Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Easily done. Just return to the material conditions for which the wetware we have evolved. In the case of human behavior, that would be a foraging/hunting economy. Once 99% of the current population had perished of starvation, the remainder could operate once more in the natural way that our distant ancestors did. They could hunt, fish, and forage for food, make tools and clothing by hand, live in small extended family bands whose members all knew each other. They could operate just fine with informal group decision-making, no formal government, no organized religion, no banks, no money, none of the complicating artificial factors that make artificial regulatory mechanisms necessary for life in a modern civilization.

You are implying that civilization is not a natural outgrowth of who we are. There's not only a wealth of evidence countering that contention, but you are also left with the rather significant unanswered question: if civilization isn't an emergent property of personkind, then who or what imposed it on us from outside?

In fact, since civilization is an emergent property of personkind, there is no need to "go back" to anything. If we are people, we will have civilization. Everything else is just the details of the system, and we are best served by being willing to modify or discard any or all parts of any particular system which do not work -- in fact, the most optimal, since we are talking about emergence, is a meta-framework in which systems can be modified or discarded in the most efficient manner possible. The 'organic' argument is that such a meta-framework relies on constant responsiveness at the lowest possible level.

That's the way it works in every other biological, social, or physical emergent system -- there is no reason whatsoever to think this is any different.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

You are implying that civilization is not a natural outgrowth of who we are.

Nothing of the sort. I am simply implying that it requires behavior which is not instinctive for us. It is almost by definition a natural outgrowth of who we are, but it creates a material circumstance which is not the one for which we evolved.

These two statements are by no means mutually exclusive.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Nothing of the sort. I am simply implying that it requires behavior which is not instinctive for us.

I think the evidence tends to disagree with that. People are instinctively compelled to absorb the details of their social environments and adapt themselves to fit in with their norms. People are also instinctively aware of the concept of justice (in the sense of the same set of rules being applicable to everyone).

That is ultimately what civilization consists of, for the standpoint of its constituents. Any particular learned social behavior patterns are also effectively instinctual for the individuals, due to the first instinctual compulsion I listed.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I think the evidence tends to disagree with that. People are instinctively compelled to absorb the details of their social environments and adapt themselves to fit in with their norms. People are also instinctively aware of the concept of justice (in the sense of the same set of rules being applicable to everyone).

Those are very, very broad statements. Stated in that way, I would tend to agree with your second two sentences; however, I do not agree that they imply your first one. There are a number of other instincts which served us well in a precivilized setting but not so well in a civilized context. One of those is a tendency to form a group of family or friends, bond with those people, and regard them as "us," while the rest of the world becomes "them." "They" are not necessarily enemies, but they are people whose interests are not conjoined with ours. We may trade with them, coexist with them, or fight them, but in varying degrees we always regard them with suspicion and a measure of distrust. In a precivilized setting, that was fine, but in a civilized setting the majority of one's fellow-citizens are among "them." Hence the need for law.

That is ultimately what civilization consists of

I believe you are using the word "civilization" to be synonymous with "society," which is not correct. The vast majority of human societies in our species' past and present have not been civilizations. The word "civilization" comes from the Latin "civilis," meaning a citizen of a town or city. Civilization is the type of society characterized by life in cities. A prerequisite for civilized life is the practice of agriculture, which means that there were no civilizations until at earliest about 10,000 years ago. The earliest known civilizations are several thousand years younger than that.

Our species is something between 100,000 and 200,000 years old, which means that a minimum of 90,000 years -- a minimum of 90% of our time on this planet, probably more -- were lived in a precivilized context. Humans have always been a social species, and have always lived in societies, but not in civilizations. What's more, our precivilized societies were so similar to those lived in by other social primate species that the differences were trivial. (Ours used more advanced technology and more sophisticated language, otherwise they were the same.) So that kind of human society is millions of years old -- older than we are as a species.

In evolutionary terms, though, civilization was born yesterday, and we are not nearly so suited to it in terms of our instincts as we are to precivilized forms of society. And that is why we need artificial order-keeping mechanisms such as written law and formal government.

Sorry to butt in with non-sequitor, but the evidence now speaks for itself that America is in a Fourth Turning level crisis.

Things are so severely messed up that it will take an entire generation to restore some sense of growth and rebirth. In the meantime there could be tremendous suffering, the likes of which none of us has ever seen.

