First year students from St Andrews University take part in a tradition
of covering themselves with foam to honour the 'academic family' on
November 23, 2009 in St Andrews, Scotland. By Jeff J Mitchell/Getty.
Another person featured in "Going Rogue" presents his side of the story. Money quote:
Why should anyone care about any of that? The reason they should care
is that if Lynn Vincent aka Sarah Palin got as many of the facts,
asserted and implied, about me in Going Rogue as wrong as she did, what
does that say about the validity of the many other, much more
important, “facts” in Sarah’s book?
Were any of the facts in this book checked? And who was the fact-checker at HarperCollins?
"His frequent speeches before large crowds all across
the country are full of obtuse circular arguments about good and evil,
and in interviews and small gatherings, like ones he has held for
academics and journalists when he visits the United Nations in New
York, he answers questions with questions, ending with a joyous smile
that reads as a distinct putdown. His logic is seldom convincing, but
then he cares little about what elites and experts think of him. He
knows that the poor masses like his folksy style. Though he may seem
comical, to many in Iran he comes across as daring and confident. They
like his audacity, and especially the way he stands up to the elites,
belittling their education, their wealth and their blue blood," - Vali Nasr, on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Fundamentalist politics - whether Christianist or Islamist - often assumes the same basic structure. What must be resisted is logic, argument or follow-up questions.
Douthat considers both 2012 contenders in his column today. Ross hopes that someone who shares Huckabee's and Palin's "charisma" can lead "an intellectually vigorous conservatism." Isaac Chotiner counters:
Douthat's argument is tautological. Sure, it would be nice for the GOP
if Palin and Huckabee were interested in policy. But if they were
interested in policy, then they would not be so appealing to the GOP
base. In other words, the problem is that a large part of the right has
no interest in a policy wonk, and sneers at intellectuals and elites
and the types of people Douthat would like to see running the party. A
candidate who was interested in learning the ins and outs of the
welfare state and health care policy is unlikely to ever achieve
Palin/Huckabee levels of popularity with the grassroots.
Some numbers have started to trickle out of Iowa that show Huckabee ahead.
Maziar Bahari tells the story of his time in Iran's infamous Evin prison. They interrogators didn't understand The Daily Show:
Only a few weeks earlier, hundreds of foreign reporters had been
allowed into the country in the run-up to the election. Among them was
Jason Jones, a “correspondent” for Stewart’s satirical news program.
Jason interviewed me in a Tehran coffee shop, pretending to be a
thick-skulled American. He dressed like some character out of a B movie
about mercenaries in the Middle East—with a checkered Palestinian
kaffiyeh around his neck and dark sunglasses. The “interview” was very
short. Jason asked me why Iran was evil. I answered that Iran was not
evil. I added that, as a matter of fact, Iran and America shared many
enemies and interests in common. But the interrogators weren’t
interested in what I was saying. They were fixated on [the recording of] Jason.
“Why is this American dressed like a spy, Mr. Bahari?” asked the new man.
It's taken about a year, but thanks to new Census numbers and to Project Vote,
we now have the most accurate picture of who voted, who didn't vote,
and how the voting patterns compare to previous elections. The
highlights: 64% of the 204 million voting-age Americans voted, up about
6 million in number and 4 percentage points from 2004. Historically
underrepresented groups made gains in this election. Non-whites made
up more than 90% of the increase in the total number of voters. The
authors conclude that had non-whites voted at the same percentage as
whites, more than 5 million more votes would have been cast in 2008.
The study, by Douglas Hess and Jody Herman, finds that had voters under
30 voted at the same rates as their counterparts over 30, more than 7
million additional ballots would have been cast.
No wonder Republicans worry about a Democratic demographic storm.
Most of the developing countries where fertility rates have fallen
sharply in the last 20 years are places like Bangladesh, Indonesia and
Brazil, which have had relative political stability and solid economic
growth. Because there are so many such countries, there's reason to be
optimistic on the global population front. But in countries that aren't
seeing political stability or sustainable economic growth, and where
women are illiterate and repressed—countries like Afghanistan, or Yemen—fertility is running disastrously high. In
countries like that, opposition from religious and community
leaders—ie, men—can easily torpedo any public-health effort. So common
sense dictates that, in addition to providing counseling and access to
birth control for women, advocates must also reach out to religious
authorities.
