What's Left in the Church

An Annoying Personal Interlude, With Help From Jerry Garcia, Walt Whitman, Kansas, and Katatonia

2012-01-27T10:33:00.000-06:00

[Good and evil] exist together in their little game, each with its special place and special humors. I dig 'em both. What is life but being conscious? And good and evil are manifestations of consciousness. If you reject one, you're not getting the whole thing that's there to be had.
Jerry Garcia, 1969 interview with Michael Lydon, published in Rolling Stone magazine

So my spiritual life - which is a weird way of saying "my life" - suddenly seemed, at least to me, a bit of thrashing nonsense. A series of contradictions without any possibility of higher synthesis. Occasionally enraged by the shallowness, the callousness, and lack of fellow-feeling I see and hear around me, I vent my frustrations by indulging in bouts where I listen to very loud, very dark music. More than simple emotional catharsis, these moments give vent to a deep appreciation for and enjoyment of the madness that lurks in all of us. For a very long time, I resisted this, thinking it somehow wrong to let the beast within take over. Yet, as Swedish Death Metal Band Katatonia sing, the darkness will indeed rise:

Sometimes, these moments verge over a line into a celebration not only of that darkness that lies within all of us, but a letting go even of the ties that bind us to God, a rage so deep and thorough it gives vent to a curse to all:

These forays to the true dark side have had me worrying about a great many things, not least of them the state of my life before God. There is, after all, St. Paul's admonition to hate evil and hold fast to what is good. This is more than just good advice; it is a good way to take spiritual inventory.

Yet, what is the evil we are to hate? Is it simple moral failing? Is it social evil? Is it both? While St. Paul does offer in multiple places examples of what he means by the word - fornicators, idolaters, drunkards, gluttons, etc. - we have the example of Jesus who, in his life and ministry risked the calumny of the religious authorities by associating precisely with some such as these. Along with being named blasphemer, he was called a drunkard and whoremonger. How do we balance what seems to be this contradiction? After all, St. Paul warns us not even to associate with ones such as these; Christ modeled a ministry precisely to those such as these.

It helps, I think, in the first instance to recognize ourselves in that list. Who among us, given enough rope, can't hang ourselves on these and so many other sins? Who among us is not, in some manner, a sexual pervert, an idolater, a drunkard? Unless we are willing and able to honestly admit our participation in some, many, even all these sins, I don't think we are really confessing our faith to the last dregs at the bottom of our lives.

At the same time, there are resources, some orthodox, some not, that are balancing this flirtation with the depths of darkness within. In the first place, I've been treading slowly but surely*, Church Dogmatics, Vol. 2, Part 1. I can't imagine a more orthodox theologian to be digesting. Having read several of the volumes before, I am enjoying this particular read as he is, in the section in which I am currently sunk, both attacking what he called "natural theology" and dismissing apologetics. The clarity of his vision of the task of theology, and from it the deep faith that cuts through meat and sinew to the bone of human overconfidence in our own ability to grasp what can only be given, gives me a peace of mind, as well as opening up new ways of thinking through various Scriptural passages and injunctions, that is profoundly settling.

A couple nights ago, on a bit of a whim, I searched and found, in its entirety, Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself". It has been decades since I read it in its entirety. I sat at my computer, transfixed by the swirl of images, the shifting perspectives, the warmth and humanity and deep, abiding love Whitman expresses. I also chastised myself for getting caught up in the pantheistic, Romantic bungle of warmed-over saccharine sentimentality that is also a good way to describe the poem. I think both views have merit, yet neither capture Whitman's attempt. In my estimation, nothing more or less than expressing a kind of American creed was his aim. In the process, he offered a template for later writers as diverse as Thomas Pynchon and Phillip K. Dick to emulate in very different ways.

Reading through the poem this morning as I prepared myself for writing this post, I came across the following, stanza 41:

I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,
And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.

I heard what was said of the universe,
Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;
It is middling well as far as it goes--but is that all?

Magnifying and applying come I,
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,
Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,
Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix
engraved,
With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image,
Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more,
Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days,
(They bore mites as for unfledg'd birds who have now to rise and fly
and sing for themselves,)
Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself,
bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see,
Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,
Putting higher claims for him there with his roll'd-up sleeves
driving the mallet and chisel,
Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or
a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation,
Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me
than the gods of the antique wars,
Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,
Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr'd laths, their white
foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames;
By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for
every person born,
Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels
with shirts bagg'd out at their waists,
The snag-tooth'd hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come,
Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his
brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery;
What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and
not filling the square rod then,
The bull and the bug never worshipp'd half enough,
Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream'd,
The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of
the supremes,
The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the
best, and be as prodigious;
By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator,
Putting myself here and now to the ambush'd womb of the shadows.(emphasis added)

The highlighted section immediately put me in mind of a long-time favorite song of mine, with its outro verse including the words, "I sang this song a hundred, maybe a thousand years ago. No one ever listens. I just play and then I go."

In many ways as archetypically American as Whitman, Kansas epitomizes the attempt to take in everything, stir it up, and make something that both leaves the different parts clear and unchanged, yet somehow makes the end result even greater than that combination as it becomes a whole, new thing.

The same can be said of The Grateful Dead, even more so. The quote from Garcia that serves as the epigram to this post used to bother me. Whether or not I "get" it in a visceral, clear way, I have no way of judging and certainly wouldn't claim as my own. On the other hand, I feel no hesitation in endorsing it as a program we, Christian or Jew or Muslim or Hindu, agnostic/atheist, fundamentalist or liberal, evangelical or Orthodox, can get behind.

At the end of the day, in prayerful consideration of our own sinful nature, always in need of the grace and mercy that flows from the cross and empty tomb to all creation, the differences we so grandly pronounce between good and evil are far less then we might think. Which is why, I think, one can weep with those who suffer, become enraged at the mass death around us, yet also celebrate the simple miracle of a child's laugh, become entranced by the veins on a leaf, allow oneself to fall in to the arms and body of the one you love with abandon. All of it is part of God's creation, all of it is in dire need of redemption. We cannot, I believe, fully grasp this, unless we are willing to let the wolf out of its cage to roam free, and see in its blood-flecked muzzle our faces.

*One reason for "slowly" is the tendency of Barth to write paragraphs, in extremely small type, that wander over two and more pages. That and the thoroughness, exactitude, and specificity of his writing make it important to read carefully in order to take in as much as possible.

Clarifying A Couple Points

2012-01-26T16:52:00.000-06:00

OK, so I ran ahead of the available evidence, stating as fact what instead is merely an interpretation of the correlation of a couple events - the SEAL raid in Somalia that rescued a couple American aid workers being held hostage there; the State of the Union message delivered by Pres. Obama on Tuesday night. I think my backtracking in the comments on my previous post should be clear enough. The disgust I was feeling at what I felt was the crass exploitation of our military for cheap, short-term, partisan political advantage by the President led me to state that feeling as fact.

Let me state for the record I still feel that way. Let me also state for the record there is no way to disprove the statement, rendering it, at the very least, not perhaps unintelligible, but certainly something that, prudence always being better than its opposite, should be a caution as we move forward. I know that there is no evidence, and none should be forthcoming, supporting or disproving the statement. It is, nothing more or less, than my own opinion.

How, one might ask, could I come to such a hyper-cynical conclusion? I can't imagine (pp. 606-607 of linked book).

While Kissinger was being feted as the peacemaker, Nixon and Colson were having frantic conversations with Sidlinger. The pollster, who made his reputation as an analyst of economic issues, had been among the first to measure accurately the extent of Nixon's strength among Democratic working-class voters. Sindlinger had predicted to Colson that Nixon would win at least seventeen million votes from that group. "Nixon had the hardhat labor members who figured that was a tough guy who could handle Congress and all the other crooks," Sindlinger says. "I figured Nixon was a smart crook."

Over the summer and fall of 1972, Sindlinger was in close contact with Colson and Colson's deputy, Richard Howard. Early on the morning of October 26, Colson telephoned Sindlinger about the Kissinger press conference, which Sindlinger watched. "Peace is at hand" stunned him. "I grabbed the telephone and called Chuck. I was angry. 'You've just elected McGovern. My God. There are seventeen million Democrats who will vote for Nixon because he's a crook and he's tough. All the polls have Nixon so far ahead that these fellows will now vote straight Democratic.'" Twenty minutes later, Colson called back put Nixon on the line. "Chuck says we made a mistake." "Made a mistake?" Sindlinger told the President. "You've lost the election." The pollster went through his reasoning, emphasizing that the hardhats would no longer feel the need to vote for Nixon. Then he asked Nixon directly: "Do you have an agreement? Is peace at hand?" Nixon said no and Sindlinger urged him to "let it hang. McGovern would never figure out what's going on."

An hour later, Nixon telephoned again. "He asked me," Sindlinger says, "what would be the public reaction if we bombed Hanoi?" Sindlinger promised to research the issue. Before the end of the day, there was at least one more telephone call from the President. Singlinger concluded that there were problems between Kissinger and Nixon. Nixon had somehow conveyed that the concept of a settlement was "Kissinger's idea,," and there was a curious moment during one of their talks when Nixon asked how Kissinger's popularity compared with his. "I said,'You're almost equal,'" Sindlinger remembers, "He gulped."

The excitement over Kissinger's pronouncement was reflected in the press. On October 27, in a column titled "The End of the Tunnel", James Reston wrote, "It has been a long time since Washington has heard such a candid and even brilliant explanation of an intricate political problem as Henry Kissinger gave to the press on the peace negotiations." Reston would wrte two columns that week on the "Kissinger compromise," without raising any questions about Nixon's two cables to Hanoi, as made public by North Vietnam, in which he pronounced the negotiations complete. The serious allegations broadcast by Hanoi were effaced, and North Vietnam's account of Nixon's perfidy was treated as Communist propaganda. Kissinger's persuasiveness had made Hanoi's notion that it was the United States which was engaged in wholesale distortion seem impossible. The Los Angeles Times breathlessly described Kissinger's announcement as a "dramatic negotiating breakthrough," although Kissinger was really describing a negatiating breakdown. Many other key issues were also obscured. No reporter saw fit to ask Kissinger to elaborate on what he meant when he acknowledged that the agreement called for "the existing authorities with respect to both internal and external policies [to] remain in office. . ." Kissinger did not tell the journalists the essence of the bargain: that the Thieu regime would have to share political and legal authority with the PRG. That issue would remain fuzzy - deliberately so - for the next three months.

Kissinger also managed to obscure the fact that the United States was seeking to repoen the negotiations after having reached a final agreement with the North Vietnamese. He did this by telling the journalists that there had been a "misunderstanding" on Hanoi's part: "It was, however, always clear, at least to us . . . that obviously we could not sign an agreement in which details remained to be worked out simply because in good faith we had said we would make an effort to conclude it by a certain date." Nixon and Kissinger had done much more than commit themselves to a "good faith" effort to sign by October 31; they had reassured Hanoi in two cables that they would do so. Hanoi's leaders were now being told that the Nixon Administration reserved the unilateral right to reopen the negotiations. They also were being told that it was their "misunderstandings," and not Kissinger's ambitions, Nixon's treachery, and Nguyen Van Thieu's categorical opposition, that had create the difficulties.

A couple points to clarify some of the things in Hersh's narrative. Kissinger went first to Paris then to Hanoi, to meet with his North Vietnamese counterparts in a sincere effort to conclude an agreement ahead of the November, 1972 Presidential elections. Nixon, meanwhile, was wary of what the Democrats might do should such an eleventh-hour settlement be reached. Kissinger's stock in the Nixon White House had been in steady decline for a while; he was negotiating the end to what was then America's longest war without the imprimatur of the President of the United States who was, in fact, trying to undermine him at every turn. Ultimately, he would succeed; Kissinger, however, was a partner in his own demise not least by his near-constant courting of the Washington press corps that, for some reason, took his words at face value.

In an interview with Hersh, a former aide to North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho, Nguyen Co Thach, spoke of the Washington collapse over what was, for them, a preliminary agreement only being presented as a fait accompli by Kissinger. On p. 602, he is quoted as follows: "We knew that they would only like to have this understanding to move smoothly through the elections, and not to sign a peace agreement," he said. "They would like to have it setlled but not signed, so they can say there is no more to the Vietnam War. . . . They would like to change it after the election."

When the North Vietnamese realized what was going on, Radio Hanoi released the full text of the agreement, along with the accompanying diplomatic cables - American and North Vietnamese - which Nixon used as a casus belli for the single largest bombing campaign up to that time: the so-called "Christmas Bombings" of North Vietnam. The two Vietnams had already received more tonnage than all fronts in WWII, including the atomic bombing of Japan. The Christmas Bombings would increase that total by close to fifty percent.

So forgive me for even imagining a President might be so crass as to order the military to rescue some Americans in order to make himself look good. An American President undermining negotiations undertaken in his own name out of the multiple paranoias directed at his staff, the press, the Democratic candidate, the American people, and the fear that an end to the Vietnam War might lose him the election sounds like the stuff of way too many movies, doesn't it.

The SEALS Aren't Props

2012-01-26T07:24:00.000-06:00

I've been more the occasionally amused but largely apathetic spectator of recent political events. Other than occasional notes on Charlie Pierce columns in Esquire that attempt some humor, I haven't been this blase about a looming Presidential election in many years. On the one hand are the Republican rivals, currently involved in a primary campaign the singular goal of which seems to be to out-crazy one another, invoking the name of the incumbent President without any reference to anything he's actually done, or not done. Because I do not allow my children to hear lies, I am keeping them from the Republican primary campaign as much as possible. If they want fantasy, I push Tolkien's books in to their hands.

On the other hand, there's our incumbent. He needs to answer many questions. He needs to be challenged, substantively, on indefinite detention and the elimination of habeas corpus; on a policy of assassinating American citizens; on the use of UAVs in domestic policing activities; on the too-small stimulus and and monetary policy that seems more thrashing than rational; on participation in the Libyan Civil War, on-going combat operations in Pakistan, the nature of our military presence in Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines; on our opening to Burma. I could go on, but you get the idea. Presidential campaigns rarely concern themselves with the minutiae of actual governance. I understand and accept that. At the very least, however, the press and Republicans could be taking him to task on these and a host of other issues. Instead, because their base is entranced by a vision of the President that bears no semblance to the man or his policies, everything else just kind of slides on by.

For example, the other night was the Constitutionally mandated State of the Union. The Constitution merely states that the President shall give a report on the State of the Union to Congress. Up until the days of television, this usually involved sending a letter to the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate that was read in to the record. It has become, over the years, grand political theater. I awoke Wednesday morning to discover, to my surprise, that President Obama had outdone previous Presidents in his staging and set decorations.

Navy SEALs rescued two American hostages held in Somalia at the same time the President was lauding our military's finest and their record during his term. It has been impressive. In his first year, they stormed a pirate vessel in the Indian Ocean, rescuing some Americans held prisoner, killing some of the pirates and bringing home at least one to face trial. A trial for piracy . . . Visions of Jack Sparrow. . .

Of course, the feather in the SEALs watch-caps - a richly deserved one - is the operation that resulted in the death of Osama Bin Laden. Obama mentions that quite often; in his SOTU, he talked about being given the flag the team had with them on that mission. No doubt, as a patriotic American, his role as C-in-C in ordering and green-lighting that particular operation should give him enormous pride. The expansion of counter-intelligence and special operations over the past couple years, and the success of these operations (the SEALs are without a doubt the single best unit in this, or any, military), raise questions, however, not so much on questions of the wisdom of this or that op; rather they raise questions on the level of policy and practice.

Except last night. While it is nice that the SEALs did their job, as usual, effectively and successfully; while I celebrate the return of Americans held captive by bandits and thieves in a far away land; forgive me for being cynical enough to suspect the timing of this particular op. It is one thing to support, even promote, the use of special forces in new and emerging tactical situations. It is one thing to laud the performance of the SEALs, Army Rangers, the USMC, and others who do this kind of work so well.

Using the SEALs and this op as a backdrop for a political speech, however, is disgusting. I remember when liberals used to roll their eyes when Reagan used fighter-jet fly-bys at outdoor events.

Taking Art Seriously

2012-01-25T12:08:00.001-06:00

I just want to drink whiskey and sing the blues. - Big Joe Turner

Ever since finishing Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground, I've been thinking a whole lot about the way we think about art in general, and music in particular. Especially popular music in its various forms. As I wrote in my original post reviewing the book, while initially drawn to it because of this review, my understanding of the music itself, and social, political, and cultural conditions which birthed it, have changed. With Rolling Stone magazine honoring David Bowie's 65th birthday with a cover featuring a photo from the Ziggy Stardust days and a career retrospective, I think it is important to ask some questions about how we understand the relationships among art and society, and how treat artists and their endeavors.

In the first place, we need to consider the history of rock and roll and, later, rock, as it was interpreted and passed on by critics. As Edward Macan notes in his Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture, rock music's roots in the African-American musical styles of blues and rhythm and blues created, as I called it in a discussion of Lester Bangs' critical work, an ideology of rock. This ideology created a set of iron-clad conditions for considering the merit of any given work. From pp. 169-171:

Besides disliking the perceived suggestio that progressive rock's appeal to high culture lent it "superiority," the critics asserted that the style's eclecticism and appropriation of devices associated with classical music removed it too far from rock's roots in rhythm-and-blues. Dave Marsh, in speaking o the body of twentieth-century popular music as a whole, stated, "What's really marginal [to the history of popular music] is the progressive rock that has produced great albums and dew if any hit singles, while dominating critical discussion. . . . [P]rogressive rock sounds dessicated to me because it's so thoroughly divorced from the taproot of rock and roll: rhythm and blues." Lester Bands, in his vitriolic write-up of ELP for Creem, charged the band with what he considered the greatest "crime" of all: "The insidious befoulment of all that was gutter pure in rock." . . .

Furthermore, "good" music, in the critics' estimation, would not take itself too seriously. Ideally, it would be dance music, rather than music meant to be listened to for its own sake. If it did fall into the latter category, the lyrics were expected to acknowledge rock's past, and to show a certain amount of self-conscious irony. Will Straw notes that "the consistent high regard for singers such as Bruce Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, and Tom Waits, for performers like Lou Reed, who played self-consciously with rock and roll imagery, stands out in a rereading of Rolling Stone from this period" (i.e., the early to mid-1970's). Progressive rock lyrics, which grappled with petaphsics and spun out complex narratives, were considered "pretentious" and "overly serious" and were lambasted for lacking any sense of irony. . . .

If progressive rock was too complex, too grandiose, too ambitious, too concerned with art for art's sake, then one would have thought that heavy metal - certainly a populist strain of rock if ever there was one - would receive the critics' approbation. TO the contrary, however, the critics attacked heavy metal with the same fury with which they attacked progressive rock, often illogically reversing their arguments. The seminal English heavy metal band Black Sabbath was described by one critic as having the "sophistication of four Cro-Magnon hunters who've stumbled on a rock band's equipment." Another critic described heavy metal as "music made by slack-jawed, alpaca-haired bulbous-inseamed imbeciles in jackboots and leather chrome for slack-jawed, alpaca-haired, downy-mustachioed imbeciles in cheap, too-large T-shirts with pictures of comic-book Armageddon ironed on the front."

In Mark Ames review, referred to above, one passage in particular echoes, in many ways, the themes Macan highlights:

The rise of the Black Metal movement in Norway is a case of humorless dirtheads taking a joke way too seriously. The joke was Satanic rock, which Lords of Chaos skillfully traces from its early origins in Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Coven (who transformed from performing black masses on stage to perpetrating the weepy hippie hit "One Tin Soldier") to metal’s second big wave in the early 80s and the rise of kitsch Satan-rockers Venom. To our modern eyes, Venom looks the spitting image of Spinal Tap during their Smell the Glove phase, but to dirtheads who didn’t know any better, Venom was the long-sought embodiment of evil. It was from the Venom branch of evil-metal that all of metal’s more violent, "evil" forms descended, including Black Metal.
The point of Satanic rock was to scare the Normals while fucking with the minds of its pimple-faced, predominantly male (nerdoid) audience, who needed to create a counter-world, with counter-morals and counter-aesthetics, to empower the nerdoids against the cooler, more successful jocks. But metal had its rivals for the hopelessly angry nerdoid: punk, hardcore and metal’s own competing mutations. The competition forced metal’s leading edge to metamorphose into harder, faster and more violent forms, reaching its apex with the rise of Death Metal in the mid-80s. Death Metal was as violent, Satanic and musically inaccessible as metal could go, or so it seemed.

Is it the case that popular music requires, at some point, a level of ironic detachment, a dedication that never allows itself to confuse seriousness of intent with the messages the music tries to convey? Perhaps, I am suggesting, we need to consider various popular music styles not as the result only of an artist's or group's vision, but consider, instead, the web of relationships among an artist, the audience, and the musical and lyrical content, leaving to one side whether or not one can or even should address matters of "seriousness" or "irony".

Ames' writes with an almost off-handed contempt not only for the music, about whose merit he says not a word, but for the intended audience. "Humorless dirtheads" must have been the result of several minutes work before finally settling as a description of the fans of Black Metal. While it's true that bands like Black Sabbath and Venom employed Satanic imagery - in the full understanding of that word - with a wink and a nod toward their audience, even a cursory glance at Black Sabbath's history should disabuse anyone of any idea that they were either being stupid, or considered their audience stupid.

One can look at this issue from a slightly different angle by considering the history and critical views regarding another African-American musical style: jazz. Born in the brothels and bars of New Orleans, growing up in the segregated dance halls and speakeasys of Chicago, New York, and Kansas City, jazz was and remains, at its heart, a celebration of life, rooted in the blues musical form, yet never resting pat with tradition. One need look no further than two well-known works by jazz critic Garry Giddins, Visions of Jazz and Weather Bird to consider the far-different way the relationships among the musician, biography, attentiveness and seriousness toward musical composition, and audience are treated within the circles of jazz criticism. Another example is Ralph Ellison's seminal essay on Charlie Parker, "Bird Watching", in which Ellison deals honestly with Parker's failings and the terrible toll they took on him and those around him even as he saw them as integral to understanding the man and his music. Critics may chuckle at Ozzy Osbourne's life-long battle with substance abuse, but an author looking to integrate that same struggle with the music Osbourne has produced over his very long career would be considered pretentious in the same, yet opposite, way Ellison's writing on Parker is offered as both "thoughtful" and considered de riguer.

Most rock critics would take the epigram at the top of this post, a quote from legendary rhythm and blues singer Joe Turner, as the only "proper" way to break through and understand rock and roll. Doesn't this approach, however, lead us to set to one side the reality that one can be serious about one's art, professional and appreciative of one's audience, and still have a bit of fun along the way? At what point do critics and others believe it necessary to step back from making music and say, "Thus far and no farther lest someone think I'm too serious"? At what point does the real joke, such as Lester Bangs' infamous insistence that Lou Reed's two-album release Metal Machine Music is high art, get lost on critics who cannot see beyond their own limited set of categories?

I think it is long past time to rip up the guidebook for music criticism that places a premium upon not taking one's work too seriously. Such a view, as the above quotes attest, also belittle the intended audience, who, from the critics' point of view, just aren't sophisticated enough to "get" the joke. That these same critics are blinded by their own set of analytical conditions not to see, for instance, Black Metal as Norway's national answer to Britain's punk, both in its social and cultural roots and intent, should be a cautionary tale to anyone who believes it possible to understand any musical style within a set of assumptions rooted far outside that style.

Scardey-Cat Democrats

2012-01-24T09:21:00.000-06:00

We're hovering somewhere near the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade, which, of course, means our inability to discuss the matter as a people will be highlighted as each side - Dead Babies! You Hate Women! - screech at each other in a ritualized ragegasm that is as predictable as it is boring.

I thought this approaching date on our national cultural, social, and political liturgical calendar would be a good time to chide the Democratic Party for stirring up the fears of so many potential voters. The prime time for the anti-abortion crowd to get their mojo working was the previous decade. Instead, they picked fights over stem cells and a non-existent practice called "partial-birth abortion" as a way to keep the money flowing and the activists active. While it is indeed the case that the low-level domestic terror campaign against women's clinics has resulted in fewer such places operating, restricting practical access to a variety of services including abortion, as a legal matter, the status quo on abortion rights - revised in Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v Thornburg in 1989 - is under no threat of drastic change.