I suggest you all do what you can to secure connections and transactions with local farmers, grow your own food gardens, learn "new" 19th or early 20th century trade as a hobby, etc.

In fact, I saw an article (no link available), which suggested that before much longer, the current situation may in fact be worse than the "Great Depression", and that action taken before we can be sure we've hit rock bottom may in fact be counterproductive.

Originally Posted by Ricercar71

Sorry to butt in with non-sequitor, but the evidence now speaks for itself that America is in a Fourth Turning level crisis.

Things are so severely messed up that it will take an entire generation to restore some sense of growth and rebirth. In the meantime there could be tremendous suffering, the likes of which none of us has ever seen.

I suggest you all do what you can to secure connections and transactions with local farmers, grow your own food gardens, learn "new" 19th or early 20th century trade as a hobby, etc.

WORD! There's been some attention to this on various threads including "When will Gen-Xer's get serious" and "13er's what are you doing now" or something like that.

As a "local farmer" (sustainable and completely tractorless) I can tell you I've been getting a lot of new calls from folks hoping to get hooked up with cheap food. Really, at least until the two youngest children get out of diapers, we're focused on subsistence production: we grow enough to A) feed the family 365 days a year and, B) pay the feed costs so the food is "free" aside from the family's labor to produce it. When people tell me they want cheap food, I direct them to the supermarket. My food isn't cheap............yet. Really it's priced no different than the organic specialty stuff you'd get a the supermarket but some people want rock bottom prices. It will seem cheap should prices go up, but I dont see that happening in the near future due to the low cost of oil. It may go up, and if it does, then my food will seem cheap.

I'd say you're right about making local connections and strengthening relationships in the community, but I'd extend that far beyond a local farmer. I'd say hook up with any organization (or create your own) that seeks to be the "glue" in the community. Community-based currency projects, barter systems, block watch, cooperative day care, eldercare, gardening clubs, etc. People need help, and give help, in all different ways. Be a part of it even if it make your Xer skin crawl to do it.

Originally Posted by Ricercar71

Sorry to butt in with non-sequitor, but the evidence now speaks for itself that America is in a Fourth Turning level crisis.

Things are so severely messed up that it will take an entire generation to restore some sense of growth and rebirth. In the meantime there could be tremendous suffering, the likes of which none of us has ever seen.

I suggest you all do what you can to secure connections and transactions with local farmers, grow your own food gardens, learn "new" 19th or early 20th century trade as a hobby, etc.

I purchased a book the other day on building your own Arts & Crafts-style solid oak furniture, of the sort they used to build back around the turn of the last century. There's a way-cool bookcase with glass-inlayed doors that I really want... to buy one in the store would cost like $2000 and be "Made In China" to boot. I could build it myself for something like $200-300 in materials.

Originally Posted by SVE-KRD

In fact, I saw an article (no link available), which suggested that before much longer, the current situation may in fact be worse than the "Great Depression", and that action taken before we can be sure we've hit rock bottom may in fact be counterproductive.

The moral depravities of the Rove-Bush-Cheney-DeLay era created much of the mess, and they must be reversed. At the least Herbert Hoover ran a squeaky-clean administrat6ion with no obvious corruption.

We don't know how much economic crime has been done and how much damage it has wrought. Should fraudulent operators still be operating big scams, one can expect that they will try to draw the effects of any bailout or stimulus to themselves. The bank bailout may have been premature; we might be better off by letting the giant banks fail and letting smaller ones take up the slack -- a classic free-enterprise solution.

I can't imagine conditions becoming as bad as those of the Great Depression except in the aftermath of a catastrophic war that ravages everything. We have institutions in place, at least three of them from the Great Depression (bank deposit insurance that prevents bank runs, Social Security that ensures that retirees can survive reasonably well in any times, and SEC regulation of financial statements to protect the integrity of financial reporting) and three from the Great Society (Medicare that stimulates the medical economy and descendants of Food Stamps and AFDC)...

The era of non-reform that was the last 3T is over. Neglect of needs deferred ends -- or else.

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

I purchased a book the other day on building your own Arts & Crafts-style solid oak furniture, of the sort they used to build back around the turn of the last century. There's a way-cool bookcase with glass-inlayed doors that I really want... to buy one in the store would cost like $2000 and be "Made In China" to boot. I could build it myself for something like $200-300 in materials.