There is only one last non-military stop on this train: President
Obama’s initiative to organize so-called “crippling” sanctions against
Iran.
These sanctions would penalize the firms that sell, carry and
finance the half-million tons of gasoline that Iran must import every
month. (Incredibly, this huge oil exporter and aspiring nuclear power
refines only about half the gas it needs.) Such firms are vulnerable to
international pressure: Two of the three Swiss firms that provide the
bulk of Iran’s gasoline have substantial investments in Canada, for
example. If Canada joins the sanctions regime, Canada can bring great
pressure to bear on these suppliers — and thus upon Iran.
GE has created an interactive polar area pie chart showing insurer and out-of-pocket costs for various conditions. The graph allows adjustment of the patient's age to help you get a handle on health care costs.
[Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit] is talking to his colleagues about making a prettier picture out of his data, and not
about manipulating the data itself. Again, I'm not trying to excuse
what he did -- we make a lot of charts here and 538 and make every
effort to ensure that they fairly and accurately reflect the underlying
data (in addition to being aesthetically appealing.) I wish everybody
would abide by that standard.
Still: I don't know how you get
from some scientist having sexed up a graph in East Anglia ten years
ago to The Final Nail In The Coffin of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Anyone who comes to that connection has more screws loose than the
Space Shuttle Challenger. And yet that's literally what some of these bloggers are saying!
The key to these bloggers' mentality is simply to find some tiny thing and focus all attention on that in order to persuade people that the bigger reality is untrue or irrelevant. This is not an argument; it's a technique. It's a technique to persuade people not to examine all the evidence, since the source of the evidence - secular humanist scientists - are evil suspects and against God and in favor of making your gas bill higher.
You can't actually persuade people that way, of course. But you can fortify their resistance to examining all the evidence.
Pawlenty's greatest advantage is that the Republican field in 2012
looks fairly thin. Mitch Daniels has the strongest credentials, but he
doesn't have an obvious base. Mitt Romney has formidable financial
resources and he gained crucial experience during his 2008 presidential
bid, but, as the former governor of Massachusetts and a newly minted
pro-lifer, he has a number of liabilities. Mike Huckabee has won the
loyalty of evangelical voters, yet economic conservatives are allergic
to his brand of populism and it's not clear that he has much appeal
beyond his base. Rather depressingly, Tim Pawlenty could win the
Republican presidential nomination in 2012 simply by being the least
offensive candidate. Even if enthusiasm for Obama dies down in a few
years time, that doesn't bode well for the general election.
Althouse responds to my take on her bloggingheads with Michelle Goldberg:
I know Sullivan wants me to check out his list of "lies." I picked one
to check out, that she said the only flag in her office was the Israeli
flag. As Sullivan himself notes, she must have meant to say the only foreign flag,
since she did also have an Alaskan and an American flag in her office.
That's the sort of sloppy speaking that one would correct easily if it
were pointed out at the time. Of course, I also have the state flag and the American flag. I mean, it would be pretty ridiculous for a state governor to only have a foreign flag! There isn't even a motivation to lie.
That there's no motivation here doesn't mean it's an "odd lie" — which is Sullivan's term. It means it's not a lie at all.
The Brazilian city of Porto Alegre has been experiencing heavy rains as
of late, so a bunch of kids got together and decided to do the only
reasonable thing you’d expect a bunch of kids to do in such a
situation: They grabbed their surfboards and headed down to the city’s
open sewer system.
He's taking the usual slew of tactical hits as his opponents try every single line of attack and pound every day, squeezing every ounce of agitprop from the news cycle. His numbers are gliding downward (although not by much), his foreign policy gains are structural and have as yet no tangible results, a critical Mid-East ally, Israel, is doing all it can to destroy his credibility with the Muslim world, his health insurance reform is still not passed, the debt is simply staggering (and the GOP's willingness to blame it all on him is as shameless as it can be convincing to those who know nothing and think less), etc etc.
And yet I remain absurdly confident that he is on the right path. Why? This rare moment of Beltway perspective helps explain:
No pain, no gain? In a way, last week epitomized
President Obama’s 10 months in office. There was lots of seemingly
short-term pain — members of Congress calling for his Treasury
secretary to resign, more P.R. snafus over the stimulus, the chattering
class criticizing his Asia trip, and his approval rating dropping below
50% for the first time in Gallup’s poll.
