my Kindle, where I am saving it up still, having already studied its final chapter.

But the subject matter is challenging. Eagleton's wit is subdued, after early on a joke at the expense of Birmingham. He hones in on not the "death of God" so much as his replacement, high European culture. The kind of thinking that George Steiner represents the last generation to have espoused.

This arose earlier than the Enlightenment, but that period, for the French and the Germans, gave it its fullest diffusion. Many Germans crowd these pages, along with the sometimes somewhat more familiar French. Eagleton looks down on the likes of Diderot and Voltaire, for they suffer the hypocrisy of many of their peers. For they speak a 'double-truth': they claim the masses need religion for its calming messages and social utility. The elite, of course, can rise to a higher worship of reason.

Yet, as Eagleton astutely notes, Deism roused no martyrs. He constantly defers to, or better still champions, the Gospel message as liberation theology (even if he steps aside from this phrasing). His Christ comes to afflict the comfortable and to condemn the authorities, taking up the side of the poor.

If one wonders if this is a selective interpretation of biblical verses, one will end this book unenlightened. Eagleton employs these talks to promulgate his own insistent reading of Jesus as a revolutionary. As the modern times impinge, and Nietzsche's own shameful (in Eagleton's view) capitulation to the 'double-think' standard proves that even he is not worthy of acclaim, the book shifts into a rapid look at those such as T.S. Eliot who attempted to make the aesthetic the norm. But, being Christian, that cohort also falls short for Eagleton. He wedges into our own age, divided between a secularized and educated class and many billions (some with degrees and high incomes, surely, a factor he skims past) who continue to integrate, however irrationally to this professor's rigorous if somewhat numinous preferences for his own Christ-figure, faith with achievement.

Eagleton nods to the resurgence of Islam and Christianity in many poorer parts of the world, not so much again as forces calling for the kind of radical overthrow of the power system, but more as a way to live in a complicated world more simply. I reckon more on Marx might have helped his explication, but his promotion of Nietzsche as the central figure in this short study leaves us moderns somewhat imbalanced. After a lively if brief look at earlier Irish dissident (if renegade Protestant convert) thinker John Toland, the reader wants more such figures to energize these dense chapters.

Instead, it's less intoxicating. Eagleton crams a lot into these sections, but he often does not explain who the figures are beyond their dates of birth and death, leaving a reader (and even more a listener) curious or confused. Some transfer of lofty content to a common if smart reader was necessary, but these lectures, transcribed as I suppose they originated, go over the heads of many who could have benefitted from a more streamlined, listener-friendly, version of what remain engaging ideas and an intellectual history on a topic that an audience needs to hear, as believers, skeptics, or seculars. 
(Amazon US 10-30-15. P.S. 2012 interview at the Oxonian Review with Eagleton on this book)

Christopher Hitchens' "Arguably": Book Review

I miss Hitchens. I used to look forward to his book reviews in The Atlantic, and when I'd pick up an occasional copy of Vanity Fair, his opinions on whatever he found worthy kept my interest. Even if "Why Women Aren't Funny" in 2007 famously fell flat, in re-reading it within this massive anthology of his journalism from the last period of his life, a more sly sense of him putting us on appears.

He reminds me in this compilation of George Orwell, a forebear to whom he nods often. Like Orwell, he takes on literature, popular culture, current events, history, and politics with equal assurance. I cannot think of a writer addressing a wide if educated audience today his peer when it comes to his breadth. He compares 1984 to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall in its prescience as to how a totalitarian system can exert itself and how a Reformation can erupt. He notes the same nom de guerre employed by Edmund Burke and, of all people, Rosa Luxemburg. As a former Marxist and one who knows how Trots work, he nods to how radicals frequently assume the worst possible motive of an opponent is his or her correct one. He notices how Rebecca West's sentences accumulate reflection as do Paul Scott's, so at the price of verisimilitude, a necessary chance for explanation and reflection unfolds.

Hitchens even connects Hitler's efflorescence to the moth found in the throat of a female victim in The Silence of the Lambs. Such a range merits awe. Hitchens rarely strains for the fancy phrase, but the scope of his exploration of how we think, act, and write deserves acclaim, even if you disagree. He shows deftly how Lincoln shifted the way we use the United States itself, from "are" to "is" to portray its unity after the Civil War. Speaking of war, he ends his introduction to West's Black Lamb, Grey Falcon by rallying his own allegiance to stand up for a righteous cause. She was "one of those people, necessary in every epoch, who understood that there are things worth fighting for, and dying for, and killing for." (221) However, in 2007 he seems to regret  his support for the first Gulf War.

