For chrissake Greg, get over yourself. You might want to mention that this Alan Jackson song was written WAY pre-Iraq and almost immediately following 9-11. It has nothing to do with invading Iraq. Iraq and Iran are in there because it worked with the rhyming scheme. If there were better words that rhymed with Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc. perhaps he would have used them. It is a story about one person preaching faith, hope, love in the aftermath of the death of 3,000 people. Is there something wrong with that? It doesn't advocate any foreign policy course. Was it so wrong for people to turn to God after 9/11 to get answers at a time when no one else can provide them?

You question the role faith-based groups can play in US foreign policy. I, for one, think the role is huge - and I don't mean just Christian groups. I don't think I have to remind you that evangelical groups are operating on the front lines of most of the world's humanitarian emergencies, the majority of them brought upon the people by corrupt leaders enslaving, beating and even killing their own people. These evangelical groups have long been operating in areas where the US has shamefully failed time and time again to even lift a finger. So let's not start preaching about how evangelicals are ruining the country.

On the domestic side, I'm not one to advocate any form of official religion or Christianization of the country (as is probably the same with the majority of religious people who get a bum rap). But with these faith based groups operating internationally, the world sees the best face of the United States - not with a bunch of suits playing politics in Washington.

Posted by: Anon at September 12, 2006 05:13 AM | Permalink to this comment

Anon. I think you might want to re-read Greg's comments a little more carefully and discern the actual message. In my reading of the post the clear point is that Politics and Faith do not mix well. I'm a huge believe in maintaining the separation between church and state for several reasons.

Most importantly democracy survives and flourishes under plurality - it provides the checks and balances that ensure a healthy democracy. Religion by its very nature seeks the reverse - it’s highly unitary, with generally strict moral guidelines. At best different faiths tolerate each other, but seldom better than that.

Also morality differs according to faith. There are still fundamentalist religious sects out there who feel that adultery is a terrible crime punishable by death. In our enlightened world we agree that adultery is not perhaps desirable in society but recognise that making it illegal would only serve to criminalise a large portion of the population.

As Greg also points out, when it comes to governance, empirical evidence is regarded as the best basis on which to form law and policy - for the simple reason that it’s proven to be the best. It’s incontrovertible. Faith as a basis for decision making is not incontrovertible - except by say so. In some cases empirical evidence supports faith, and other times it doesn't. But running foreign policy on the basis of faith, when facing the most significant threat of the past 2 decades, IS deeply concerning. Matters of such magnitude surely ought to be dealt with using an empirical basis as much as possible - oughtn’t they? At least to my way of thinking they should be.

I agree however with your point about the great work evangelist groups are doing around the world (I guess so long as their aid is not conditional on accepting their POV or religious beliefs). In some respects I think that it’s actually important for such groups to be kept away from the inequities and inefficiencies of government - they do a far better job than government ever could - although government could probably do more to support such groups.

Government as an edifice is almost always hopelessly inefficient at distribution of any good or service, and is best suited to dealing with situations where the profit motive would interfere with "fair and equitable" access of distribution of said good or service or when its fits the nebulous criteria of "in the national interest".

Posted by: Aran Brown at September 12, 2006 07:26 AM | Permalink to this comment

Pre- or post-Iraq, not sure it makes a difference. I don't doubt Mr. Jackson's sincerity (I think; I'll go ahead and give him a huge benefit of the doubt on that one), but I hate it when people imply that ignorance is more virtuous than knowledge (since when?), and that simpleminded religious observance is as good as actually knowing what the hell is going on.

I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran

Well, watching CNN won't help you much, but I can tell you the difference between Iraq and Iran: They are two completely different countries. Help me, Jebus, how hard is it, really, to discern the difference between countries? Saying you don't know the difference between Iraq and Iran is almost like saying you don't know the difference between Italy and Ireland because they both start with the same letter or that you didn't realize North and South Dakota were two different states because they both have "Dakota" in the name. Maybe (as The Daily Show has suggested), George Bush really did get confused and mistakenly invade Iraq when he meant to invade Iran. Hell, that explanation makes as much sense as anything the Republicans have come up with. I'd come closer to believing it, anyway.

