Though I haven’t been following everything that the chattering masses have been saying about NARAL Pro-Choice America’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president, I wanted to toss out my support for their decision. Not because they endorsed Obama per se, but because they were willing to actually endorse a man, in an election cycle that included a woman.

I don’t know about the specific voting records of Obama or Hillary Clinton when it comes to choice issues, and I don’t pretend to know about the internal deliberations that must have gone on inside NARAL Pro-Choice America when coming to this decision (at a party over the weekend, a NARAL staffer summed it up as “blowback” when talking about the endorsement). However, NARAL for whatever reason, looked beyond just endorsing a woman because she’s a woman, and made an endorsement on who they honestly thought was the best choice.

As a guy who is pro-choice, I’ve always felt slightly unwelcome in the pro-choice/feminist movements. I’m not sure if it’s me projecting, or if there is a disconnect, ever so slight. Where does a man fit in, in the framework of women’s empowerment? Is my support appreciated, or seen as condescending? If it is allowable for my voice to stand out in support of choice issues, what about the man who stands against a woman’s right to choose? If his voice negated because he’s a man and against choice, why should mine be allowed simply because I’m saying the right things?

For NARAL Pro-Choice America to take this step, shows, ever so slightly, the direction they’re leaning in the debate about a man’s place in the women’s movement.

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister and founder of Médecins Sans Frontières has brought up the radical (to some) idea, of having the United Nations bring in food and other relief aid, to the Burmese people, even if the generals in the military junta object. Of course, as Nick Cohen points out in the Guardian:

He (Kouchner) was opposed by authoritarian regimes the world over. A Western diplomat at the UN Security Council meeting said objections came from China, Kouchner’s old enemies in Vietnam, Russia and South Africa… All knew without needing to be told that if the Burmese military were held to be illegitimate rulers whose wishes could be overruled because they lacked a democratic mandate, the same criteria could be used against them or their allies, too, and their desperate arguments reflected their fears.

To say that the American Left has become sadly predictable in its foreign policy would be an understatement. It should be no surprise after some hemming-and-hawing, to see the Left end up as uneasy bedfellows with dictatorial governments such as the People Republic of China in this matter. After all, the people of Burma cannot compete the ugly strain of isolationism that is creeping into America’s body politic. Nor can the Burmese suffering ease the trauma that the Left would surly face by being called Western imperialists from various quarters.

Though pocketbooks have opened up around the world to help the Burmese, the next few days will require tough decisions in order to prevent an already tragic event turn into a mind-blowing catastrophe. The people of Burma need our help. So what are we going to do about it?

In Sunday’s New York Times, Paul Berman writes about “Why Radical Islam Just Won’t Die” and offers up his theories as to why it is that extremism survives in Iraq, as well as why it flourishes in the West, too. Berman states that,

Even in the Western countries, quite a few Muslim liberals, the outspoken ones, live today under a threat of assassination, not to mention a reality of character assassination. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch legislator and writer, is merely an exceptionally valiant example. But instead of enjoying the unstinting support of their non-Muslim colleagues, the Muslim liberals find themselves routinely berated in the highbrow magazines and the universities as deracinated nonentities, alienated from the Muslim world. Or they find themselves pilloried as stooges of the neoconservative conspiracy — quite as if any writer from a Muslim background who fails to adhere to at least a few anti-imperialist or anti-Zionist tenets of the Islamist doctrine must be incapable of thinking his or her own thoughts.

A dismaying development. One more sign of the power of the extremist ideologies — one more surprising turn of events, on top of all the other dreadful and gut-wrenching surprises.

This critique by Berman can also be extended, to some degree, to the humanist movement. For example, in the January/February 2008 issue of the Humanist, in a piece about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, authors David Schafer and Michelle Koth conclude, in part, by saying,

Her approach is poorly informed about the past and present of Islam, ineffectual at best, mainly counter-productive, and at worst potentially catastrophic in its consequences. It is here, too, that the influences of her principal intellectual environments since 2003—the VVD Party in the Netherlands and the American Enterprise Institute in the United States—taken as a whole, have clearly discouraged her development as a well-balanced defender of human rights and security.

Schafer and Koth are perhaps correct in stating that,

Hirsi Ali’s prior experience of Islam was confined to her youthful and often painful life in Africa: the tribal variety in Somalia, the strict Wahhabi version in Saudi Arabia, and in Kenya the Islamist political formulations of the Muslim Brothers and even more radical Sayyid Qutb—all followed by her intense contact with mainly African (e.g., Somali and Moroccan) immigrant women who had suffered abuse in the Netherlands. She knew little about the complex history of Islam in other times and other places.

While her views on Islam aren’t based on years of study, her intense, personal understanding of the religion also cannot be dismissed. Though what she dealt with is not the form of Islam practiced by every Muslim, it is also difficult to argue that she is taking her stand purely because of the ideology of the VVD Party, and the American Enterprise Institute.

