Using “belief” as a weapon of torture a must read at ‘Commonweal’, December 5, 2008 edition
Written by John Borst on December 8, 2008 – 3:53 am
The following articles are available free At the Commonweal website:
Commonweal December 5 2008
EDITORIAL
Absolutism & democratic deliberation
The Editors
The gracious tone of Sen. John McCain’s election-night concession speech was both impressive and reassuring, especially his call for Americans to bridge abiding differences and forge the “necessary compromises” the nation requires. Unfortunately, that tone and sentiment were lacking in the response of many Catholic bishops to Barack Obama’s victory.
SHORT TAKE
CLEANING UP AFTER THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
Margaret O’Brien Steinfels
Has George W. Bush been the worst president ever? Or, as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has suggested (November 2), was that James Buchanan? Hint: Buchanan’s policies set the stage for the American Civil War. Whoever wins the race to the bottom, the Bush administration has almost certainly presided over the most egregious run of mis-governance since the British ruled North America. While the Bush administration certainly has perpetrated bad government, a major task facing the new Obama administration is to track down the legacy of this mis-governance, the secret paper trail and hidden deeds that must be rescinded so that we can once again be a nation of laws.
ARTICLE
Religious Abuse in the ‘War on Terror’
Michael Peppard
In Fünf Jahre meines Lebens (”Five Years of My Life”), the most powerful memoir yet published by a former Guantánamo detainee, the German Murat Kurnaz remembers an especially disturbing episode that took place while he was in a cage at Camp X-Ray: “One time there was a long, tortured cry. I turned around. There was a second and then a third cry, but they sounded different from the cries of people being beaten. It was the long and frightening wail of death. Through the chain-link fencing I could see a guard in the cage of one of the Arab prisoners. I immediately knew what had happened.”
SCREEN
MIKE LEIGH’S ‘HAPPY-GO-LUCKY’
Richard Alleva
“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” Prone to tantrums over the pettiest of setbacks, I’ve never been able to absorb this maxim of G. K. Chesterton, but I love it. And I love Pauline “Poppy” Cross, the heroine of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, because she is the embodiment of the maxim.
WEBSITE BONUS:
New Commonweal Podcast
Sr. Helen Prejean’s memo to President-elect Obama
Sunday Morning Quarterbacks
Christopher Ruddy
Can the bishops save Notre Dame football?