Posted by: LL at September 12, 2006 07:47 AM | Permalink to this comment

In this weeks economist magazine on the prospects for the republican party stated that "9 out 10 white evangelicals still thought the Iraq war was worth it". Say white fundies make up 30% of the overall population and support for the war running in the 30s.....less that 10% of the non white fundie crowd thinks the war was worth it. The contrast in outlook on the war between the these 2 groups is stunning and speaks directly to Gregs point.

Even more disturbingly within the white born again crowd their is a sizable chunk who believe that jesus will return within their lifetime....and chaos in the middle east is interpreted as signaling that the "end times" are near, (which in their eyes is good) So for all our hangwringing about Bush in the middle east he may in fact be "motivating the base". This explain why no matter how bad things get he maintains a stubborn 30% approval rating.....THEY JUST BELIEVE!!!!

Religious fundementalism is scary here and in Iran.

Posted by: centrist at September 12, 2006 03:21 PM | Permalink to this comment

I could totally get with a vox pop that really internalized the "greatest of these is Love" thing.

Posted by: Jim Henley at September 12, 2006 03:36 PM | Permalink to this comment

The trouble with these people is that they think Virtue (defined as fuzzy good intentions) is an excuse for mental laziness. We are seeing that in no uncertain terms in the current president, and we've seen it in some of his predecessors (Carter and Reagan come to mind).

It's a very dangerous disorder. Jesus told us to be "as gentle as doves but as wise as serpents". The trouble with a very large number of Fundamentalists is that they get that commandment backwards. Quoting a more modern (and very morally shrewd) Chistian figure, C.S. Lewis: "The correct slogan is not 'Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.' It is 'Be good, sweet maid; and don't foget that this requires being as clever as you possibly can.' God is not any fonder of intellectual slackers than he is of other kinds."

But then, the American South -- the home of country music, and of this president -- is still suffering the hangover from the fact that, through most of its history, it has been one of the most furiously anti-intellectual societies in human history, for two combined reasons. First, during its slavery days, it was considered both Bad Manners and actively dangerous to social stability to ask too many awkward questions about the morality of forcing other people to do your work for you at gunpoint. Then the Civil War both put an end to that and wrecked the place economically -- and so, afterwards, the South suffered the additional resentment that poor people always suffer of people richer and therefore better-educated than they are.

Posted by: Bruce Moomaw at September 12, 2006 05:11 PM | Permalink to this comment

One has to not be American to be struck by how odd Americans are when it comes to religion. As a Canadian who travels to the states often it is the constant religious clamouring that strikes the senses with most offense. I had a entirely irreligious friend who moved to the states and within five years was a regular church goer. This could never have happened to him had he stayed in Canada. I think you have to not be american in order to be disturbed by this. Certainly my friend seems to think the only thing strange about the conversion is that I should find it so strange. It's hard to resist feeling that he has been absorbed by a cult.

Also hard to resist thinking that religion will be the undoing of the republic. Religious fervor is ultimately antithetical to the tenets that underpin democracy - but when you're the non plus ultra, king of the hill when it comes democratic liberty you do paradoxically become a slave to fear, fear of being knocked off the hill - and nothing rouses religious fevor more than fear. Hard to believe that this paradox will not eventually tear the country apart.

Europe had its wars of religion which spawned political tolerance which spawned America and so it is America inherited this tolerance without ever having to suffer the disruptions that brought it about - until possibly now. The sun also rises.

Posted by: saintsimon at September 12, 2006 06:06 PM | Permalink to this comment

Mr. Djerejian,

Thanks for mentioning this song. I've heard it many times on the radio. As someone who grew up in the foreign policy world (father in foreign service) it always depresses me.

But I think the key to it is really not any 'evangelical' or 'fundamentalist' overtones in it. To outsiders perhaps the references to Jesus make it seem like an especially religious song, but I'm quite Christian with many evangelical friends and I can tell you that I don't recognize its piety as at all familiar to evangelicalism. Rather, it's just standard, American, vaguely protestant religiosity. After all, another line in the song asks (about your reaction to 9-11), "Did you dust off that old bible at home?" Now, really religious evangelicals may need to dust off a lot of things, but bibles are not among them. Similarly, they don't need to think back to Sunday school classes 'when they were young' to remember the verse about 'faith, hope, and love' from 1st Corinthians (because they've probably heard a sermon or been to a bible study that dealt with it sometime in the past year or two).