All the same, all one need do is whisper "pro-life candidate" and the screeching from Democrats begins. Not only will abortion be outlawed and the doctors and women involved become criminals; contraception, pre-marital sex, sex education in public schools, the introduction of mandatory chastity belts, the sterilization of all women of all ages - there is no end to the claims by pro-choice proponents in the fear-mongering over this issue. Common sense and a glance at recent history should be enough to quiet the chilling tales of what might happen should this or that candidate be elected to this or that office.

I shall confess here and now that I used to let this kind of thing sway me. Not just on matters regarding reproductive choice and women's health and the regulation of sexual activity. On all sorts of things. I operated out of a mindset that saw political opponents not as opponents, but as threats. Standing now outside the largely false dichotomies and ridiculous irrelevance of so much of our politics and public discourse, I yearn for just one figure in politics to say, "You know, Mitt Romney has his pluses and minuses as a person, but the question before us is whether or not the policies he proposes would be in the best interest of all Americans."

Of course, I also yearn for warp drive technology so I can go to another planet where things make sense.

It isn't just Republicans and conservatives who practice the politics of fear. I wore partisan/ideological blinders long enough to buy in to that notion. It certainly didn't help that much of the politics of the previous decade consisted of waving the bloody shirt of 9/11 around to silence anyone saying anything about Pres. Bush's policies. All the same, it just isn't true that only conservatives and Republicans play upon our fears to get people motivated to support candidates.

I grew tired of being afraid some time ago. Pres. Obama used to talk about hope, but I'm guessing the coming year is gonna be dire warnings about everything from the fragile state of the economy to Republican spies in our bedrooms policing our sex lives moreso than vague pledges of fealty to hope. Hope sounds nice. Fear gets the epinephrine pumping. I'm tired of thinking my fellow citizens are either too stupid to understand reality, or too elitist to understand how the real world works. I am weary of the name calling.

I am not speaking now of the politicians. I have little doubt they will continue to stoke our fears of all those horrid Christian thugs waiting to guard the wombs of our women even as they lock Muslims and atheists up forever under Pres. Obama's practice of lawful indefinite detention. What better way to make sure folks get the message than the hint that our country teeters on the edge of a chasm, and only our heroic efforts can pull it back?

I am speaking more about partisans, particularly those who write on the internet. It would be nice if those folks tamped it down a bit. Stop yelling. Stop seriously discussing the alleged threats to the Republic posed by a Romney/Gingrich/Paul/Santorum Presidency. Even should such an unlikelihood come to pass, we made it through eight years - EIGHT YEARS, FOLKS! - of George W. Bush. Stop calling them wingnuts and Rethugs and Christianist fascists and all the other names out there.

Our times are uneasy. The folks who support Republican candidates are our fellow citizens, uneasy by the uncertainty of our times. Making them not just folks who think differently than we do, but our enemies, a threat to the survival of the nation may be good politics. It is also bearing false witness against our neighbor. The nation will not collapse should a Republican be elected to the White House. Our rights and freedoms are under far more threat from the actual practices of the incumbent, particularly regarding indefinite detention, the recently passed NDAA, and the targeted assassination of American citizens (even if I occasionally voice support for this or that actual assassination) than by some spectral Republican candidate.

Man up, Democrats. Stop being a bunch of pussies. Seriously.

Some Honest Republicans

2012-01-23T17:46:00.000-06:00

With an entirely new well-pump and all the fixin's being installed, I've spent most of the day perusing stories on the intertoobz instead of writing. I came across this story, and it got me thinking.

The campaign manager of Arkansas Democratic congressional candidate Ken Aden arrived home last night to find his child’s pet cat murdered on the front porch with the word “LIBERAL” scrawled across its lifeless body.

The usual denunciations are flowing. No doubt many will call it "cowardly".

On the contrary, it is an act from one of the few honest conservatives out there.

If it is, indeed, the case that liberals are not just our fellow citizens who have slightly different views regarding the best way to govern the country, but active, hostile threats to the Constitution of the United States, then aren't acts of violence against them, including intimidation, not only acceptable but morally justifiable? Seems to me, like all those doctors killed by right-to-lifers, there is most definitely a logic to this act that makes "cowardly" unintelligible in context.

Which, perhaps, should lead some few of us to shut the hell up. Stop the fear-mongering about what might happen to America if a Republican is elected President. Stop claiming that America might collapse should Obama be re-elected. Stop saying that Pres. Obama is destroying the country. Stop the apocalyptic rhetoric, right and left, that sees the US perched on the precipice of collapse depending on who is elected in November, and who is doing the viewing.

I don't believe for one moment that candidates from the two major parties will stop it. They have far too much invested in using fear-mongering to energize an electorate that just doesn't see any candidates addressing the real issues - real, normal, bread-and-butter issues of proper governance and Administration - that need to be faced.

We, however, can do better. We can refuse to be cowed by the rhetoric from some, "Beware Newt/Mitt/Santorum because they'll take away your abortion rights/impose Christianity/steal the middle class's money". None of that is going to happen. Neither with the alleged disarming/destruction/Islamification of America should Pres. Obama be re-elected. The House Republicans are obstructionist and, largely, incompetent. That doesn't make them dangerous, just a good source of both amusement and frustration. Mitch McConnell is not a threat to American Democracy from his perch as minority leader in the Senate; he's a ridiculous clown who is grasping at what little power he has.

The election of liberals or conservatives will not cause the collapse of the US. Neither will it save us from the nightmare in which we find ourselves.

Until we can all accept this reality, the true believers - killing cats to intimidate potential candidates for public office from any particular ideological perspective - are both honest and brave. If you listen to our public rhetoric, that is.

Thinking In Jesus Christ

2012-01-23T08:49:00.000-06:00

The past week has been fruitful in any number of ways as I have engaged in a longish discussion on humility, how one approaches living, and understanding that living, as Christian in the fullest sense of the world. I've been around and through and over the repeated insistence that part of our humble approach toward this whole thing loosely called "being a Christian" is the reality of the openness of the future, an openness rooted in the Good News that is the heart of the Biblical witness.

It was my great good fortune to learn of a long-running blog by a doctoral candidate in theology at Edinburgh, Scotland. For those who may not quite get it, there is irony in the title, albeit, I think - in keeping with the blog writer's admiration for Barth and Moltmann (among others) - a dialectic of irony. In any event, as a way of introducing myself to what the blog offers readers, I checked out this series on theodicy, the bugaboo of theology. If all the things we say about God are understood correctly, the reality of evil becomes the great stumbling block, over which far too many folks trip on their way to hearing the Good News that God's Love and Grace, incarnate in Jesus Christ, has, in his death and resurrection, enacted the reconciliation between God and fallen creation.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the series on theodicy is among the best explorations of the topic I have read. Not least because it takes the matter head on. Evil is real. Death still holds sway. Whether it's the evil of children dying across the world from preventable diseases because pharmaceutical companies refuse to provide the drugs needed to prevent them at cost or even free, or the brutal reality of the husband who beats and belittles his wife and children - unlike the Love of God, who wears just one face, evil is constantly shifting, ever-changing, trying to stay one step ahead of the judgment upon it.

While not even trying to justify or "explain" evil in any way, Byron makes clear in this series that the only way to live in the midst of the on-going reality of evil and death, is in the faith and hope and with the love that flows through the cross and out the empty tomb. When I repeat what T. F. Torrance, the late great Scottish Reformed theologian said about the best theology - that it is thinking in Jesus Christ - this series is precisely what I mean.

A Bunch Of New Songs

2012-01-22T12:49:00.000-06:00

O sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvellous things.
His right hand and his holy arm
have gained him victory.
Psalm 98:1

An on-going discussion, from a different angle . . .

Meet, if you would, Tony MacAlpine:

I was introduced to him, quite literally, less than two hours ago. Not new, perhaps. New to me, however. Which begs all sorts of questions, not least about what, precisely I thought I was doing with all those music posts for so long.

Then, there's a truly new band. They just released their first collection of music (I really hate calling them albums anymore since I buy it all electronically). They're from Texas. They're a mixture of classic psychedlic rock and good old fashioned Texas blues a la Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King. Their release, Conversations in D Minor, was one of the gifts I gave myself with my iTunes bucks.

Then there is the discovery that even in darkness and the celebration of evil, one can find beauty. There is something about the songs of the Norwegian Black Metal band Emperor that I just find . . . entrancing. I am the last person to say I like the whole screaming-rather-than-singing thing that has infected so much rock. Yet, it works here so well, in combination with the whole sonic, tonal approach. I cannot help but call it beautiful. Dark beauty to be sure, but that, too, is a part of God's creation.

Also, I should mention the fun I've been having using the various artist radio stations on Spotify. If you don't have it, I highly recommend it, especially over the far overrated and tired Pandora.

So, there's always all sorts of new things to hear, new sounds to encounter and think about. New songs to sing to the LORD, like the Psalmist says.

In Other News . . .

2012-01-21T13:03:00.000-06:00

What a crappy day. Between the sick wife and no water, I do believe this is one of those days I shall, at some point, look back upon and shake my head in wonder as to how I made it through.

I've been wanting to read the new defense strategy the White House announced a few weeks back, but other interests and things have interfered. I have, at least, the link to it. In the near future, I hope to take a look at it.

A Single Word

2012-01-20T08:40:00.000-06:00

Last night's Christian Believer class was on the doctrine of atonement. A great benefit for me was a deeper appreciation for this particular teaching, and the way various "theories" - ransom, substitution, moral example, Christus Victor - all work together to illumine the depth of the confession this one word contains. Along with discussing the Scripture and historical readings for the week, each week there is a video presentation of a Christian scholar discussing some aspect of the topic for the week. This lesson, it was Leander Keck, New Testament scholar and former Dean of the Divinity School at Yale. In the course of Keck's discussion, he notes the links between the Hebrew "kippur", as in Yom Kippur, "kapporeth", the word used in Leviticus to describe the lid or covering of the Ark of the Covenant, and the word the rabbis used in the Septuagint - hilasterion. Interestingly enough, a couple centuries before the LXX, St. Paul uses this very word in Romans 3:25. Here, from the NRSV, is Romans 3:21-26:

21 But now, irrespective of law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. (italics added)

I was unaware not only of the word itself, but of the long history of scholarly dispute over its use by St. Paul, and what, precisely, he means by it in this context.

This morning, I typed "hilasterion" in to Google (a lesson here for those who aren't sure how to work this whole Internet thingy), and found, among the 27,600 hits available in the first three-tenths of a second, these three articles that make clear just how unclear the meaning of this word is.

For the moment, I want to set to one side the debate itself. As a total novice, a newcomer to it, recognizing just from the reality of such an extensive debate, I have no opinion beyond accepting that such a thing as a debate over the meaning of this word exists. The main point in highlighting this is two-fold. First, it is a constant source of amazement how much of our understanding of our faith can hinge upon words the meaning of which is just not clear. In this case, much of our understanding of St. Paul's teaching on the meaning of Christ's death hinges on just how, exactly, we understand this particular word.

Second, I bring this up as further testimony in an on-going discussion on the reality that I am constantly learning new things, reminded of my own ignorance. Which is why, while I would defend to the fullest extent my understanding of the faith at any given time, I would never under any circumstances presume to claim that understanding as final.

Most definitely, I would never assume to claim clarity concerning the Biblical witness, which is why life-long study and the surprise that accompanies it, is part of my life.

What Makes Something Real?

2012-01-19T07:29:00.000-06:00

In 1950, my mother made her final installment payment, and took the subway from her apartment on E 51 St. near Second Avenue over to Brooklyn to pick up her new sewing machine. She would always remember that ride for two reasons. It was her first trip to Brooklyn. Instead of going under the East River, the train rode on tracks underneath the bridge. My mother has always had a phobia about heights and bridges, so she made sure, on her return trip, to find a route that went under the river.

It was a Necchi, that sewing machine. Complete with sewing machine cabinet, it had an electric treadle. Sitting on the sewing machine stool, which opened up to store sewing material, she pressed her knee against a small lever that operated the motor, turning the machine. The Italians made great sewing machines, the Olivetti and Necchi. The former was probably more popular. The Necchi, though, was built to last. My mother's, built and bought during the Truman Administration, sits in their house to this day, fully functioning, with all the original parts and extras. Needing only the occasional squirt of oil to keep the moving parts from stiffening, it should run well for another sixty years.

At this point, you're probably wondering what the heck my mother's old sewing machine has to do with the alleged subject of this post. Trust me when I tell you, the relationship could not be more vital.

Capitalist ideology limits an understanding of reality to that which can be exchanged for another thing of equal value. In advanced capitalist economies, the value of any item is the price it fetches on the market of goods. Anything that cannot be so priced, anything that is not both reified and reduced to its price on the market, is not real. The inexorable, totalitarian logic of capitalist ideology pushes society toward denying any other reality to all things. If it doesn't have a price tag, if no one wishes to pony up some money for it, it isn't real. Even marketing flirts with this in the midst of denying it. Consider the Master Card commercials that list the price of various purchases, then ends with the tag line that, these particular items, when used together by people to make memories, create an experience that is "priceless". Yet, isn't this Romantic nod toward human sentimentality actually enforcing the worthlessness of the experiences in question? After all, they would have been impossible without first purchasing the items in question; they, it would seem, are the truly and really valuable items. Because they have an exchange value. Because they have been and can be priced. The rest is, as noted above, so much sentimental guff.

The creation of useful items and their exchange was once a means to an end. The reality of these items was not determined by their exchange value, but by their usefulness for the purposes for which they were made. Some of that same process lingers even in advanced capitalist society, where items of greater durability tend to have higher value than those of less durability. Once purchased however, and actually put to the use for which they were intended, their value as determined by the market decreases substantially. Unused, however, they hold their value. Consider, for example, how collectors value an unopened toy as compared to one that has been opened and played with.

There is another way to think of what makes a thing real. Built and sold on the market, some items, like an old Necchi sewing machine, become more than just an electrical/mechanical contraption that is useful for making clothes and curtains, for stitching together a child's Halloween candy bag or stuffed animal. The item, used for the purposes for which it was constructed - a toy that's played with, say, or a settee that is sat upon - becomes an integral part of the lives of the people who use it, or are effected by its use. Its reality, then, is determined not only by its usefulness, its success at performing the tasks for which it was constructed. By being a part of the lives of people who share experiences due to that success, its usefulness is appreciated; its value becomes a function, then, not of its potential or actual price on the market as a commodity. Its value rests now on its vital connection to the life-experiences of the people who use it. It is far more real as a link in the warp and woof of human life than its moment on the market, a bar code attached.

We human beings make things real. What is real has value. This word, much misused and misunderstood, is not a function of market forces or reducible to any given's commodification. A thing becomes what it really is when it becomes integrated into human living. Until then, it is formless, a heap of matter without use or any reality of its own. Whether its an antique sewing machine, a yo-yo, a car, a chair, what-have-you, the inexorable press of capitalist ideology, reducing these to their exchange value distorts, at a fundamental level, what provides them with reality. Their value does not reside in what others are willing to pay for them. Their value, hence their reality, is the result of human use, the function and role they play in human interaction.

Because my mother made use of that old Necchi sewing machine for decades, its reality has become an integral part of my family's life, its memories and experiences. Reducing its reality to the amount of money others might be willing to pay for it strips away that reality, reducing it to little more than a heap of metal, sitting on a block of wood, shapeless, nameless. This is the lesson I've learned from thinking about this old piece of Italian craftsmanship. It is not real because it has a price; it is real because, put the use for which it was made, it provided for real experiences for our whole family.

The Beginning And End Of God-Talk

2012-01-18T07:37:00.000-06:00

Along with ruminations on William Stringfellow, Per Crucem ad Lucem also has a variety of ruminations on the thought of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. Surprisingly, perhaps, for a contemporary English prelate, Williams has a long CV, and a recent work is criticized, from the perspective of method, in this thoughtful post.

Reading it, I found echoes of recent thoughts I've expressed - on the way doing theology is a never-ending process; my own warnings at resting safe on any particular conclusion; the way the Spirit has of disrupting even the most cogent self-satisfaction - and heard the warnings and criticism of similar thoughts expressed by the Archbishop.

As a response, I can only say that theology is not a "thing" humans do. We too often associate it with other human intellectual pursuits, in particular philosophy, from which it often borrows vocabulary, and with which it remains in dialogue. Yet, the two things are very different. Indeed, theology can rightly claim not to be an "intellectual pursuit" at all. Rather, it is a faithful pursuit of understanding, striving to make clear using different vocabularies that which we proclaim in our life of faith. The beginning of philosophy, it is often said, is wonder. Wonder that there is something rather than nothing. Theology, on the other hand, does not begin with wonder.

It begins with praise. It begins with the faithful acknowledgement of the reality of salvation God has granted in Jesus Christ, to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. We encounter this reality in our life of worship, in the sacramental practices by which the Body renews itself and restores us. We encounter this reality in prayer, as the Spirit takes our mumblings and stutterings and makes of them something coherent. We encounter this reality on the pages of Scripture that begin the journey of unraveling the encounter between God and creation.

While I do indeed, and will continue to insist, that we should never rest easy with what we feel are, in the words of Archbishop Williams, "a captivity to trivial optimism … and lying cliché", this should not prevent us, even as we continue to try to make sense of this marvelous mystery in which we find ourselves living, from continuing to participate in the praise and thanksgiving which birthed it. Unlike the kind of doubt and skepticism that can pervade philosophical thought, even the most thoroughgoing doubt and pervasive God-questioning rarely leads an honest theologian from saying, praying, and singing the reality that God's love, offered to the world in Jesus Christ through the Spirit that is the Love that binds Father and Son together, is the strange and wonderful thing that keeps them going.

The end of theology, like its beginning, is always and only praise. I wouldn't even claim a more enlightened praise, or a more deeply-felt thanks. Rather, I would just say one with a bit more clarity. It is one thing to put all one's works, including one's theological musings, under the shadow of the Cross. No matter how faithful, now matter how brutal, no matter how honest they will always fall short because they are human works trying to make sense of the God who is Wholly Other. Which is precisely why prayer and praise, song and sacrament, living and working in the Spirit are always the end of theology, just as they are the beginning.

Something New

2012-01-17T09:21:00.000-06:00

It seems the simple reality that we can never know enough in order to be certain about what we believe is far too difficult a concept for some. Which is fine. Resting in their certainty, they may well have the kind of peace that passes understanding in their own way.

Me, I'd rather assume, from the get-go, that I pretty much don't know anything.

Over the past few days, thanks in no small part to the links provided by the blog Faith & Theology, I have encountered the most generous blessing. Yet another theological blog, Per Crucem ad Lucem, has explored the thought of Anglican lay theologian William Stringfellow. When I say "explored", I mean that I stopped at nine posts on various of Stringfellow's writings and his life.

I wish to post here, in part, some of what Stringfellow wrote, in a book entitled Instead of Death on how the transformative power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer changes even our sexuality. I would urge anyone to go and read this, indeed all, the posts on Stringfellow. The tantalizing hints in the works cited seem to show he was one who, as T. F. Torrance has said of all good theology, thinks in Jesus Christ. Anyway, enough of my babbling. Here's Stringfellow:

How then shall one discover who one is as a human being if sex provides neither the means nor the answer? And how shall one be emancipated from the power of sin in sex and in other realms as well?

In Christ.

In Christ. That means in beholding Christ who is in his own person the true human, the person living in the state of reconciliation with God, with himself, with all men, with the whole creation.

In Christ. That means in discerning that God ends the search for self by himself coming in this world in search of men. For the person, [sic] who knows that he has been found by God no longer has to find self.

In Christ. That means in surrendering to the presence and power of death in all things including sex and , in that event, in the very midst of death, receiving a new life free from the claim of death.

In Christ. That means in accepting the fact of God’s immediate and concretely manifest love for human life, including one’s own little life. Finding, then, that one’s own life is encompassed in God’s love for the world.

In Christ. That means in knowing that in the new life which God gives to humans there is no more a separation between who a person is and what a person does. That which one does, in sex or anything else, is a sign of who one is. All that one does become sacraments of new life.

In Christ. That means in realizing radical fulfillment as a person in the life of God in this world; such radical fulfillment that abstinence in sex is a serious option for a Christian though it is never a moral necessity.

In Christ. That means in enjoying God’s love for all humanity and all things in each and every event or decision of one’s own life.

In Christ. That means in confessing that all life belongs to God, and but for him there is no life at all’.

In a previous discussion of the relationship between Stringfellow's possible homosexuality and his life of faith and theology, the blog writer cites a discussion of some thoughts of Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury. This summary of Archbishop Williams does indeed capture the living heart of what Stringfellow says in the above passage:

1. The gospel, the good news spoken by God to the world in Jesus Christ – is God’s command. To put it the other way around, the command of God is not extraneous to the gospel, as if God, while saving us in Christ by the Spirit, said, ‘Oh, and there’s another, unrelated thing I wanted to talk to you about’.
2. The connection between gospel and command is intelligible. That is, it is possible for us by attending to the Gospel to understand how and why we are commanded and such understanding is the fundamental task of Christian ethics.
3. The gospel so understood provides the criterion by which we discover what truly is a binding command upon us. Faced, for instance, with a range of biblical commands about slavery, women, usury, polygamy, and sexual relationships, the fundamental theological question is not, ‘Which of these is culturally conditioned?’ but ‘How, if at all, do these matters relate to the gospel?’ Theological ethics is a matter, we might say, of taking every thought captive to Christ.
4. Because this attention to the gospel is the fundamental task of Christian ethics, any approach that simply stops with the apparent demands we find in Scripture, without asking whether and how they connect to the gospel, fails to take the command of God seriously.
5. If there is some intelligible connection between the gospel and sexual relationships, there would be a binding Christian sexual ethic (a command of God regarding sexual behaviour) even if there were no passages in Scripture that explicitly treated sexual matters.

These thoughts, this way of thinking in Jesus Christ, with the Gospel as the central reality of our identity, bringing new life out of all the empty tombs in which we dwell, are tantalizing indeed. I am going to enjoy, over the ensuing days and weeks, reading more from Stringfellow. It is a good thing to encounter a challenge, something new and different, life-affirming and faithful.

Time Doesn't Stand Still

2012-01-16T09:09:00.000-06:00

As a way of clarifying why I refuse to rest easy with my understandings of Christian Scripture at any particular time and place, I think an obvious point to make would be this - time and place are always changing. I am not the same person I was yesterday, last year, ten years ago. I have no idea who I will be tomorrow, in five years, in twenty years.

I often reference the Ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Few works have had the impact on the way I understand the faith and my life in that faith. It is important to understand this work that it was never finished. Indeed, some Bonhoeffer scholars think he would be unhappy with the publication of various notes and manuscript pages, some separated by years, that lack organization or any central theme. Which is why it is with caution I approach anything he has written in these pages; they are incomplete, lacking a center. All the same, the two things that have made the biggest impact upon me seem, to me at any rate, to be complete ideas. They open the reader to possibilities.

In this case, he makes it clear that "ethics" is and always has been a questionable name for the study of that part of the Christian life that includes not only the moral life of the individual and community, but worship and liturgy, private devotion and prayer, the relationship between the church and the state, and what was known, once upon a time, as the Orders of Creation. Bonhoeffer makes plain his discomfort with this by contrasting the study of "Christian ethics" with a consideration that what is right and proper for Christian is not a concern that their actions and lives are ethical or moral; rather, referencing abundant Scriptures, not least the saying of Jesus that we are to seek the Kingdom of God above all things, and concludes that it is our lot not to pursue "the good" (however we envision that particular word), but rather, each and every day, to seek in prayer and devotion, to do the Will of God.

Why each day? Simply because each day is new. We must set to one side the idea that God's timelessness has anything to do with our perception of what God is calling us to be and do. Like a blind man in a room with an elephant, we can't believe we have it all figured out from one, or even two, or perhaps many, encounters with various parts of the elephant.

We are being pulled forward in to God's Holy future, the true creative force in history. For this reason, each day brings not only more clarity, a smidge closer to that final Triumph for which we all live. It also rolls the stone in front of the tomb that has become our past. I would submit that God's will for us, however we understand that phrase, does not change. I would also submit that our understanding of that will for us, our perception of it, our openness to the Word for us, changes all the time. Everything changes for us, each and every day. Why should our understanding of Scripture, our perception of the whispered Word of the Spirit in our lives be any different?

