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On any given day, a sizeable band of hardy swimmers take to the sea across Dublins riviera: in Dollymount, Sandymount, South Wall, Seapoint, Vico Road, Hawk Cliff, White Rock.

For many Dubliners, these are the names of summer afternoons, but for this disparate group of water worshipers, they are locations of choice in both summer and winter, come rain or shine.

The benefits of cold-water treatment are legendary. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used it as part of their bathing regime, and hydrotherapy was revived by the Victorians and later used to treat mental-health issues and alcoholism.

In fact, Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous Bill W. to his friends was apparently a proponent, and more recently, an as-yet-unpublished study by Cambridge University researchers suggested that it might help protect the brain against degenerative diseases like dementia.

With lockdown, a whole new generation of adherents to the benefits of a daily short, sharp cold-water endorphin shock mean that jostling for space to dry and change, while keeping a respectable two-metre distance, can be a challenge.

But in Sandycove, home of the famous Forty Foot, a new struggle is emerging. Its not between male and female bathers that battle was fought over 40 years ago. Nor is it the regulars and locals versus the day-trippers that is more evident at the weekend, when the locals get their fix early, and then concede the space to the hordes.

This new struggle is between new money new arrivals and old-money seasoned swimmers. Specifically, its between the people who use trendy, pricey brand-name changing robes, and those who think that flaunting money in that way is gauche, even offensive.

This is, of course, not really about the robes. Its about socio-economic changes taking place in the neighbourhood.

Given the Irish geography, climate and weather, an item of clothing that facilitates a quick change while in public, and in the open, and possibly in the wind and rain too, sounds like a winner.

It is an improvement on the traditional habit of trying to hide your modesty behind a towel or a dressing gown. But the changing practice of choice, at least in Sandycove, has become a cultural weather vane.

While taking my daily dip one recent morning, a printed notice pinned to the wall caught my attention: This is a dryrobe free area, it read, referring to a specific brand of changing robe.

Being a blow-in, I had wanted to fit in with the locals, and so I had been having discussions with my wife about buying her such a garment.

That is, until I saw the price, which was north of 150. And she, in no uncertain terms, told me that her uncle, who had swum in the Forty Foot every day of his life, would have scorned such an item of clothing.

The requirement for a swimming costume since the 1970s was one thing, but if you are hardy enough to swim in the sea, you are hardy enough not to need an expensive and flashy coat to keep you dry and warm.

The dryrobe yes, the brand-name is styled with a lower-case d is the item of clothing of choice (other brands exist, though seemingly not in Sandycove), and this printed A4 notice uncovered a lot more about social tensions in the neighbourhood than any voluminous (and shower-resistant) changing robe could cover.

In the traditional, old-money corner, is the tradition of sea-swimming. For decades considered to be a pastime to be enjoyed in the company of your own sex, the Forty Foot was for males, and around the headland, the Sandycove for females and families.

Wealth, as with semi-naked bodies, was not for flaunting in public. That all changed with the action by the Dublin City Womens Invasionary Force in 1974, which the said-uncle attended and is visible in RT footage of the day, and since then mixed swimming is the norm.

Similarly, it seems that decadent public expressions of wealth which might have been previously socially unacceptable are now more prevalent, and with this, the seeds for culture wars in suburbia were sown.

In the new-money corner, certain upwardly mobile youngsters in their thirties and forties (young for this neighbourhood), see having gone wild-swimming as the new dinner-party boast or that it will be when dinner parties are allowed again.

For them, the outlay of 150 on the robe is a worthwhile investment, which goes far beyond the useful physical garment, but is a uniform a symbol providing what Pierre Bourdieu called social recognition and a statement of belonging.

This divide here is superficially economic, but at its heart is cultural and perhaps territorial too.

Its like when someone wins the lottery, and suddenly has money but not the social status they desire, so they buy expensive items to signify belonging to that higher social class they aspire to.