The Iranian regime is using SMS to warn people not to protest:
The reports come ahead of Student Day on December 7, which the
opposition has vowed to “turn green” in support of the Green movement
backing opposition leader Mir Hossein Musavi.
One blogger posted a picture
of the cautionary SMS, which states: “Respected citizen, based on our
information, you have been influenced by the antisecurity propaganda of
the foreign media. If you get involved in any illegal protest and get
in touch with the foreign media...” The image is cut off after
that, but according to other sources, the message threatens that the
person “will be considered a criminal according to several articles of
the Islamic law and dealt with accordingly.”
And the political executions continue. I believe these moves are signs of desperation in the coup regime. But we will see on December 7 if the Green Movement can still command the people.
I called the executive director of the Pre-Trib Research Center at Liberty University
in Lynchburg, Va., Dr. Thomas Ice. The Pre-Trib Center is one of the
preeminent evangelical institutions in this country arguing for literal
Bible prophecy, and especially for pre-millenial dispensationalism, a
complicated belief system that concerns the conditions that must obtain
on Earth before Jesus can return ("Pre-Trib" is short for
"pre-tribulation.") [Ice said,] "Over forty percent of the world's Jews now live in Israel. What Sarah
Palin probably believes is that this is the first regathering," when
the Jews all migrate to Israel.
"This is a condition for the second
regathering, the regathering in belief, when the Jewish nation is
converted. Then there will be the battle of Armageddon, because
remember, Satan wants to wipe out the Jews to prevent the Second
Coming, but Jesus comes to rescue the beleaguered Jews. We believe that
the Jews are going to be converted so that they can call on Jesus to
rescue them from Satan."
And people wonder why she wants more Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Or why we read sentences like this in the press:
She
quizzed [Billy Graham] on the presidents he's known and wanted his take on what
the Bible says about Israel, Iran and Iraq, Franklin Graham reported.
As I understand it, the apparently fiscally responsible portions of the
bill come from a) eventual cuts in Medicare spending, and b) rising
taxes on some health insurance plans and they come later of course.
Few Congressional representatives are willing to do these things today,
so should we predict they will be done in the future? (The same
problem plagues Waxman-Markey, by the way, so these back and forth
rhetorical debates are becoming quite common.) In my view, policies
structured in this manner are simply another way of doing deficit
spending.
"[O]ur strength lies, in our opinion, not in deliberation and discussion, but that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection," - Pericles.
Greenwald fisks the Republican meme - "trials in a real court would lead to the disclosure of classified information that would help the Terrorists":
To see how false this claim is, all anyone ever had to was look at the Classified Information Procedures Act, a short and crystal clear 1980 law that not only permits, but requires, federal courts to undertake extreme measures to ensure the concealment of classified information, even including concealment from the defendant himself.
Andrew Bacevich and David Frum discuss whether Afghanistan is a rational place to invest a huge amount of money and lives at this point in world history.
I disagree with your reader who says Palin is a bullshitter. I kind of
like bullshitters. I consider someone like Bill Clinton to be a
bullshitter. Kind of smooth, kind of full of one's self. In my mind,
Palin is a disturbed individual who does not live in a world where
truth as a concept is relevant or even extant. She is wholly a
creation of the media because she has a sexy quality to her good looks
(especially in an industry - politics - that has few beauties). Her
only cleverness is that she uses her child with Down's Syndrome as the
entire basis of her being as a politician. Sorry to put it so crudely, but that is the thing that the hard
right loves about her. (In fact, she recounts how she considered
abortion but decided against it. As a mother, I find that little story
so disgusting. Why would a mother ever openly discuss that they
thought about aborting her child? Or her defender, Bernie Goldberg,
implying that a liberal would abort a Down's Syndrome child. Even more
disgusting.)
Some people who are not on the hard right like her for
other reasons - especially because she is a working mother of five.
They relate to her, and I think that is valid.
