Quoted: Relativism and fundamentalism seem, at first sight, to be direct opposites. Rather, I think, they are two sides of the same coin. Both are rooted in the same distinctly modern phenomenon. Modernization progressively undermines the closed communities in which human beings lived through most of history, communities in which there was a very high degree of consensus about the basic cognitive and normative definitions of reality. Such consensus brings about a situation in which these definitions have the status of taken-for-granted, self-evident truth.

Under modern conditions, where almost everyone lives in communities in which diversity has taken the place of consensus, certainty is much more difficult to come by. Relativism can be described as a world view that not only acknowledges but celebrates the absence of consensus. So-called post-modernist theorists like to speak of narratives and, in principle, every narrative is as valued as any other. The moral end result of this world view can be captured by imagining a television interview with a cannibal. “You believe that people should be cooked and eaten. I certainly don’t want to be judgmental, but the audience will be interested. Tell us more.” (Laughter.) This is not all that fictitious.

Quoted: Conservative Christian leaders who believe the word "evangelical" has lost its religious meaning plan to release a starkly self-critical document saying the movement has become too political and has diminished the Gospel through its approach to the culture wars.

Quoted: He also said that Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, who announced his retirement in February, once bristled at the suggestion that some defendants could be acquitted, an outcome that Davis said would give the process added legitimacy.

"He said, 'We can't have acquittals,' " Davis said under questioning from Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, the military counsel who represents Hamdan. " 'We've been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions.' "

Quoted: The Catholic Church is not quite 43 years old—at least in “religious freedom” years.

Quoted: Just to follow up on the point about public transportation in the previous post, it's no secret that Congress has always spent far more to promote driving than it's spent on public transit—note that the White House requested $40 billion for the federal highway budget in 2008, versus $1.08 billion for railroad funding. But that's only the beginning. While doing some searching around, I came across an old Brookings report from 2003, which usefully compared the funding process for highway and mass transit projects, and laid out some glaring differences.

Quoted: So why has a legal policy statement been classified and withheld for five years? The answer to that question is now clear. The memorandum would have produced reactions of ridicule and outrage from throughout the professional community—as indeed it has. The author and the classifier knew that. They used classification as a political tool to keep something which is a quintessentially public document out of the reach of the public. Moreover, this classification reflects a regular pattern of abuse by the Bush Administration, a fact to be kept in mind when considering Attorney General Mukasey’s harsh and factually unfounded criticisms of pending legislation designed to reign in the use of state secrecy claims to cloak corruption and criminal conduct by state actors.

Quoted: Glenn Greenwald, New York Times bestselling author and former constitutional law and civil rights litigator, shares opinions through his political blog.

Quoted: T he important thing about Jeremiah Wright Jr., the inflammatory former pastor of Barack Obama 's church, is not that he thinks America is "controlled by rich white people," that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were the result of our "chickens are coming home to roost," or that God should "damn America" for its sins against blacks. It's that Wright is supporting a presidential candidate who clearly believes none of these things, but instead puts his faith in what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature."