Voltaire and Theo van Gogh

There is a last chapter to this story. As an expatriate living in the Netherlands, I felt the shock of the assassination of filmmaker Theo van Gogh somehow blunted by the fact of the first one, the murder of the politician and sociologist, Pim Fortuyn. It shouldn't have happened again so soon but it did and, for some reason, it did not surprise me.

Both were examples of intolerance, the first from the European community and the second from the Muslim world. Both sent shock waves through the Dutch population. Both brought tens of thousands of people into the streets to protest violence that seemed directed at the very core of democracy - free speech.

But there was one significant difference. When Fortuyn was killed, a large section of Dutch society made their voices heard and showed their grief in public. But Fortuyn was a vocal opponent of immigration, which kept another large group of residents - the immigrant community - off the streets. When Theo van Gogh was felled, the shock was also felt among the immigrant Muslim population.

Thousands of local Muslims joined the commemorative marches, lined up outside the crematorium and appeared as never before on Dutch radio and television, expressing their concerns about the damage done to the Muslim image in the Netherlands by a small group of fanatics. More surprisingly, these same Muslims began to voice their support for freedom of speech - something that probably would have been unheard of a few years ago.

Ironically, while the Muslim community in the Netherlands reacted to van Gogh's murder by showing support for the filmmaker's right to insult Muslims in public, many Dutch politicians took a sharp turn to the right. The current right-of-centre coalition announced new, hard measures to go after "terrorists". They caught the main suspect in the van Gogh assassination and rounded up more than just the usual suspects.

Incredibly, the Dutch Ashcroft-like Minister of Justice responded by saying publicly that there should be a crack down on blasphemy! I kid you not.

A few hundred years ago the French philosopher, Voltaire, described the problem this way:

"The man who says 'believe as I do or God will damn you', will presently say 'believe as I do or I will assassinate you!"

Like Salmon Rushdie, van Gogh personified free speech around the world, in his provocative films and on television to a select public. While he had his share of enemies, no one deserves to die because their views shock or offend others. There are still those in free countries who attack free speech from the pulpit and the political stage in words, laws or with bloody deeds. But they will never succeed in silencing the voices of free peoples.

Theo van Gogh is dead. Long live Theo van Gogh!

Is Bush the Chicken or the Egg?

If you ask someone which came first, the chicken or the egg – the chances are they would either say that no answer was possible or, if they based their world views on metaphysical or mystic notions, they might venture a guess: the chicken. Both answers are wrong, of course, if one accepts the logic and evidence of evolutionary science.

Prior to the arrival of the chicken, a pre-chicken creature that was at least one generation away from our present-day chicken, laid an egg that contained an embryo with DNA consistent with the “new” aviary creature known as chicken. Therefore, the egg that contained the newly evolved chicken preceded its hatching. In other words, prior to the arrival of the first zygotic mix of male and female pre-chicken DNA that combined or mutated to form today’s chicken, there were only non-chickens. The DNA mutations occurred at the cellular level in the zygote developing inside the egg. Therefore, the egg clearly preceded the chicken. (Source)

If this is news to the average reader, it might be interesting to ask a similar question of the political climate in the USA. Which came first, the Religious Right or President Bush? As with the chicken-and-egg conundrum, the answer is not as obvious as one might think.

Consider, for example the fact that American politics has been laden with religious fundamentalists with a political agenda since its founding. There were peaks (late 19th century, early 20th century), declines (1930s to the 1950s)and revivals (the 1960s and 1980s). Until George W. Bush, however, no president (including Reagon) had reached out to – and activated – this group. Bush II did so deliberately, without doubt. His visit to the Bob Jones University during the 2000 campaign sent a clear signal to a minority of fanatics that their time had come – that the power of the presidency was now open to a group of people who would hitherto have access to the offices of power and who, in exchange for their votes, would ascend from oblivion and once again play a major role in American social politics.

Interestingly, there is no evidence that Bush himself particularly agrees with many of the views of the Religious Right. It is more likely, considering the people he has put in his cabinet, that he is heavily influenced by the American philosopher, Leo Strauss, who among other things advocated in a Machiavellian way that politicians who want to rule should play the "religious card". (Among Strauss's students or those influenced by his students: Justice Clarence Thomas; Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Dundes Wolfowitz; former Assistant Secretary of State Alan Keyes; former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett; Weekly Standard editor and former J. Danforth Quayle Chief of Staff William Kristol; Allan Bloom, former New York Post editorials editor John Podhoretz; and former National Endowment for the Humanities Deputy Chairman John T. Agresto.")

Few would deny that, for whatever reason, George W. has played that card and played it effectively. His appointment of people like John Ashcraft to high office sent signals to religious fanatics around the country. His proposal for a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, his tightrope opposition to abortion and stem cell research did not drive his supporters away; on the contrary, they sympathized with the problems he faced in a Congress largely comprised of infidels. Bush's appointment of anti-abortion groups to represent the US at the UN was the icing on the cake. He was keeping up his end of the bargain.

Perhaps that's what he meant when he stated, after the election, that he had accumulated some "political capital", which he intended to use to good effect during his second term?

The evolutionary scientist, Richard Dawkins, coined the term "mimes", to describe how ideas without scientific foundation could evolve, much in the same way that organisms evolve. If we look at the example of the chicken and the egg, we can see a similar development taking place politically in American history. One could view the "chicken" as religious fanaticism intent on legislating moral values on the American public. The "egg", according to this scenario, would be George W. Bush. His upbringing, his early history, his political charm and success in being elected governor of Texas – followed by his candidacy for the presidency in 2000 – put him in a position to change the course of American history. That was the message he got across to rank-and-file fanatics – and they rewarded him (with some help from the Supreme Court) with the occupancy of the White House.

When 9/11 came, Bush seized the moment politically and never looked back. While the concerns of fighting wars in Afghanistan and, later, in Iraq, relieved him of going overboard to accommodate those who were ready to turn American into a modern theocracy, he never lost sight of his political base, particularly those on the Religious Right. With unfailing political acumen, he (or his political brain, Karl Rove, as some would have it) identified and milked every inch of political advantage from the lesbian-and-gay marriage issue.

What we have just witnessed – in 2000 but more particularly in 2004 – is the evolution of an idea. Religious fanaticism has been legitimized in America. The president, like a politician whose time has come, has unleashed a mime that could have disastrous consequences, a Pandora's Box with the potential to destroy the tolerant, multicultural society that America was on the way to creating in the 1990s. Bush seems to be the political egg that carries the ideological DNA code for a new breed of Republican – the religious crusader at home and abroad.

And, like evolution, the irony is that this may not have been his intention at all. He may simply have been following Leo Strauss' advice: the elite should rule, religion is a political tool, might is right.

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom. (Stephen Vincent Benet)