Apologies for the typo: the name of this remarkable fellow was Chuang Tzu or Zuangzi depending on your mode of translating Chinese names into English. I've long known of him via Oakeshott but had never really pondered the deep similarities between their thought before reading an unpublished paper by Chor-yung Cheung, an Oakeshott scholar from Hong Kong, at a recent Oakeshott conference. A light bulb went off as well when I realized that Chuang Tzu was also one of Thomas Merton's favorite writers. Merton wrote his own versions of several of Chuang Tzu's stories, parables and anecdotes. From a review:
Merton
sees Chuang Tzu as his kindred spirit. Merton and Chuang Tzu both
were hermits to some extent, and both spiritual philosophers of
sorts, perhaps with Merton heavier on the spiritual side and Chuang
Tzu more the philosopher. The content of their philosophies is similar,
too. Merton assures us that his book "is not a new apologetic
subtlety (or indeed a work of jesuitical sleight of hand) in which
Christian rabbits will suddenly appear by magic out of a Taoist
hat." Yet Merton's paraphrase demonstrates how Chuang Tzu's
writings closely resemble the apophatic thought of some Christian
theologians and mystics that Merton writes about elsewhere.
Merton
points out that Chuang Tzu's Taoism is not "the popular, degenerate
amalgam of superstition, alchemy, magic, and health-culture which
Taoism later became." Instead, Chuang Tzu's Taoism values an
inner unity, a hiddenness of the true man, and a practical asceticism
that Merton also finds in Christian mysticism. Merton
believes that Chuang Tzu's gift of "unknowing" is similar
to Christian contemplation. A Chuang Tzu disciple loses his self-conscious
"knowledge" and gains an inner "unknowing" by
which he lives through Tao. The disciple in one Chuang Tzu story,
for instance, prepares for the gift of unknowing through a patient
emptying of desires, otherwise known as a "fasting of the heart,"
much as Merton's contemplative must go through John of the Cross'
Night of Sense, when the will grows tired of desire and reasoning.
The gift of unknowing - what Oakeshott would try to capture in his theory of aesthetics as well as of practical life - is perhaps best put in this classic Chuang Tzu tale that was central to Oakeshott's understanding of how human beings actually do what we do, and live how we live, irrespective of modern rationalism's claim to have captured all human knowledge in theory:
I think the question has to be asked now, concerning unemployment: If our economy is in "recovery," then what is preventing companies from actually hiring people? I hate saying this, but this is feeling like another "Mission Accomplished" to people, especially me.
While I certainly understand the aggravation, I'm not sure I've seen a single individual suggest that the job market was going to rebound quickly. In fact, basically everyone (from the administration on down) has explicitly argued that the recovery was going to be slow, particularly in the job market. So, it is a bit unfair to reference "Mission Accomplished" along these lines. The economy appears to be recovering, and jobs will eventually come as well, but the latter is not necessarily an indicator that the former is a faulty belief.
Jamie Kirchick wants to stop sending PEPFAR money to Uganda, which has introduced legislation that would make homosexuality a crime punishable by death:
When a government actively encourages homophobia, the effect
reverberates throughout society. Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni,
has accused European gays of coming to his country to "recruit" people
into homosexuality. Ugandan newspapers and bloggers have seized on the
proposed law to launch their own broadsides against gays, posting the
names and photographs of individuals in Wild West-style "wanted"
posters in print and online. A major tabloid, the Red Pepper, trumpeted
an expose headlined "Top Homos in Uganda Named" as "a killer dossier, a
heat-pounding and sensational masterpiece that largely exposes Uganda's
shameless men and unabashed women that have deliberately exported the
Western evils to our dear and sacred society."
From 2004 through 2008, Uganda received a total of $1.2 billion in
PEPFAR money, and this year it is receiving $285 million more. Clearly,
the United States has a great deal of leverage over the Ugandan
government, and the American taxpayer should not be expected to fund a
regime that targets a vulnerable minority for attack — an attack that
will only render the vast amount of money that we have donated moot.
"Confucius called on Lao Tan and spoke to him about benevolence and righteousness.
Lao Tan said, “Chaff from the winnowing fan can so blind the eye that heaven, earth and the four directions all seem to shift place. A mosquito or a horse-fly stinging your skin can keep you awake a whole night. And when benevolence and righteousness in all their fearfulness come to muddle the mind, the confusion is unimaginable.
If you want to keep the world from losing its simplicity, you must move with the freedom of the wind, stand in the perfection of Virtue.