A Question For Dan

2012-01-14T09:36:00.000-06:00

A peripheral point, I suppose, but before I make my own position clear I do have to ask Dan if he really means what the following sentence seems to indicate he means:

I don't find the Bible, for the most part, to be that hard to understand. I think its teachings are generally consistent, reasonable, understandable and pretty danged obvious (if challenging and hard to live up to, short of God's grace). I don't find the Bible to be a puzzle in the least.

Speaking only for myself, I find understanding the Bible to be a journey full of traps and tricks, a lifetime-long search for understanding that never ceases. I refuse to rest in this journey, because within the dead words on the page, the Spirit constantly urges and whispers, comforts and convicts, binds and frees me. Reading the Bible as a far too comfortable middle-aged man in the second decade of the 21st century is a far different experience than a far too self-enamored young seminarian in the last decade of the 20th century, or a far too earnest and serious youth in the decade prior to that.

In addition, I find myself challenged by new readings, using all sorts of tools of which I was either unaware, or ignorant in their inner workings. It can become bewildering, discovering new meanings, new ways of reading, new questions to ask the text, finding new questions posed by the text.

The Bible is Heraclitus' stream. Which would be frustrating were it not the stream that flows from the Throne, the Living Water that, once tasted, leaves us never thirsting again.

So, Dan, I'm wondering if you really mean what it sounds like you're saying here. I find the Living Word that resurrects the text as surely as the dry bones of the Valley are made to dance by the Spirit of God's grace a challenge both in its whole and its parts. The questions it asks, the challenge it poses, the threat to my self-satisfaction; all these and so much more change not only with each phase of my life, but each passing moment of that life. The only reason I return to it each day is that I believe the sentence passed on my previous sense of success and understanding is a window to the only real Life that matters.

We Are Whole

2012-01-13T09:11:00.000-06:00

PLUS Model Magazine has an article, with accompanying photos, concerning models, their bodies, and the effect of images of models on women's perception of their bodies. While generally acknowledged that the manufacturing of an unrealistic potential body image is not a good thing, fashion and pop culture continues to promote the notion that thin is not only the same thing as beauty; with assistance from health care and nutrition, we are told that thin also equates with health. Thus, an image such as the one below is not only considered "not beautiful", but also, should one read the comments to the accompanying article, not healthy.

I want to suggest a couple things. First, the idea that mass-produced images of thin women and beefed-up, defined men (all those six-pack abs, you know) promote unhealthy assumptions and understandings about what is and is not beautiful and healthy rest, I believe, on an underlying consumerist approach to the human body. Our bodies become just another product, to be purchased in a gym, a health food store shelf, through diet plans and exercise regimens. We view our bodies as things, products, whose value can be reduced to the amount of money and work we are willing to invest in making them properly presentable. With the endorsement of doctors and other health care professionals, we have the additional impetus for changing our bodies that comes from a desire to be healthy. Yet again, however, our bodies become a thing, detached from who we see ourselves as being, a means toward an end - health - unrelated to our whole selves.

I would further suggest this ability to understand our bodies as things separate from ourselves rests with the Cartesian division of reality into "thinking substances" and "extended substances". While many folks point to "Greek philosophy" and the ways the Christian Church adapted it for its purposes through its long sojourn as reigning intellectual framework in the west, it was really Decartes, with his radical separation of the physical world from what he understood to be an equally real, supremely better world that, for lack of a better word, we can call mind or soul.

At its heart, Biblical anthropology - the understanding of what it means to be human culled from reading the Christian Scriptures - is almost comically holistic. Not just we human beings, but all existing things, are whole things. Modern science, with its emphasis on the biochemistry of brain function, mapping the ways our brains operate under a variety of stimuli, certainly backs this up. Our bodies are not things, separate from some other thing we call our "selves". There is no ghost in the machine. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible views human beings as beloved creatures in our entirety.

We haven't always been clear in articulating this reality. With the advent of Cartesian dualism and its reign of error for the past four and three-quarter centuries, we speak of "hearts" and "souls" and "minds" as if they were things that could or did or should operate apart from the "gross" functions of the human body. With the rise of consumer capitalism, and the assistance of deeply-rooted transcultural misogyny, as well as bad readings of Genesis 3 that place the blame for the Fall of humanity on the shoulders of the first woman, we have created an entire industry that demands women consider their bodies a thing to be bought and sold, to be repaired or willed to fall in to disrepair, always with the aid both of "beauty" and "health care" and "nutrition" experts who are more than willing to make a buck from people's desire to correct any deficiency in their lives.

As I noted above, it isn't just women. Men, too, are targets for such really bad beliefs. While not nearly as visible, whether it's the size of one's biceps, the conditions of one's abdominal muscles, or penis size, there are literally billions of dollars to be made from men who are convinced their bodies are a thing to be improved, tinkered with like the car in the garage on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

There is no easy way out of this trap. Not only centuries of thinking in the wrong way about what it means to be human, but industries with millions of dollars in potential profits as well as the weight of scientific understandings regarding obesity, body mass indices, and the like are all mixed together to create this superstructure within which we are socialized to think both of beauty and health. With both understood as products, and our bodies reified as separate entities from our "real selves", to be manipulated for goals that exist outside what they actually are, we face a daunting task in clearing this rubble and coming to understand who we are as persons, as beloved sons and daughters of a good God who made us whole beings, creatures with bodies, unique mammals whose brains have evolved to give us self-awareness, the ability to reason, to imagine, to love.

Our bodies are not things. We are not in any way distinct from our bodies. Beauty is not a product to be purchased, either in an image or through the variety of industries that offer their assistance in getting it for us. Health is not a product to be purchased on the open market. Before we do anything else, we need to rid ourselves of these cancerous ideas, these inhuman views of what it means to be human beings.

State-Sponsored Terrorism

2012-01-12T07:04:00.000-06:00

I chuckle when I hear and read the oft-repeated claim of Iranian involvement in and support for international terrorism. Not that I think they are innocent. I just find it fascinating that the abundant evidence linking the United States to a variety of terrorist acts and groups somehow never gets brought up.

I got to thinking about all this after I heard our Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Kissinger, "categorically deny" US involvement in the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist yesterday. The only difference between these days and back in the good old days of the Cold War is Pres. Obama all but admitted the US has been seeking any means to disrupt Iran's nuclear research. What makes all of this even more funny - well, except for exploding cars and dead bodies, I suppose - is the US has yet to release evidence of the dread Iranian nukes. Over a decade ago, they were five years away from raining atomic death upon us. They are still, according to recent reports from both the CIA and Israel, about a decade away. Are they that incompetent? Have the disruptions in their research program noted in the linked article - three other targeted murders, "mysterious explosions", and a computer virus unleashed on Iran's internal security networks, including the one with their nuclear data - continued to push back the date of the inevitable Iranian bomb?

Or could it be, as the UN continues to say and Iran continues to insist, that Iran is doing peaceful nuclear research?

The US would be more credible if the frothing dogs of so much of our discredited foreign policy establishment hadn't spent the better part of three decades trying to spark a war between the US and Iran (well, except for that one time we sent them weapons so Oliver North could give the proceeds to one of our terrorist clients, the drug-running Nicaraguan Contras; so, I suppose by a circuitous route, that counts as sponsoring terrorism, huh). Just the other day, Max Boot, one of those so-called "establishment scholars" who enjoys imagining other people fighting and killing and dying in wars he dreams up, insisted that the "anti-bombing side" (what a strange construction) had yet to offer any convincing arguments. These folks revel in destruction.

While not insisting that Iran is a blushing bride in the state-sponsored terrorism brothel, I think it fair enough to note that the US is the madame. It may well be there is abundant evidence of Iran's nuclear program being specifically for a weapon for use against Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other regional targets. It may well be that the ongoing low-level conflict in all its variety continues to push back the inevitable development of an Iranian nuclear weapon.

The least all involved could do is be grown ups about this. Not that I expect any US Secretary of State to stand before the press and say, "Sure, we killed 'em. I'm damn proud of it, too!". We could, I should think, understand that we Americans have hands just as bloody as any other state sponsor of terrorism.

Mad Season

2012-01-11T07:29:00.000-06:00

With Mitt Romney all but divinely ordained Republican nominee for President after the New Hampshire results last night, I think it is important to wonder at the strangeness of this political season. The Republicans have been trying to convince voters who among them is crazy enough to hold that title - Republican Candidate for President. It isn't enough that some, like Jon Huntsman and the putative nominee, have surrendered every scruple and principle in the dogged pursuit of the nomination. It isn't enough that true oddballs like Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum are spoken about in the deep measured tones one used to hear in reference to McGeorge Bundy and that old war criminal Henry Kissinger (but he's a professor, you know). It isn't enough that Newt Gingrich put even pride on the line, and rather than wait for a public outcry for his presence in the race, has actually campaigned, only to remind people exactly why the whole party got rid of him thirteen years ago.

This whole spectacle has taken place in a bubble tough enough to prevent any reality to penetrate. There have been serious discussions about all sorts of things that have nothing to do with reality. In his speech last evening upon winning New Hampshire, former Gov. Romney proclaimed the President, who began life the peripatetic child of a wandering scholar, then settled for borderline poverty in the care of his grandparents only to rise through hard work and some luck and an acceptance letter from Harvard University to become the President of the United States, to hold "resentment of success".

And none among the normal folks drowned out the cheers with their laughter.

Meanwhile, the silence on the Democratic side due to Pres. Obama cruising to renomination, has been oh-so-briefly broken by a spectacle I have longed for: Glenn Greenwald and Katha Pollitt, two lions of the left, smacking the crap out of one another all because Greenwald made the not-uncontroversial point that the only candidate talking about real issues also happens to be the one candidate who hides his sociopathic tendencies the best - Ron Paul (the part about sociopathy is my addition).

For those not familiar with either, Greenwald is a former civil liberties attorney who rose to prominence in the left-blogosphere in 2006 with searing attacks on the Bush Administration. He jumped from writing a private blog to getting a steady paycheck from Salon with the publication of his first book, How Would A Patriot Act?, and success has made his pomposity and self-righteousness coalesce through some weird personal chemistry to become, in a word, an asshole of the highest water.

Pollitt, a poet and columnist for The Nation, has those qualities so many on the left treasure the most. Not only does she have the ability to speak for whole swaths of the population without blushing, she manages to do so while still publishing a memoir in which she confessed that she considered herself emotionally abused by a man who later dumped her, then spent months semi-stalking him - the whole call-and-hangup routine; driving by his new digs - which only shows that left-feminists can be as creepy as anyone, I guess.

The subject of the dispute, Ron Paul, first gained some lefty attention in 2008, because he was the only Republican candidate for President who talked in negative terms about the Iraq War. It took me about ten minutes of digging to realize that Paul is The Last Bircher, a dogged defender of the ideas of Robert Welch who, sitting in a hotel room late one night, dictated to friends (who dutifully wrote down each word in what has become known as The Blue Notebook, which I used to own but lost in a basement flood) a rambling dissertation on the insidiousness of the Communist Conspiracy, which included, among others, then-Pres. Dwight Eisenhower. While Paul does, indeed, speak on matters from American Imperialism to economic exploitation that need to be addressed, he does so from a deep well of sinister beliefs concerning the myriad conspiracies that control these dangers to the Republic. Worse than a broken clock that may well be right twice a day, Rep. Ron Paul is the street person you meet, take for a cup of coffee at the diner because he starts talking about the family he lost and wishes to get back, only to discover he lost them to aliens who put an implant in him. The coffee you just bought him may well dissolve the chip, or it may well hold more insidious drugs that will make of him even more the slave to the aliens.

In other words, Ron Paul is just bug-shit nuts.

Greenwald noted, with his usual panache and flair for detail, the many ways Paul is the only "mainstream candidate" (doesn't writing that indicate a sickness in our polity) addressing these issues. Ms Pollitt made the not unimportant point that Ron Paul is kinda nuts, and a white supremacist to boot. Had she stopped there, I do believe she would have been fine. She couched her argument, however, in the measured tones of shallow identity politics*, in the process managing to claim to speak for all sorts of people. Not only "lefty women" but "people of color" (God, I really detest that last phrase, reducing the matter of race to pigment), it seems, were forthrightly behind Ms. Pollitt's disdain for Paul and his long-time residency in crazytown.

With that, the fight is on. Since the goal in these things isn't so much "let's find out if Glenn Greenwald made some valid points, while Katha Pollitt reminded the world that Ron Paul is loony", but "I'm right! No, I'm right, and you're a closet-crypto-fascist! Well, you're a hypocritical blowhard who doesn't care about "lefty women" and "people of color" as much as I do!", it has entered the popcorn-popping stage.

In other words, these two are worse than children. My sincere hope, at this point, is they just beat the crap out of one another.

Meanwhile, is it at all possible to ask a question? Is anyone going to make Pres. Obama face up even to one failure? Not the imagined failures and betrayals one reads about in the fever swamps of the right, mind you. I'm just wondering if we can have a thoughtful discussion of Mr. Obama's failings, instead of crazy on the right, and a duel to out-pompous one another on the left.

*I say "shallow identity politics" because all politics are about identity. In Pollitt's case, however, it is identity-as-physiognomy, genetics is destiny politics that are not only shallow, but deeply, deeply troubling.

Finding Beauty In The Oddest Places

2012-01-09T09:47:00.000-06:00

I am happy to note an addition to the roll of my usual readings. The blog Per Caritatem offers thoughts on a variety of subjects, much as I wish I could do. The latest offering concerns what could be called, for lack of a better phrase, a sociology of knowledge that refuses to grant pride of place either to the signifier or the thing signified. Rather, each exists in mutual relation to the other by means of a convention that, nevertheless, provides shape and meaning that transcends each.

Moving freely between French post-structuralist understandings of language and an examination of the atonal music of Stravinsky, the post suggests in a far more clear, nuanced, and detailed way something I have long proposed: rather than determine the aesthetic quality of any particular musical experience as something to be judged qua music we need to consider any musical composition in light of all sorts of things within which its significance may lie. This is why I believe it is possible to teach people to hear a variety of musical expressions as beautiful precisely because they fulfill the purposes for which they were intended. Rather than judge any particular piece of music - from Bach to Black Sabbath - by an arbitrary canon created for a particular purposes, it might be better to consider the conventionality of such aesthetic tools.

Traditional western musicology hears non-standard musical styles, from the varieties of indigenous folks musics to non-Western music in its marvelous variety, in ways ill-suited to the task at hand. Which does not render such musicological analytics erroneous in and of itself. Rather, it is a simple case of choosing the wrong tool for the job at hand.

Rather than unlearn what we have learned, as Yoda would insist, we need only consider that our notions of beauty, that arrangement and relationship among parts and the whole that affect us, are not universal. The experience may well be; that which we call beautiful, however, may differ greatly, and some may be unable to appreciate in a visceral way, the beauty that would grasp another immediately, and (perhaps) unmediatedly (to coin a word, apparently).

I consider myself strange for any number of reasons. Not the least of them being that I find myself praising the beauty in each of the following. My guess is most would find, perhaps, one or another, beautiful while dismissing the rest as either pretentious nonsense, noise for noise's sake, or (perhaps the most devastating critique of all) passe, irrelevant to our life hear and now. All I can say to others is simple enough: Hear it as it was intended to be heard, by those for whom it was composed. This is the first lesson in opening up oneself to the variety of beauty that human beings create in the world. Don't judge a work of art. Let the work judge you.

Salvation Be Not Proud

2012-01-09T08:35:00.000-06:00

The Faith and Theology blog, includes among many other wonders, occasional epigrammatic posts by one Kim Fabricius. He calls them "Doodlings". His latest offerings include the following:

If Christianity is unique, it is in declaring not the forgiveness of the sinner but the forgiveness of the righteous. The righteous too must repent – precisely of their rectitude.

Obviously, I insist you go read all of them. This one, however, struck me for its roots in the Biblical testimony, its thoroughly theological grounding in the Trinitarian economy of salvation, and its relevance in a world that is awash in phony Christian piety.

My prayer today is that I submit to the judgment that my desire to be righteous, to stand before God and humanity as a good person, is the spear that pierced the side of the suffering Christ. My hope is that I would always prefer to sing that I am without one plea when summoned to judgment by the One who has been judged in my place.

Some Advice From The Psalms

2012-01-08T08:52:00.000-06:00

I was pleased to see that one of the Psalms for this morning's Daily Office reading is 146. I offer, with no commentary, this short, sweet, poem:

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith for ever;
who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the strangers;
he upholds the orphan and the widow,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

The Lord will reign for ever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord!

Keep this in mind as the endless political season plods on.

Which Story Is True?

2012-01-07T10:36:00.000-06:00

I started yesterday's post complaining that the morning had been pretty awful. And it was. God-awful. There are days it just seems the whole effort of trying to make clear what it means to be a Christian, to live that life faithfully and in full knowledge that I shall always fail at it - all that isn't worth it. You see, there are people out there who, trash the name of Jesus whenever they speak it. Am I "questioning" their faith? Not at all. I am saying, right out loud for all the world to hear, that whatever they're talking about, it isn't the faith in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, their blathering and carrying on, full of hate and division, rage-gasms of bigotry and belittlement make a mockery of the cross of Christ because they are serving the one thing the crucified Son of God tossed aside as he carried that cross up the Place of the Skull - power. Whether it's political power or social power, economic power or cultural power, these folks and the myriad like them who prance around mouthing the words "Lord, Lord" should remind us that the devil, most assuredly, believes who Jesus is, what Jesus does.

If that sounds kind of harsh, well, I'm not apologizing for it. Reading through today's Daily Office readings we get the real story, the whole story, the only story, from the banks of the Jordan as Moses prepares for his own end, and the new beginning for the people he has led through the desert for so long; we hear Jesus recall this event as he tells listeners that the Bread of Life, the true gift that gives life in the wilderness of this world in which we are to wander together, is nothing more or less than Himself, his body; we hear the Psalmist declare the greatness of God, the wonder and power and grace of God toward those who fear God; we read St. Paul praise the tiny group of folks in Colossae who have heard, and in whom the Spirit has moved, offering them hope in the midst of confusion, strength to face the trials that come from being citizens of the Kingdom Christ offers to us, a kingdom of light and redemption and forgiveness.

So which story is true? Is the bullshit we read from people like Mike Adams and Rick Santorum and all the rest of the phony "Christians" who want our eyes closed while we pray to the god they made up so they can reach in our pockets and go through our purses for money - is that what the Bible is talking about? Is the craptastic nonsense from self-appointed religious leaders, whose lust and greed and gluttony and pride are on display for all the world to see the faith of the One who offers us His own flesh as the True Bread of Life? Are we renewed by the constant badgering about how gays and Muslims and atheists are going to destroy our world? Does any of this have anything to do with the peace and light we have as people bought at the price of the blood and life of the Son of God?

Do you understand now why I might be upset? There are the lies the people pursuing power tell the world, and there's the simple truth of the Gospel, a story that stretches from Moses through Jesus to our own day, a story of simplicity, of Divine presence and the promise of light and life to come. The world, which the Fourth Gospel reminds us, did not know or receive the Word that came lighten its darkness, can perhaps be forgiven for being confused. Which message is which? Who are the followers of this Jesus, the heirs of the promise of Moses, the descendants of the humble community in Colossae facing persecution?

We who are claimed by the blood of the risen Christ are heirs to a simple message. We are to bear witness to the unfathomable love of a God whose ways are not our ways, whose love for us is as great as the distance between our creaturely realm and the heavens where God sits enthroned. We are to celebrate a forgiveness of the breach between ourselves and God, and between one another, offering the Bread of Life as strength for the journey. The world is a place of hatred and lies, a place of violence and depravity, and yet God loves us, right here in the midst of all this demonic debauchery, coming down in the carpenter of Nazareth to tell us that this creation is far too precious to let go. Each of us, and all of us - all of it, from supernovae to mosquitoes - is the product of a prodigal love to which our lives are to bear witness.

Any other message, any other claim, any other words are lies. It's that simple, really.

Of course, God loves Mike Adams and Rick Santorum. They, too, are the precious children for whom the Christ suffered and died, and in whose resurrection we believe and hope we have a share. When they call upon the name of god, however, it isn't the God who is known as love. When they seek to divide us, they are not appealing in the name of the Son, whose body is the Bread of Life that creates community. When they dehumanize and deride others, their words are not inspired by the Spirit of Life, the Spirit that reaches down to lift us all out of the sinkhole of violence and death that is the world that doesn't want to believe there's a way out.

Which story is true? The only answer to this question, I guess, depends on what you wish the world to be. Do you look around and, like Jesus as he stood gazing down on Jerusalem, weep because of the boundless love that is repeatedly scorned, yet tread onward because that love is not one born in fear, but is the very essence of the power of God, revealed in the powerless, despised, spat-upon criminal hanging on the cross? For me, this is the test: Do you look upon the horror and hatred and violence and weep from a love that knows no end? Do you still carry a tiny flame of hope in your heart because you still believe these things do not define the world that is God's, and that God refuses to let go? Do you hear the cries of those whom the world despises and call them brother and sister?

There is only one Way, one Truth, one Life - it is the scorned and beaten, crucified and risen Jesus, the Messiah. We who bear the marks of the crucifixion in our own lives must do a better job of making clear that our story, a story of boundless forgiveness, of unrelenting hounding by a God who refuses to take our "No!" as final, is the only real story. All the rest is just crap, lies told by those who would take this glorious treasure for their own ends.

A Different Perspective

2012-01-06T08:48:00.000-06:00

This morning has been a wreck. I usually take some time to peruse the news, and I can't help but feel outraged and enraged by what I read. I detest reacting to things like this. I had even planned to write something from the class I lead on Thursday evenings at church, Christian Believer. Then, it got all muddled and fuzzled in my head, and I became even angrier at the way people keep stomping the name of Jesus in the dirt.

So, why not talk about what I did yesterday morning?

At nine a.m. I arrived at Cornerstone UMC, and met with Dave, a retired USAF pilot. He drove me out to a little airport outside Huntley and introduced me to his plane, a Cessna 170A built in 1951, which he keeps in immaculate condition.

He walked me through his usual pre-flight routine and checks, then we hopped in and soon we were 1500 feet above sea level, which means about 600 feet above the suburbs.

About fifteen minutes later, we were out over Lake Michigan, flying south.

We flew by Chicago. From 1500 feet up and a couple miles out over the lake, this is what Soldier Field, the Observatory, and the Shedd Aquarium look like.

We flew as far south as the Museum of Science and Industry, then Dave banked left and climbed a thousand feet for the trip back north. From that height the plane was finally above the tops of the tallest buildings in Chicago. The skyline from that vantage point is . . . well, it's nothing short of breathtaking.

We headed back west, then somehow, flying by the seat of his pants and with a little help from some landmarks, we found, first, our house:

And the church:

I was given a rare treat yesterday, an hour and a half of my life that offered beauty, a unique perspective on the world, a chance to see and experience a kind of freedom and joy that not everyone gets in this life. I remain humbled by the thought that I, even I, had this opportunity. I am a very blessed man.

Frayed Ends Of Sanity

2012-01-02T08:16:00.001-06:00

The only gift I asked for Christmas is Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind. Ever since I read this review several years ago, I thought it would be a worthy volume for the small but important musical section of my library. Well written, thoroughly researched, with an attention to the extra-musical milieu and activities that makes clear this was as much social/political movement as music scene, I would recommend it to anyone interested in the intersection of music, social issues, politics, and culture. All the same, my reaction to the book is very different than Mark Ames.

He writes:

The rise of the Black Metal movement in Norway is a case of humorless dirtheads taking a joke way too seriously. The joke was Satanic rock, which Lords of Chaos skillfully traces from its early origins in Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Coven (who transformed from performing black masses on stage to perpetrating the weepy hippie hit "One Tin Soldier") to metal’s second big wave in the early 80s and the rise of kitsch Satan-rockers Venom. To our modern eyes, Venom looks the spitting image of Spinal Tap during their Smell the Glove phase, but to dirtheads who didn’t know any better, Venom was the long-sought embodiment of evil. It was from the Venom branch of evil-metal that all of metal’s more violent, "evil" forms descended, including Black Metal.
The point of Satanic rock was to scare the Normals while fucking with the minds of its pimple-faced, predominantly male (nerdoid) audience, who needed to create a counter-world, with counter-morals and counter-aesthetics, to empower the nerdoids against the cooler, more successful jocks. But metal had its rivals for the hopelessly angry nerdoid: punk, hardcore and metal’s own competing mutations. The competition forced metal’s leading edge to metamorphose into harder, faster and more violent forms, reaching its apex with the rise of Death Metal in the mid-80s. Death Metal was as violent, Satanic and musically inaccessible as metal could go, or so it seemed.
And here is where Norway, the comic straight-man character in this dumb, bloody saga, comes in. Norway is not only a completely humorless society (it banned Monty Python’s The Life of Brian for being too offensive, leading to ads in rival Sweden boasting that the movie was "so funny it was banned in Norway!"), but worse, a deeply oppressive society, in a recognizably bland, caring, pious, Social Democratic way. Which raises an interesting question: Do boredom and blandness "count" as real suffering, and if so, do they justify murder the way other forms of oppression make murder seem a likely, even understandable response? The Black Metalists of Norway think so.
The humor and empty boasts inherent in Death Metal were lost on Norway’s youth. They took Death Metal literally, and quickly discovered that it wasn’t "evil" or "authentic" enough. There were too many "poseurs." And more important, too few genuine corpses for a scene that claimed to be so obsessed with death and violence.

To be honest, I, too, considered the "Satanic Metal" of bands like Venom and Slayer to be a ridiculous pose, a marketing scheme designed to ensure press and sales among the target market, teenage boys who are unsure of all sorts of things, and find both reassurance of a certain understanding of "maleness" as well as the catharsis that comes from listening to very loud, aggressive music. I used to think that the Black Metalers were too stupid to get the joke. I used to think the fans who started reading Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible or dabbling in fascist politics might be better off in a community theater troupe.

I don't think that way anymore. On the contrary. While it is true enough that Venom were, indeed, Spinal Tap in the flesh - the authors provide a snippet of lyrics from a Venom track that includes the line "We eat the vomit of the priests"; excuse me if I do not take this seriously - and that Slayer's toying with dark imagery was just that, and careful attention to some of their lyrics betrays a defiance against violence, against war, against senseless, meaningless death. While the death metal genre certainly toyed with certain aspects of dark imagery, and their songs are hard, fast, and obsessed with, as the genre's name implies, death, that in and of itself isn't "evil". While there are comic elements, and self-conscious seriousness and a desire for authenticity that drove some over the edge in to criminal behavior, it is difficult to come away from this work without understanding that there is, at its heart, something evil not only about the music itself, but the whole scene.

In an interview included in the book, the lead singer of the Black Metal band Emperor, Ihsahn (for some reason, members of black metal bands, at least in Europe, adopt stage names, a way of faking it to prove authenticity; or something) said this about life in Norway, on page 219:

Black Metal wanted to be in opposition to society, a confrontation to all the normal stuff. Everybody needs some excitement, and if you look at youth today, they're all very boring.

In my town all they do is have their cars and they drive up and down the one main street. They have nothing else to do - it's a kind of competition for who the finest car and the loudest stereo. They basically live in their cars. Those who are younger, who don't have a car - they sit at the side d the road and look at the cars. Their lives are extremely boring, and I can see that some people want more out of existence, they want to have theor own personality and expression which makes it impossible to be associated with all those meaningless humans who walk around everywhere.

In essence, Black Metal was Norway's Punk, it's Grunge, a musical expression of youth frustration with a stifling status quo. Like some branches of punk, and unlike the far more apolitical American grunge, Black Metal had a political component that veered far to the right. Some Black Metalers moved away from the anti-Christianity of vulgar Satanism, through the more sophisticated Satanism expressed by LaVey and embodied by someone like Ihsahn, to the anti-Christianity of a kind of heathenism dedicated to a revival of ancient Nordic religion that includes, most definitely, more than a flirtation with National Socialism in its Norwegian varieties (the book includes a sketch of Norway's wartime leader Vidkun Quisling who espoused an ideology he called Universism, a pantheism that befits most well-read mental patients).

At the beginning, Black Metal was a tiny movement, if the word fits, of a few bands that could attract, at best a few hundred fans to rare shows. The shows were rare because the fan base wasn't there to sustain performance. The early bands like Mayhem and Burzum - the latter wasn't really a band, but a one-man project by the above-mentioned Varg Vilkernes - released self-recorded and produced records that have managed to survive, somehow. The original lead singer of Mayhem, a Swedish youth given to extreme lapses in to depression and self-mutilation, ended up blowing his brains out with a shotgun; the authors helpfully provide a photo. Mayhem's leader, and the leader of the scene in general, was a pampered youth whose real name Oystein Aarseth wasn't boss enough. He adopted the stage name Euronymous. Along with leading a band and starting a record label - it included the two aforementioned bands as well as Emperor, Dark Throne, and Immortal - he also opened a Black Metal record shop in a rundown section of Oslo. Called Helvete - Hell in Norwegian - the shop was atmospheric, although from the outside the authors point out it was little different from the massage parlors that were its neighbors. The walls were painted black, there were skulls liberally placed about, it was lit by candles, and it soon became the focal point of the Black Metal scene. Ames is quite right that there was a certain humorlessness about it all, with the corpse-painted band members and fans walking around in black.

It would be easier to laugh, as Ames did, if it weren't for the dead bodies associated with the musicians, the burnt churches in Norway first, then Sweden, Germany, and France, and the generally depressive haze that hangs over both the musicians and the fans. The book is as much a true-crime book as a chronicle of a musical form and its social milieu, due not least to the prevalence of criminal activity, from burning churches in Norway to the murder of an anonymous gay man in Lillehammer in the summer of 1992 by the drummer of the band Emperor to a band of confused teenagers in Fort Myers, FL who called themselves "Lords of Chaos", going on a crime spree that included arson, robbery, assault, and finally murder. Led by a charismatic young sociopath, their ultimate goal was to sneak weapons in to Disney World on their senior trip and murder African-American guests who also happened to be in the park.

I would be willing to grant even to the more intelligent and thoughtful purveyors of this music - and Ihsahn of Emperor, a band that is still around and whose music has a majestic, almost operatic quality to it, comes across in his interview as intelligent, thoughtful, serious but never earnest - a bit more leeway were it not for the prevalence of dead bodies. Removed from its original context in Norway as a form of social and political protest against a stifling mediocrity imposed for national benefit, Black Metal becomes less political, less intelligent, and more simple-mindedly nihilistic. In America, bands like Buffalo's Cannibal Corpse, Tampa's Deicide, and Britain's Cradle of Filth seem to revel in shocking dress, behavior, and a kind of youthful overindulgence in the whole Sturm und Drang of anti-Christianity. This disgust is only slightly lessened in the case of Cannibal Corpse, whose lyrics are indecipherable. Even reading them while listening it becomes impossible to make any correlation due to the lead vocalist's hoarse grunting.

While an expression of youthful discontent at the benign oppression in a wealthy, indulgent society, Black Metal's seamy underside of arson, violence, and murder as well as its indulgence in racialist, fascist politics* makes it far less attractive despite its occasional forays in to musical territory that one can only describe as beautiful.

*The book includes a rare interview with Anton LaVey of San Francisco's Church of Satan. While certainly intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful, LaVey also comes across, pretty clearly, as a far-right political and social personality. His remarks against consumerism, for example, make me almost wish I had never said anything about American consumerism. Knowing his background, I always figured LaVey wasn't very serious about the whole Satan schtick; he started off as a carnival barker, and was a small time hustler as well. I assumed he indulged in Satanic fantasies as a way of making money a la L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology. It seems, sad to say, he is quite comfortable with his mix of Nietzschean philosophy, human potential group dynamics, and what he calls an aesthetic that is similar to National Socialism with its enjoyment of drama and dynamic expression. In short, he seems to have been the real deal.

A Prayer For A New Year

2012-01-01T12:08:00.000-06:00

It is so easy to surrender to despair. It is so easy to grow blind to the evil around us. It is so easy to stop our ears from hearing the cries from the billions around the planet who suffer. It takes no effort to throw up one's hands, insisting that we cannot change the world, that we are helpless, powerless, nothing.

My prayer for the New Year is that we see in the eyes of our fellow men and women precious children of a loving God. Every single one of us has been bought at a great price. The greatest gift we can give them is the understanding they are of infinite worth because of what God in Jesus Christ has done for them. Weep with those who mourn. Bind up those broken. Visit the lonely, the prisoners, those most despised in a world that finds it easy enough to dehumanize. Give your time, your energy, your resources, as much as you can give for those the world has said are irredeemable.

My prayer is that we are no longer afraid to hope. My prayer is that we are no longer too aggrieved to believe. My prayer is that we have eyes and ears and lives open to love those around us who are called unlovable. They, too, just as we, are children of a loving God, for whom Jesus came to sacrifice so that all of us, and each of us, could have life, and that more abundantly. We must endeavor to do this in our actions, in our lives. Not just in words.

That is my prayer for 2012. All of us, and each of us, can give to the world that which is greater than the pearl of great price, that which is more wonderful than a treasure buried on a plot of land. Let us, all of us and each of us, be the widow who searches for the lost coin, the shepherd who travels through the bramble and rocks and thorns for the lost sheep.

This is my prayer. That we live as God in Christ through the Spirit would have us live - for this world for which God gave everything. This world, and each person in it, is the most precious thing there is. We should live so that the world comes to believe this is true.

My Predictions

2011-12-30T07:30:00.000-06:00

The title is supposed to be ironic because I don't believe in predicting the future. I know that my family will enjoy another week in Disney Resorts in March. I know there's going to be national elections in November. I know that spring will follow this winter.

Beyond that, couldn't tell you.

Based on previous experience, I'm guessing that a bunch of people across the political spectrum are going to say and do stupid, occasionally criminal, stuff. I also am pretty sure some conservative will say something liberals think is outrageous and it will become the hot-topic for a few days. Then, a liberal will say something conservatives think is outrageous and the cycle will repeat itself. None of it will mean very much, but it should be fun.

On the religion front, people who don't know anything about it, or any specific religion, will write millions of words about how silly it is. Again, doesn't mean much, but it should be a lot of fun. Nothing feels better than that deep satisfaction that comes from telling the world someone is being mean to you.

I feel safe predicting that about 90% of the music that will be released to the public, both on major labels and independents, will be, at best, mediocre sound sludge. Quite a bit of it will be crap. This time next year all sorts of people will either be moaning about how awful the year in music was, how wonderful the year in music was, or how the hipsters/Baby Boomers/music industry/rock critics/stupid listening public have destroyed musical entertainment. Again. If you look carefully enough, these same general complaints go back to the rise of popular music in this country at the end of the 19th century. Someone is always pissing in someone else's tea, apparently.

I'm not trying to be cynical here. I'm just saying that most of the things people get in high dudgeon about don't really matter all that much. The things that really matter, though, usually pass unnoticed and unremarked upon. If I made New Year's Resolutions, mine would be simple enough: Pay attention to what really matters. Let other people get their panties in a wad over things that don't matter.

I'm Not Insulting Anyone

2011-12-29T07:42:00.000-06:00

Some people don't like to be called out for being bad people. Surprising, I know. Who wants to have the world know that, at heart, they have deep ugly recesses in their hearts filled with rage and disgust directed at their fellow human beings? If the past generation or so has taught us anything, it's no longer acceptable to be a bigot.

Except, of course, there are still bigots out there. They just don't like being called out for it, because being a bigot is socially unacceptable, so they deny-deny-deny.

I, for one, do not consider it a personal attack to call an ignorant person ignorant. When they demonstrate their ignorance for all the world to see, repeatedly, then it isn't an insult. It's just a description of . . . their ignorance. When an individual repeatedly expresses bigotry, calling them a bigot isn't an ad hominem attack. It is just calling things as they are.

If I said they were so ugly they were born prematurely because their mother's body couldn't stand them, that would be an ad hominem attack. If I said they were so stupid they couldn't breathe without cue cards reminding them, that would a personal attack. Calling someone who repeatedly demonstrates ignorance "ignorant" isn't an insult.

Just as people get all up in arms when someone notes that public figures, or bloggers, or writers, are lying - not prevaricating, being misleading, misstating the facts - I'm not sure why this is even a problem. The question of lying, for instance, is one I find fascinating. People will go to great lengths to excuse others from the charge of lying. For me, the test is really simple. If a person makes a statement that is contrary to fact, that's a lie. Do they know it is contrary to fact? With the multiple resources available to ensure factual accuracy, getting facts right is one of the easiest things in the world. So, when Michelle Bachmann claims that the HPV vaccine is dangerous, then tries to insist that she is merely relating what others have said, she is lying. In the first instance, the HPV vaccine is not dangerous; about ten seconds on Google would clear that up. In the second instance, repeating something someone else says about a topic that one does or can know is factually inaccurate is . . . lying. How is this hard to figure out?

I actually have a pretty simple standard for whether or not a person is lying. Person "A" says "X". Several people mention to "A" that "X" is false. Person "A" continues to say "X". That, folks, is lying. Even if Person "A" did not know in the first instance that "X" is false, once it is pointed out that "X" is false, Person "A" not only has a moral duty to make clear that he/she is wrong; Person "A" has a moral duty to make sure that, in the future, "X" is not presented as true.

Again, this isn't rocket science.

When a person doesn't know something, yet makes claims about understanding and insight and knowledge, repeatedly, and gets all manner of things wrong about said topic; when others, trying to be helpful point out a variety of errors in the first individual's claims, and that person continues to make claims rooted in ignorance, then that person is being both ignorant and untruthful. Not "misleading". Not "misstating the facts". They are both ignorant and, of course now, they are lying.

Again, this is first-grade moral clarity here, folks. The reason it's so simple is because it is.

It isn't "name calling". It's simple description. I'm not sure why any of this is a problem. Yet, it is.

Rick Santorum Gets Something Right

2011-12-28T09:11:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, Talking Points Memo's Livewire noted that former Senator and current candidate for the Republican nomination for President Rick Santorum said Pres. Obama "is against both free markets and the founders' idea of individual liberty." One tends to scoff when Santorum speaks, yet on the latter point, he does have something right.

In the recently passed Authorization Act for the Department of Defense, FY 2012, Section 1301, subsections (a) and (b) have received some attention, albeit too late for people to actually do anything about it.

Sec 1031. AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORIZATION FOR THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE.

(a) IN GENERAL.-Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.

(b) COVERED PERSONS.-A covered person under this section is any person as follows:
(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.
(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.

In essence, Congress has given blanket authority to the President to arrest and detain anyone, anywhere, who may have, in some way or other that is never defined, supported not only the terrorist attacks ten years ago, but ongoing terrorist activities.

Sounds like Pres. Obama isn't too fond of freedom to me.

Back in September, Jonathan Turley, writing in The Los Angeles Times, made the point even more bluntly:

One man is primarily responsible for the disappearance of civil liberties from the national debate, and he is Barack Obama. While many are reluctant to admit it, Obama has proved a disaster not just for specific civil liberties but the civil liberties cause in the United States.

Turley revises and extends a tad:

President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the "just following orders" defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

While I'm pretty sure Rick Santorum doesn't give a fart in a tornado for civil liberties, he did manage to trip over the truth despite his ongoing efforts to be the most risible of an admittedly risible bunch.

Those who argue that, somehow, electing a Republican candidate will make things worse haven't been paying attention. Obama's signature on the Defense Authorization Bill, not even fighting to get this section removed, is just the latest in a series of blows against civil liberties. It is difficult to imagine a President actually expanding the policies of the Bush Administration, but Obama has achieved that with relish. Yet one more reason to refrain granting him my vote next November.

A Christmas Story

2011-12-25T12:33:00.000-06:00

I suppose there is no better time, except perhaps Holy Week, to confess a sense of inadequacy in regards matters of faith. I have been feeling . . . well, let's just say I've been battling a sense of my own ultimate unworthiness in the face of the Gospel story. One hears the Good News, and it seems impossible the simple message of salvation - a free gift, to those loved beyond measure - is really meant for one such as I know myself to be. Not that I'm a horrible person. Just . . . faced with the reality of the whole thing, I have just felt myself without a plea, without a single leg upon which to stand.

I confessed to Lisa, before worship this morning, an overwhelming sense of my own unworthiness, of being beyond redemption. She cried for me, as I cried for myself, and she promised to pray that I would understand, anew, the promise of redemption that has been, is, and will be mine.

Then, in worship, I was overwhelmed with the presence of the Son, through the Spirit, for the sake of the Glory of the Father. The whole story seemed to unfold in my head and heart and I believed, in a new way, that this story was for me, too. I felt called forward to see the baby, offered a chance to hold him by his parents who smiled and insisted. The tiny hands, the marvelous baby-weight in my arms. . . Such joy.

On the north wall of the worship space at Cornerstone hangs a cross. Like all Protestant Churches, it is empty, signifying both its centrality and that this instrument of death is not the end of the Jesus story. As we sang Christmas carols, after having taken communion, I could see first, the tiny baby, then the man, hanging there, smiling down through the blood and tears. Then, the cross was empty and I could hear, from an empty tomb, the laughter that is the true final word of the story. The baby who sleeps on a bed of straw, wrapped in rags to stay warm is the man tortured and murdered by an Empire who does not want to hear a word of freedom, of salvation. The New is the biggest threat to all Empires, and Jesus was nothing if not the first real new thing to come to the world. Our capitalist orgy is as much about removing the threat implicit in the Christmas story as it is a celebration of the birth.

The story, in its fullness, doesn't really begin with a remembrance, an anamnesis of that long-ago night in Bethlehem. It began on the first day of creation, because it is the story of God's prodigal, never-ending love, an obstinate refusal to take our no as the final answer. Even if that means substituting his yes for our no. We are caught up in the great adventure, the challenge God poses for us - do we recognize and celebrate that magnanimous grace that is ours in the babe of Bethlehem or do we refuse, perhaps even laugh it off as a fable, a myth, a story for gullible ignoramuses too purblind to accept the reality of its falseness?

Today, I received the best gift anyone could ever give me. In a new way, not for the first time, and I know not for the last, I received assurance that my name - yes, mine - is called by the babe in the stable to come forward and kneel. I received the blessing of seeing that babe look down on all of us with love born in pain, and forgive us. I received the blessing of the Divine laughter that is the first sound of Easter, the only real Christmas carol worth singing.

Merry Christmas to all of you, to each of you, and may the peace of Christ, the peace that passes all understanding, be with you.

Sounds Of The Season

2011-12-24T06:56:00.000-06:00

From the silly

To the traditional

To the Baroque

To the brand new

Whatever fills your heart with joy, whatever sound helps lift you up from the humdrum to the heavenly, may you allow music to accompany over the next few days as you enjoy family and good food and friends. May you also remember a tiny baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, that most unlikely sign of the arrival of the Blessed Son of God.

Merry Christmas to all and each of you, to those you love. May you find peace and happiness and most of all patience in the upcoming year.

Surrendering

2011-12-23T07:49:00.000-06:00

I know it's two days before Christmas and I should be sucking down eggnog and going through my wife's sugar cookies faster than she and the girls can bake them, but I've decided to buck the holiday trend - how many times can I tell the same story before I want to kill myself? - and write about something that has troubles me for quite a while. Our political class, as many have noted, haven't seemed to outgrow high school. Of course, our pundits aren't much better, treating the campaign for the Presidency as a run for Student Council, only less interesting and certainly less important. The recent spate of politicians, in particular in the Republican Party, act as if they either never got over high school, or are exacting revenge on those who troubled them so in their years of acne and decadence.

While the rest of us were growing up, going to college, getting jobs, getting married, these folks never - quite - left the hallowed halls strewn with the books knocked from the hands of the nerdy kids. The echoes from the gymnasium keep them up at night. If they sleep, some awake in flop sweat from a nightmare that features the voice of their gym coach screeching, "Dodgeball!!"

Sarah Palin, for instance, we were told, was the star of her high school girl's basketball team. She was called "The Barracuda" which, I believe, had little to do with her skills on the roundball court. After all, when was the last time you saw a barracuda do the perfect fade-away 3-point jump shot? I'm guess the nickname had more to do with what was, in all likelihood, her being one of the small coven of girls who control the social life of most middle class high schools. Being referred to as "Barracuda" - a large, nasty, aggressive, predatory fish, a kind of salt-water relative of the Wall-Eye - would not be something most people would carry with them in later life, indicating, as it should, a streak of nastiness and even viciousness that is hardly belied by one's physical assets. Yet, wear the moniker proudly, ex-sorta-Gov. Palin certainly has. Which, it would seem, is all we really need to know, isn't it?

Remember that annoying kid all the older kids detested, and occasionally punched in the face, because he was always showing off how much he knew, usually quoting Isaac Asimov and Larry Niven? Well, that annoying kid is still quoting Isaac Asimoc and Larry Niven, and really, really needs to get punched in the face, but damn! He gets laid a whole lot more than folks who aren't nearly as annoying! Somehow, he managed to con enough people that he actually knows stuff to give him money, too. Thus, Newt Gingrich continues his life as high school nerd-in-chief. Which may well be the highest title he carries the longest, considering even disgraced former House Speaker is kind of going out of style.

Remember the President of the church youth group? She seemed to have this odd, not-quite fanatical acceptance of the strangest ideas the church was pushing, combined with an almost eerie drive to see her ascendance as head of the Youth Fellowship as Providential. Now, all these years later, running for President, Michelle Bachmann still believes all those really weird things her church was pushing, only that fanatical acceptance has deepened, reflecting in the odd blue light emanating from her eyes that ensures, if nothing else, she can find her way to the bathroom in the middle of the night without flipping any switches and waking up her husband in the next room. Fixated upon a few simple ideas, none of which actually have anything to do with reality in much the same way she wrote heated letters to sponsors of TV shows and ran paper drives convinced there was money in all those newspapers collected over the years, she shrinks in our national rear-view mirror unbowed by criticisms because, as she has been for so long, she is convinced beyond doubt of the rightness of all her beliefs. Facts, reality, the common life of real people all around her are as nothing to the conviction in her heart that she may well be the only one standing between the country and the disaster looming around the corner.

I suppose I'm being a bit unfair, because I haven't featured any prominent Democratic politicians here. At the moment, the only really prominent Democratic politician is Pres. Obama, and he has none of the qualities of a superannuated adolescent yearning either for revenge or the simple continuity of the glory days of yesteryear. The three folks featured here, however, not only leap to mind, but seem to revel in either continuing their former lives, or reaping revenge upon those in their past who wronged them for whatever reason. Since our punditry seems to believe we, as a people, enjoy wallowing in discussions like this, I thought it best just to signal how I see some folks on the national stage.

A Tale Of Two Holidays

2011-12-22T08:36:00.000-06:00

Ever since I was a child, I recognized there are two holidays on December 25. On the on hand there's the celebration of the Incarnation, the day we Christians gather to worship the Bethlehem babe. Historically not all that important, the Christ Mass was only made a date in the 9th century or so, mostly to keep things in and around Christendom regular. It also helped keep those who were straddling the fence from falling back in to paganism by taking over the winter solstice holiday.

On the other hand, there's this massive commercial celebration, a glorious orgy of buying, in which an entire country seems to believe a month is dedicated to snow, elves, pretty paper, lights, and some guy breaking and entering each and every house. Even down south, Christmas cards feature snow, snowmen, fireplaces, the usual northern folderol.

What the two of them have to do with one another is, by and large, becoming less and less clear with each passing year.

I have nothing against either celebration. Obviously. We are a parsonage family, after all, and the preparation for the arrival of the Christ during Advent, and the celebration of the birth on Christmas are spiritual and communal plot-points, ways we all get in to the whole Jesus story. Beyond that, since we Christians are always standing in the shadow of the cross, the manger/cradle should serve as a reminder of the rocky bed on which Jesus' corpse lay after his execution. No good home for him at any point in his life, it would seem.

I also enjoy all the things our secular national celebration has to offer. Gathering with friends and family. Decorating. The lights. The tree. We could tone down some of the commercial aspects of the day just a wee bit, not least decorating stores and such, say, after Thanksgiving instead of after Halloween. I love egg nog, and sugar cookies, and even holiday music, in moderation of course. Gift giving is such a treat, watching people's faces light up when they open a package and have received just the right gift is wonderful. Sitting together as a family, snacking and listening to quiet music together as presents are unwrapped, candy and treats and nibbled, and all laugh and celebrate together all help make memories; I know, because I have many fond memories of Christmas from my childhood.

I just wish the two days could be separated somehow.

Whether the confusing orgy of capitalist over-consumption combined with sentimental gatherings of family and friends remains "Christmas" or is renamed "Adam Smith Day", as I have suggested to some on occasion, remains to be seen. I think the Christian churches in the west should at least take a partial cue from Orthodox churches and celebrate the Incarnation on Epiphany, January 6. That is, after all, what the 12 days of Christmas are all about, the time from 12/25 to 1/6. My grandmother and her cousin used to exchange gifts on Epiphany. I see no reason why others shouldn't.

We can keep the lights and the tree and the gatherings and Santa and the reindeer and the stockings and, of course, the candy, on December 25. Then, on January 6, Christians would gather, quietly, in their respective houses of worship, and sing quiet hymns and read prayers and hear the Word about this marvelous discovery, this unveiling of the Son of God in the baby born in Nazareth, and reflect on the road this baby has in front of him. A road we, too, are to travel. It should be no more than seven or eight weeks until the beginning of Lent, when we turn our faces toward Jerusalem, after all.

So, this year, we will have three services between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. On Sunday, after church, we'll all come home, put our pajamas back on, gather around the tree, and exchange gifts. On Monday, my wife's family will come 'round and a second day of exchanging gifts and eating and being together will ensue.

Off to the side of the room, largely forgotten, is a small Arabesque, molded porcelain tchotchke. My wife hates it, but I adore it. Hidden inside are the figures of a man, a woman, and a baby in a small feeding trough. They are barely visible within the rather ornate (my wife thinks "grotesque" is a better word) stylized "stable". Which is as it should be. By and large the world ignored the events of the first Christmas. The unveiling of who this baby is, what he is to do come later.

We celebrate two holidays in our house. One, the raucous joy of family and capitalism, is certainly a source of joy. The other, quiet, almost forgotten, rests in the corner of our hearts, almost forgotten. This is, I think, as it should be.

A Ghost Of A Tale

2011-12-21T08:52:00.000-06:00

Apart from the Nativity story itself, no narrative captures the English-speaking world's romantic associations with Christmas quite as much as Charles Dickens' small work, A Christmas Carol. Having visited an orphanage in the late summer of 1843, Dickens originally planned to write a tract, hoping to enlighten the rising bourgeoisie to the plight of the poor. After a couple failed attempts and some urging from a wealthy benefactor, he tried his hand at a short novel. It was written and published quickly, in time for Christmas that same year.

It would be difficult to imagine the holidays without this marvelous story. It has been dramatized so many times, in so many ways, not least because, despite occasional literary transgressions, such as the comparative deathly similitude of door nails and coffin nails, it is nothing more or less than story. Scrooge is, perhaps, the greatest villain in English literature because there is little to complicate his villainy. Epitomizing the actor's truism that the devil has the best lines, Scrooge's part of dialogue evinces not only his demeanor, but, as one critic has noted, a kind of dark humor aimed squarely at the idiocy of a world that, for a few days in late December, seems to lose track of reality.

As a child, I wondered if there wasn't, possibly, something less spiritual and more psychological about the events of that long-ago Christmas Eve. Did Scrooge in fact encounter his dead partner, glimpse a world of suffering spirits, then follow three iconic Spirits through the wayward paths of his life, and the lives of those close to him? Or, perhaps, was Dickens - as with all great writers - using this as a metaphor for a simmering conscience, perhaps pricked by an earlier encounter hat reminded him of his seven-years-dead partner, which opened a flood-gate of memories in his mind, which he had to filter using spiritual imagery? At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, for the result is the same. Transformed by his experience, Scrooge emerges that Christmas morning a new man.

The most moving, most powerful, lines in the entire work belong, in turn, to Marley's Ghost and the Ghost of Christmas Present. When told that he was always a good man of business, Marley responds with a speech that bears repeating:

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

There is something so fundamental about these words, simple, clear, lucid, and dare I say obvious it is amazing they even need to be said.

Yet, spoken often, and not only at Christmas, they do. In an age when we are told by some that concern for the common welfare is an alien idea at war with our best traditions, it bears repeating that, in fact, our concern for others is the heart of our common life. Selfishness is not a virtue to be inculcated for any reason.

From the Ghost of Christmas Present:

"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before,"tell me if Tiny Tim will live."

"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die."

"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit. Say he will be spared."

"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! To hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust."

What more needs to be said?

The beauty of the story lies beyond the emotional appeal of a lost soul finding its way back to life with its fellows, or the seasonal romance of the story as a whole. I think this is a rare instance in which true beauty, as the ancients understood it, has been placed before an entire people. Not only in its parts, but in its whole, there is beauty here. The humor, the terror, the sorrow, the playfulness, the joy are all there and add up among themselves to something so marvelous, it continues to speak to us nearly one hundred seventy years after it was first published.

While not wishing anyone to forget that Dickens wrote this marvelous tale to remind his fellow Britons that there existed within their midst a dirty, starving, trampled mass, and that the word "DOOM" was scrawled across the forehead of Ignorance in particular, I would commend it just for the sheer joy of the story. While nearly impossible to separate the story from the many times it has been dramatized (my own personal favorite is the 1980's version with George C. Scott, looking more like William Gladstone than Ebeneezer Scrooge), the story is vivid enough to create a whole world, indeed a Universe filled with spirits and ghosts who can whisk us off across the wide world with a mere brush against our hearts, if we wish. It is also short enough to be read in just a sitting or two. If you haven't in a while, find your dusty copy on the shelves, or just click the link above; since it is in the public realm, it is available to read on-line without an e-reader. It will brighten your holiday, and perhaps open your eyes to our on-going battle with those who continue to worship at the idol "profit" that has displaced the far more human love for one another that Scrooge himself, in an earnest passion to provide for himself, experienced.

This Christmas, I hope to awaken much as Scrooge himself did, prancing and dancing around my bedroom, proclaiming my joy and giddiness as I attempt to dress myself and fail marvelously. And, of course, God bless us. Every. Single. One.

A Rose By Any Other Name

2011-12-20T09:55:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I mused somewhat briefly on the passing of journalist Christopher Hitchens. In particular, I focused on what I saw as a telling sentence fragment regarding the necessity of safeguarding one's dignity.

In contrast, consider the following from Vaclav Havel, who also left us for good and all this past weekend:

I had arrived in the countryside outside Prague at a place called Okrouhlice to visit artist friends. After a feast by a bonfire, I led a friend who had had too much to drink down a dark path toward a house nearby. In this total darkness, though completely sober, I suddenly fell into a black hole surrounded by a cement wall. The fact is, I had fallen into a sewer, into what can only be called, you'll excuse me, shit.
My attempt to swim in this fundamental mud, this strange vegetation, was in vain, and I began to sink deeper into the ooze. Meanwhile, a tremendous panic broke out above me. Local citizens flashed lights, grasped one another's arms, legs, offering limbs, articles of clothing to grab; a chaos of impossible rescue techniques followed. This brave fight for my life went on for at least thirty minutes. I could barely keep my nose above the dreadful effluvium and thought this was the end, what a way to go, when someone had the fine idea of putting down a long ladder.
Who could have known I was to leave this unfortunate sewer only to end up in the president's office two months later? I was not, after all, to have the distinction of becoming the first playwright to drown in shit at Okrouhlice.

What of Havel's dignity remains after confessing, with an air of surprise at what seems to be its uniqueness, that he was sober? What of Havel's dignity remains after confessing that bare weeks before the events that would catapult him on to the world stage he nearly drowned in shit?

Nothing contrasts these two men and the very different trajectories their lives followed than these little snippets. One had the courage of a life spent quietly, thoughtfully, writing poems, plays, and other pieces that held his rulers up to the contempt of the world. He spent quite a bit of time in jail, yet continued to write, saying what so many of his fellow Czechs knew to be true. He could make them laugh, both at themselves and at their rulers, something more deadly than the most strident polemics.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2001, Christopher Hitchens took up the sordid mantle of defiance against the terrorists. Which, one would think, was hardly a display of courage. Yet, he marked this "decision" by breaking with many on the Left whom, he seemed convinced, were insufficiently outraged by the wanton murder of thousands and the glee of far too many at the destruction wrought that sunny September afternoon. When the Bush Administration decided to attack Iraq, Hitchens, a long-time advocate for Kurdish rights against Iraqi and Turkish violence against them, hitched his wagon not only to that particular Administration's plans, but to an entire ideology that represented everything Hitchens had spent his professional life fighting. He did so without a glance backward, without a regret or thought he might be selling himself far too cheaply.

Havel never lost the ability to chuckle at the irony and absurdity of the world. He also never mistook the various ways we might appear undignified for the reality that it is only worldly powers who wish to strip far too many of our fellow human beings of the signal dignity that comes with being human. Whether being jailed repeatedly for refusing to remain silent, or being called "collateral damage", and having various officials shrug at their deaths, it is this indignity that should be the focus of our rage. I cannot imagine Hitchens writing with obvious good-humor at an event in which he comes up smelling like shit. Havel, on the other hand, understood that sometimes in life we all fall in deep pools of shit.

At the end of their lives, each of these men carried a definite odor about them. One, having fallen in to a sewer, has the aroma of sweet perfume about him. The other, sad to say, against his insistence to the contrary, merely stinks.

Rest in peace, Vaclav Havel. And thank you.

Nobody Wrestles With Somebody

2011-12-19T16:40:00.000-06:00

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

Ever since I first saw the news that Christopher Hitchens had finally succumbed to the esophageal cancer that had been killing him slowly for a couple years, I have been trying to decide if I should say anything about him. That, of course, led to the next question: If so, then, what?

I remember the first time I saw Christopher Hitchens on television. It was about six months after I had read a column of his in The Nation, before I subscribed. The image has been burned on my brain, and the image I last saw - gaunt, unshaven, the dual horrors of cancer and its current "treatment" rendering him nearly unrecognizable - seem like book ends on a life that ended too soon. He seemed a journalist out of some old central casting director's idea of "Journalist". British, he would have looked better dressed if he didn't also have that central casting aura of dishevelment about him. His speech was ever so slightly slurred, indicating a familiarity with John Barleycorn that was once a requirement of the species. When I discovered he also chain-smoked, I thought to myself, "Of course he does."

He was also, dare I say it, not-quite-beautiful in a way few men ever achieve. Even the slight swelling he started to take on as years of dissipation caught up with him but before the cancer took its unholy share seemed to add a cherubic quality. It was easy to look at him and think, "Man, this guy is too good looking."

Reading Hitchens was a joy. Only one other writer has filled me with the kind of thrill I felt when I read Hitchens, and Larry McMurtry is a very different kind of person, and writer, from Christopher Hitchens. Which indicated, at best, a catholicity of taste on my part that each of the others might appreciate. In any event, reading Hitchens was a joy, for me at any rate, because he read as if writing was, for him, effortless. After seeing him on television a few times - once with his brother Peter, as different a person as could be imagined, I might add - I would read Hitchens' columns in The Nation, stories in Vanity Fair, and the occasional book (I only own one, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, a magnificent tome for any maturing international lawyer wanting to make a name for herself) and in my head I could see him at a desk. The desk sat in front of a window. On his right was an overflowing ashtray with one burning and several smoldering cigarettes. On his left was a glass running with condensation. On the other side of the glass was a bottle of gin, three-quarters empty (I think because Hitchens was British, I pictured gin; I have no idea what he quaffed). He would sit there, his fingers flying over the keys of an old electric typewriter, the stacks of copy piling up like the butts in the ashtray. Whisked off to an editor, they would need no work, no tinkering. Not even a spell-checker, and certainly not a fact-checker! His writing, for me, was so beautiful, I could actually hear his voice when I read, something no other author has done for me.

It has been enough, for now, to mourn the loss of a kind of craftsmanship that is too rare these days. Not that I really believe my romantic image of Hitchens effortlessly pouring copy out his typewriter; a style as signature as his only comes from years of work, and hours of writing, then erasing, then writing again, then pulling the paper out, swearing as you crinkle it in to a ball and throw it away. The consonance of his written work with his speaking voice meant, for me, that it was possible to say something, say it beautifully, and say it as yourself. If I took anything from Hitchens, it was this possibility. Not so much to write, but to speak, using words, as an individual whose voice was one's own.

In the days since, I have been reading quite a lot of encomiums, eulogies, and malogies for Hitchens. From Scott McLemee in The American Prospect, to George Scialabba in n+1, to Katha Pollitt and D. D. Guttenplan in The Nation, to Alex Pareene at Salon there has been, as Scott wrote, a bit of grave-pissing. At least from those who once counted Hitchens as a fellow-leftist, a companion in the struggle against mendacity and simple-mindedness, his betrayal of these same values over the last decade of his life left many angry and confused. It led, for at least the first 48 hours after his death, to a bit too much wistfulness.

Charlie Pierce, lately of Esquire, calls out one of Hitchens' late-life fellow travelers, the very kind of mediocrity he spent the better part of his previous life lampooning and impaling with elegance. It is fair to say that, while it would be nice to believe Hitchens privately held someone like Ross Douthat in contempt, I think we reward ourselves a bit too much with that thought. The fact is, I think, Hitchens came to believe he really was as marvelous as his admirers told him he was, and wished to spend his time with as many such persons as possible.

There is also the class angle. I should say that this was not an aspect of the complexity I even considered until I read one or another comment on Facebook over the weekend. Then, from his haughty disdain of the Clintons to his lip-curling at various religious enthusiasms to his frequency at high-powered Capital parties made a great deal more sense. Which is not to say his former Trostkyite sympathies were not genuine; the British upper middle class provided a plethora of communists of various stripes, including Kim Philby, who spent the last years of his life enjoying Stalin's hospitality.

The epigram that begins this post, borrowed from a Facebook friend, is classic Hitchens. I believe it is either a marvelous summary of, or perhaps even a quote from, Letters to a Young Contrarian. There is nothing in the quote itself I find horrible or awful. Some of it I find laudable. One sentence, however, sticks out like a sore thumb, at least to this more than casual admirer of Hitchens: "[P]refer dignity for yourself and others."

Dignity for others? Absolutely. Part of our duty to others who are not granted dignity is to work to ensure it is recognized by others. Yet, this often entails stripping ourselves of dignity in the process. At the very least, what passes for being dignified among those who attend Georgetown and Cleveland Park parties, can call intimates of Presidents by their first names, and ensures that even rumpled, their clothes have the right labels.

At the end of the day, I believe Hitchens faced a choice: carry himself with dignity, or struggle against the forces of brutality and ignorance that may well strip him of that dignity. It makes me sad to believe, even for a moment, that he believed such a choice existed. Yet, the evidence of the previous decade, the shifting sands of his excuses for an allegiance with the social, cultural, and political forces that worked against everything he held near and dear, have led me to the conclusion that his dignity was far more important to him than his friendships. He sold, not his soul, but something far larger and more important: his passion. He sold it to the real barbarians who threatened the west. He did so because he mistook bonhomie for dignity. For that, even more than his occasional well-written screeds against the religious faith that feeds me and millions of others around the world, I am still angry with Hitchens. More than angry, however, I grieve for the loss of so fine a mind, so sharp a pen, and so passionate a fighter to the forces of destruction he labored so long to defeat.

Garbage In Garbage Out

2011-12-19T09:17:00.000-06:00

Titus 1:15-16:

To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure. Their very minds and consciences are corrupted. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their actions. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.

I suppose I could insist that a diligent reader check out the entire introduction to Titus, or perhaps even the entire letter - it isn't that long, after all - yet these two verses, clear enough in and of themselves, reflect not only a wise commentary upon the specifics of Paul's instructions to Titus, but something we usually associate with the phrase that is the title of this post.

And doesn't this reflect so much of what troubles the Church these days? Wouldn't it be nice to read Christians who see the world and all that is in it as a gift, something good graciously offered by God? Obviously, the moral preachments to which St. Paul give voice regarding the conduct not only of bishops and elders, but of all Christians, should be seen as the backdrop against which this more general comment is made. All the same, the specific context - that a Christian reflect a view of the world that sees purity, beauty, gratuity in the world where others see nothing but corruption and evil - is a wise insight regardless of time and place. This difference in seeing, and proclaiming what one sees, reflects (for St. Paul) the inner state of the person.

So, those who obsess, say, over the sex lives of pretty much everyone else kind of tells us what goes through their minds, doesn't it? The fetus-huggers, too, seem to be able to spare all sorts of love and compassion for a non-human lump of flesh while gleefully celebrating the deaths of other human beings without a care in the world.

St. Paul's observation here should serve as a guide for discerning the moral and spiritual worth of the words we read on the Internet, even apart from the common-sense idea that such folks are pretty much putting their issues on parade for all the world to see.

The Prophecy Of St. Mary

2011-12-18T08:07:00.000-06:00

From Luke 1:

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

While the declaration of Elizabeth - "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus" - has become part of the devotional life of the Roman Catholic Church, the Magnificat of St. Mary enjoys far broader acclaim. It is a part of our Advent celebrations, a way of declaring our hope for the life of the baby Mary currently carries within her, and the promise of God's reign and what it portends for all the earth.

Except, read with even more than passing care, most people notice that Mary is speaking in the present tense. Her declaration is not that God will do all these things - feed the hungry, displace the powerful, raise up the lowly. God, she declares, is doing these things.

How should we react to a declaration such as this? Most anyone looking around will notice the proud aren't scattered, the rich aren't sent away empty, and the powerful are still seated on thrones pretty much everywhere.

The Church has dealt with this mystery, conundrum, or even fanciful nonsense (depending on one's point of view) in a variety of ways. It has been spiritualized, stripping the statement of its prophetic power, decontextualizing it. More often in recent decades it has been read eschatologically and incarnationally; in the birth of Jesus we have these new realities coming about. Which, one would think, begs as many questions as it answers.

I do think it necessary to keep the spiritual and eschatological dimensions in mind, as part of the whole. Insisting on only one level of meaning to any Biblical passage renders it inert, a lifeless thing that drains it of power. It is a bit of a blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, I would think, because it substitutes whatever fleeting concerns any particular interpreter (including the present one!) has for the deeper, life-giving, life-affirming power that is within the passage itself. Instead of listening to the text, we are telling it what we want it to say. Not a good thing at all.

Which is why I would suggest that there is a way we can take this ambiguity at the heart of the text - a declaration of present Divine acts that don't seem to be happening at all - and use it as a judgment upon the Church. We are the body of this Christ whom Mary carries in her womb. We are the hands, the feet, the very mouth that, in the power of the Holy Spirit, speaks the Word of Truth and Life to a world weaned on death and lies. If we read the Magnificat and declare it anything other than an expression of how we, the Church, are to live in this world, then we are not being the Church, we are not living out this prophetic call of St. Mary to the Church and world from the other side of the Incarnation.

The list of present realities Mary declares are, I am suggesting, the ways we Christians are to see and move and speak and live in the world. We are to live so that the hungry are fed. We are to live so that the proud are scattered. We are to live so that the mighty are cast from their thrones. These are Kingdom realities, the reality Christ has come to inaugurate in his person and passion and resurrection. Part of expressing our faith in Christ is ordering our lives so that these proclamations are our realities; these declarations are the world in which we live. Prophecies are not a statement about some future time. It is always a statement about what God is doing, here and now. Expressing our faith in the baby Mary will birth includes living these realities, together.

It takes new eyes, to be sure. It takes hearts no longer wedded to the hope and promise of power, or gold, or favor. It takes lives ordered by God's Law of Love and forgiveness, wrath expressed in grace, judgment expressed by the bleeding, dying Son of Man on the cross outside the city gates. The whole Gospel is proclaimed here, and Mary is to be thanked and honored as a prophet of God not only for bearing the Son of God within her frail, teenage body; she is to be remembered for declaring for all the world to hear who this God is whom her Son will call Father, and what a world, ordered by this God, looks like and in which we are to live.

Mission Accomplished 3

2011-12-16T06:35:00.000-06:00

So, the war in Iraq has ended.

Again.

In all honesty, the "news" that Pres. Obama has withdrawn all but a few thousand garrison troops from Iraq, being touted as the "end of the Iraq War" has been met with chirping crickets. Not because the war hasn't mattered. Not because Americans don't care about the troops. Not because we are an ignorant, lazy rabble. We've been down this road before. Who can forget this?

Then there was the announcement by Pres. Obama that a large number of troops were being brought home.

Two years ago.

I'm sorry, but this "ending" is not only redundant, it seems . . . anti-climactic. For one thing, there are many people in the United States who refuse to admit they were lied to. From Pres. George W. Bush through most folks in his Administration responsible. Remember Condi's warning about "mushroom clouds"? Who can forget Colin Powell disgracing himself and the United States before the entire world at the United Nations? Then, there was Donald Rumsfeld, insisting at a press conference that the US knew where those pesky WMDs were - north, south, east, and west of Baghdad! - which was a marvelous way of implying they were both everywhere and nowhere. That there were actually none, zero, zip, zilch, that this was known since 1998, and publicized pretty widely . . . well who would dare call the entire foreign policy establishment of an American Administration a bunch of liars?

Well, anyone paying attention, for one thing.

A whole lot of people, tens and perhaps even hundreds of thousands, are dead. More displaced; the exodus of Iraq's small but historically significant Christian community is almost completely unremarked upon. The destruction of the physical infrastructure has yet to be repaired.

The physical, mental, and moral toll upon the American military won't be paid until we admit, first of all, that such exist. Considering the way the previous Administration treated wounded vets, we have years of catching up to do. Considering it seems nearly impossible to talk about the corrosive effects dehumanizing our enemies has had on some folks in the military, how is it possible to address, for example, the more than occasional reports of our troops simply murdering civilians? I think a whole lot of thanks needs to go to military legal teams who investigate and prosecute these crimes when they occur; yet, like so much else surrounding this whole episode, we just don't talk about it all that much.

Since before the whole thing began, we haven't really talked about it. We didn't discuss whether or not we should invade Iraq. We were told we had to. Then, we were told we were going to. Then, we were told we had to stay. And stay. And stay. The reasons kept changing, the rationale always shifting. At the end of the day, erasing all the lies and 9/11 bloody shirt waving, there seemed no good reason. A whole lot of people are dead, a country lies in physical, social, and political ruin, and our troops are coming back home amid an uneasy silence because no one, either those in charge, those who fought, or we who have had to watch have wrestled with the reality that the whole thing has been a horrendous crime. Those in charge will never face legal sanction. Our troops, who have done their jobs to the best of their abilities, by and large, aren't coming home to ticker-tape parades and long speeches.

The whole thing has stunk, and the dearth of serious discussion leaves me feeling that nothing good has come of these past 8 years. It was all preventable. It is just . . . sad.

Voicing Frustration . . . Again

2011-12-15T07:06:00.000-06:00

So, I'm reading Tbogg smacking Megan McArdle around, and I'm thinking how familiar it all is. Someone on the right says something morally foul; someone on the left points out how morally foul it is; the original person claims to ignore the criticism, yet actually doubles down on the truly morally vicious stuff until finally, in a display of utter abandon, someone like Tbogg comes along and says, with all the poetry at his command, "You are a horrible fucking human being who I hope dies slowly." Readers cheer with delight.

Over the years I've read stuff far worse than, but of a kind with, the kind of thing McArdle is pushing here. I honestly believed it was possible to listen to what they have to say, offer a counter-argument, have a back-and-forth, blah-blah-blah. I have come to recognize, however, that the Megan McArdles and Jonah Goldbergs and writer's at The American Thinker and Renew America and even such dull luminaries as the op-ed writers at our flagship national newspapers, by and large, are just horrible human beings. While I do not wish to see any of them die slowly, that needs to be repeated until it has sunk in.

These are horrible human beings.