"I was among those who thought and believed and argued that this example [of U.S. implementation of a "you-fly-you-die zone" over Iraqi Kurdistan] could, and should, be extended to the rest of the country: this cause became a consuming thing in my life. To describe the ensuing shambles as a disappointment or a failure or even a defeat  would be the weakest statement I could possibly make: It feels more like a sick, choking nightmare of betrayal from which there can be no awakening."(521)

These essays and pieces roam widely. They begin with American politics and history. then English literature, observations on mores and manners, foreign policy, "legacies of totalitarianism," and defenses of free speech as PC-speak inhibits bold journalism. He predicts: "Within a short while,--this is a warning--the shady term 'Islamophobia' is going to be smuggled through our customs. Anyone accused of it will be politely but firmly instructed to shut up, and to forfeit the constitutional right to criticize religion. By definition, anyone accused in this way will also be implicitly guilty." He finds presciently in an attempt to alert the world to the danger of letting fanatics shut down the Danish press for cartoons judged offensive in 2007, that "American Muslim leaders" are canny. He cites the NY Times in explaining how PR spin is spun. ''They have 'managed to build effective organizations and achieve greater integration, acceptance and economic success than their brethren in Europe have. They portray the cartoons as part of a wave of global Islamophobia and have encouraged Muslim groups in Europe to use the same term.' In other words, they are leveraging worldwide Islamic violence to drop a discreet message into the American discourse." (706)

While inevitably some entries feel lightweight, or seem already dated as to once-current events they may lack the impact of his more detailed critiques, the collection rewards one's attention. Hitchens strives to answer his critics fairly and patiently, and he keeps alive his measured wit along with a winning sense of his own failings as he struggles to make sense of our world. (Amazon US 4/5/15)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "Do we tolerate another culture's intolerance"?

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about feminist opposition to "safe spaces" and free speech, within contexts of defending Islam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali joins this with calls for an Islamic reformation. She encourages dissent by those who reject its spurious claims of peace and who reject its political ideology of violence. A very learned friend of mine responded with his nuanced, considered comments, about the relative progress of Muslim legal and academic culture. On FB, where I posted an excerpt from Ali, others attacked Islam and defended Ali in turn. I weighed in cautiously but in favor of Ali, as deserving a hearing. For she knows firsthand the cost of sharia and the discrimination against women, rebels, non-Muslims, and freethinkers.

Today I found posted via another learned friend on FB this 3/24/15 article by Ali from the Huffington Post: "From Selma to Tunis: When Will We March Against the Segregation of Our Own Time?"
While I got blowback from citing that related Ali piece, I feel she merits thoughtful attention. For she makes, as with the Reformation, another telling analogy which may speak better to secularists today.

Here are some excerpts, with a few of my own comments. Ali compares the 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery to the recent outbreaks of "racially charged incidents" which "have prompted a near-universal reflexive response of black anger and white guilt"--but Ali reminds us change has come. I agree with her "that the president was right to push back against the idea that nothing has changed since 1965." My current and past two supervisors are black, one from Africa, two from here, two men, one woman, one an immigrant, the others a descendant of freed slaves. One is married to a white man. None of this might have happened half a century or more ago, certainly. That is progress.

Ali shows how discrimination increases across the world where Islamic jurisprudence expands. "And the discriminated group I have in mind is women, though I could also reference Jews, Christians and gays." She lists the long litany of laws limiting women's freedom: and emphasizes: "Segregation, in short, is central to sharia -- a fact that no amount of contortion by self-styled Muslim feminists can get around." She tells of the growing movements cracking down on female liberty.

"There seems to me only one possible way to react to this trend toward sharia and that is to resist it. Perhaps that is more obvious to me than to most; having lived under sharia when I was a young girl in Saudi Arabia I know just what it means to be a second-class citizen. Yet many Western liberals seem to struggle with the obvious point that if they were against segregation and discrimination in the 1960s they should be against gender segregation and discrimination now." This to me is eminently sensible. I cannot fathom, when I read certain liberal journalists or exchange views with radical friends of mine, why a stress on diversity and tolerance affords Islam such rampant intolerance.

Ali introduces Heretic. "My most recent book is an argument for a Muslim Reformation. It proposes a fundamental five-point modification of Islamic doctrine designed to remove the various incitements embedded in the Koran to engage in intolerance, oppression and violence. The book is addressed mainly to Muslims who are reluctant to follow me all the way to apostasy, but who are prepared to acknowledge, if only to themselves, that there are fundamental incompatibilities between their faith and modernity. But I am also addressing Western liberals -- and not only those at Brandeis University who last year saw fit to rescind their institution's offer to me of an honorary degree.
In their letter denouncing me, 87 Brandeis faculty members accused me of suggesting that:

violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam or the Two-Thirds World, thereby obscuring such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus [and]... the hard work on the ground by committed Muslim feminist and other progressive Muslim activists and scholars, who find support for gender and other equality within the Muslim tradition and are effective at achieving it.