It might have been a pocket watch when Sandycove was built, an outsized mobile telephone a decade after mixed swimming had been finally allowed, or a branded, all-weather changing robe today.

After four years living in Sandycove, I am undecided I dont want to be part of suburbias culture war and the weather really isnt really that bad. Also, 150 can go a long way feeding a family for a week and providing a formerly homeless person with a moving-on pack from Crosscare as they move into a new home.

While cold dips were once considered an antidote to alcoholism, nowadays this activity encourages a post-dip drink, alcoholic or otherwise. In these Covid-19 times, whether you culturally identify as a wild-swimmer or a sea-swimmer, a splasher, or a dipper, or indeed a sceptic, or a non-swimmer, perhaps the warm glow of charity might be the better course of action?

For those of you considering taking part in the annual Christmas Day dip, a major charity fundraiser, maybe you can do both. A bathing suit, nowadays, is advisable. A changing robe? Well, that is up to you.

Read more:
Paul: On the Sandycove Swim-Robe Wars - Dublin Inquirer

(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

From a global pandemic and nationwide protests to a contested presidential election, this year seems tailor-made to expose Americas partisan fault lines. Those hoping for a blue or red wave to unite the country on election night were undoubtedly disappointed. What the returns revealed instead was a divided electorate.

Even before the election results underscored Americas political gulf, Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her faith became something of a national Rorschach test for where Americans line up on the partisan spectrum. Some viewed Barretts Catholicism, and her involvement with the charismatic Christian community, People of Praise, as tantamount to Margaret Atwoods dystopian novel, The Handmaids Tale. For others, Barretts faith was evidence of her character and integritya signal that shed live up to her oath to impartially discharge the dutiesof the office.

What explains this divergence?

The data suggest that our national divide is deeper than just knee-jerk partisanshipit involves a confluence of religio-geographic trends in the United States that all but guarantee the kind of political gridlock we saw manifest this month at the ballot box. The United States is not a purely secular nationnor is it a fully religious one. The country stands out among its international peers as distinctly balanced. And acknowledging this reality may be the first step to burying the countrys cultural weapons of war and embracing a posture of greater political pluralism and cooperation.

According to our recent survey report sponsored by the Wheatley Institution, a non-partisan research center at Brigham Young University, slightly less than one third of the U.S. population is deeply religious, frequently attending church services or engaging in other religious activities in their homes. Another third is fully secular, never participating in any sort of religious practice, whether its prayer, reading holy writ, or attending services. Meanwhile, a final third of Americans are nominally religiousattending services infrequently or engaging in other practices with varying levels of devotion.

These findings align with the 2020 National Religion and Spirituality Survey from the NationalOpinion Research Center as well as findings from the Pew Research Center, which estimates that roughly a quarter of American adults today are religiously unaffiliated.

The story of secularisms rise is well-documented. From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the worlds more religious countries, with religiosity levels changing very little, notes political scientist Ronald Inglehart in Foreign Affairs. Since then, the United States has shown the largest move away from religion of any country for which we have data. The Atlantics Derek Thompson similarly notes the rapid ballooning of the religiously unaffiliated, tracing its relative size from around 6 percent of the U.S. population in 1991 to more than a quarter today.

So, what happened?

Theres no simple answer. And, certainly, people stop affiliating with their religious tradition for many reasons. However, sociologists Michael HoutandClaude Fischer have published research suggesting that an aversion to the religious rights involvement in politics throughout the 1990s (and beyond) may have influenced the decision of self-identified moderates and liberals to disaffiliate from religious institutions during this period.

Organized religion, they write in their 2014 study, gained influence by espousing a conservative social agenda that led liberals and young people who already had weak attachment to organized religion to drop that identification. The scholars note a causal link between the religious rights entrance into public conservativism and disaffiliation among certain pockets of the population: Political liberals and moderates who seldom or never attended services quit expressing a religious preference when survey interviewers asked about it.

