Zealots

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- He recycles like mad to cut his family's garbage down to one bag a month, uses refillable fountain pens, cloth handkerchiefs and reusable chopsticks, and gets around on buses, bikes and skates.David Suzuki is the first to concede the triviality of such individual pursuits to conserve the planet's resources.But Mr. Suzuki, Canada's best-known advocate of environmental causes, says it is important to start somewhere to conserve a world threatened by unbridled economic growth -- and to live by one's beliefs.

BETHLEHEM, Occupied West Bank -- Gnarled and cracked, an old olive branch enters Jiries Giacaman's shop and sits in a dark corner for three years. One day, Mr. Giacaman will pick it up. He will turn it around in his hands and his mind, and then begin cutting.From the twisted wood will emerge a sleek and polished figure of the Virgin Mary. Or Jesus. Or a camel, or a cradle, or a wise man.Mr. Giacaman makes manger scenes and other carvings from olive wood, a specialty of this town where Scripture says Jesus was born.

America, you are an idiot. You are a moocher, a zombie, soulless, mouth-breathing, ignorant, greedy, self-indulgent, envious, shallow and lazy. The foregoing is a summation of "analysis" from conservative pundits and media figures -- Cal Thomas, Ted Nugent, Bill O'Reilly, et cetera -- seeking to explain Mitt Romney's emphatic defeat. They seem to have settled on a strategy of blaming the voters for not being smart enough or good enough to vote as they should have. Because America wasn't smart enough or good enough, say these conservatives, it shredded the Constitution, bear-hugged chaos, French-kissed socialism, and died.

Voters should not trust Republican Ellen R. Sauerbrey to leave the abortion issue alone if she is elected governor, a group of women representing abortion rights organizations warned yesterday."

PORTLAND, Maine - So it takes an ecumenical group of zealots charging anti-Catholicism in an ad running in a state with a Greek Orthodox senator to make me fully understand the word chutzpah. I guess this is what it means to live in a multicultural society? This display of sheer gall began with the nomination of Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Pryor is anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, pro-school prayer. And Catholic. He most notably said, "God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time and this place for all Christians ... to save our country and save our courts."

PHILADELPHIA - Every time I return from the Middle East, I thank God I live in a country that separates church and state. The Middle East - and the Afghanistan of the Taliban - offer frightening lessons about what can happen when that barrier between church and state is shattered. Too bad those in Congress rushing to intervene in the tragic case of Terri Schiavo are so blind to the risk of injecting religion into government. In this disorienting era of globalization, where few can escape bombardment by disturbing satellite and Internet images, many people turn to religion to regain their moorings.

WASHINGTON -- When Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich wrote the "Contract with America" as a Republican agenda, he was shrewd enough to leave out any of the touchy social issues. He understood their potential for causing tensions among Republicans and for polarizing the electorate as a whole.But now, after eight months in power, conservative Republicans in Congress are asserting themselves on one issue after another -- and perhaps at some political cost to themselves and their party.This is the clear message in the movement to deny federal workers health insurance plans that provide coverage for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the life of the mother.

CounterpointRecently, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott sparked a controversy when he compared homosexuality to alcoholism, sex addiction and kleptomania. Richard L. Tafel, the head of a Republican gay rights group, criticized Lott in a Perspective article last week. Here's another view.Given the state of current discourse, in which honest observations that conflict with the Zeitgeist are zealously punished, I begin my column with this caveat: I harbor no hatred against homosexuals, am offended by anti-gay discrimination, in no way condone violence against them and really couldn't care less what sexual behavior adults engage in.I thought of this admittedly wimpy approach after following what Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott had to go through recently for making some seemingly innocuous comments about homosexuality on a TV talk show.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- One of the most reviled figures of the century, the fugitive Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, surrendered to his former comrades yesterday, a clandestine rebel broadcast said.The broadcast was greeted with astonishment, joy and skepticism by Cambodian officials and by foreign analysts who have spent much of their lives trying to comprehend the brutal and often bizarre creators of this country's killing fields.The development suddenly opened the prospect that Pol Pot, 69, could be handed over to the government or the international community and put on trial for the killings of perhaps more than a million Cambodians during his reign of terror from 1975 to 1979.

In 1991, Mary Ann Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School, wrote a discerning book, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (The Free Press, 218 pages, $22.95) in which she noted that contemporary American discourse over such issues as property, sexual activity, abortion, social welfare and the like was deteriorating into sound bites, slogans and the strident language of "my rights." In this process our opinions were becoming hyperpolarized, exaggeratedly absolute, coarsely self-centered and remarkably silent about personal, civic and collective responsibilities.