It isn't just that, say, Jonah Goldberg, who has achieved all he has in life because his mother Lucianne Goldberg, was an integral part of trying to get Bill Clinton's penis impeached; it isn't that George Will played an unethical role in the candidacy of then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, helping him prepare for a debate using papers purloined from the campaign of Pres. Carter, then adding to this lack of ethics by lying about what happened; it isn't that Charles Krauthammer has weekly visions of American and Israeli armed forces pretty much wiping out any and every non-Jew in the Middle East because that's the only way to protect Israeli, I mean American, interests.

While morally obtuse and ridiculous in and for themselves, these positions - and the hundreds, even thousands, of others - folks like this have taken, and continue to take, as well as the assumption by all involved that they are good, upstanding people who deserve to be heard all add up to the irrefutable conclusion that they are, to a person, morally vicious proponents of a vision of America at home and abroad that is violent, racist, almost demonic in its viciousness.

Rather than pretend, it is far better to just call these people out and say, "Do you have any idea that the combination of ignorance, stupidity, and moral vice in pretty much everything you write makes kittens weep?"

I know I harp on this theme more than occasionally, but the truth is simple enough. We would actually function far better as a political society without people like this sucking the life blood from our public discourse. I suppose we could just hand mirrors up - I'm guessing that neither Ann Coulter nor Ross Douthat actually cast reflections - but that just isn't good enough. It's one thing to dismiss a low-info, obviously bigoted blogger as a ridiculous scribbler who actually lowers our national IQ each time he or she publishes something on the internet. Saying the same thing about Joe Klein, while also technically accurate, is far harder to get across to people. He used to write for The New Yorker, after all. He writes for Time.

Which doesn't mean he isn't as big a douchebag as some anonymous scribbler on the internet. We just know this douchebag's real name, is all.

We just need to do more of this kind of thing. As often as possible. We need to stop pretending that these folks are being rewarded for intelligence, or hard work, or insight, or anything else. They are rewarded because they toss the chum in the waters of our political life, and the sharks come a-swimming.

A Serious Proposal For Reforming The Nomination Process

2011-12-14T07:11:00.000-06:00

With the Iowa caucuses less than three weeks away, we are yet again facing the same set of questions political junkies have been hearing for decades: Why Iowa and New Hampshire? Why do we begin our contest for nominating candidates for the Presidency with two small, rural, unrepresentative-in-every-way states? The usual answers - because they're small, because they allow face-to-face connection with voters, yadda-yadda- just don't cut it anymore. While I know it pains so many in the national press to accept this, we live in the day and age of the internet. The basic falseness of the old-style face-to-face campaigning for the Presidency is meaningless. With the restructuring of the whole system of campaign finance with the Citizens United decision, as well as the advent of new technologies for connecting with large swaths of the potential voting public, I think it's high time, past time even, for the major parties to stop coddling the folks in Iowa and New Hampshire. There isn't anything wrong with them; they are both states in the United States, filled with good, hard-working folks who also happen to be mostly white and rural in a country that is multi-racial and urban. Their preferences and concerns are not those of the majority of Americans.

With the Democrats taking the cycle of primaries off, I believe there is an opening, if anyone in the Democratic Party had any sense, to completely revamp the entire primary/caucus system. Proposals like this are a dime a dozen; I believe even (gasp!) David Broder proposed something similar to what I am proposing way back in the 1990's. That doesn't make it wrong; it doesn't make it right. It does, I think, address certain inequities and disparities within the nominating process as well as make the system a bit less nonsensical.

The first Tuesday of each month of the primary season, beginning in January and ending in May, have primaries in 10 states. The first set of primaries would include California, the largest state. The second would include Texas. The third, New York. The fourth Illinois. The last, in May, would include Florida. Have the ten states spread across the country. No regional primaries like the old Democratic "Super Tuesday" nonsense.

By having each set of primaries include the five largest states, with California being up front, rather than last as has happened historically, the system would put a premium upon organization and fund-raising - a key barometer of support prior to voting; moreso than all the nonsensical, nearly daily "polling" that means absolutely nothing. It would also keep vanity candidacies such as those of Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum from this year, to a minimum. While anyone could declare their candidacy, once it became clear that some just couldn't create the infrastructure because of a lack of support and funds, they would fade away.

With a premium on organization and fund-raising, and with the understanding that competition will be in very large states with diverse populations, as well as small states, there will also be an emphasis, right off the bat, on national appeal. Candidates will be able to use the internet as well as traditional media; barnstorming tours rather than pretending to care about the farmers at some Hayseed County Fair in Iowa when everyone, including the farmers, knows they don't. With the rules established under the Citizens United decision clearly making corporate support - in a general sense; large organizations can advertise for candidates - easier, rather than stand around and whine about it, something the Democrats have been doing since the Court handed the decision down, they should use it to their advantage. Candidates could get both corporations and unions, large lobbying firms and other large organizations who have voiced a willingness to support a candidate to put their money where their mouths are.

I doubt very highly that either party, certainly not the Democrats, would ever think of doing something like this. For some odd reason, the whole process of choosing candidates is held hostage to nostalgia and simple-mindedness. The largest states in the union get shafted in the process. The mega-urban corridor on the east coast - running from Boston to Richmond, VA - gets little to no attention. The uniqueness of Texas with its very large urban areas, its vast physical spaces, its many and diverse needs and interests, becomes just "Texas" the southern state with border issues. Having Illinois be a key state would highlight the needs of the upper Midwest and Great Lakes states, a group of moderate-sized states that are diverse within and among themselves that nevertheless share key interests and changing populations and demographics.

The country has changed many times over the decades since the beginning of the primary/caucus era. The system, sad to say, has just not reflected those many changes. Personally, I would almost welcome some other system - a national primary day, say - to the one we have now. At the very least, the proposal on offer here has the distinct advantage of ensuring a modicum of seriousness and attention to central issues facing the nation as a whole. It also would reflect the reality that our nation is an urban, diverse nation. The one disadvantage it has, I think, is how sensible it is.

Tom Tomorrow Sums Up Newt's Career

2011-12-13T15:12:00.000-06:00

Thank God for Tom Tomorrow

A Hermeneutics Of Effrontery

2011-12-13T07:38:00.000-06:00

Piling on the disgraced former Speaker - which, were the pile female members of his staff might be a reminder of past glories - along with George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and Peggy Noonan, we now see Michael Gerson. I should say that the first four words of the title given to Gerson's column, "The problem with Gingrich" are a Pandora's Box, a bottomless pit of possibilities, many of them beginning with the letter "M".

In any event, there are many ways we can read the growing chorus of insider attacks upon the disgraced former House Speaker. We can, I suppose, focus our attention upon the specifics of the attacks themselves. That, sad to say, leads us to applaud people as odious as George Will, as ridiculous as Peggy Noonan, as blood-thirsty as Charles Krauthammer, only because they have managed to spy something real through the lenses normally viewing only poorly understood baseball, or fringed with icons of St. Ronald of Dixon, or red with the blood of swarthy types.

In Gerson's case, while we may agree with many of the specifics of what he is saying - that Gingrich's understanding of Sharia and its role in Muslim societies, including the United States, may well be lacking a little something we call "understanding" - yet there is embedded in this otherwise noteworthy column two sentences that almost made me destroy my laptop due to the sudden urge to spit take:

n the United States, public officials respect the conscience of citizens while protecting them from violence. The proper role of government is to aggressively fight terrorism, not to engage in theological judgments.

Michael Gerson wrote that. Yes indeed. It is a monument to sanity. In the service of going after the disgraced former Speaker of the House, Gerson has managed to trip over the truth, and notice it sitting there. No doubt, he shall hop to his feet soon enough go on penning his usual fluff that is chock-a-block with advice for office-holders on making theological judgments.

Because of the incongruities involved when folks who are semi-regular readers of the horrible people suddenly feeling the urge to mutter, "Peggy! You go girl!", I think another way to read your typical Big Name Pundit, when said person has written about Newt, is through the interpretive lens of effrontery. Rather than, say, having to drink oneself to oblivion because one finds oneself agreeing with George Will, consider a totally different possibility. It isn't that Will has suddenly discovered the real world, or that Peggy Noonan no longer swoons over Ronald Reagan. These tidbits of reality, such as the Gerson's today, are accidents, really. No more than dollops of whip cream upon the usual Hot Crap Sundae that is their usual fare. They are done in service to a Greater Purpose. It is no secret these, and others, who have worked for years in the nation's capital, hold the disgraced former Speaker in contempt. With politics not being beanbag, as the saying goes, anything ready at hand that ensures the world understands a Gingrich Presidency would be far worse than anything currently under consideration is certainly available for tossing.

Even the truth.

Read this way, we can nod when Gerson writes what he has today, yet need not marvel at this moment of moderation. It is little different, in kind, from David Broder's famous quip that the Clinton's trashed a place not theirs. Will, Krauthammer, Noonan, and Gerson consider themselves the guardians of respectable conservative opinion, the gatekeepers to the House of Right. That they are usually, by turns, silly buffoons or blood-thirsty moral monsters or tin-eared pseudo-theologians is all in service of the Greater Good. In this case, that includes keeping Gingrich from moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW on January 20, 2013.

I'm not writing this because I feel sorry for Gingrich. I am defending neither his usual forays through the thickets of his own ignorance to the glorious meadows of his megalomania; nor am I defending the pretense of bad pundits assuming the tattered mantle of Lippmann and Broder. I am only suggesting that when the folks in question actually pen something that makes sense, it is an accident. It is obvious to most that Newt is a ridiculous figure to anyone not Newt. The folks who remind readers of this from the precincts of right-wing punditry aren't saying anything surprising. Rather, they are wiping the spittle and grime they rightly understand is the texture of a Gingrich speech from their clothes, telling any who might be interested that he is not "their kind."

Except, of course, he is. They would not exist today if not for Gingrich and his dogged pursuit of a former Speaker (Jim Wright) and the penis of a President (Bill Clinton). Their careers and his followed a similar rise in fortunes with American voters preference for a politics of nonsense, a flirtation with fabrication, and the no-holds-barred idiocy that is all that remains of the Republican Party in America. Now to turn on Gingrich in a last-ditch effort to ward off this fellow-creation of the past generation of American politics is amusing, but ultimately self-defeating. Their fortunes and his are linked in ways that would make Callista Gingrich blush; considering the memories I am quite sure she has of her own ways of linking to the previously married former Speaker, this is saying something.

In other words, when Gingrich fails to win the nomination, and fail he will, he shall not go quietly. He shall drag these, and many others, with him to the depths. That, after all, is how he rolls.

Life In Pottersville

2011-12-12T07:11:00.000-06:00

So Lisa and I sat down and watched It's A Wonderful Life yesterday. The girls aren't that Jonesed with it, so it ended up being the two of us. While I was watching, the old familiar complaints I had with it surfaced. Except for Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore, it isn't really well acted. Some of the dialogue seems stilted. When George returns home having been told he's not only lost $8000 but may face arrest and the possible exposure and mischaracterization of his friendship with Violet Bick, does he take his wife aside, tell her what's happened, and figure out what to do? No. He throws a temper tantrum, then runs out and gets drunk, then wrecks his car. His self-pity is almost overwhelming. I don't so much feel sorry for him as want to smack him.

This doesn't even begin to capture my frustrations with the scenes when Clarence shows him Bedford Falls without him. George is supposed to be smart, yet he never really catches on that he has never been born! Seeing the downtown area doesn't convince him? He runs off to his "mother"! That doesn't convince him (a spell? What the hell!), so he heads over to "Bailey Park", even though his mother treats him like the drunken loon he is. And he is shocked, SHOCKED! I tell you to discover, despite Clarence's repeated description of events, to discover not only no Bailey Park, but the grave of his brother, whose death as a child doomed the lives of hundreds of soldiers whose transport was sunk.

After all that, even I'm wondering why I bothered watching it.

Anyway, I got to thinking about some other things while I was watching it. For instance, without the Bailey Building and Loan, the collapse of the local market in Bedford Falls allowed Henry Potter, who - as George correctly tells his frightened customers and neighbors and friends - wasn't panicking in the midst of a banking crisis, to take over the town He not only exploits the situation to his own advantage He converts a friendly, run-of-the-mill small town to the Las Vegas of the Finger Lakes. Potter is no dummy. Vice is the quickest, easiest, and most profitable business imaginable. Dance halls. Burlesque houses. Peep shows. On and on and on and on. We see Violet Bick, whose less than stellar virtue has already been demonstrated, not once but twice (she is, essentially, portrayed as a prostitute in an earlier scene; in the immediately previous set of scenes, she is heading out of town . . . because women had to leave if they were either pregnant, or involved in a scandal; personally, I think she probably got pregnant by some married dude and had an illegal abortion, but that's the romantic in me), being dragged to a paddy wagon, screeching like a harpy.

It occurred to me that the United States has become Pottersville. It's really that simple. Not only have the folk of Pottersville forgotten their history as the sleepy, pleasant community of Bedford Falls, their decade and a half as Pottersville (I usually put the community name-change at the point when the Building and Loan collapsed and Potter consolidated his hold on the town) has completely erased any vestige of personal or communal ethic from their lives. Even Mary, who is described as "an old maid" at, what, 35, doesn't react with any equanimity when George confronts her. That anyone like Mary could exist in a town like Pottersville - that it would even bother with a library - strains credulity. At the same time, the way the bad folk of Pottersville gather round to protect her as she faints over George's (largely unbelievable) entreaties is kind of a ridiculous display of false protectiveness. Which results in the kind of scene that, say, had George been African-American, would have ended up with him strung up from a tree.

Like the residents of Pottersville, the same Americans demand unfettered access to profit from individual and social weakness, promote a kind of collective ignorance and rapacious individualism that merely exists from one moment to the next without thought, and allies itself with a false virtue that protects largely symbolic innocents, all the while actively apathetic to the collective suffering that exists around them. Indeed, our major parties would much prefer we waste our energies protecting old maids who faint at the slightest provocation, while always reaching deep in to our pockets to shell out as much money as possible for the dance girls. That the same people can actually insist simultaneously that we need to be most concerned with some random matters of personal virtue all the while promoting a social, economic, and cultural milieu that seeks to profit from a variety of vices only shows how atrophied our collective moral imagination has become. Those who insist that things can be, or at least could be, otherwise are George Bailey - crazy, drunk, and refusing to believe that things are the way they really are.

The Womb Police's Ladies Auxiliary

2011-12-09T06:18:00.000-06:00

There are some topics I try to avoid. Feelings, and therefore temperatures, run high, so it is difficult to be heard, especially when the screeching harpies show up. All the same, there are moments that silence just doesn't cut it.

Isn't it bad enough that the United States Senate refuses to support our troops when something horrible happens to them? A bunch of women who seem to think they should tell other women what to do with their bodies comes out and applauds. From the website RH Reality Check, that covers health care politics and related issues:

Concerned Women for America (CWA) revealed exactly how little concern they have for actual women, much less for America, this week when they sent out a letter attacking women who defend our country for having the nerve to believe they deserve full medical care after being raped. The mind-bogglingly vicious swipe at female soldiers had a couple of doozies, including the claim that allowing raped service members to access abortion “serves as a political distraction” from national security, as if it’s in the interest of national security to subject raped service members to forced childbirth. CWA also pretended to care about female troops with blather describing being raped and forced to bear a rapist’s child as merely “difficult circumstances” requiring “compassion and support,”

Like Rick Santorum obsessing over what people do in bed, the Church Ladies at CWA are so focused on what other people should and shouldn't do they have crossed the line from offensive to annoying. The folks in the Senate deserve all the outrage flung at them.

The CWA, which really should be known as the Overly Concerned With Other People's Lives Association, needs to take a chill pill, chased by a double shot of STFU. My mother, a real concerned woman in America, always taught us to mind our business. something these folks need to remember.

A Reality Dope-Slap

2011-12-08T07:32:00.000-06:00

One of my friends on FB, a gentleman who went to high school with my older brother, is not a fan of Pres. Obama. To say the least. No big deal, because I'm not exactly going out of my way to make sure he spends four more years in Washington. What's frustrating, as with so many denizens of the fever swamp that is the American right-wing, is that he doesn't like him for all the wrong reasons. He carries on about how Obama has raised our taxes. Obama has cut taxes on Americans pretty consistently, with the latest fight being over the expiration of a payroll tax holiday that Obama wanted and the Republicans want to see end. He carries on about Obama's ego, which, while substantial (you don't seek then win the highest office in the land without some sense of oneself, unless you're a paranoid lunatic like Nixon), is dwarfed by, say Newt Gingrich's outsized sense of himself. He repeats the nonsense that Obama is some kind of socialist bent on destroying America.

Like the constant barrage of stupidity that carries on about Obama's socialism which is non-existent, his deep, long-time relationship with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayres, which doesn't exist, his penchant for apologizing to other countries for American conduct, which has never happened, I honestly and sincerely wish folks would dislike Obama for real reasons. Substantive reasons. There are plenty, which is why I am not planning on supporting his re-election campaign or voting for him next year.

In the same vein of wishing people would just, you know, deal with things as they are, rather than as they are told they are or think they are or something, I honestly wish liberals (as opposed to those on the Left, who tend to display a bit more clarity of vision on these matters in my experience) would stop getting huffy over stuff Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich say. The only bottom-tier Republican candidate for President whose recent statements need disparaging are Jon Huntsman's recent remarks that indicate he is flipping on climate change in a last-minute, desperate attempt to drag in some cash. I have to agree with Pierce, by and large, that Huntsman was never "liberal". He was, however, at least sane enough to call out climate deniers for the flat-earthers they are.

Until someone told him the campaign cash cupboard was bare.

The other three, however . . . The reason I would rather poke a bit of fun at Santorum, Perry, and Gingrich is easy: None of them are going to get the nomination from the Republican Party. Certainly not Santorum, who is currently giving Huntsman a run for the bottom of the field. Over, the past few days, Santorum's mind keeps wandering back to what folks do in the privacy of their own homes a little more frequently than is normal; most of us would call his obsession with gay sex more than a little creepy.

It isn't that the things he has said aren't offensive, with a thin coating with ick. They are. It is far better, however, not to allow one's indignation to overcome common sense. Santorum was so loathed by folks in his home state he wasn't re-elected to the US Senate, so I never understood why he thought people in the rest of the country would find him an attractive candidate. When Think Progress or Fire Dog Lake or even Charlie Pierce at Esquire take a moment to highlight yet another instance of Santorum's outrage that people are having sex of which he doesn't approve and about which he, apparently, thinks constantly, take a deep breath, calm down, and have some fun at his expense. Seriously. That's about all he deserves.

Ditto Rick Perry. His new ad, in which he makes the silly, and false, statement that "there's something wrong" in American because gay folks can serve in the military but kids can't pray in school (lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie), is an obvious attempt to strong-arm the douchebag vote away from Santorum who is on the way out. Seriously. Even if Rick Perry believes his own ad, he is as slick and phony as Mitt Romney, and I just don't have enough benefit of the doubt to grant him. It's pandering, pure and simple.

Yet, the comment threads on these posts are chock-a-block with serious parsing of these statements, tinged with the kind of outrage that one would think should accompany any serious policy proposal from a viable candidate. To which I can only say - calm down. Have some fun, be honest and just say, "Wow, these folks are just nuts." Then, go back to having a cup of coffee and helping Junior or Janie with homework.

As for Newt, I realize he is the latest anti-Romney "front-runner" (no, I neither care what polls say, nor believe them when they are shoved in my face; it's votes that count, not what random people tell a stranger before actually casting a ballot), but his underlying megalomania has been surfacing recently - he's the one responsible for Romney's wealth, apparently; he will be the nominee; he will appoint Dr. Whovee lookalike John Bolton Secretary of State - along with his life-long penchant for making stuff up, then defending the lie with further lies that usually play to his own view of his overwhelming intellect are all combining to remind most of America why he has spent the past 13 years unemployed by any public institution whatsoever. His flaws are florid at the current moment, and it is far better to sit back and watch him destroy his own candidacy than to allow oneself to be outraged that he thinks child-labor laws are stupid, or that poor kids just don't have any role models to follow when it comes to hard work.

Start an office pool on the date when he ends up destroying himself, grandly, in public. That would be a far better use of one's time and energy.

If you're wondering what my point is in all this, it's simple. Calm down. Obama isn't going to destroy America. Considering the job the financial sector did, and continues to do, I think that award should rest firmly on the shelves of those who've earned it. Santorum, Perry, Gingrich may be bigoted idiots, but they aren't going to be their party's nominee for President. I'm not saying politics isn't important. Obviously, I believe it is. It isn't something one should allow to overwhelm both common sense and reality. You don't like Obama? Good for you. All I ask is you dislike him for real reasons. You think Santorum's statements regarding gay marriage are insulting? Why, insult him right back! Shoot, all you have to do is Google "Santorum" and the very first choice is a marvelous example!

Part of our problem is we as politically active citizens just don't keep perspective. It takes just a few moments of time to check out whether or not real Socialists loathe Barack Obama or whether Mitt Romney's health care plan in Massachusetts is pretty much the same one Congress passed in 2009 and that he campaigns against. Just deal with things as they are. That's all I'm asking.

Election, Predestination, Freedom, And Grace

2011-12-07T08:52:00.000-06:00

In last night's class, we concentrated a lot of effort on Romans 9. That's odd, because the eschatological promises of Romans 8 are probably the most moving passage in the New Testament. They are certainly the most beautiful thing St. Paul ever wrote.

Lot's of people, it seems, don't like the idea that God might arbitrarily decide who is the beneficent recipient of grace and who, through neither virtue nor fault, will suffer the eternal reprobation reserved for the Devil and his angels. For some reason, all the other stuff the Old Testament and New Testament says about God's desire being for all creation to return to God; that God never ever ever ever ever ever ever stops pursuing us, calling us, whispering in our ears, seducing us, even cheating to get us to follow the Divine Way just disappears when we pout, because we, rightly, understand ourselves undeserving of the grace and love we have in Jesus Christ. We all turn in to Pelagius, it seems, because, dammit, we WANT to be in control.

While I consider myself Wesleyan, I think on this and related matters (as the title suggests) I console myself with St. Augustine, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Reformed tradition in its affirmation that the judgment of God, revealed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, reveals God's wrathful declaration that sin is contrary to the will of God, that the new life in Jesus Christ is a free gift from the overflowing love of a God who has demonstrated the prodigal nature of the Divine love and life in this act of sacrifice and reclamation.

If we take grace seriously, which is little more than taking God's judgment upon our sin seriously, then the idea that God's graceful decision for humanity, for creation, expressed on the cross and in the empty tomb either mean everything or they mean nothing. The idea that God's choosing of life, of love, of forgiveness as the final judgment upon our willful insistence to turn away from the constant Divine entreaty should fill our hearts with joy, rather than indignation. Rather than sulk because the decision has been taken out of our hands, we should celebrate the only real freedom that matters - the freedom from the fear of separation from God precisely because God doesn't will or want that separation. Either we take the cross and Easter seriously, or we should just write Jesus off as another failed revolutionary, a faux-messiah as deluded as all the rest.

The Christian life lived in the acknowledgement of God's eternal decision for us is an expression of Divine Favor, of Divine wrath given over to joy and dancing. We no longer need to worry about whether or not this or that act, this or that life-choice, this or that thought, is a barrier to God, because God has removed all the barriers between us and communion with God. Not for our sakes, to be sure. God does this, and we acknowledge it as being so, because God desires to be with us, to be in relationship with us. We are free from worrying about how we stand before God, because we cannot stand before God. Yet, God calls to us and offers us the help we need, a proffered hand pierced with nails we hammered.

Christian freedom is the freedom from the fear that we can either earn God's favor, or separate ourselves from God's love. We no longer need to tally up our daily round of rights and wrongs, and living in the fullness of the grace bestowed through the Spirit, in Christ, for the Father, just live. Thankfully. Joyfully. Always with a penitent heart, but a joyous penitent heart.

The teaching that God has chosen us, even before we were born, because God had chosen before the foundations of the world were laid that the Son would come to heal the rift between creation and Creator, is the fullest expression of Divine Love and favor I can imagine. It doesn't bind us, or hinder us. On the contrary, I am grateful beyond measure for God's overflowing love for all creation that is summed up by God's gracious choice to be for us.