These findings are significant, but they dont tell the full story of American faith in the twenty-first century. Much like the bifurcated reaction to Amy Coney Barrett, the same trends that seem to push some toward secularism may also help crystalize faith in others. Indeed, even as the nation is becoming more secular, in another sense, its also becoming more religious as well.

For example, a 2017 study from Indiana Universitys Landon Schnabel and Harvards Sean Bock suggests that intense religion has persisted even as more moderate religion has seen declines. In other words, ascendent secularism is accompanied by a deepening of religious intensity. Speaking to The Washington Post, Schnabel compared this phenomenon to a container getting smaller, but more concentrated. So, yes, the steady stream of cable news chyrons on waning religious affiliation are accurate (the religious landscape is shifting) but the real story is more complicated.

The fact is that the highly religious in America havent gone away. Theyve remained steady as a percentage of the population, which means their overall numbers have grown with the population and their higher-than-average fertility patterns are one sign that the trend probably wont reverse. Thus, those anticipating a full conquest of secularism in the United States shouldnt hold their breathneither should those rooting for a modern-day Great Awakening.

It may be that recognizing the nations religious and secular demographics as both stable and balanced could broker the kind of dtente that recognizes cooperation and the search for genuine understanding as a productive path forward.

Pluralism, after all, has always been what makes America exceptional on the world stage. In our report, we analyzed data from more than 16,000 survey participants in eleven countries, looking specifically at how religion in public life varies across populations. In Latin American nations like Columbia and Peru, most respondents were both religiously affiliated and active in their faith. As you would expect, in European countries like France or the United Kingdom, religious affiliation and participation were much lower. Whereas religion was once predominant in these nations, today, secularism reigns.

The United States, meanwhile, stands out for its unique demographic mix of both seculars and the highly religious. Of the eleven countries analyzed, only in the United States do these two groups have to deal with each other on somewhat equal grounds.

Specifically, we estimate that there are a little more than 100 million American seculars and about 85 million Americans who might be considered highly religious. In other words, there are more seculars in the United States than there are people in all of the Nordic countries combined plus Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, Austria, and Switzerland. Likewise, the church-attending population of the United States is larger than the combined populations of Chile, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

Thats a lot of seculars. And thats a lot of religionists. So, its easy to see why one side or the other might feel like they own the country and they should control the nations levers of political power. An October poll showed that Christians, particularly white evangelicals, supported Donald Trump by a very wide margin (78 percent) whereas atheists and agnostics supported Biden by an even larger margin (83 percent).

Seculars and religionists may share this much in common: a mutual fear (and misunderstanding) of the other. This idea explains why they often fight so hard to gain and maintain political advantage. The phenomenon is also likely exacerbated by geographical segregation. Seculars often live on the coasts or in other urban settings, while religionists are more commonly found in the rural South and Midwest. According to a 2017 survey from The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation, fully 78 percent of rural Republicans said, Christian values are under siege. If these geographically separated groups bump into each other, its usually through the less-than-humanizing lens of social media.

With these interests so evenly spread, knowledge of the nations demographic balance cant help but prompt seculars and religionists to see the culture wars as a battle with little prospect of a full victory. But, given the current political environment, moving from an acknowledgment of demographic realities to actual political cooperation may be asking for a miracle of biblical proportions. And yet, at least we know that there are many Americans who might be willing to pray for one.

Spencer James, Hal Boyd and Jason Carroll are faculty members in Brigham Young Universitys School of Family Life. They are each affiliated with the Wheatley Institution.

See the original post here:
Why the Partisan Divide? The US Is Becoming More Secularand More Religious - Religion & Politics

As I write this, most world leaders, the media, state election officials across the country, and the majority of American voters now agree that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the election by a clear margin. Joe is now acting more presidential almost two months from his inauguration than the orange menace has in four years

But beyond the obvious, who else has come out of this strange election in a better or worse place? In other words, who really won? In a word, the oligarchs, 1-percenters, or billionaires, choose your label. Just look at how much money theyve raked in during our mismanaged pandemic ($10.2 trillion worldwide).