This song is informed more by the popular American attitude (not especially Christian in its theology) that we're all pretty much good decent hard-working Americans with a God that we can turn to when disaster strikes, and ignore at all other times, a God who will never rebuke us for wrongs we may have done, but will help us to feel good and get rich and win wars if necessary, since he's always on our side.

So the song isn't really evidence of evangelical attitudes or influence. In a way, it would be better if it were, since then we could hope that the proud ignorance celebrated in the song was just confined to evangelical circles. But it's really a much wider phenomenon, as LL and Bruce Moomaw have both pointed out. It's an attitude that says that we Americans mean well, and lead our good, ordinary lives, and don't have time (or any obligation) to inform ourselves about the wider world. The attitude is basically that good intentions make up for a lack of information.

In one way, I can sympathize with part of the attitude of the song. It is, after all, a very complex world that we live in, and we all have our lives and our jobs and our responsibilities closer to home to deal with. Why should a farmer in northern Indiana have to learn about the history of Shia-Sunni relations, Putin's attempts at rolling back Russian democratic reforms, ongoing negotiations over EU expansion, Ethiopian incursions into Somalia, the rise of China, and so on? It would take a lot of time, and the dearth of real news on television means that it requires much more effort than it should.

But despite some sympathy that I can feel towards the attitude of the song I have to say that if you're a voting citizen of a democracy that might actually invade Iraq or Iran, then, yes, you do have to learn, not only where they are (and how to pronounce them - in the song they're pronounced 'I rock' and 'I ran'), but also something of their history, their make-up, their policies, and the current situation. You do have an obligation to ask whether what your politicians are about to do in your name is wise or not, and whether it is just, or not. The singer says he's 'not a real political man'. But when you're a citizen of country that can drop bombs anywhere in the world, you kind of have to be a 'political man' to some extent. That's part of the duty of a citizen. What's so depressing is that the song really celebrates an abdication of that responsibility, and in so doing, reflects a widespread popular attitude.

And this bodes poorly for American foreign policy. It is unlikely that a political leadership whose constituency is the US public is going to be compelled to make wise decisions about Iraq and Iran (or any other country), if the US public doesn't know much about them. Public ignorance will enable the administration to make a persuasive case for a bad policy and also, on the other hand, will make it harder for an administration to make a persuasive case for a complex, but well-thought strategy.

At any rate, thanks for drawing attention to the song. (I hope no one in Tehran has heard it!)

Posted by: Beren at September 12, 2006 07:14 PM | Permalink to this comment

Wow, call me insensitive, but I read your piece on Gerson's comments a couple of times and in no sense can I pick up on you disparaging his religion at all.

Taking offense at what you said seems like something out of a Monty Python skit at the School for the Professional Offense-Takers.

Posted by: Whammer at September 12, 2006 07:53 PM | Permalink to this comment

My good friend Bruce Moomaw,

First off, it's a song. Should we start taking all songs literally? They need words to rhyme. And the "difference between Iraq and Iran" doesn't mean they don't know they're two separate countries. It could just as easily mean they couldn't give you a detailed account of the social, economic and political history of the two countries. I bet most of you here couldn't do that either, despite your posturing and your desperation to actually pretend any of the comments here are thoughtful considerations of foreign policy, rather than a rehashing of what you read in the New York Times or The Economist. In which case, the songs talking about you just as much as it is some bumpkin in the mountains of TN.

Second, I got news for you - country music and NASCAR isn't just a "south" thing. I can find more country stations in Illinois than I can in NC. But perhaps the fact that you're associating religion with southerners should be taken as a compliment. For us, that is.

Come south anytime. We'll see who's more "educated" over a quiz bowl and a couple plates of bbq (just to show you our cooking is better, too). How often do you actually make it to any of the southern states? And please, spare me the self-righteousness, as if all of America's skeletons are hidden entirely in the south, while the northeast and the rest of the country come out smelling like roses. The US is, in my mind, the greatest country in the world. But there are a handful of things we've done as a country over the past 230 years that I'm not entirely proud of. That doesn't mean I'm going to engage in some act of self-flagellation, but I will get a little pissed off when the rest of the country fails to own up to its own complicity.