DUDE!!!! What is the name of the book!!!

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

I purchased a book the other day on building your own Arts & Crafts-style solid oak furniture, of the sort they used to build back around the turn of the last century. There's a way-cool bookcase with glass-inlayed doors that I really want... to buy one in the store would cost like $2000 and be "Made In China" to boot. I could build it myself for something like $200-300 in materials.

Skills as a carpenter will put you in good stead should the oil doomers' prophecies come true and we find ourselves in a post-modern world.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

I purchased a book the other day on building your own Arts & Crafts-style solid oak furniture, of the sort they used to build back around the turn of the last century. There's a way-cool bookcase with glass-inlayed doors that I really want... to buy one in the store would cost like $2000 and be "Made In China" to boot. I could build it myself for something like $200-300 in materials.

Skills as a carpenter will put you in good stead should the oil doomers' prophecies come true and we find ourselves in a post-modern world.

H-m-m-m. Making furniture isn't trivial. I assume that the $200-300 in materials also requires $4,000-5,000 in tools and jigs to get the desired results. I'd suggest making several to many, selling all but the one(s) you want, and hopefully making a little in the process.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

H-m-m-m. Making furniture isn't trivial. I assume that the $200-300 in materials also requires $4,000-5,000 in tools and jigs to get the desired results. I'd suggest making several to many, selling all but the one(s) you want, and hopefully making a little in the process.

I think Mr. Handyman has a fair amount of tools already. He's done a lot of renovations on his home -- he put up shingles in place of old aluminum siding, and retiled his bathroom.

I could probably do a simple end table using hand tools, though it would take quite a while longer than with power tools.

The 1904 Limbert glass-doored bookcase I really want to make would probably require power tools to get it done in a time frame that wouldn't tax my patience. I'd need a router and table, a power jig saw and various accessories... basic/starter models might run me $5-600 or so. I can always upgrade if I find myself making more complex furniture, or offering it for sale. I found this website where I should be able to buy everything I need: http://www.rockler.com

At any rate, I've got fifteen to twenty years before I'll need enough stuff to furnish my little saltbox on the Cape.

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

I could probably do a simple end table using hand tools, though it would take quite a while longer than with power tools.

The 1904 Limbert glass-doored bookcase I really want to make would probably require power tools to get it done in a time frame that wouldn't tax my patience. I'd need a router and table, a power jig saw and various accessories... basic/starter models might run me $5-600 or so. I can always upgrade if I find myself making more complex furniture, or offering it for sale. I found this website where I should be able to buy everything I need: http://www.rockler.com

At any rate, I've got fifteen to twenty years before I'll need enough stuff to furnish my little saltbox on the Cape.

How familiar are you with the Shopsmith? For some reason, these are sold in much larger numbers than they are used. Many would-be furniture makers have them on sale for a 1/3 of their original price or less. Find some guy that really went overboard and bought all the whistles and bells, and viola ... instant woodworking shop.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

How familiar are you with the Shopsmith? For some reason, these are sold in much larger numbers than they are used. Many would-be furniture makers have them on sale for a 1/3 of their original price or less. Find some guy that really went overboard and bought all the whistles and bells, and viola ... instant woodworking shop.

...find a carpenter. I had access to power tools as my uncle was a cabinet maker and was down what is now West Saari Road a mere mile distant.

As the Crisis is soon upon us, might I suggest that you find a woodworker or several (in a "trade school", a guild, a co-op, an amateur association) who have the the tools. The relationships you can carpent will be more valuable than the Mission tables and shelves you build.

I take instruction from books and purchase the tools as they become needful in the past Awakening and the present Unravelling; but as an INTP this may not be the normal way forward.

There are now compact tablesaws, jointers, planers, and press drills that can be easily moved about by one person. More exotic machinery could be found at someone else's shop and bartering a soporific or some civil engineering for time at the lathe or mortise machine may be a way forward.

Well this has become quite an interesting line of discussion. I find myself even more enthused about building my own heirloom-quality furniture than before. Which is just as well. I'll finish the re-siding/painting project on my house by mid-summer if all goes well, and I'll need something constructive to do.

I think Peggy Noonan has identified much of the uneasiness which I and others I know have been discussing amongst ourselves...