Many people saw this election and the Trump presidency as the main problem and the only solution to what ailed America. Wrong. Trump is just a very orange, very visible symbol but by no means the cause.

Systemic racism has always been here; he just made the racists comfortable enough to come out in the open. Income inequality is now at world-beating levels. But thats just an acceleration of what Reagan started.

The true winners right now are the super wealthy. The eight individuals (and others we never hear about) who now hold more wealth than the next billion folks on the planet. That group. The shadowy folks who fund the right-wing think tanks, Fox News, Breitbart, the Federalist Society, One America News, and so on.

This crew, folks like the Kochs, the Walton family, Betsy Devos and her brother Eric Prince of Darkness have been funneling money and buying influence for decades all in hopes of ultimately taking over everything. In their world, our only purpose is as replaceable wage slaves whose lives are devoted to making them ever wealthier.

The level of division in our country now and in many other countries, is a direct result of their influence played out over mainstream media, social media, and general propaganda channels. The more divided the populace is and the more divided government is, the less likely it is that the oligarchs will be encumbered by irritants like higher taxes, environmental regulations, strong unions, and strong governments. Make no mistake, we are at war with the 1-percent and they are winning in many places.

One of the big things to come out of the disaster that is/was the Trump presidency is the widespread recognition of the incredible racism that rules our country. And why did it finally come to such a head? Was it just Trump and his dog whistles and overtures to the Ku Klux Klan? Was it police violence against people of color?

Trump and his father before him were avowed racists. To have a racist in the Oval Office was a David Duke wet dream.

Now we see much more clearly just what our Black and brown neighbors have been dealing with for a couple of centuries and just how far we are from true equality. Folks, theres a ton of work still left to do.

But keep in mind that the oligarchs are behind a lot of the racism in terms of funding and messaging. Again, it keeps us divided.

And lets not forget the constant attacks on women and their rights by the Rapist in Chief and the right wing of our society led by rabid evangelicals and demagogues of all sorts. But the right-to-life folks (forced-birth people) have always been in it to control women, not save lives.

If they truly cared about lives, theyd do away with the death penalty, fund social programs, and come out strongly for gun control. Never happen. These are gun-toting, bloodthirsty misogynist bigots hiding behind the Bible and the flag.

And again, these folks are funded in large part by dark money funneled through fronts and fake charities directly from the coffers of the oligarchs. Its just another way to keep the culture wars going and keep us divided.

Look at every divisive issue in our society and you will find wealthy people funding the divide to keep us from paying attention as they rape and pillage the planet. Bernie Sanders has been saying all this for the past 30-plus years and only recently have people picked up on it.

But for now, there is some light. Joe and Kamala are two real people with our interests first and foremost, and that gives me hope. But dont kid yourselves, they are imperfect and their efforts will be compromised by our broken government. Moscow Mitch McConnell has already gone public saying he would not allow Joe to appoint just anyone to his cabinet and approve them if theyre too radically left for his tastes. Of course, Mitch may be on shaky ground if he loses the two contested Senate seats in Georgia.

Its nice to look forward to four years during which it is unlikely our leaders will be a daily embarrassment on the world stage and a living menace to our rights and our democracy. I think Joe and Kamala will govern much like Obama did, with class, humility, professionalism, and a commitment to doing the right thing whenever possible.

Their opposition is secretive, well-funded, dug-in, and willing to break any laws or norms to stay on top. That is our fight now.

Never forget that the wealthy are typically apolitical, amoral, areligious, and sociopathic. They worship the twin gods of money and power and thats it. But it also makes them vulnerable and obvious after a fashion and weve seen the naked depravity, greed, and violence they wielded in the past four years.