As for the south's lack of education, I'll just rattle off a few of the nation's top schools that happen to be in the south. Stop me if you've heard any of them. Duke, Wake Forest, UVA, Washington and Lee, Davidson, Vanderbilt, Rice, UT-Austin. Heard of any of them? Having gone to one of them, followed by grad school at one of the supposedly more "elite" colleges in the north, I can tell you that school in the south was harder than anything I had to deal with at that northern school. What's more, they don't use the terms "sunbelt" and "rustbelt" for no reason, y'know. Guess who's part of the sunbelt. And now guess who's part of the rustbelt. Exactly.

Posted by: Anon at September 13, 2006 12:06 AM | Permalink to this comment

Apologies to any Tar Heels. I did not mean to leave out UNC on the list of top schools in the south

Posted by: Anon at September 13, 2006 04:39 AM | Permalink to this comment

Well, as a neo-Agnostic-Expatriate-New-Yorker the reiterated references to Jesus in the song is offensive to me. A lot of my agnostic-atheist-skeptic friends who were in Manhattan on 9/11 aren’t too thrilled with it either– and I’m pretty certain a good percentage of the extensive Jewish population of NYC won’t be tapping their toes to a song about 9/11 embroidered with born again Christian vocabulary (he knows Jesus? Why, was he at his bar-mitzvah?).

When I hear someone say: “I know Jesus and I talk to God” my reaction is, really? And what is god telling you to do, and does it have anything to do with guns or knives or weapons designed on the theory of critical mass?

I feel the same shudder of annoyance when Islamic Imams regurgitate Koranic verses condemning ‘disbelievers’ (like me) to eternal fires and damnation, and exhort believers to lie in wait to waylay and kill me. Of course it worse when national leaders conflate religion and politics, like Bush: “I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did." – and Ahmadinejad: The God of all people in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the Pacific and the rest of the world is one. He is the Almighty Allah ..”

What about the Almighty Buddha? And the Almighty Aphrodite? Don’t they get a slice of the religious pie?

Well, that's just my Agnostic 2-cents... Jousting with windmills and other religious shibboleths... with the same expected results...

Posted by: Jay Jerome at September 13, 2006 06:58 AM | Permalink to this comment

Just to amplify Beren's comment above and respond to something you say in passing: Jackson's lyric nod in the direction of Paul's famous passage in I Corinthians 13 about faith, hope and love. Paul's specific love there is that love which is given with no expectation of anything in return from the beloved. That doesn't sound terribly "messianic" to me. Jackson's speaker's professed ignorance of regional difference doesn't lead in the direction of the Other's more-easily-demonized sameness.

One could indeed argue that THIS non-recognition of regional difference has its own dangers, but it's not an expression of the fundamentalism you imply it is.

Posted by: John B. at September 13, 2006 02:00 PM | Permalink to this comment

The mainline traditional Protestant religions have, primarily, have been dominated by a common sense/realistic view of the world.

However, the Born-Again/End-Timer Apocalyptic Protestantism of the “low churches” have come to dominate American Protestantism, and for the worse.

That today’s Protestants confuse the two as one, tells me the state of toady’s confused Protestants.

Posted by: NeoDude at September 13, 2006 02:38 PM | Permalink to this comment

The mainline traditional Protestant religions have, primarily, have been dominated by a common sense/realistic view of the world.

However, the Born-Again/End-Timer Apocalyptic Protestantism of the “low churches” have come to dominate American Protestantism, and for the worse.

That today’s Protestants confuse the two as one, tells me the state of today’s Protestants.

Posted by: NeoDude at September 13, 2006 02:46 PM | Permalink to this comment

Some of posts here are faith based posts...."the south is well educated" nevermind avg. sats, acts and high school graduation rates "the south has Davidson"!
"The confusion between Iraq and Iran is just a rhyme and people are really more savvy" ...well maybe, but any data I have seen show a real confusion on the part of the american public between Saddam and Bin Laden and Iraq and Afganistan. I dont know if those misbelief religeographic in nature but it is heavily corelated to people who get their new from FOX news.

Posted by: centrist at September 13, 2006 03:48 PM | Permalink to this comment

Centrist - here are SAT scores by state. I think you will find that the southern states are mixed in pretty well with the rest of the country, including 7 of the top 17 states being located in the south. So tell me again about these average SAT scores?

http://sde.state.ok.us/test/SAT/SATstateSCORES.pdf

I'm guessing you also have something against Davidson? I figure there's got to be a reason it's ranked in the top 10 liberal arts schools in the country, no? But I guess you can keep pretending you have any idea what you're talking about.