There's No Pill for This Kind of Depression
Six months after the collapse, a "pandemic of fear."
By PEGGY NOONAN

It is six months since Lehman fell and the crash (or the great recession, or the collapse—it's time it got its name) began. An aspect of the story given less attention than it is due, perhaps because it doesn't lend itself to statistics, is the psychic woe beneath the economic blow. There are two parts to this. One is that we have arrived at the first fatigue. The heart-pumping drama of last September is gone, replaced by the drip-drip-drip of pink slips, foreclosures and closed stores. We are tired. It doesn't feel like 1929, but 1930. People are in a kind of suspended alarm, waiting for the future to unspool and not expecting it to unspool happily.

Two, the economy isn't the only reason for our unease. There's more to it. People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures, old ways and assumptions. People don't talk about this much because it's too big, but I suspect more than a few see themselves, deep down, as "the designated mourner," from the title of the Wallace Shawn play.

I asked a friend, a perceptive writer, if he is seeing what I'm seeing. Yes, he said, there is "a pervasive sense of anxiety, as though everyone feels they're on thin ice." He wonders if it's "maybe a sense that we've had it too easy in the years since 9/11 and that the bad guys are about to appear on the horizon." An attorney in a Park Avenue firm said, "Things look like they have changed and may not come back." He contrasted the feeling now on the streets with 2001. "Things are subdued. . . . Nine-eleven was brutal and graphic. Yet because there was real death and loss of life folks could grieve and then move on." But today, "the dread is chronic. . . . Tom Wolfe's Masters of the Universe were supposed to be invincible. The pillars of media were supposed to be there forever. The lawyers were supposed to feed through thick and thin. Not anymore." He quoted Ecclesiastes: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." We are worried, he said, "about a way of life, about the loss of upward trajectory."

The sale of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs is widespread. In New York their use became common after 9/11. It continued through and, I hypothesize, may have contributed to, the high-flying, wildly imprudent Wall Street of the '00s. We look for reasons for the crash and there are many, but I wonder if Xanax, Zoloft and Klonopin, when taken by investment bankers, lessened what might have been normal, prudent anxiety, or helped confuse prudent anxiety with baseless, free-floating fear. Maybe Wall Street was high as a kite and didn't notice. Maybe that would explain Bear Sterns, and Merrill, and Citi.


Gun sales continue up. The FBI's criminal background check system showed a 23% increase in February over the previous year, a 29% increase in January, a 24% increase in December and a 42% increase in November, when a record 1.5 million background checks were performed. Yes, people fear Obama will take away the guns he thinks they cling to, but a likely equal contributor to what The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch called a "gun-buying binge" is captured in the slogan on one firearms maker's Web site: "Smith & Wesson stands for protection." People are scared.

They are taking cash out of the bank in preparation for a long-haul bad time. A friend in Florida told me the local bank was out of hundred-dollar bills on Wednesday because a man had come in the day before and withdrawn $90,000. Five weeks ago, when I asked a Wall Street titan what one should do to be safe in the future, he took me aback with the concreteness of his advice, and its bottom-line nature. Everyone should try to own a house, he said, no matter how big or small, but it has to have some land, on which you should learn how to grow things. He also recommended gold coins, such as American Eagles. I went to the U.S. Mint website the next day, but there was a six-week wait due to high demand. (I just went on the Web site again: Production of gold Eagle coins "has been temporarily suspended because of unprecedented demand" for bullion.)

In Manhattan, Catholic church attendance appears to be up. Everyone seems to agree that this is so, though the archdiocese says it won't have numbers until next fall. But yes, said Joseph Zwilling, the director of communications, "from what I've heard anecdotally from various priests," the pews have been fuller. The rector at St Patrick's told him Ash Wednesday was "the busiest yet," with 60,000 people coming for ashes. At my local church at noon mass one day this week, there were 40 people when normally there are roughly a dozen, and the communion line stretched to the back of the church. Something is happening. Yesterday a friend sent the warning of the Evangelical pastor David Wilkerson, of Times Square Church, that a new catastrophe is imminent. This is causing a small sensation in evangelical circles.

To me, one of the signal signs of the times is the number of people surfing the Internet looking for . . . something. One friend looks for small farms in distressed rural areas. Another logs on late at night looking for a house to buy in a small town out West, or down South, or in the Deep South. She is moving all around America in her imagination. I asked if she had a picture in her head of what she was looking for, and she joked that she wanted to go where Atticus Finch made his summation to the jury. I don't think it was really a joke. She's not looking for a new place, she's looking for the old days.