Lets keep that in mind, folks. Your enemy isnt the guy in the MAGA hat or the person with the Biden sign on the lawn. Your enemy is the guy who pays Moscow Mitch to load the courts with unqualified political hacks who will reliably rule against unions, womens rights, the environment, clean air, clean water, equality and public education. The people who would clear-cut the Amazon rainforest for profit while we all choke on dirty air and the seas rise.

Thats public enemy number one and with Joe and Kamala on top, maybe, just maybe, we can get these folks where they live: tax them hard and regulate their criminal behavior. If they win, we all lose because our country and our planet are doomed.

Michael Seinberg is a columnist, social critic, and professional cynic. But he says hes sharpening his word processor and making new protest signs as the fight is just getting interesting.

Read more here:
The winners, the losers, and the rest of us - The Altamont Enterprise

U.S. Supreme Court

By Debra Cassens Weiss

November 16, 2020, 12:10 pm CST

Image from Shutterstock.com.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether allowing union organizers to access private property for part of the year amounts to a physical taking of property that violates the Fifth Amendment.

The Pacific Legal Foundation is representing two produce growers, the Cedar Point Nursery and the Fowler Packing Co., that are challenging a California regulation permitting union access to their property, according to press releases here and here. The regulation allows union officials to spend up to three hours per day, 120 days per year on employer property to recruit union members.

According to the cert petition, the issue in the case is whether the government may avoid the Fifth Amendments requirement to pay just compensation merely by placing time restrictions on an easement. The case is Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco had upheld the regulation, holding that it did not constitute a permanent property invasion requiring compensation. Under the 9th Circuit rule, governments could avoid a duty to pay just compensation by limiting easements to particularly high-value times, according to the growers cert petition.

After all, the right to enter [the growers] properties during nighttime hours when no workers are present would be useless to the union. The same is true for beach access easements, which governments would be happy to limit to daylight hours if they could evade a categorical duty to compensate by doing so, the Supreme Court said.

SCOTUSblog, Law360 and the San Joaquin Valley Sun are among the publications covering the cert grant.

More here:
SCOTUS will decide whether allowing union access to property is unconstitutional taking - ABA Journal

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would hear Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, a case targeting a 45-year-old California regulation that allows union organizers to briefly enter agricultural workplaces to speak to farmworkers. But the case has implications that stretch well beyond labor organizing. Among other things, Cedar Point could potentially allow businesses to deny entry to health inspectors and other government officials who ensure that those businesses are being operated safely.

The Fifth Amendment provides that private property shall not be taken for public use, without just compensation. The Cedar Point plaintiffs argue that this takings clause gives them a broad right to exclude unwanted persons from [their] property, including union organizers and that property owners are entitled to compensation if this right is violated by a state regulation.

If the Supreme Court were to hold that the government may not require a business to allow unwanted people on its premises, the implications could be staggering. It could mean, for example, that the government runs afoul of the takings clause if it requires restaurants to submit to periodic health inspections, or if it requires power plants to be inspected to monitor their emissions, or if factories are required to allow workplace safety inspectors to observe working conditions.

A victory for the Cedar Point plaintiffs could potentially endanger a wide range of land use regulations such as requirements that certain buildings install sprinkler systems to prevent a fire from spreading, or requirements that buildings in earthquake-prone areas be built to protect occupants from such quakes.

The Court could also potentially hand down a narrower ruling that singles out unions for inferior treatment. In Janus v. AFSCME (2018), for example, the Supreme Court voted along party lines to forbid public sector unions from charging certain fees to non-union members who benefit from the unions services. But the Court has, at least so far, not applied Janus to non-unions that charge similar fees.

A broad decision in Cedar Point, meanwhile, could fundamentally reshape the balance of power between the government and private property owners. And it could do so in ways that dont simply endanger workers rights but that could also potentially make all of our lives less safe.

The specific regulation at issue in Cedar Point, as Harvard Law professor Niko Bowie noted on Twitter, was the product of a years-long campaign by Csar Chvez and the United Farm Workers. Promulgated in 1975, this regulation gives union organizers limited access to agricultural worksites, provided that those organizers disclose to the employer that they intend to enter a particular worksite.