Posted by: Anon at September 13, 2006 06:54 PM | Permalink to this comment

anon,
I can see why you post anonymously...did you even bother to look at the information you linked to? ALL of the top ten states on the list you supplied were UNION states and ALL of the bottom 5 were former confederacy states and most of the other metrics I sited would show similar results. That is your definition of "pretty mixed"?

Since you have touted the quality of southern universties I bothered to look up Nobel prizes by institutions.

Union -783
Confed-41

1. u.ofc. 81
2. harvard74
30.uc irvine-4
31. DUKE-4...the top former confed intstitution behind 3 canadian universities... mcgill, u of toronto and u of british col.
ps. if you lump the entire UT system you could end up with high single digitshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_laureates_by_university_affiliation

Posted by: centrist at September 13, 2006 07:42 PM | Permalink to this comment

Oh yeah 1 of 41 is Jimmy Carters Peace prize...which I'm sure many posters of the neo-con ilk would be embarassed by.

Posted by: centrist at September 13, 2006 07:49 PM | Permalink to this comment

Centrist,

The fact that you're going by the number of nobel prizes a university has means you have no idea what you're talking about. Your first mistake is assuming the nobel prize winners at Chicago and Harvard aren't originally from the south. But let's say none of them are, because only people from trailer parks come from the south. Second, those guys who win the nobel prizes - very few of them are imparting their wisdom on anyone other than a select few they choose to work with all the time. Very few of them have to teach classes (other than MAYBE an occasional seminar), and even fewer of them WANT to teach classes. You don't learn much when your professor has no interest in teaching.

Therefore, even though these nobel prize winners are affiliated with these universities, that says nothing about the intelligence of people educated at these universities. The professors at the schools in the south teach - and they teach lots of kids. These kids then get smarter. The nobel prize winners at Harvard and Chicago research. At best, they are partially responsible for imparting their wisdom as their findings eventually trickle down to the classroom, but just because they are at these institutions says nothing about the institutions themselves other than the fact that they have lots of money that can attract these nobel prize winners to their institution.

Don't get me wrong - Chicago and Harvard are fantastic schools, but like I said before. I did undergraduate at one of those po' dumb southern white trash schools, and graduate work at one of those "union" schools you listed as supposedly superior because of their nobel prize winners. I did better than most of the people in my program b/c of that hick school in the south - that was, in my mind, the more intellectually rigorous program precisely because it didn't employ walking, talking, breathing egos who are certain they are right simply because of their name recognition.

As for the list of SAT scores by states, the first 5 schools may be "union" states, but you still have to find a way to explain why the next 7 "confederacy" states beat out the rest of the union. I'll be waiting.

Posted by: Anon at September 14, 2006 07:18 AM | Permalink to this comment

One more thing - how is posting under the name "Centrist" any less anonymous than posting as "anon?" I think, if you ever chose to blow your cover, "hypocrite" might be a more identifiable moniker.

Posted by: Anon at September 14, 2006 07:20 AM | Permalink to this comment

anon,
You can characterize the data about SATs however you like but the fact is most metrics(high school grad, literacy act, sat) will show simillar results...9 of 10 on top ten union and 8 of 10 on bottom from the former confederacy.
That does not mean every southerner is an idiot by any means. The southern states have more than likely climbed those lists in the last 40 years. My concerns about this subject is two fold that I'm sure you would share them. 1. As a global hegemon we need to be more sophisticated citizens about the rest of the world. 2. As a participants in the global economy education is critical to sustaining a great lifestyle.

As for the Nobel prize issue..obviously the winners don't teach intro to econ very often. I have been fortunate to interact with a couple of laureates both professionaly and academically Sure the south has very good schools but you started out by implying it was obvious the south had the best universities in the world.

This conversation has run its course and you will BELIEVE what you want to regardess of the facts, and that really was Gregs point.

PS. I agree strongly with your intial point about the positive role of cristian ngo in the third world but disagree strongly with your belief that southern born-agains don't enable ham handed foreign policy by their "revelations based faith" and naivity.

Posted by: centrist at September 14, 2006 03:47 PM | Permalink to this comment