Morality, Religion & Philosophy: May 2008 Archives
It's amazing that there are still uncontacted tribes anywhere in the world, and it's very sad to me that anyone hesitates to bring them into modernity.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — One of Brazil's last uncontacted Indian tribes has been spotted in the far western Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border, the National Indian Foundation said Thursday.The Indians were sighted in an Ethno-Environmental Protected Area along the Envira River in flights over remote Acre state, said the Brazilian government foundation, known as Funai. ...
"Four distinct isolated peoples exist in this region, whom we have accompanied for 20 years," Funai expert Jose Carlos Meirelles Junior said in a statement.
The tribe sighted recently is one of the last not to be contacted by officials. Funai does not make contact with such Indian tribes and prevents invasions of their land to ensure their autonomy, the foundation said.
I think it's morally perverse to leave these human beings living in absolute destitution -- doomed to disease, starvation, and misery -- simply because they're ignorant of modern civilization. Any one of us, in their place but knowing what we know, would instantly choose modernity over savagery; it's only due to the twisted logic of "multiculturalism" that we hesitate to rescue these people from their pointless suffering.
These Indians need to be given the same choices we have, the same respect for their human dignity, and they can't make informed decisions if we leave them in ignorance. They aren't "cute" or "quaint", they aren't pets or specimens to be studied. They're people. Just because they're ignorant doesn't mean we should abandon them to lives of barbarism.
From a Christian perspective, evangelism alone is sufficient reason to make contact. Ignorance of the Gospel is no excuse, and the eternal futures of these Indians are at risk. They need to hear about Jesus Christ, how their sins can be forgiven, and how much God loves them. Anything less is in direct violation of the Great Commission.
Matthew 28:18-20: Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
I wrote about David Mamet's break with "liberalism" a couple of months ago, and here's another great story about a Hollywood leftist's conversion to the right-wing.
In my former life I was Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s agent and manager. I co-owned a prosperous talent management firm, Relativity Management, lived in a four-story mansion, and somehow successfully stumbled (often drunk and stoned) through the whorehouse called Hollywood. I was an indoctrinated hardcore liberal. If you think I’m a spoiled dick and you hate me, then we’re on the right track. But having a child 10 years ago changed my thinking. It gave me a certain respect for capitalism and even corporate America.When I bought a new Hummer H2 back in 2002, I ordered a custom license plate that read U.S. WINS. I got it because I believed in the message. I wanted people to have a reaction to the plate, usually negative, and then examine their thinking. Would it be so bad to win this war? Plus, I knew it would fucking piss everyone in the city off because it was Los Angeles.
I could give two fucks about WMDs. There were much more important reasons to topple Saddam—terrorism being one of them. The root causes of terrorism are the lack of capitalism, the lack of democracy, and the lack of modern education. What has stood in the way of those things has primarily been the regimes of Iraq, Iran, and Syria. We just got one of them out of the way.
It looks like visiting Iraq and watching the War on Terror first-hand can really affect one's perspective.
(HT: My wife.)
Republicans should be concerned about demographic shifts in America, but writer Alan Abramowitz doesn't leave any room for the possibility that conservative positions could gain traction within the emerging majority of non-white, non-married, non-Christians.
Since the potential for additional Republican gains among married white Christians appears to be limited, Republican leaders will need to find ways to reduce the Democratic advantage among voters who are not married white Christians in order to maintain the party's competitive position. However, given the generally liberal views of this group, this will not be easy. In 2006, according to data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 57 percent of these voters supported a woman's right to choose an abortion under any circumstances, 66 percent opposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage, and 71 percent favored a single-payer health care system. Any attempt by Republican leaders to significantly increase their party's support among voters who are not married white Christians would therefore require changes in some of the party's longstanding policy commitments -- changes that would clearly upset a large segment of the current Republican base.
There are several problems I can see with Dr. Abramowitz' analysis.
1. The political preferences he attributes to skin color are more likely to be due to dynamic cultural factors, such as recency of immigration, urban living conditions, and so forth. It's unlikely that skin color alone causes a person to favor gay marriage or broadly legal abortion. Whatever cultural factors underlie the leftist dominance of non-whites could change or be changed as easily as white preferences have changed over the decades.
2. Even though people are getting married later than they have in the past, most people still do marry. As longevity increases, it's not clear that people will spend fewer voting years married than they have in the past. Additionally, there's no reason to believe that marriage is experiencing a permanent decline. Perhaps conservatives need to lead by teaching/convincing others about the merits and benefits of marriage. Strong leadership could, perhaps, work to rebuild the institution of marriage within our society and fight against the forces that are working hard to erode it. Instead of trailing these demographic shifts, political leaders should be working to shape the culture.
3. Christianity seems to be rather cyclical in its popularity. There's no doubt that the church needs to be more active in evangelism, not merely for political or demographic purposes, but because God commands it. The political consequences of this calling are secondary to the spiritual, but will follow nonetheless.
Rather than seeing these shifts as a reason to abandon conservatism as Dr. Abramowitz suggests, I see them as a challenge: if we conservatives really do have a better way of running the world than the leftists do, we need to make our case for it and convince the voters. Demographics are destiny, but they are not beyond our ability to influence.