Why all this huffing and puffing, as though you were carrying a big drum and searching for a lost child." - The Complete Works Of Chuang Tzu, one of Oakeshott's influences.
(Drawing: Zhuangzi dreaming of a butterfly (or a butterfly dreaming of Zhuangzi)
In his Sunday column, Andrew examined the superhuman powers of Sarah Palin. Joining the study of her lying psyche was Michelle Goldberg, Bella DePaulo, David Benjamin, and Matt Taibbi. David Nood corrected her grasp on Alaskan history while Douthat highlighted one of the true silver linings of her rise. On the news side, Palin gave her mission statement to O'Reilly and continued to trash the father of Tripp. Meanwhile, Levi's mom was sent to prison.
In other weekend coverage, Krauthammer endorsed the "show trial" meme, Liz Cheney stoked more fear, Fallows bemoaned the coverage of Obama's trip to Asia, McWhorter gave him advice on ending the drug war, and a reader provided a view from his recession. Get your weekly Jonah Lehrer fix here and here.
In assorted fun, we featured an kick-ass story of sudden fame, found a fascinating document of forgotten fame, read some terrible fictional sex, watched a cool display of imperial decline, and delivered some YouTube crack from The Wire and Mad Men.
A group of Christian rappers extol the virtues of the “Christian side hug”.
Because you will definitely go to Hell if your genitals get anywhere near other peoples' genitals.
Razib Khan ponders the similarities between Islam and orthodox westerners:
On issues such as abortion and the marriage of homosexuals the orthodox will part ways with the conservative. The orthodox Westerner may see in the Muslim a closer adherent to the true tradition. This is one reason why the Traditionalist philosopher Rene Guenon converted to Islam. But, I believe that the orthodox underestimate the implicit cultural commonalities which are unspoken and unelucidated, and which bind societies and civilizations together even more than adherence to a metaphysic. “My Country, Right or Wrong” is at once a profoundly unintellectual idea, but at the same time so is the assumption that one would sacrifice one’s own life for one’s child. Instincts have their limits, but at some point human flourishing is contingent upon [admitting] that life depends on implicit instincts for proper functioning, and that reflection is an exceptional avocation, islands in a sea of reflex.
About Sarah Palin, you've written that "All we know for sure is that whatever she says isn't true. It never is."
I'd argue that what she says has no relation whatsoever to the truth - you can't count on it to be false anymore than you can count on it to be true. What you can generally count on is that it will be hastily conceived and self serving. I know you've invested a great deal of time proving her to be a liar, but to my mind Palin's a bullshitter, as defined by Harry G. Frankfurt in his book, On Bullshit.
A piece in today's L.A. Times tries to determine how much escalating in Afghanistan will cost. Ackerman summarizes:
[According to a memo from the Pentagon’s own comptroller], a 40,000-troop increase would cost an
additional $30 to $35 billion annually. That’s on top of current war
costs — which, as the piece reports, are rather hard to determine with
precision. But if we take the memo’s reported calculation of at
$750,000 per soldier/sailor/airman/marine annually, then we’re looking
at an existing cost of $51 billion before an escalation.
My column plumbs the amazing powers of a certain someone:
Palin is indeed a feisty Alaskan and a genuine triumph of red-state feminism. But her narrative is embellished and embroidered to such an extent, it resembles not so much a memoir as a work of magical realism.
If you treat it as a factual narrative you will soon falter. Among the few early reactions were those of Nicolle Wallace — a McCain campaign staffer — who said of one passage: “It is pure fiction. No such discussion took place.” A reporter Palin says targeted her daughter Piper after a press conference was never at the press conference cited. Palin’s claim that she was personally billed $50,000 for vetting is point blank denied by the McCain campaign. Palin’s account of her record in the Exxon Valdez lawsuit was described last week by the chief lawyer for the case as “the most cockamamie bullshit”. I could go on.
None of this is particularly surprising. Palin has a long and documented record of saying things that are empirically untrue but asserting them as if her own imagination is the only source of objective reality.
So you simply read the book as if it is fiction and enjoy it. Or you read it as non-fiction and believe that Palin is a magical mythical figure who defies the laws of time and space and normal human nature.
Take one story that every mother will relate to: the drama of her delivery of her fifth child, Trig.