Infamous Days

2011-12-07T06:31:00.000-06:00

It's been seventy years since the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the forces of the Empire of Japan. That's a very long time. On that day, my father was an underemployed wannabe actor on the streets of Manhattan. He happened to be near Times Square as a crowd gathered around the ticker that displayed headlines in moving lights. He gathered with hundred of others as the news of the attack flashed to passersby on the streets of New York. He insists he can find himself in photos of the crowds, but to me, he's just another hatted gentleman in the multitude. My mother was in the first semester of her senior year of high school; her two older brothers got up early the next morning and joined the military, her oldest brother, Eugene, joined the Navy, Rowland, the Army.

My parents are old, now, as are the rest of those who still remember that day when Dr. Win-the-War took over from Dr. New Deal.

This week marks another anniversary. It is more recent, happening 31 years ago on December 2nd. On this infamous day, innocent people were attacked and killed by a military power. The difference is that, unlike the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was not the victim. We were, in fact, the willing conspirators and global apologist for the brutal rape and murder of four nuns by military forces in El Salvador. Charlie Pierce reminded us all yesterday of the gruesome details:

During what we used to call The Prayer of the Faithful, which comes immediately after the Homily, we prayed for the souls of Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel, four Catholic missionaries who were beaten, raped, and murdered by a death squad in El Salvador in 1980. The death squad carried out this mission at the direct order of the Salvadoran government, a right-wing horror show of which President Ronald Reagan and his incoming administration were quite proud. When Republicans boast of Reagan's foreign policy triumphs, murder and rape is part of what they're talking about. The four women — American citizens and clergy, mind you — were brutalized on December 2. Last Sunday was the 31st anniversary of their deaths.
The case was a stench in the nostrils of the world. Once in office, the Reagan people lied their asses off — or, worse, blamed the nuns. Jeane Kirkpatrick said that the murdered women were "not just nuns. The nuns were political activists – on behalf of the [leftist opposition] Frente." Alexander Haig, Reagan's lunatic Secretary of State, opined that "the nuns may have run through a roadblock or may have accidentally been perceived to have been doing so, and there may have been an exchange of fire."

The history of America's dealings with Central America is written in blood. Whether we supported or opposed any particular government, it seems the result was death and destruction, a horrible wasting of lives to no good end or real purpose. Even the cries of "communism" rang hollow in the teeth of brutality we supported with an almost gleeful abandon. Our drug-running terrorist freedom-fighters in Nicaragua, getting help from Pineapple Face, also known as our drug-running lackey Manuel Noriega in Panama, were the flip side of the brutal sociopaths we supported in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Largely forgotten now when we recall the decade of Reagan, it is important to remember how much time and energy the American government expended to insure that the horror show in the long isthmus between Mexico and Colombia continued.

Both of these days need to be remembered. Both need to live on in our national consciousness, reminders of our failings as a country. The spirit of the four young nuns, whose bodies were buried in shallow graves by the roadside without the comfort of last rites to console their souls in their final, terrified minutes, should haunt us all, horrific reminders of the price we Americans make others pay for our delusions of Empire.

The Newt York Times Style Manual

2011-12-06T08:36:00.000-06:00

I really need to write something about Willard Mitt Romney at some point. I hate feeling like I'm beating up on the nerd in the classroom.

The first sentence made me want to take a pickaxe to my eyes.

Ideas erupt from the mind of Newt Gingrich — bold, unconventional and sometimes troubling and distracting.

The person who wrote this sentence is named Trip. Trip Gabriel, in fact. People aren't really named Trip, are they? Is it a nickname for something, perhaps? Or was he born while the family was on vacation?

This isn't a complaint about Gingrich. Really. The complaint here is about the way he and his statements are portrayed. Gingrich does not have ideas. They do not "erupt" from his mind. His "ideas" are neither "bold" nor "unconventional" let alone "troubling" and "distracting". Paul Krugman recently quipped that Newt is a stupid person's idea of what a smart person sounds like, a marvelous bit of snark that also happens to be an apt description of the disgraced former House Speaker. Lacking any discipline over his pants or his mouth, Gingrich simply lets fly whatever comes in to his head. It doesn't have to be related to reality. It doesn't have to be thought through with care. Spouting stuff more quickly than people can take in isn't a sign of intelligence. It's the mark of a bullshitter who understands that by the time something he or she says is taken apart and looked at thoroughly, he or she will be on to five other topics, equally swamped with the distinct odor of the cow pasture.

The same "mind" which insisted that child labor laws are stupid and the people are taking vacations on their Food Stamp allotments also opined that the Columbine High School shootings were a direct result of Democratic domestic policies, and that Susan Smith, the multiple child-murderer from South Carolina, was an example of Democratic policies in action. Forgive me for not thinking too highly of Gingrich's "mind".

Trip is writing from the typical playbook. Gingrich is the smartest guy in the room. He likes to show off how much he knows. He spouts ideas because his mind is fertile and imaginative, thinking outside the boundaries of usual discourse and accepted opinion. The entire piece is rife with these basic elements of Newt-speak.

Mr. Gingrich’s tendency to speak bluntly, provocatively and sometime impulsively may be part of his emerging appeal at a time when conservatives seem intent on sending a no-business-as-usual message to Washington. It helps with his attempts to foster an image as a candidate eager to bring about change.

--snip--

Longtime aides to Mr. Gingrich said he fosters work environments where people feel free to think out loud. The ideas he offers in public are not ad hominem but grounded in such lengthy brainstorming. But because his ideas are often unconventional, they require detailed explanations; expressed as a sound bite, they backfire.

This entire enterprise is in the same vein as an article in Time magazine, written by "historian" Joe Meacham (he has written a history of the Jacksonian era, which instantly saved me all that money of buying a book by someone who could write what Meacham did). Such public obeisance to a figure as ridiculous as Gingrich makes one wonder about the stability of the entire political class. Considering the German's have a far more sober take on the Republican Presidential candidates than anything in the mainstream American press, it at least suggests that familiarity doesn't so much breed contempt as it does idiocy.

Is The Theory Of Military Keynesianism Wrong?

2011-12-06T06:36:00.000-06:00

A long-time argument offered by many on the left for the relatively high employment numbers in the United States during periods when other industrialized countries were suffering economic slumps - the early- to mid-1960's; the late-1980's - was quite often put off on what commentator Noam Chomsky called "Military Keynesianism". Rooted in the macro-economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, the theory was that relatively high spending in defense and related sectors by the federal government created or maintained jobs in related industries while other countries that had relatively smaller military budgets (as well as militaries less beholden to high-tech industry for their existence) couldn't rely on this as an employment stop-gap.

There is a study (.pdf) out of the University of Massachusetts (incorrectly identified as MIT in the Think Progress report where I first read about it) that compares the employment effects of military spending to the employment effects of public spending in other areas. From the abstract:

This study focuses on the employment effects of military spending versus alternative domestic spending priorities, in particular investments in clean energy, health care and education. We first present some simple alternative spending scenarios, namely devoting $1 billion to the military versus the same amount of money spent on clean energy, health care, and
education, as well as for tax cuts which produce increased levels of personal consumption. Our conclusion in assessing such relative employment impacts is straightforward: $1 billion spent on each of the domestic spending priorities will create substantially more jobs within the U.S. economy than would the same $1 billion spent on the military.

This wasn't the only question under scrutiny:

We then examine the pay level of jobs created through these alternative spending priorities and assess the overall welfare impacts of the alternative employment outcomes. We show that investments in clean energy, health care and education create a much larger
number of jobs across all pay ranges, including midrange jobs (paying between $32,000 and $64,000) and high-paying jobs (paying over $64,000). Channeling funds into clean energy, health care and education in an effective way will therefore create significantly greater opportunities for decent employment throughout the U.S. economy than spending the same amount of funds with the military.

Using standard methodology first developed in the 1930's, they conclude that, in large part due to higher non-labor costs military and related industries incur - physical plant and other material capital, land - spending in the other areas under study actually create more, and better-paying, jobs than equivalent spending in the military budget.

A couple things. The military budget is not a jobs budget. While even the most skeptical anti-Keynesian in Congress often pushes strenuously to keep various military projects funded if they are contracted within his or her district out of a concern for jobs, the object of the military budget is to make sure the United States has adequate military defenses to face threats to its interests. Now, the previous sentence is over-loaded with political questions: What is "adequate"? What constitutes a "threat"? What are our "interests"? What is the meaning of "adequate" in the face of these "threats"? While having an analytical component, answering these questions is a matter of politics. Which is as it should be. There is no final arbiter of what is or is not an adequate level of military spending, what our interest are, etc. We have to come to understand these terms together, always with the proviso that they all may change, sometimes in the blink of an eye.

Second, while certainly an important consideration in long-term fiscal planning, especially as we draw down forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and consider various options in future force-structure that are adequate to existing and emerging threats as well as take advantage both of the training and abilities of American military personnel and technology, we should not look for immediate economies by thinking solely of the employment effects of relative federal spending levels. It may well be the case, as the study concludes - and the conclusions of this study are the same as its predecessors over the previous decade - that military spending is not as big a job-creating engine as spending in other areas; in tough economic times, some might see an opportunity here not only for fiscal economies but an opportunity to boost employment by more cost-effective public-sector investment. That, to me, would be a mistake. Only after careful examination of current and recent DoD budgets should anyone suggest ways in which future military spending might include some of the conclusions of these studies. That should always be done as a secondary or even tertiary consideration; the first, over-riding concern of Defense spending has to be insuring a defense of the United States.

As to the question of the Theory of Military Keynesianism, it seems that repeated studies over a decade are dealing a blow to the idea, beloved of Congress members with defense contractors in their districts, that, if all else fails, as long as they have a plant building parts for a tank or a plane of a ship, they're fine might want to consider getting money to build a school or maybe even a plant that produces green technology.

Really Stupid Liberals

2011-12-05T07:20:00.000-06:00

One of the very first posts I ever did, way back on the eve of the 2006 mid-term elections, dealt with a liberal blogger who insisted that "Cheney" was going to "pull something" and swing the elections to the Republicans. I called it out for the crap it was.

In the intervening five years, many liberals continue to be truly, horribly stupid. Awful. Dumb. Ridiculous. Breathlessly over the top. Not least because they are almost comically partisan in their views. They are the mirror image of Republicans for whom "The Democrat Party" is the source of all evil in the world. Considering both the Congressional Democratic record as well as Pres. Obama's, one would think them disabused of the idea that either major party has the common good, the Constitution, or simple political common sense as guiding lights. For both parties, it is a cowardly desire to hedge any bets, refuse any risks that might "alienate" the only real constituency that matters - Big Money.

Having said that, I found the comments on this story at Talking Points Memo to be both really funny and really, truly, horribly stupid. Brain-dead stupid. Tragically, ignorantly, pathetically stupid.

For instance, davidasr writes in part:

I'm not sure I'd want to go back to the dark ages, or even 1929 for that matter, as they all seem to advocate.

Did you catch that? "The Dark Ages"! Whatever that might mean . . . "Even 1929"! Hello, um, we have a Democratic President who doesn't seem to grasp that we're reliving that era. We've been stuck in 1932 for the past two and a half years because our President would rather cut a deal with folks who want to see him lose an election rather than work for the betterment of the country. So, he sells his soul for a compromise. Over-the-top, stupid, blind, partisan. All in one sentence.

Ibesteve2u is so awesome, adding a touch of paranoia to the mix, that subtle dollop of political conspiracy that sees four people shooting at JFK in Dallas, and the CIA behind 9/11:

I wouldn't be thrilled with Gingrich winning the nomination - especially since I have no idea what kind of technology the right put in place between the voting machines and the central tabulating computers under the guise of the Patriot Act and with the power of Homeland Security. I don't much like the idea of a man who trumpeted orphanages as a means of reducing welfare rolls being that close to the White House.
Ain't much of a step between slapping the children of the poor into orphanages and work camps for poor adults. That is something every American who is not of the power structure of the right should be concerned about: Inequitable free trade ensures that 99% of the American people are just the desire of a CEO for a new yacht to match the fashions of the season away from becoming eligible for such camps.

Dallas attempts to serve up a reminder to "Us", name-dropping Hitler, Mussolini, Jesus, and His Mother all in the same comment, all the while complaining that it's the Democrats who never catch an even break:

Don't get too cocky. The Republicans have nominated seemingly unelectable candidates before (Reagan, Bush Lite) and gotten away with it. This time, they will use their Citizens United dirty money power to enhance their billion dollar advantage from the free 24/7 advertising on Fox and the places where the elections are either decided by Republican-made electronic vote-counting machines or by corrupt election officials (Wisconsin, Florida, several others).
If the Republicans get REALLY desperate and nominate the ghosts of Hitler and Mussolini as their ticket, they are still guaranteed 40+% of the vote. This is an advantage we do not enjoy. The Democrats could nominate a ticket of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and we'd still never get 60% of the vote. We would be well-advised to remember that.

Firenze_30fps drags up the ghost of the millenium:

if you'd asked me in 2000 whether GW Bush could be elected president, I would have said 'no f'ing way!'
And... hey, I was right. He wasn't elected in 2000.

The award for "Best" Comment that manages to show the world that conservatives do not have a monopoly of truly awful political commentary goes to debbieqd:

It may be good for politics to have Newt as the candidate, but it is terrible for the country. This is a man who channels Hitler at every turn. Pure evil in my book. And, one can only sit and wonder how so many Americans could be that stupid -- so ignorant of past history -- so enamoured of the devil himself. It is a sad commentary on a once great nation.

There are also some really good, insightful comments on the story, which shouldn't necessarily be forgotten or ignored. All the same, it is nice to be reminded that the Democratic electorate can be as truly dumb as the Republicans.

One More Thing . . .

2011-12-04T08:40:00.000-06:00

I know I probably shouldn't ask this question . . .

In fact, knowing I had to start with the above phrase should be an indication that I should stop typing now, erase any trace that I even sought to write this, and just get on with my morning.

Still, I'm curious. I've read and heard the following "argument" in a variety of places, and, for the life of me, I can make neither heads nor tails of it. It sounds like a group of words in the English language. When used in other combinations, they do make sense. I could blame Ms. Bachmann, but it isn't just her. In what way does this mean something?

JANE SCHMIDT: One of my main concerns is government support for the LGBT community. So my question is what would you do to protect GSAs in high school and support the LGBT community.

BACHMANN: Well, No. 1, all of us as Americans have the same rights. The same civil rights. And so that's really what government's role is, to protect our civil rights. There shouldn't be any special rights or special set of criteria based upon people's preferences. We all have the same civil rights.

JANE SCHMIDT: Then, why can't same-sex couples get married?

BACHMANN: They can get married, but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they're a man.

JANE SCHMIDT: Why can't a man marry a man?

BACHMANN: Because that's not the law of the land.

JANE SCHMIDT: So heterosexual couples have a privilege.

BACHMANN: No, they have the same opportunity under the law. There is no right to same-sex marriage.

Setting aside the slipperiness of introducing "right" in that last line - I fail to read or hear anyone saying anything about "rights" here or anywhere - this basic "argument" makes so sense to me.

The major premise, I believe, is this: Adults can only marry people of a different gender. The minor premise is, I believe, this, maybe?: Sue wishes to marry Karen. Therefore, obviously: Sue cannot marry Karen. The major premise seems to limit the class of persons who would qualify to have their relationships recognized by the state as "people of a different gender". Sue and Karen, being two women (I'm assuming here, based on the names, unless "Sue" was the character in that Carl Perkins/Johnny Cash song) are therefore prohibited from having their relationship recognized by the state.

Which means, to most folks who understand these things, that straight couples enjoy state-sponsored privileges. The final statement by Bachmann, then, is a throw away. When she denies that straight couples enjoy "a privilege", it seems she either doesn't understand that is what she is, in fact, arguing, or simply denies the reality that straight couples enjoy a privilege.*

The whole way the position Ms. Bachmann holds is presented makes no sense. Gay folk are able to marry, just not the people they want to marry. Wanting to marry the person with whom you wish to spend the rest of one's life is "a special right" for straight people, a position Ms. Bachmann categorically denies.

Honest to God, trying to untie this knot hurts my head. Would someone who understands this explain it in such a way that it makes sense?

*As in so many things, we may not have to choose between stupid and bigoted.

Let's Have Stupid People Run The Country

2011-12-04T07:08:00.000-06:00

I suppose some folks believe that's the case anyway . . .

There are many serious problems we face. A stagnant economy. A paralyzed political system. The opposition in next year's Presidential election is determined to pick a candidate that is almost laughably unqualified for office. We are waging de facto undeclared war against an alleged ally using robot planes and tired excuses. Our southern neighbors are bleeding to death in a civil war waged by mass murdering drug dealers who exist because we Americans love our cocaine and heroin. The list, I know could fill pages.

Which is why writing about this particular subject should probably seem . . . I don't know . . . a bit of a time waster. All the same, it reveals a basic lack of understanding of some realities that, while certainly inconvenient, are still real. From today's Washington Post:

If you want to understand Americans’ frustration with Washington, you might start with the very words the government uses to communicate with them.

--snip--

[A] small but growing band of civil servants, lawmakers and consultants is leading the charge against bureaucratic legalese. Their mission isn’t just to cut down on government forms in triplicate. They believe that Washington is dysfunctional on a more basic level and that to fix the government, the public needs to understand what the government is telling them.

It’s a movement that’s deeply populist in spirit, with its aim to bring the government closer to the people. And activists across ideological lines have echoed the same cause: The Occupy Wall Street crowd rails against deliberately impenetrable credit-card billing practices; tea partyers find evils lurking behind every run-on sentence in regulatory reform bills.

Ultimately, proponents believe that they’re protecting the sanctity not only of the English language but also of the republic itself. “How can you trust anyone if you don’t understand what they’re saying?” says Annetta Cheek, a 25-year veteran of the federal government who now runs a nonprofit called the Center for Plain Language. “When you’re supposed to be a democracy, and people don’t even understand what government is doing, that’s a problem.”

First of all, we aren't "supposed to be a democracy". We are, in fact, a republic. A republic that is governed, not by human beings, but by laws. It's an imperfect system; in fact, Churchill, misnaming it "democracy" called the rule of law the worst form of government there is, except all the others*.

When the legislature passes a law, or an administrative agency passes a rule; when courts hand down decisions, or state prosecutors file indictments - they are, all of them, dealing with laws. The laws the regulate our society. The laws that determine who is, and is not, a criminal. The laws the limit or expand our freedom of action, limit or expand our access to income, to goods and services, I could go on, but I do hope the main point is clear. Government action isn't just "stuff" people do. It's all about laws.

It would be wonderful if the convoluted language in legislation, regulations, and judicial opinions could be discarded for clarity and simplicity. It would also be wonderful if I found a bag filled with $100 bills lying in the street. Neither will happen. In the latter case, because even if such a thing did happen, and I were unscrupulous enough to hold on to it, the person who left it behind, more than likely, would be a criminal, and possessing such a thing would place my family, no less than myself, in grave danger. In the former case, it isn't going to happen because the legalese, for all its occasional confusion, and the seeming obfuscatory role it plays in communication, is in search of a different kind of clarity than communicating to the general public.

In other words, laws and regulations are written in a way so that if questions arise in courts of law, there is enough specificity in the language to determine if, in fact, any particular section of a law has been violated.

It's that simple.

Imagine a world where laws were simple, clear, direct, and comprehensible to the average citizen. Not just some of the laws. All of them. Imagine, in such a world, a person arrested for a crime - let's say theft, shall we, so no one gets hurt in our imagination - and, under the simple, direct language of the law, "Do Not Steal Or Go To Jail For A While", that person is indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison. Simple, right? So much better than our current system, one would suppose.

Except, of course, the real world, the one in which we live rather than the one in our imaginations where such things as the above paragraph are impossible, is so much more complicated. Let us take the same example, someone steals something, gets indicted, and goes to court. In a republic, at least those using Anglo-Saxon jurisprudential traditions, the accused has the right not only to confront the accusers, but, with the burden of proof on the accuser, to present a defense against the charges. A lot of people don't like these other features of our legal system, either, but there it is.

Just as in criminal law, so, too, in administrative law cases. An executive agency promulgates a regulation, or a series of them. For the sake not of clarity in a general sense, but rather clarity in a legal sense, the regulation is written in such a way that seems - seems, mind you - to defy understanding. Except, of course, in the case of administrative law - perhaps especially so in these instances - the matter will usually wind up in a court of law somewhere, in which the messiness of reality collides head on with the details of the rule. Part of a court's job is linguistic, determining the meaning of words, the scope of the application of the particular definitions, whether particular acts fall within the definitions in question, etc. Were a law or a regulation, in some noble but misguided attempt at general clarity, eschew specificity for clarity, it would invite a kind of legal orgy, as various groups would pile on seeking to make sure the definitions of the words involved do not apply to any acts they perform, and even better, apply to those of others.

Why this needs to be explained to a population as well-educated as Americans I do not know. I am not exactly a fan of the pages of legalese, usually printed so small I have to rent a microscope to read, in everything from credit card statements to phone bills to loan applications. All the same, I know why it exists, and it seems to make perfect sense to me that it exists in the way it does.

Maybe I'm just weird.

*Churchill, perhaps, can be forgiven for using the word "democracy" as he was a citizen and leader of a Constitutional monarchy. For all its failings and medieval political institutions, Britain's parliamentary system, combined with its Whiggish Constitutional history and the over-300-year old legacy from the Glorious Revolution, is a marvelous model of the Rule of Law.

Happy Holidays

2011-12-03T07:38:00.000-06:00

I blame that politically correct, Baby-Jesus-hating, anti-family, secret commie Bing Crosby.

When did Christians become whiny crybabies? At some point, we started complaining about everything. The business each year about Christmas trees, whether people say "Happy Holidays!" or "Merry Christmas!" has reached the point where I want nothing to do with the holiday itself.

Historically, celebrating Christmas was outlawed for religious reasons.

The lavish cultural celebration the entire season has become is relatively recent. Truth be told, it is also quite annoying. Driven by commerce, pushing back further and further the beginning of celebrating Christmas is far more about filthy lucre than the Prince of Peace.

Quite apart from the ridiculous idea that Christmas trees or saying a phrase to one another has anything at all to do with remembering the birth of the Christ child, one wonders where these same folks are when, say, the same people who carry on about the "War on Christmas" complain about churches participating in sheltering undocumented individuals and families, or participating in Occupy Protests. I would trust their insistence on faith-based whining a little more if they showed even a scintilla of consistency.

Finally, even if the "War of Christmas" were real - which it isn't - it would be a reason for giving thanks, for praise to God that we Christians might actually be doing something right. After all, the world and its rulers are supposed to hate us and persecute us, lie about us and kill us, which is called a blessing, a reason for celebration. Whining about "Happy Holidays" isn't quite the same thing as being tortured and killed because you profess faith in the risen Savior. In fact, it's kind of the exact opposite of it.

So, buck up. Stop complaining about non-existent slights to the faith. Stop getting indignant when someone quite honestly wishes you "Happy Holidays", because they are being thoughtful, polite, and pleasant. Christians shouldn't sound like spoiled children, demanding their own way.

Enjoy the pleasant things the season brings - family and friends gathering together; the soft lights of the decorations that push back the encroaching darkness; the quiet moments as you gather with loved ones - and, for God's sake, stop your bitching.

And Happy Holidays.

Confession

2011-12-02T06:54:00.000-06:00

What follows is modeled on The Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo. Written as a series of prayers to God confessing his manifold sins, this marvelous spiritual assay/autobiography is not only a good entry point for understanding this deep and confounding and necessary figure in Church history. It is also a wonderful way of humanizing one who has become larger than life. Even the Penguin edited version is marvelous.

Oh, Lord, Giver of all good things, I come before you now in the full knowledge and understanding that I have in the past, and continue, to hold what is a judgment upon my life as a blessing to be flashed before the world. Rather than accept the reality of grace in my life as final judgment upon my sinful nature, I boast - despite St. Paul! - of the grace that is mine in the Holy Spirit, from the Son, for the sake of the Father. Rather than sit in silence, I stand and shout. Rather than mourn my wretchedness, I celebrate a righteousness that is not mine. Rather than remember that grace is equally condemnation, I forget the judgment upon my manifold sins for my own sake.