Indeed, as the West continues to encounter Islam, not only on grand geopolitical scales, but everyday at the corner store or in a school hallway, it is imperative to recognize the vast and heterogeneous nature of Islam. What is perhaps forgotten, then, is that this also extends to the varying types of critiques of Islam. For Schafer and Koth to deride Hirsi Ali’s analysis of Islam simply because her view doesn’t conform to their understanding of the religion leads them down the same narrow path that they’re alleging Hirsi Ali has taken. It’s unfortunate that Schafer and Koth have fallen into the trap that so many others on the Left have fallen into.

It’s always troubling for me to see the emptiness of the rhetoric and the lack of coherent arguments that has emerged from our movement regarding the liberation of Iraq. T.F. Kelley’s recent online column for the Humanist is unfortunately no different in this regard (for a more nuanced view of Iraq at this five-year anniversary, check out a Week in Review article from the New York Times). I am continually astounded that when the topic of conversation turns to Iraq, we, who claim the mantle of critical thinking and humane values, suddenly cannot help but point out the conspiratorial hand of Big Oil, and the supposedly secular utopia that was built by Saddam. Only two of Kelley’s points appear to require any serious rebuttal.

Kelley writes, “I don’t believe it’s a ‘tragedy of the Left’ to be unwilling to apply the idea of justice for all by supporting an illegal war, not one declared by Congress and in contradiction to [the] will of the United Nations.” If Kelley wishes to be told by politicians and bureaucrats what is ethical and what is not, he is free to do so. However, considering the social and legal struggles humanists, atheists and all freethinkers have fought for, we know that the institutions that we as a society have created are not always fully just, and that what is right and wrong is not always the same as what is legal and illegal.

The implied claim by Kelley that liberal hawks did not apply any rigorous or critical thought to the question of Iraq in the lead up to March of 2003 is laughably ridiculous, at best. By simply typing “liberal hawks” into Google, readers will find a plethora of articles by liberal hawks discussing amongst themselves the difficulties in rendering a decision on this matter, as well as articles about the choices – and reasoning behind those choices – that were made. Liberal hawks were not drawn into the right-wing culture of fear created by the White House, but they also refused to stand alongside a Left which is becoming increasingly isolationist in it’s outlook. Our first and foremost concern was, and continues to be, the people of Iraq. Kelley may not wish to acknowledge that, but the weight of evidence easily available on the Internet belies his claims.

At the end of his essay, Kelley speaks of the Iraqi boys in the photo that accompanied the print version of my article. It’s encouraging to see him show some concern for their wellbeing. I wonder, though, if Saddam were still in power, would Kelley still have been concerned about their fate? Or would they simply have been someone else’s problem?

In the March issue of the Atlantic, Walter Russell Mead suggests that evangelicals in the U.S. are becoming more moderate as they mature into the mainstream, shedding their more strident tone as their influence grows in politics and society. One example of this, of course, is the move beyond the longstanding focus on gays and abortion, toward “creation care.” This past weekend, writing in the Washington Post (registration required), E.J. Dionne Jr. proclaims the death of the culture wars, not because one side or the other has finally emerged victorious. Instead, as we head to presidential elections this fall, voters simply have too much on their minds — for example, the liberation of Iraq, the state of the economy, the place America stands in the world—and don’t have the time to be worried about “values,” like they could in the past.

It’s too early to tell if this really is the trend both authors see it to be (just between reading this blog and the Humanist, it seems a case can be made that the religious right is not mellowing out that much). But if we grant the authors their assumptions, what does it mean for the humanist movement? Of course, on a philosophical level, humanism is so much more than just a reaction to religion. But when it comes to day-to-day activism in the public square, not only are we out there pushing our worldview forward, we’re doing all we can to push back against most everything the religious right is spewing out. What would happen if evangelicals continue proselytizing on an individual level, but no longer tried to impose their views on the rest of society through legislation? Or, what if they started promoting viewpoints that our movement could support?

Something the humanist movement has never openly and honestly articulated is the ideal role we envision religion playing in society. Do humanists only seek to reduce the influence of the religious right in the public square, ensuring a secular society where religion holds no particular sway? Or do we intend to continue to push, to try and root out religious thinking in society as a whole, and create a world full of humanists? Is the latter even possible? Can religious belief be tolerated in a humanist society, and should it be? Does making common cause with religious believers on shared issues of concern mean an end to the critique of the irrationality of a belief in a god?

This is an issue that we already face as we work with religious liberals on those issues of common concern. But our agreement on various issues are arrived at by very different means, and very different routes. If we truly are facing a trend of a religious right that is more moderate, or of a religious right that is simply less relevant, the question then becomes where does that leave us, and where do we go from there?