Finished George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant and have already passed it off (I’ll buy more copies for friends) and have ordered his Moral Politics.

His big point is that conservatives and progresives have, respectively, dominant Strong Father and Nurturant Parent worldviews, which apply to the nation which fills the role of family. I’m not fully sold on the theory, but it works in the breach.

Lakoff takes the reasonable step to distinguish between conservative and progressive religions by how they see God, again, as Strong Father or Nurturant Parent. The “Strong Father” God is the wrathful punisher, and so forth.

Today, in the mail, I got a mass-mailed booklet entitled The Path to Peace: Finding Hope in a Troubled World. It is Seventh Day Adventist, is in a magazine format, and nice if a bit folksy (in a Readers’ Digest and SDA way.) Something my grandmothers would or would have liked.

Also in typical SDA way, there’s the line:

Though all thse evidences have been given, the enemy of good blinded the minds of men, so that they looked upon God with fear; they thought of Him as severe and unforgiving. Satan led men to conceive of God as a being whose chief attribute is stern justice –one who is a severe judge, a harsh, exacting creditor.

The lesson? Find a friend where you can, and not get suckered into a culture war which, given the de facto terms of engagement, the Right would almost certainly win.

At Day Job, there’s a lot of talk about how apathetic the American people have gotten. Here’s my bit for being a part of the solution rather than being a part of the problem.

In long hand with blue fountain-pen ink on a small piece of writing paper:

July 13, 2005

The Hon. George W. Bush
White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. President,

As an American, I am deeply dissapointed that your advisor Mr. Rove would leak the identity of a CIA agent (even if he didn’t use her name exactly.) You said such a person in your adminstration would be fired, and I think you are honor-bound to dismiss Mr. Rove from your service.

Yours truly,
(The Rev.) Scott Wells

[my address]

It took me a few minutes and was a lot more satisfying that talking about Scott McClellan flop sweat.

And it wouldn’t be hard would it be for ten of my US readers to do likewise. Write a letter.

Here’s the address:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

I was having an ordinary conversation about a federally-mandated program related to the work of Day Job with another Day Job Employee when our respective frustration about the President, the Vice President and their responses to the Amnesty International report led us to a shared catharsis. Who do they think they are? And do they think we Americans are that stupid? was the thrust of it. In a couple of moments we simmered down and got back to business, but the immediacy of the response startled me.

I felt as if the American people have been under a nuclear — make that “nookaler” — winter cloud of self-restraint since 9/11. The kind of cloud that makes compassionate people forget themselves in a wave of self-consuming, destructive fear. Tie that to the baseball bat of Bush moralism, and its easy to see how one wouldn’t want to speak up. After all, it isn’t a long road from those “who hate America” — the President’s catch-all justification for a lawless incarceration at Guantanamo; he makes Castro look like a champion of justice in contrast — to those who defend the most basic of their human rights. We’re supposed to take as given that the detainees are as bad as they say, but who can trust the Bush administration to be anything other than self-serving. Add the volleys of attacks from the right and it is easy for anyone less-right to be caught off balance.

Let Cheney be insulted or Bush grieved. They’re liars and violent men. They’ve degrade the trust the people have in the office. They need to be called out and condemned before they do more damage to this country, its most vulnerable, and those it can victimize in silence and in shadows. They make us liars and violent by proxy, and hateful in millions of eyes.

Guantánamo Bay – a human rights scandal

Remember this name: Cale J. Bradford.

He’s the Indiana judge — I am so fumin’ freakin’ mad right now I can barely type — who barred a pair of divorced parents from teaching their son Wiccan religion. You’ll see this story linked all over the blogosphere

In one of those “throw me a bone” moments, I kept looking for some mitigating circumstance like a nasty divorce, an informal arrangement, and a misunderstanding that got out of control. Don’t believe it.

Spare a prayer for Tom Jones, Jr. and Tammie U. Bristol and their son, whose fundamental rights are being steamrolled.

I can’t imagine this ruling will hold, and I hope the Indiana supreme court feeds Bradford to the wolves.

Hat tip to Jason at WildHunt.org and ChaliceChick (and not a certain A-list blogger) for the tip.

No other blogging tonight — fascinated by the UK parliamentary election returns. Interesting to see another, more candid political culture. Fun to see the very marginal candidates stand and hear they got double-digit votes. Happy to see successful (or at least hear “swing to the”) Liberal Democrats. Nice to have returns while the sun is still shining!

On CSPAN2 tonight.