I spoke to a Manhattan-based psychiatrist who said there is an uptick in the number of his patients reporting depression and anxiety. He believes part of the reason is that we're in a new place, that "When people move into a new home they increasingly recognize the importance of their previous environment." Our new home is postprosperity America; the old one was the abundance; we miss it. But he also detected a political dimension to his patients' anguish. He felt that many see our leaders as "selfish and dishonest," that "our institutions have been revealed as incompetent and undependable." People feel "unled, overwhelmed," the situation "seemingly unsalvageable." The net result? He thinks what he is seeing, within and without his practice, is a "psychological pandemic of fear" as to the future of things—of our country, and even of mankind.

So where does that leave us? The writer and philosopher Laurens van der Post, in his memoir of his friendship with Carl Jung, said, "We live not only our own lives but, whether we know it or not, also the life of our time." We are actors in a moment of history, taking part in it, moving it this way or that as we move forward or back. The moment we are living now is a strange one, a disquieting one, a time that seems full of endings.

Too bad there's no pill for that.

It may seem like I'm beating a dead horse (yes, pun intended), but the culture wars are dead. Moreover, public opinion of religion is dropping, while public opinion of science is rising.

March 15, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist

The Culture Warriors Get Laid Off

By FRANK RICH

SOMEDAY we’ll learn the whole story of why George W. Bush brushed off that intelligence briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” But surely a big distraction was the major speech he was readying for delivery on Aug. 9, his first prime-time address to the nation. The subject — which Bush hyped as “one of the most profound of our time” — was stem cells. For a presidency in thrall to a thriving religious right (and a presidency incapable of multi-tasking), nothing, not even terrorism, could be more urgent.

When Barack Obama ended the Bush stem-cell policy last week, there were no such overheated theatrics. No oversold prime-time address. No hysteria from politicians, the news media or the public. The family-values dinosaurs that once stalked the earth — Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and Reed — are now either dead, retired or disgraced. Their less-famous successors pumped out their pro forma e-mail blasts, but to little avail. The Republican National Committee said nothing whatsoever about Obama’s reversal of Bush stem-cell policy. That’s quite a contrast to 2006, when the party’s wild and crazy (and perhaps transitory) new chairman, Michael Steele, likened embryonic stem-cell research to Nazi medical experiments during his failed Senate campaign.

What has happened between 2001 and 2009 to so radically change the cultural climate? Here, at last, is one piece of good news in our global economic meltdown: Americans have less and less patience for the intrusive and divisive moral scolds who thrived in the bubbles of the Clinton and Bush years. Culture wars are a luxury the country — the G.O.P. included — can no longer afford.

Not only was Obama’s stem-cell decree an anticlimactic blip in the news, but so was his earlier reversal of Bush restrictions on the use of federal money by organizations offering abortions overseas. When the administration tardily ends “don’t ask, don’t tell,” you can bet that this action, too, will be greeted by more yawns than howls.

Once again, both the president and the country are following New Deal-era precedent. In the 1920s boom, the reigning moral crusade was Prohibition, and it packed so much political muscle that F.D.R. didn’t oppose it. The Anti-Saloon League was the Moral Majority of its day, the vanguard of a powerful fundamentalist movement that pushed anti-evolution legislation as vehemently as it did its war on booze. (The Scopes “monkey trial” was in 1925.) But the political standing of this crowd crashed along with the stock market. Roosevelt shrewdly came down on the side of “the wets” in his presidential campaign, leaving Hoover to drown with “the dries.”

Much as Obama repealed the Bush restrictions on abortion and stem-cell research shortly after pushing through his stimulus package, so F.D.R. jump-started the repeal of Prohibition by asking Congress to legalize beer and wine just days after his March 1933 inauguration and declaration of a bank holiday. As Michael A. Lerner writes in his fascinating 2007 book “Dry Manhattan,” Roosevelt’s stance reassured many Americans that they would have a president “who not only cared about their economic well-being” but who also understood their desire to be liberated from “the intrusion of the state into their private lives.” Having lost plenty in the Depression, the public did not want to surrender any more freedoms to the noisy minority that had shut down the nation’s saloons.