Seriously? "Support for gender and other equality within the Muslim tradition"? As for Muslim feminists "achieving" greater equality, the evidence, as we have seen, is that women's rights in the Muslim world are being rapidly eroded by the spread of Islamism.

I echo her disbelief. All the more as the liberal Jewish university, Brandeis, would have been expected, to me at least in my naivete, as a supporter of those from marginalized and persecuted groups who challenge the unjust laws and religious demands limiting a freer exploration of human potential rather than fealty to a supposedly divinely dictated set of primitive rules and illogical regulations. Yes, I know the Torah and that may contain its own irrational codes, but in the liberal outlook informing Brandeis, I'd expect a more generous audience for Ali's congenial (to me) address.

Ali continues: "We who have known what it is to live without freedom watch with incredulity as you who call yourselves liberals -- who claim to believe so fervently in women's and minority rights -- make common cause with the forces in the world that manifestly pose the greatest threats to just those things." Now that she is an American, she admits to her new colleagues that "we Western intellectuals cannot lead a Muslim Reformation. But we do have an important role to play. We must no longer accept limitations on criticism of Islam. We must reject the notions that only Muslims can speak about Islam, and that any critical examination of Islam is inherently 'racist.' Instead of contorting Western intellectual traditions so as not to offend our Muslim fellow citizens, we need to defend the Muslim dissidents who are risking their lives to promote the human rights we take for granted: equality for women, tolerance of all religions and orientations, our hard-won freedoms of speech and thought." She goes on to sum up her thesis, and it's one I share: "Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture's intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women's rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on that spurious ground."

She compares Jim Crow to sharia, and concludes: "I want to echo Martin Luther King. Yes, we Muslim reformers are on the move and no bogus charge of Islamophobia can stop us. The burning of our offices will not deter us. The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us. The beating and killing of our leaders and young girls will not divert us. The wanton release of known terrorists would not discourage us. We are on the move now. Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom.

My question to the liberals of 2015 is this. You are very sure about what side you were on in 1965.

But whose side are you on today?Will you march with us for Muslim women's civil and political rights? Or will you wait half a century -- for the movie of our march?"

Ali gets a lot of flak. Her marriage to Niall Ferguson, perhaps, has exacerbated the opposition she gets among many in the left-leaning media. He too challenges some conventions of the anti-North Atlantic/American, pro-"South" voices who deny Western hegemony and champion the anti-imperialist voices of those who join that message to one of anti-secularism, and pro-tradition.

In Arguably, another outspoken journalist, Christopher Hitchens, anticipated this. Defenses of free speech wither as PC-speak inhibits bold journalism. He predicted: "Within a short while,--this is a warning--the shady term 'Islamophobia' is going to be smuggled through our customs. Anyone accused of it will be politely but firmly instructed to shut up, and to forfeit the constitutional right to criticize religion. By definition, anyone accused in this way will also be implicitly guilty." He finds presciently in an attempt to alert the world to the danger of letting fanatics shut down the Danish press for cartoons judged offensive in 2007, that "American Muslim leaders" are canny. He cites the NY Times in explaining how PR spin is spun. ''They have 'managed to build effective organizations and achieve greater integration, acceptance and economic success than their brethren in Europe have. They portray the cartoons as part of a wave of global Islamophobia and have encouraged Muslim groups in Europe to use the same term.' In other words, they are leveraging worldwide Islamic violence to drop a discreet message into the American discourse." (706) Certainly proven by now.

While the sympathies extended more and more to proponents of the Muslim (and other faiths) suppression of those who attack its limitations disappoint me, they seem an inevitable extension of the 20th century's encouragement of the Other, those who strike back against the Empire, those on the sidelines who push forward to play on the field. Orthodox Jewish men increasingly are refusing to sit alongside women on planes in America, as their numbers grow and their confidence grows. Few are able to stand up to these manifestations of cruelty, fearing their opposition will brand them as bigots, or as in Islam however illogically, "racists." My childhood Catholic faith appears to play the role predicted by my teachers in junior high: they saw in the ebb of European devotion a harbinger, less than a decade after Vatican II had concluded, of the decreasing rather than dominant role the Church would play in my own coming of age and the coming century. On the other hand, the hijab becomes ever more common in my country, whereas the nun's habit and priest's collar seem nearly invisible.
Cartoon credit.

