Entries in Harper's Watch!!! (4)
Harper's Watch!!! September, 2005
The fabled Harper's Watch!!! returns with another edition. Harper's tries something totally novel and takes on the subject of American religion as it relates to politics. As usual its own assumptions get in the way of saying anything with substance.
After recounting how woefully ignorant American Christians are:
Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.-Bill McKibben
Harper's posits that there is a "paradox" in American Christianity- that at once we are the most professedly Christian nation on earth but we act like it the least. What is the evidence marshalled for such a broad claim?
In 2004, as a share of our economy, we ranked second to last, after Italy, among developed countries in government foreign aid. Per capita we each provide fifteen cents a day in official development assistance to poor countries.
Read On for Marxist Phraseology
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Harper's Watch!!!
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Harper's Watch!!! July 2005
Until I get around to fully vetting the latest issue of Harper's which
does include an excellent and instructive article on Government Pork -
I'll link to The New Criterion's pithy comment on Editor Lewis Lapham's new paperback book.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Harper's Watch!!!
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Harper's Watch!!! May 2005
This is the second installment of Harper's Watch !!! here at Surfeited With Dainties.
To recap: I've discovered that many right of center blogs watch
media outlets in order to scandalize their pious readers with some
outrageous hint of bias against Bush or Christians or Ann Coulter. CBS,
the NY Times - all are being watched by the right blogs! Because I am
too lazy to do this sort of things everyday. I have chosen to keep my
eyes trained on Harper's Magazine. (published twelve times a year!)
The debut of Harper's Watch !!!
didn't go so well. I pointed out that the April
issue featured the great John Lukacs who is a hero on the Right from
George Will to the editorial staff at Chronicles. This month, however,
Harper's gets back to its bread and butter:
Christian Evangelicals are incipient Nazis! -actually incipient
free-marlet Nazis!!! This may be a long post because of Harper's
decision to run three articles on Evangelicals this month, but read to
the end. Harper's crosses a magical line and calls out for repression
(possibly violent) of Evangelical Christians.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Harper's Watch!!!
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Harper's Watch!!! April 2005
Many right of center web sites have a bias “Watch”. Some watch for bias
on CBS, others look for it in the New York Times. Apparently there is
a real market for getting people outraged by things they wouldn’t have
encountered in the normal course of their day- it’s a popular feature on
many sites.
To this end I am announcing that Surfeited With Dainties will feature, Harper’s Watch!!! That is, I will scan the table of contents of Harpers Magazine
and find something outrageous and riff on it for all of you. It is a
good fit for a site like Surfeited With Dainties, because it only comes
once a month (at the most). Also, I’ve read somewhere that stress can
cause weight gain - and well, listening to Air America, or reading the
New York Times everyday would be very stressful for me.
This month Harper’s features a serial adapted from John Lukacs’ new book:
Democracy and Populism. This serialized bit is called “When Democracy
Goes Wrong”
He discusses the prophetic chapter of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America entitled
“Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rare.” Tocqueville’s thesis is that
in a Democratic age, the people become materialistic and will not want
to imperil their material possessions with a Great Revolution.
John Lukacs finishes his article with these thoughts:
There is reason to believe that, at least for some time, great revolutions will continue to be rare. There is some comfort in this condition. But again, much has changed since Tocqueville’s time. One unfortunate development is the weakening of the power and the prestige of states while their bureaucratic functions remain enormous. But far more important is the decline of healthy appetites for freedom at the very time when an immense coarsening of civilized life has arisen all around us. In this respect - illustrated by their behavior - there is hardly any difference between conservatives and liberals, or between self-designated Rightists and Leftists. Freedom, after all, is not merely emancipation, meaning the relaxation of rules imposed on people by society, church, or state, by the tyranny of a ruler, by a minority, or by a majority. Freedom means the capacity to know something about oneself, and the desire to live according to limits imposed on oneself rather than by external powers. This appetite for freedom is not yet extinct, but the present cultural atmosphere provides something very different, indeed contrary, to its proper nourishment. Great revolutions have indeed become rare. But so too will privacy, security, liberty, family and personal independence.
This actually isn’t outrageous at all. Unfortunately folks, Harper’s Watch!!! started at precisely the moment when Harper’s saw fit to print something that was quite good. I’ll have to go back into last month’s issue in order to educe your outrage. Be on the lookout for Harper’s Watch!!! in the future.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Harper's Watch!!!
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