In our own hard times, the former moral “majority” has been downsized to more of a minority than ever. Polling shows that nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with ending Bush restrictions on stem-cell research (a Washington Post/ABC News survey in January); that 55 percent endorse either gay civil unions or same-sex marriage (Newsweek, December 2008); and that 75 percent believe openly gay Americans should serve in the military (Post/ABC, July 2008). Even the old indecency wars have subsided. When a federal court last year struck down the F.C.C. fine against CBS for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl, few Americans either noticed or cared about the latest twist in what had once been a national cause célèbre.

It’s not hard to see why Eric Cantor, the conservative House firebrand who is vehemently opposed to stem-cell research, was disinclined to linger on the subject when asked about it on CNN last Sunday. He instead accused the White House of acting on stem cells as a ploy to distract from the economy. “Let’s take care of business first,” he said. “People are out of jobs.” (On this, he’s joining us late, but better late than never.)

Even were the public still in the mood for fiery invective about family values, the G.O.P. has long since lost any authority to lead the charge. The current Democratic president and his family are exemplars of precisely the Eisenhower-era squareness — albeit refurbished by feminism — that the Republicans often preached but rarely practiced. Obama actually walks the walk. As the former Bush speechwriter David Frum recently wrote, the new president is an “apparently devoted husband and father” whose worst vice is “an occasional cigarette.”

Frum was contrasting Obama to his own party’s star attraction, Rush Limbaugh, whose “history of drug dependency” and “tangled marital history” make him “a walking stereotype of self-indulgence.” Indeed, the two top candidates for leader of the post-Bush G.O.P, Rush and Newt, have six marriages between them. The party that once declared war on unmarried welfare moms, homosexual “recruiters” and Bill Clinton’s private life has been rebranded by Mark Foley, Larry Craig, David Vitter and the irrepressible Palins. Even before the economy tanked, Americans had more faith in medical researchers using discarded embryos to battle Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s than in Washington politicians making ad hoc medical decisions for Terri Schiavo.

What’s been revealing about watching conservatives debate their fate since their Election Day Waterloo is how, the occasional Frum excepted, so many of them don’t want to confront the obsolescence of culture wars as a political crutch. They’d rather, like Cantor, just change the subject — much as they avoid talking about Bush and avoid reckoning with the doomed demographics of the G.O.P.’s old white male base. To recognize all these failings would be to confront why a once-national party can now be tucked into the Bible Belt.

The religious right is even more in denial than the Republicans. When Obama nominated Kathleen Sebelius, the Roman Catholic Kansas governor who supports abortion rights, as his secretary of health and human services, Tony Perkins, the leader of the Family Research Council, became nearly as apoplectic as the other Tony Perkins playing Norman Bates. “If Republicans won’t take a stand now, when will they?” the godly Perkins thundered online. But Congressional Republicans ignored him, sending out (at most) tepid press releases of complaint, much as they did in response to Obama’s stem-cell order. The two antiabortion Kansas Republicans in the Senate, Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, both endorsed Sebelius.

Perkins is now praying that economic failure will be a stimulus for his family-values business. “As the economy goes downward,” he has theorized, “I think people are going to be driven to religion.” Wrong again. The latest American Religious Identification Survey, published last week, found that most faiths have lost ground since 1990 and that the fastest-growing religious choice is “None,” up from 8 percent to 15 percent (which makes it larger than all denominations except Roman Catholics and Baptists). Another highly regarded poll, the General Social Survey, had an even more startling finding in its preliminary 2008 data released this month: Twice as many Americans have a “great deal” of confidence in the scientific community as do in organized religion. How the almighty has fallen: organized religion is in a dead heat with banks and financial institutions on the confidence scale.

This, too, is a replay of the Great Depression. “One might have expected that in such a crisis great numbers of these people would have turned to the consolations of and inspirations of religion,” wrote Frederick Lewis Allen in “Since Yesterday,” his history of the 1930s published in 1940. But that did not happen: “The long slow retreat of the churches into less and less significance in the life of the country, and even in the lives of the majority of their members, continued almost unabated.”

The new American faith, Allen wrote, was the “secular religion of social consciousness.” It took the form of campaigns for economic and social justice — as exemplified by the New Deal and those movements that challenged it from both the left and the right. It’s too early in our crisis and too early in the new administration to know whether this decade will so closely replicate the 1930s, but so far Obama has far more moral authority than any religious leader in America with the possible exception of his sometime ally, the Rev. Rick Warren.

