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18 comments on Rough notes for a Monday morning

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TRE on May 8, 2006 - 4:08pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
I'm not sure I could call myself a fan of Roscoe Bartlett.  I don't have enough details to form an intelligent opinion, but I've read enough about him to raise the hair on the back of my neck.  He's apparently enthralled with the idea that the US is a christian nation and can legislate christian morality and law because of that.  He's against many forms of birth control.

Is this another case of consorting with those who hold your views in a narrow area irrespective of all other considerations?

I'm not condemning him nor questioning his good faith efforts on many issues.  But I would like to know:  is Mr Bartlett a strong representative of the cause, or just another quirky fellow who happens to embrace peak oil for sustainability reasons that grow out of his own nationalistic and religious beliefs?

He gives me the heebie jeebies as much as he stirs feelings of admiration.

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MicroHydro on May 8, 2006 - 5:27pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well, yes, single issue politics has its risks.  I am glad to have found refuge in a secular democracy where both the head of government and the head of the opposition are not religious people.  One of the reasons that the US will do particularly badly (compared to the developed economies of Europe and Asia) during the decline of the oil age is the extreme religiosity and hostility to science in the US.  Many people are looking forward to another medieval period, which was the high point of church power.  And the US now has 5 co-religionists on the Supreme Court to make it so.
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tom deplume on May 9, 2006 - 10:23am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The anti-science stance of the Republicans may have more to do with the short term profits of corporations than their narrow branch of christianity. There are many christians who are realizing that war and neglect of the poor are not pro-life values. I've noticed the change in my own pastor.
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davebygolly on May 8, 2006 - 9:41pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I know exactly how you feel. But it goes further. No-one seems to share my exact opinions. I am all alone. Worse still, my opinions are not what they were a few years ago, or even last week. So not only am I alone, I am confused. :)

A bit more seriously, it seems to be a characteristic of the times. Back in the 60s, we leftists would argue among ourselves, not nicely very often. But there was the presumption that we were somehow on the same side. Now I work on anti-war and 9-11 truth stuff. Left to right, veggie to Christian fundamentalist, peak oil to it's an oil company conspiracy. I think the same thing is true on TOD to some extent -- get away from peak oil and it's a thousand different opinions. Well, don't even leave out peak.

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Magnus Redin on May 9, 2006 - 1:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
My opinions and directions for what I regard as good politics, cultural development and infrastructure investment have hardly changed due to peak oil but I am unfocused. Too many new ideas at the same time and most of them relate to each other. I am trying to package a few subsets of them and post them in different directions where they might do some good to see if they have some effect and if some reaction comes back to me. I am 36 so I hope I will get a number of decades of these intresting times, provided I dont get unfocused enough to forget to live in the here and now.

I do not care if people share my exact opinions, it is enough if their actions are compatible with the actions my opinions should lead to and preferably those given by a very large set of other opinions. I do not have the perfect answer for everything and its most likely that nobody has it.

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railmatt on May 9, 2006 - 4:16am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That a peak oil leader is a christian is good news to me.  We aren't all secular, you know.  A healthy church community may be one of the forms of sustainability.  
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TRE on May 9, 2006 - 11:58am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I agree.  I'm certainly not selling myself as anti-Christian.  There are too many secular atheists such as myself who devote far too much energy to bashing religion.

I raised the point on Bartlett, not because he is a Christian, but for a different reason:  I am greatly concerned by anyone who tries to argue that the US was created as a Christian nation.  The founders were deists at best by and large.  The argument that this is a Christian nation can then become a slipper slope towards theocracy and demogoguery.

But as stated above, given that I've not done enough research no this, it's largely inappropriate to raise concerns that may be fictious and paranoia on my part.

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odograph on May 9, 2006 - 9:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I've seen Jon Meacham, author of "American Gospel," making the rounds promoting his book.  He makes the argument that the founders had an idea of a non-specific, non-denominational, public religion when they drafted the Constituion & etc.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights ..."

He contrasts that with more recent attempts to inject religiosity into government, along more specific, denominational, and doctrinal lines.

... as a result, I think people are sensitive to which God people are talking about - the old general public religion - or an effort to "move the ball futher down the field" as it were.

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18 comments on Rough notes for a Monday morning

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