What's this "deal with the devil" that Pat Robertson was talking about?

I am no fan of Pat Robertson these days. While I respect his work to support and encourage Christians worldwide, his recent shows seem to do a lot to alienate non-Christians needlessly. One of the most egregious examples of late was his quote about Haiti after the earthquake.

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," he said. "They were under the heel of the French ... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.'

"True story. And the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal,'" Robertson said. "Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another."

Why do I dignify this statement - at best, kicking a nation while it is down - with a Mod-Blog story? Because Mr. Robertson represents a lot of people, and he is referring to something that Haitians consider history. The Straight Dope took up the historical research, which points to both the points Mr. Robertson was reaching for and the facts he got clearly wrong.

The story goes that a houngan (voodoo priest) named Dutty Boukman held a meeting of black slaves and runaways at Bois Caïman in the mountains of the north to prepare to rise up against their oppressors. With the aid of an African-born priestess, they conducted a religious ceremony in which the group swore on the blood of a sacrificial pig, invoking the spirits of the forest and their ancestors, that they would live free or die. According to tradition, this was the catalyst for the Haitian revolution. Though Boukman was captured and beheaded, the revolt continued, and after much strife Haiti became an independent republic in 1804...Legend has it that Boukman offered a prayer at Bois Caïman in which he drew a distinction between the wicked god of the whites and the benevolent god of the blacks. Whether the prayer was actually uttered is debatable; nonetheless, it can be taken as a fair indication of the rebels' sentiments, namely, that they were aligning themselves with the forces of good. Clearly the idea they were bargaining with Satan was an interpretation by Christians, who figured our god is righteous, everybody else's god is evil.

It is foolish to take Mr. Robertson too seriously. He is a broadcaster and (arguably) a theologian. Not a historian. But when everyone is mocking someone, it is a good idea to see where he might be coming from.

Busting the Myths of the Democratic Nominating Process

Mark Ambinder has up a good piece analyzing the myths and truths regarding the Democratic Party's process of nominating their presidential candidate. It cuts through many of the strange arguments coming from each side.

Myth: The Democratic primary process is supposed to be democratic.

Fact: With its mix of caucuses and primaries, proportional allocation and at-large bonus delegates, its racial and gender quotas, and its layer of superdelegates, the process is anything but democratic.
And that's the point of it, actually.
In cameral terms, the superdelegates are the Senate; the other delegates are the House. The supers exist to preserve the power of the party itself by taming the passions of the pledged delegates
Since the McGovern-Frasier reforms, the Democratic Party has cautiously backed away from the principle of deference to the majority and toward the countervailing principle of protecting the rights of the minority (who were, in many cases, ethnic minorities).
The nomination process is designed to ensure that the majority does not prevail without a fight in the event that the minority of the party objects. The downside risk is obvious: in the event that there is no consensus, there is no objective way to determine who the nominee should be.

Did you know...

That in the United Kingdom (UK) they don't use the metric system? Despite my fetish for all things British, I was unaware of this fact. I was familiar with the concept of "having a pint" - I, in fact, enjoy a pint now and then. But for some reason it never clicked with me that a pint wasn't a metric unit. Not only do they use pints, they use inches, pounds, feet, quarts and any number of other measurements that we, in the US, would be familiar with. It seems that this little fact has made some in the European Union (EU) quite upset with the UK. So they started waging a fight with the Brits to get them to convert to the metric system - they put forth the argument that homogeneous measurement systems will make trade easier. But alas, the UK has outlasted the EU on this one and the EU has given up what they are now calling a 'pointless battle'. I guess this all goes to show that we have more in common with the UK than simply the war in Iraq - if not our language.