History is cyclical, and it would be foolhardy to assume that the culture wars will never return. But after the humiliations of the Scopes trial and the repeal of Prohibition, it did take a good four decades for the religious right to begin its comeback in the 1970s. In our tough times, when any happy news can be counted as a miracle, a 40-year exodus for these ayatollahs can pass for an answer to America’s prayers.

Originally Posted by Mr. Reed

It may seem like I'm beating a dead horse (yes, pun intended), but the culture wars are dead. Moreover, public opinion of religion is dropping, while public opinion of science is rising.

March 15, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist

The Culture Warriors Get Laid Off

Somebody tell this to the ones on the left. There are plenty still concerned with "keeping guns away from evil redneck hicks" and whatever

Originally Posted by Odin

Somebody tell this to the ones on the left. There are plenty still concerned with "keeping guns away from evil redneck hicks" and whatever

I'd agree. I think it may be done for millies and maybe even for some Xers, but it isn't over for boomers. Yea, I'm over generalizing & it doesn't hold true for everyone in the generations. But the boomers aren't declaring the issues anymore, the Xers are taking over that role & the issues are moving towards civics.

Originally Posted by Odin

Somebody tell this to the ones on the left. There are plenty still concerned with "keeping guns away from evil redneck hicks" and whatever

Could you give me a source on that quote? I haven't been following the gun control battles as well as I once did, but last I knew the problem from the left's perspective was that urban drug gangs found it too easy to go to red states to buy guns. At the moment, though, the hot issue ought to be the recent Supreme Court case establishing an individual right. The extreme gun control of a few cities like Washington DC and Chicago is going to be threatened.

Some analysts claim that gun control gave Bush enough electoral votes in 2000 and 2004 to have decided the election. Thus, the Democrats retreated, dropped much of their national effort towards gun control, shifting the battle to the states. I'd be surprised if they moved off that stance at this point.

I recently saw an article where the democratic pro gun control city government of Washington DC was upset with the democratic congress as congress is trying to eliminate DC gun control much faster than the courts will move. Thus, while I anticipate the Republicans will continue to paint the Democrats as trying to pry guns out of cold dead fingers, the Democrats aren't really looking to do that anymore at a federal level.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Could you give me a source on that quote? I haven't been following the gun control battles as well as I once did, but last I knew the problem from the left's perspective was that urban drug gangs found it too easy to go to red states to buy guns. At the moment, though, the hot issue ought to be the recent Supreme Court case establishing an individual right. The extreme gun control of a few cities like Washington DC and Chicago is going to be threatened.

Some analysts claim that gun control gave Bush enough electoral votes in 2000 and 2004 to have decided the election. Thus, the Democrats retreated, dropped much of their national effort towards gun control, shifting the battle to the states. I'd be surprised if they moved off that stance at this point.

I recently saw an article where the democratic pro gun control city government of Washington DC was upset with the democratic congress as congress is trying to eliminate DC gun control much faster than the courts will move. Thus, while I anticipate the Republicans will continue to paint the Democrats as trying to pry guns out of cold dead fingers, the Democrats aren't really looking to do that anymore at a federal level.

Several threads on Democratic Underground were going on about gun control following that tragic shooting down south a few days ago.

Originally Posted by Odin

Several threads on Democratic Underground were going on about gun control following that tragic shooting down south a few days ago.

Not surprised. How much did you see it in the major media? Bet you saw a lot more economic coverage.

The New York Times says So Far, Few Ripples From Landmark Ruling on Guns

Thus far, not a lot of gun laws have been overturned since the 2nd was declared to create an individual right. Some big issues haven't been covered yet, though. Does the 2nd Amendment apply to state laws would be the big one. The Times briefly discusses a handful of cases where the new ruling was applied. It seems that machine guns and sawed off shotguns are still out. One also can ban guns around schools and post offices. Drug pushers also don't have a right to go armed, nor felons.

However, a law banning the right to bear arms upon arrest was overturned. A fundamental right can only be revoked on conviction, not on arrest.

I'm not surprised by how things rulings are going so far, though I am surprised that more of the big city strict gun laws haven't been taken to court.