Razib Khan builds off the arguments in Michael Specter's new book:
[S]erious problems emerge when our intuitive prejudices push themselves into the scientific domain. Natural science has over the past few centuries has proven itself to be a marvel not by extension of our intuition, but contravention of that intuition resulting in an even closer fit to reality (contrast Newtonian physics with "folk physics").** Humans have always had engineering in the form of tinkering with technology. But the last two centuries of productivity growth through mechanical improvements have been based in part on the rise of science as a theoretical framework which allows for more than trial & error experimentation guided by intuition. Science allows us to stand on the shoulders of giants, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive their theories are, because they are judged not on plausibility but predictivity.
[P]erhaps the unemployment crisis, the real estate crisis, the health
care crisis, and even global warming are more urgent matters in the
grand scheme of things just now.
Now, that is. However, how about in 2014, when Obama has just two
years to go and other things are presumably taken care of to the extent
that they can be (and assuming that John Thune, Tim Pawlenty and Sarah
Palin will not turn out to be the GOP’s secret weapons three years from
now)? By then Obama will not be facing re-election, nor will he likely
be mired in a sex scandal to distract him from real work.
For now, maybe we have to face things like what happened in the
Bronx Monday as a weekly kind of event. But what kind of a nation are
we to treat episodes like that one as business as usual? The War on
Drugs stands as an obstacle to people becoming the best that they can
be. It is, in its way, un-American.
Authority...performs a dual function; looking to authorities is a
way of increasing the likelihood of being right, and of reducing the
penalty for being wrong. An authoritative source isn’t just a source
you trust; it’s a source you and other members of your reference group
trust together. This is the non-lawyer’s version of “due diligence”;
it’s impossible to be right all the time, but it’s much better to be
wrong on good authority than otherwise, because if you’re wrong on good
authority, it’s not your fault.
"There is a virus of disrespect and hate spreading here very rapidly.
And unless one lives right here with it, day in and day out, it is
unbelievable how quickly and subtly it infects reasonably intelligent
persons. This is not too hard to understand only if one recognizes the
unremitting, deep, bitter religious and racial prejudice existing today
in this section of our land — I don’t know if any of them are similarly
infected in other sections, but I know personally of what I
speak as regards East Texas.
The most recent employment report shows the unemployment rate rising past 10 percent even though it appears output may have already turned the corner, while new claims for unemployment insurance
are still over 500,000, a number that indicates the economy is still
losing jobs overall. In fact, I am worried that the peak in
unemployment could lag even further behind the recovery than it did in
the last two recessions.
Stanislas Dehaene, chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the Collège de France, gives his view of the brain:
What I am proposing is that the human brain is a much more constrained
organ than we think, and that it places strong limits on the range of
possible cultural forms. Essentially, the brain did not evolve for
culture, but culture evolved to be learnable by the brain. Through its
cultural inventions, humanity constantly searched for specific niches
in the brain, wherever there is a space of plasticity that can be
exploited to “recycle” a brain area and put it to a novel use. Reading,
mathematics, tool use, music, religious systems -- all might be viewed
as instances of cortical recycling.
Joe Kloc examines why we get creeped out by lifelike robots and lifeless bodies:
Disturbing experiences that feel both familiar and strange are
instances of the “uncanny,” an intuitive concept, yet one that has
defied simple explanation for more than a century. Interest in the
particular occurrences of the uncanny, in which humans are bothered by
interaction with human-like models, began as a psychological curiosity.
But as our ability to design artificial life has increased—along with
our dependence on it—getting to the heart of why people respond
negatively to realistic models of themselves has taken on a new
importance. Attempts to understand the origins of this reaction, known
since the 1970s as the “uncanny valley response,” have drawn on
everything from repressed fears of castration to an evolutionary
mechanism for mate selection, but there has been little empirical
evidence to assess the validity of these ideas.
Stephen Williams reviews the latest work by Bruce Ellis Benson:
The argument in this volume is that Nietzsche retained
his native Pietism. He was brought up in a Pietist home and broke away
from the beliefs which it housed, but he did not thereby cease to be
religious or pious. He aspired to become a disciple of Dionysus, a
devotee of Life, of which Dionysus is the symbol. This determination to
pursue a way of life is rightly called "piety" when we observe the
continuities between Nietzsche's background Pietism and his later
quest. His Pietism was a way of life rather than a set of doctrines.
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