Briefly, the regulation allows organizers to enter a worksite and speak to farmworkers for up to three hours a day the hour before the start of work, the hour after the end of work, and the period when the workers break for lunch. Before a union may take advantage of this regulation, however, it must notify the government and the employer that it intends to do so. After filing the appropriate paperwork, the union then gains limited access to a worksite for up to 30 days. A union may invoke this right to enter a particular worksite up to four times a year.

Thus, union organizers are allowed on an agricultural employers property for a maximum of 120 days a year, and only for a maximum of three hours on any given day.

The Supreme Courts cases distinguish between per se takings, which are cases involving particularly significant intrusions on a persons property that are entitled to special constitutional protection, and regulatory takings, where landowners rights are more limited.

Property owners who are subject to a per se taking typically win their suit, while property owners who allege a mere regulatory taking are far less likely to prevail even if the plaintiffs in a regulatory takings case challenge a land use regulation that imposes significant limits on how they can use their property. In one classic regulatory takings case, for example, the Supreme Court upheld a New York City law that prevented the owners of the Grand Central train station from constructing a high-rise office building on top of the terminal.

Fairly few cases, moreover, qualify as per se takings. Under the Courts existing precedents, unless a particular law either deprives a property owner of all economically beneficial or productive use of their property, or subjects the property owner to a permanent physical occupation of their land, the law is not a per se taking.

Given this existing framework, Californias farmworker access rule should not qualify as a per se taking. Though the goal of a unionization drive is typically to pressure an employer into paying higher wages to their workers, the mere presence of union organizers at a workplace does not deprive an employer of all economic use of their property. Similarly, the California regulation does not give union organizers the right to permanently occupy an employers land it only lets them enter that land for a few hours a day, and for only four months of the year.

The Cedar Point plaintiffs, however, ask the Court to expand its definition of what constitutes a per se taking to include many regulations that merely allow an unwanted person to enter a landowners property temporarily.

Although the California regulation does not permit union organizers to permanently occupy an employers land, the Cedar Point plaintiffs argue that the regulation grants unions a permanent right that they can invoke against certain landowners (known as an easement in the parlance of property law). Thus, the plaintiffs argue that this case should be deemed a per se taking because the California regulation is itself permanent.

If the Supreme Court embraces this theory, however, the implications could stretch far beyond union organizing.

Imagine, for example, a city ordinance that provides that all restaurants shall permit a government health inspector to enter their business once every three months, to inspect the property for health code violations. This hypothetical ordinance resembles the California regulation in that it only permits an unwanted person to enter a businesss property occasionally, but it also grants health inspectors a permanent power to enter into that property once every quarter.

If the California regulation violates the takings clause, then its hard to see how this health inspection ordinance or any other law that requires businesses to periodically allow a government worker to inspect their property doesnt also run afoul of the Fifth Amendment.

Moreover, if the Court does expand its definition of what constitutes a per se taking that is, what constitutes a permanent physical occupation of land then such a decision could have profound implications for virtually any land development project. Fairly basic laws requiring developers to install illuminated exit signs in their buildings or to construct those buildings using sturdy, architecturally sound materials could potentially run afoul of the takings clause.

After all, if it is a permanent physical occupation of land to permit a union organizer to temporarily enter an employers property for a few hours a day, then why isnt it a permanent physical occupation of land to actually require a developer to install a permanent physical structure inside one of their buildings?

Thus, if the Supreme Court. with its 6-3 conservative majority, decides to limit the rights of unions in Cedar Point, it could open up a can of worms that could jeopardize a long list of land use laws. At the very least, its hard to distinguish the California regulation from any law permitting government inspectors to investigate whether a business is complying with health, safety, or labor laws.

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Supreme Court: The huge implications of a new union-busting case - Vox.com