Free Speech Can Be Scary

 



It's difficult for those of us saturated in social and print and online media to keep up with anti-free speech demands. British laws, as conservative critic Charles C.W. Cooke tells the New York Times, apply capriciously: "A Briton was arrested for telling a police officer his horse was gay. A singer in a seaside bar was arrested for singing 'Kung Fu Fighting' in the presence of a couple of Chinese people." Although I have since writing this been informed that Cooke fails (at least in the edited version of an admittedly short space) to clarify that the “hate speech” legislation since the “horse” episode has been amended eight years ago, and that said offender was not prosecuted, this explanation shows the lengths to which such legal interference and incompetence have extended.

I cite the end of Judith Shulevitz' article, worth reading in full, for its applicability to the situation Maryam Namazie has chronicled the past week on her blog, and which The Pensive Quill excerpted. Namazie planned to speak at Trinity College Dublin. But, security asked for a moderator, to shield her talk from any threat of "antagonising" its "Muslim students." TCD seems to have clumsily tried to tip a "balance" away from "one-sided" views, but winds up censoring one who knows Islamist tactics well. "It is crucial that I be able to speak against Islamist fascism and honour our dissenters deemed apostates, blasphemers, heretics…whether ex-Muslims, Muslims or non-Muslims," she insists. 

Shulevitz, after documenting the increasing levels of administration on college campuses to protect supposedly vulnerable young adults from harsh opinions or dissenting ideas, raises the overlooked "possibility that insulating students could also make them, well, insular. A few weeks ago, Zineb El Rhazoui, a journalist at Charlie Hebdo, spoke at the University of Chicago, protected by the security guards she has traveled with since supporters of the Islamic State issued death threats against her. During the question-and-answer period, a Muslim student stood up to object to the newspaper’s apparent disrespect for Muslims and to express her dislike of the phrase 'I am Charlie.'”

Judith Shulevitz goes on to narrate the situation, and I quote her at length. “Ms. El Rhazoui replied, somewhat irritably, 'Being Charlie Hebdo means to die because of a drawing,' and not everyone has the guts to do that (although she didn’t use the word guts). She lives under constant threat, Ms. El Rhazoui said. The student answered that she felt threatened, too.

A few days later, a guest editorialist in the student newspaper took Ms. El Rhazoui to task. She had failed to ensure 'that others felt safe enough to express dissenting opinions.' Ms. El Rhazoui’s 'relative position of power,'  the writer continued, had granted her a 'free pass to make condescending attacks on a member of the university.' In a letter to the editor, the president and the vice president of the University of Chicago French Club, which had sponsored the talk, shot back, saying, 'El Rhazoui is an immigrant, a woman, Arab, a human-rights activist who has known exile, and a journalist living in very real fear of death. She was invited to speak precisely because her right to do so is, quite literally, under threat.'

You’d be hard-pressed to avoid the conclusion that the student and her defender had burrowed so deep inside their cocoons, were so overcome by their own fragility, that they couldn’t see that it was Ms. El Rhazoui who was in need of a safer space." So concludes Shulevitz, in wise words to ponder.

Megan Murphy, a Vancouver feminist, has since added her view on the dubious protection afforded "safe spaces" in the Globe and Mail. She tells how she has been added to a list of "dissidents" on the Black Box, "an online incarnation of safe space." She joins a list of prominent freethinkers who have lately found themselves the targets of opprobrium for daring to speak out and not to give in to cant.

She reminds us of the cost that capitulation carries. "Pathologizing disagreement is an intellectually dishonest way to cope with challenging arguments. It certainly doesn’t support critical thinking."

She continues: "It also creates a culture wherein people are afraid to express dissenting opinions or question the party line. This is ironic, because many of those under threat of being silenced are people who are speaking out against abuse, harassment and violence. While some may hold 'controversial' opinions about how best to do it, they are just that – controversial. Throughout history, our heroes and radicals have held controversial opinions. How often do tepid opinions and fearfulness change the world for the better?"

Those at The Pensive Quill and as we see above, certain journalists and activists in the media, continue to fight for the right to freely express opinions and to promote facts that challenge pieties.
The reaction to Shulevitz' article in the following week of the New York Times, as these letters prove, was mixed. Professors and students tended to insist on safe spaces, at least from the correspondents selected, more than I would have predicted, but this appears to illustrate how deeply the principles of right-thinking by purportedly left-leaning individuals have permeated many in higher education.

(P.S. My blog piece has been updated for TPQ. I cannot find the original source of this image credit)