Dear Lord, who sent the Son to die for us while we are yet sinners, please forgive my arrogance rooted in a misguided love for your sacrifice. Please forgive my refusal to say before the world the first word - You hate sin. You hate sin even more than you loved your Son who came in the Spirit of Life and Love to bring your wayward children back to you, not for our sakes, but for Your sake. Forgive me for refusing to always - always always always - put Your Love, Your Judgment, Your Purpose first in all things. Forgive me for all the ways, big and small, I have seen in the salvation you bring in Jesus Christ, an adornment for my life, rather than a reminder of how lost, and alone, and broken, and separated from you I am and will continue to be, unless I, at each moment of my life, surrender and die to the wayward heart of my sinful self.

Forgive me, God, not for my sake. Forgive me, God, for the sake of Your Son, whose life bled out even for me. Let me always, in each moment with each breath, recall that this Divine Love, this expression of the Divine Life, which pulls all creation to it, is done not for us, but for You. In your love and grace and mercy, oh, God, I only ask that I can, once again, forget myself so that my living and my dying, my laughter and my tears, my hope and my life, both now and to come - are all for You.

In all things, oh God, please let me give thanks and honor to you. In all things. At each moment.

A Lesson In Finding Out Stuff

2011-12-01T06:38:00.000-06:00

One of the many frustrations of this particular hobby is the presence of folks who consistently say things that boil down to the following: Where do you get your information? This past spring, in a discussion elsewhere, I made the observation that the median household income was around $50,000. A fellow commenter wrote that he did not believe that was the actual figure (I do not remember if he thought it was lower or higher; I just recall that he contested the figure). Now, as someone who pays attention to things like this, I had seen that figure bandied about for a while, but I decided to check it out for myself by going to the Census Bureau's website and looking it up for myself, and sure enough, there it was. So, I provided the link.

In this particular instance, the person in question routinely wonders where I find the information I use, how I go about finding it, questions the sources I use, blah-blah-blah. The last one I cannot help; like the extreme skeptic in Descartes who questions even his own existence, at some point the questioning itself becomes absurd. Matters of fact are just that, and whether they come from The National Review or The Nation, they are what they are.

Today, I had the misfortune of reading a column by George Will. From the headline, I figured it would become a subject of discussion during the next day or so, and reading it now is a good way of preventing me feeling stupid when other people are talking about it. The column, concerning a potential Supreme Court case regarding affirmative action, includes links to two amicus briefs. Will is also kind enough to provide the names of the people who have submitted the briefs. Since I had not heard of these people, I sought to learn who they were, if they'd ever written anything relevant, or otherwise accessible, and check it out for myself.

I opened a new tab in Windows, and pressed the "Home" button on my toolbar. My homepage is a personalized Google search box.

I realize that some people just wonder where all this stuff comes from, all this information, all these facts, all this access to all these crazy things called writings and articles and such. Since Google is so easy to use, and since pretty much anyone can use it, though, continuing in ignorance on any topic, or questioning a factual claim without checking it out for oneself, or seeking background information or past, relevant, information on individuals whose names appear in the news or on the Web is more a sign of laziness than anything else.

Each of these words is a link to the Google search results for the names in Will's article. How anyone wishes to proceed from here is up to them.

I do hope the implications of this lesson are clear. If you have a question about anything, no matter what it is, you can do this, too. Go to Google. Type in the word or phrase that troubles you. Press enter. Voila! The only thing you have to do now is sift through the results for what seems relevant. For that, you need judgment, discernment, and a willingness to be challenged and deal with contradiction and ambiguity as you sift the various matters Google provides for you. Getting going, though . . . that's easy.

I highly recommend this approach for anyone who wishes to find out stuff. You don't believe a claim someone has made, regarding a matter of fact, or a quote from someone? Google. It's that simple.

Learning Something New

2011-11-30T07:09:00.000-06:00

Last night's Roman's class introduced something completely new. Studying chapter 7 - as convoluted and odd, yet historically important a part of the Bible as one can think - the author of the study guide, Pamela Eisenbaum introduced the possibility that, in this chapter, St. Paul is not writing in a straightforward first-person voice, but rather using a particular device drawn from the ancient practice of rhetoric. I was intrigued, to say the least, but knowing absolutely nothing about the detailed practice of rhetoric in contemporaneous literature (including sibling epistolary literature, which was quite common), I contacted a blogger and Facebook friend of mine who is a student of rhetorical criticism. He was kind enough to respond with the suggestion I check out the "Rhetoric" tag on his blog.

Talk about an embarrassment of riches! I offer just these two posts as examples of how an understanding of rhetoric, its structure and rules, and the various ways it can be used, can open up the world of the Bible in new and exciting ways. While I read "Rhetoric" years ago as a humble philosophy grad student, and can say that it was something that was used in a formal way in antiquity, with rules and principles that both the speaker/writer and hearer/reader would understand without needing to be prodded, that is the extent of my understanding. So, one of the many projects I am now setting for myself is to re-read Aristotle, peruse some more of Joel's blog posts on this specific matter, and, I hope, come to a more rich, more deep understanding of St. Paul, his writings, and what it can mean for us today.

Sully's Problem

2011-11-29T06:38:00.000-06:00

I suppose this is one of those "blogger insider" things that most of the rest of humanity cares little about. All the same, when an influential writer in any field removes any pretension of intellectual respectability, it might be time to talk about it.

Andrew Sullivan is an accomplished writer and political commentator. He was editor of The New Republic, once upon a time the most respected liberal political journal out there. He has been writing a column called "The Daily Dish" at The Atlantic for years now. "Sully", as he is known, is also openly gay, a fact he often exploits for sympathy points from his audience.

I first started reading his name, then reading his column, during the 2008 Democratic primaries. While many liberals held a grudge against the Clintons from the 1990's, Sully's venom, spewed only at then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, was not contaminated by the usual liberal complaints regarding welfare reform and other heresies her husband practiced during his Presidency. The reality, as detailed in this 2008 piece from Shakesville, is Sullivan couldn't hide his contempt at the fact that Hillary Clinton is a woman:

Sully calls Hillary's candidacy a "corruption of feminism," and says that ads recorded by Bill to support Hillary are a "sad, final betrayal of feminism."

Certainly, Sullivan shows a great respect for feminism. Looking at his site right now, he's running a letter from an unnamed reader that compares her unfavorably to Eva Perón. Another correspondent says she's got big balls. Yet another worries that Bill Clinton will be a corrupt freelancer in a Hillary Clinton administration, worries that evidently didn't apply to Hillary, or, for that matter, Laura. Certainly all these correspondents are pro-feminist, right?

But let's not stop there -- let's look at all of King Andrew's fine contributions to women's rights. Sullivan, of course, endorsed the rabidly anti-choice Ron Paul for President. He has referred to differing women's differing opinions on Clinton as "Paglia women vs. Steinem women," in which says he's "long sided with Camille Paglia." He defended Larry Summers from women angry at him for suggesting that women aren't as smart as men, saying "Scientists are finding out more and more about the differences between the male and female brains. One thing that endures across cultures and populations is a male edge at the very top of the bell curve for spatial and mathematical reasoning." And in a 2000 article in the New York Times, Sullivan praised testosterone, and said, "Since most men have at least 10 times as much [testosterone] as most women, it therefore makes sense not to have coed baseball leagues. Equally, it makes sense that women will be under-represented in a high-testosterone environment like military combat or construction. ... [G]ender inequality in these fields is primarily not a function of sexism, merely of common sense."

So clearly, Andrew Sullivan is a feminist, and a strong one.

Folks "in the know" have understood that Sully has issues with women. He is kind enough to flaunt them.

Fast forward three years or so, and we learn that Sully is now raising the tattered banner of race and IQ. Fellow Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisis Coates provides details and some context.

Andrew's ahistorical approach to race and intelligence has always amazed. The contention, for instance, that "research is not about helping people; it's about finding out stuff," may well be true in some limited sense. But it's never been true, in any sense, of race and intelligence. In the 19th century helping out white people (however that is defined) was very much the point of intelligence research. Into the early 20th century, the rise of eugenics was equally linked the field to the advancement of "people." Even the intelligence theorists whom Andrew, himself, has advanced over the years are motivated by a desire to presumably help people, if only in the form of deciding how a society should expend its limited resources.

Advocates of the "p.c. egalitarianism" theory, such as Andrew, evidently believe that the notion that black people are dumber than whites is a cutting edge theory, as opposed to a long-held tenet of slave-holders and white supremacists. They present themselves as bold-truth tellers who will not bow to "liberal creationists." In fact they are espousing firmly established views that date back to the very founding of this country.

A commenter on Coates' piece provides even further context regarding Sullivan's footsie-playing with academic hood-wearers:

My introduction to Andrew Sullivan was some ten years ago. The right wing talking point du jour was that the media was proven to be liberal because it identified conservatives as "conservative" more often than it identified liberals as "liberal". Even apart from the silliness of this argument, an actual linguist used actual academic tools to perform actual research and found not only that the assertion of fact is untrue, but indeed that it had the facts backwards. A minor frenzy followed among the usual commentariat. Sullivan's contribution was that he didn't know the facts, but he knew the correct conclusion so the facts didn't actually matter. I have never for the life of me understood why anyone with any pretension to seriousness has ever taken him seriously.

When Tucker Carlson said of then-Sen. Clinton that "there's just something about her that feels castrating, overbearing, and scary" and " I have often said, when she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs", he was mocked for his hostility. Sullivan, for some reason, continues to have a certain cache among some liberal commentators, including Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo and Matt Yglesias.

Schlepping for the pseudo-science linking race and intelligence reveals Sully as not only a misogynist, but a bigot as well. This may sound harsh, but the reality is simple enough. The pedigree of the "blacks are dumber than whites" idea is old. And rotten to the core. That The Bell Curve attempted to give it a fine sheen of intellectual respectability doesn't disguise the reality that it is no different than craniometry. As with Sullivan's insistence that evidence regarding naming this or that person liberal or conservative is irrelevant, having made up one's mind about an issue without reference to any facts is the garden variety definition of "prejudice", pre-judging.

It is an important thing to expose this kind of thing, call it what it is. Whether it's some kind of visceral hatred of women, or this or that particular woman; or a long-time expressed support for long-debunked ideas regarding race, Sullivan has a history of antipathy to both women and racial minorities that betrays what lies in his sad little heart.

The Practice Of Discipline

2011-11-28T07:13:00.001-06:00

John Wesley's great gift to posterity was the practice of mutual accountability within a framework of the disciplined practice of the faith. In the face of an apostate church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to understand that the roots of discipleship lie in discipline. Writing in a Lutheran context, there could have been fewer things more shocking than both to discover then to insist that to be a Christian believer means to be a follower, that this following is not this thing or that thing, but quite specific things, rooted in the call and Christ to follow, always knowing the cross lies before us.

The Cost of Discipleship is a marvelous little work to be reading at Advent. Part of preparing our lives for the coming of the Messiah is recalling, and making that memory a living thing in our own daily round, that we, like those folks so long ago, were all waiting. In a world beset by the dual tyrannies of Rome and the apostate King Herod, a world where the slightest whisper of holiness of heart and life was understood as a threat, a time when God seemed silent, the only way to be sure one was being faithful seemed to be a persistent practice of piety not as an end in itself, but as a means toward union with God.

We flail and flutter about, seeking ways to breathe the Spirit in to moribund churches. We mourn the sense of loss, the lack of any direction, the inability to sense any hope in our common life. We rail against the stupidity and corruption of our leaders. We mourn preventable deaths that the powerful insist are necessary; human sacrifice continues to be practiced in the name of economic efficiency, but that doesn't make it any less human sacrifice.

So, our times really aren't that different.

Except for this.

We Christians already know the end of the story.*

If we in the Church are floundering and flailing and moaning and whining and feel hopeless and lost, we are forgetting that this whole Advent season should be reminding us that God is on the Way, because God, in Christ, has already been here. When we recall this together, we are already beginning the process of discipleship. As we move through this season to the celebration of the birth of Jesus, we do it together. In this daily movement, we hold one another up, recall one another to the life of love and service that is the way of he Christ child. As we feel others around us reminding us of our duty to continue to follow even as the world around us seems insistent that such following leads nowhere, we should be thankful to the call to surrender our lives, together with those who have gone before us as witnesses, to those who are with us on the Way, hoping against hope that even now, in the midst of all the troubles, we can see that single candle so we do not have to curse the darkness.

Discipleship exists in the tension between the individual and the community. This Advent season is a nice time to recall that tension, and that it serves us all well through mutual reinforcement. The Way isn't easy. But, we aren't alone. In the midst of the dust and dirt and sense of loss, we should still be able to see the tiny baby who leads us.

*I'm stealing this from Lisa's sermon yesterday. I hope she doesn't mind.

Varieties Of Ignorance

2011-11-27T06:08:00.000-06:00

I was recently reminded that it is impossible to argue with ignorance. Why I even made the attempt is beyond me. Yet, ignorance is a sneaky devil, cropping up not only in discussions of religion and politics, where it is like kudzu, spreading almost too fast to control. One can find it most anywhere.

It wears all sorts of masks. On the one hand, of course, we have the fundamentalist, ignorant equally of science and Biblical interpretation, screeching on everything from the age of the Universe to sexual ethics, without any reference at all to anything but their own prejudices, guesses, and poorly informed reading of the Christian scriptures.

My favorite ignorant folks are the New Atheists. These are the people who parade their ignorance like one of those balloons at the Macy's Parade. They know nothing of church history. They know nothing of Christian doctrine, the varieties of expressions of faith - Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical (Lutheran), Reformed, Anglican, Anabaptist. The insist one need not read the Bible, Christian theology, church history, or anything else related to religion to understand it is wrong. Like young earth creationists and other fundamentalist ignoramuses, they say the things they do about religion out of a deep well of ignorance.

They have spawned a kind of weird child who crops up in the weirdest places in comment threads. These are the folks who, for some reason, see the "enemy" in any and every discussion as religious folks who, they insist, believe in something they all call (I have seen this so often over the past five or so years it cannot be a coincidence) "the sky fairy". Like creationists who insist that scientists are secret antinomians, bent on destroying human moral life by convincing us we are "only animals", these folks seem to think they understand what religious folk (and here, religion is conflated with Christianity, an insulting and ignorant position) think without any reference to anything Christians or Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or followers of Shinto or Santeria or anything else actually believe.

Duncan features comment threads in Philadelphia papers' on-line editions as a source of humor. Folks making comments on articles regarding various urban issues such as the perennial matter of parking, public transportation, residential density, crime, and so on have a tendency, to be polite, to speak without actually understanding the issue at hand. Freedom of speech surely means that folks who don't know anything can talk about whatever they wish. Prudence and humility would seem to suggest there is a certain virtue to keeping one's yap shut on a matter about which one knows nothing.

Now, I am ignorant about the vast majority of matters in the world around me. Ask me a question about, say, diagnosing a problem with an automobile, and I'd be lost. I can replace the inner workings of a toilet tank, but I can't do plumbing, and wouldn't know where to begin. If my computer were to go on the fritz, I wouldn't dream of taking it apart and trying to fix it myself; I'd either send it off for repairs or buy a new one.

There are discussions on these, and thousands of other topics on the internet. I do not engage them, not because they are stupid topics, or boring, or irrelevant. It would probably be wise for me to learn a few tricks about diagnosing car problems. I've tried and it just doesn't work with me. Which is why I am grateful there are people who can tell, from a certain knocking or shaking or pulling, what, precisely, is the matter with my car and how to go about fixing it.

I have often wondered why it is that people who are as ignorant of religion and politics feel this isn't a barrier to participation in discussions about them. I wouldn't go to the retired machinist across the street if I had a toothache. He's a really great guy, has a sweet dog and a mouthy cockatiel, but he isn't a dentist. If he demonstrated some knowledge of dentistry, I might go to him and ask his advice about a problem - a loose filling, say, or receding gums - and accept the information he gave me. Since I happen to know that, while a nice guy who knows all sorts of things, he doesn't know anything about dentistry, I am wise not to heed suggestions he may have on tooth care.

For some reason, we don't think the same approach applies to matters like religion or politics, or social or cultural discussions. This is not to suggest that "only" "experts" should speak on these matters (God, how I've heard those lines before!). I do not like the word "experts", and most self-proclaimed ones are blowhards. I am saying, however, that if you wish to write about, say, the efficacy of tax cuts and their economic impact, spend ten minutes with Google and read up on what folks who know economics are actually saying. Read a bunch of people, too!

Last week, I read an article in the New York Times that claimed the Pentagon had no contingency in the face of looming, drastic budget cuts. Apart from being a bit of a muddle, something about the article and its central point didn't pass the smell test with me. I did something that makes perfect sense. I emailed someone I know who knows something about budgeting in public agencies, and after a cursory reading, this person let me know the story was, to be generous, really really bad.

For some reason, whether it's a discussion about reading the Bible, or talking about a particular theological position, or the effects of tax cuts on public revenue or the Occupy movement, there are people who think they can say whatever pops in to their minds, type it, send it out on to the internet, and, hey! like magic, they have contributed to public discussion. Instead of thinking, "Man, I just broadcast to the world that I don't know my ass from my elbow."

Simple word of advice: If you're going to write about something, learn something about it. It saves readers headaches from beating their heads against various walls.

People Get Ready

2011-11-26T08:55:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow we begin a new Church Calendar year, with the First Sunday in Advent. Similar to Lent, Advent is a season of preparation. Unlike Lent, we are not called to spiritual disciplines per se during Advent, no fasting or silence. We are, instead, to prepare our lives for the coming of the Son of God.

Every good story has a prologue. The stage is set, the questions and surprises that get the ball rolling, pulling us in to the story. Advent is nothing more or less than God's prologue to the whole mystery of Salvation.

It is not just a time to look back. We are not only to consider Isaiah 40-55, Luke 1, Matthew 1. We are also to look around ourselves, in our lives here and how, hearing the words of St. Mary and St. Simeon as declaring realities here and now, realities we are to see, words in which we are to trust. Most of all, a path to follow on the way to meeting the living Lord.

We are also to look ahead. As the tradition has it, we live between the times. Between the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and the inauguration of the New Creation and the return of Jesus Christ in final victory and glory, gathering all who have laid their lives before him, healing this wounded creation, so that we can sit around the table God has prepared for all of us.

In this last Spirit, then, as we move from the declaration that Christ is King, that our profession of the Divine Triune Life reaches not only in to our hearts and lives, but out to all creation, so, too should we now confess our failure to anticipate the coming promised so long ago. Setting aside the fantasies of the ignorant, or the apocalyptic visions of the pathological, the dreams of a river of blood, we should instead be living each day in the footsteps of the one who leads the Way, knowing that it brings us to an end that is greater than we can imagine. A world where all creation is in harmony. Where the God of Life sits in the Temple, and light and justice and peace and life rule.

We are to be about the business of making this reality because we believe - we do not know; we believe - that it is already a reality in the resurrected Son of the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are not to kick against the pricks of fallen creation that screams in rage and fear at the very mention of the holiness and healing brought about by Jesus Christ. Rather, we are to rejoice at the rage of the powers and principalities for that means we may yet be on the only Way that leads to true life.

Folks, in order to get ready, the first thing we need to do is set our feet on that road. We need to remember that road is long, there are all sorts of dangers and distractions, and every step will be agonizing for us.

But . . . oh, my, the promise that each of us and all of us, our communities and societies and all creation will be gathered before the Throne, washed in the blood of Christ, who stands our only advocate. While you're decorating and shopping and preparing for parties and getting those stupid year-end letters sent out, remember - none of that is real preparation. Keep looking out in the world around all of us, be looking for those signs that say, "Be of good Cheer, Christ is coming soon." Live that out in as many varieties as possible.

And be glad.

Caveat Emperor

2011-11-25T08:40:00.000-06:00

What better day to take a moment and wonder whether or not, in the pursuit of economic stability, we aren't selling our birthright for a mess of pottage?

[C]onsider the interview that Alex Stubb, the minister of Europe for Finland’s right-wing government, gave to the Financial Times last weekend. The six euro-zone nations with AAA credit ratings, said Stubb, should have greater say in Europe’s economic affairs than the other 11 euro members. The political rights of Southern and Eastern Europe would be subordinated, essentially, to those of Germany and Scandinavia — or to credit rating agencies, which are threatening to downgrade France (thereby reducing the number of decision-making euro nations from six to five).

What Stubb is proposing, and what the markets are doing, is, in essence, extending to the realm of once-equally-sovereign nations the one-dollar-one-vote principle that our Supreme Court enshrined in its Citizens United decision last year. The requirement that one must own property to vote — abolished in this nation in the early 1800s by the Jacksonian Democrats — has been resurrected by powerful financial institutions and their political allies.

What we in America are experiencing is little more than the result of accepting the lie that our state institutions should serve the financial interests of corporate power. With the conflation of bourgeois democratic liberalism and a species of corporate capitalism, we have lost the reality that the common good is more than simple prosperity, that our institutions serve the common good, and that accumulated wealth equals massed power and is a danger to the health of our polis.

This last, in particular, was a warning cited again and again in The Federalist Papers. It also became the mantra of proponents of expanded democratic rights during the Jacksonian era. It withered during the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century when the states and the United States Senate and the Supreme Court worked in lock-step to keep growing rage at the very obvious social and economic disparity at bay. One would have thought the lessons from the Great Depression would have sunk so deep in to our collective political bones we would not need this discussion again. Alas, a combination of greed, ignorance, and collective forgetfulness has created conditions that leave us staring at the very easy, very obvious solutions, and declaring them either impossible or, what seems worse, dangerous to our political and economic order.

The health of the American economy is not the gauge by which we determine the health of our polity. Giving free reign to private institutions to determine our public policy at the expense of the common good has been a recipe for disaster. Continuing this trend in the face of disastrous failure; continuing to listen to the voices of those who created the conditions in which we live long after these voices have lost any credibility; continuing to insist that supporting the private good of some large private institutions is key to advancing the public good, regardless of any evidence to support it; all these create the false political stalemate that is, in fact, the on-going stranglehold by large private institutions over the public sector whose mandate is to serve all of us. With a strength enhanced by fear and rage, the result is our current malaise and legislative deadlock that is easily overcome, given only slightly more backbone.

Our democratic institutions have always been frail; in the face of concerted effort by private interests who have amassed the kind of power and influence we see here and abroad, they seem to teeter on the brink of collapse. Funny enough, the answers are simple enough and easy enough, and fully in line with the best of our traditions. That we just cannot find the wherewithal to force them through reluctant legislatures should be enough evidence for even the biggest skeptic that our democracy, like our economy, is sick. It isn't a mortal illness by any means. We should take care, however, not to delay doing what really needs to be done in order to return it to robust health.

No Turning Back

2011-11-24T14:04:00.000-06:00

Along with leading a class called Christian Believer, I am also taking the Invitation to Romans, part of the short-form Disciple Bible Study series. Tuesday evening, we were discussing the typological use of Adam in Chapter 5, the question of original sin, death, and the sticky wicket of the universal efficacy of Christ's sacrifice and the penalty for Adam's sin.

The grace of Jesus Christ being the subtext of so much of Romans, mention was made of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. The leader of the class asked me to read a famous passage from the Introduction:

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buyw hich the merchant will sel all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought, again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

The book is, in essence, an elaboration of this passage. The movement between the costliness of the sacrifice of Christ, and the graciousness of the sacrifice; from the way we are called, called to leave all we have, venturing forth only because our names have been called, following without knowing whence the road will lead; from the fear and rejection and death that awaits us, to the joy and peace and life that is the essence of being a disciple of Jesus Christ - this is what the book concerns itself with.

I was reminded of the reality of the depth and power of Bonhoeffer's message - similar in so many ways to our own Wesleyan heritage of disciplined discipleship as a signifier of the mark of the cross on our lives - when I discovered my name brought up in a discussion elsewhere. Apart from so much else I find . . . troubling . . . about all of this, the lack of any understanding that we are to begin our understanding of what it is to follow Jesus Christ within a context of already having heard that call and answered it, of setting aside our nets, our tax collector's rolls, leaving our family and friends behind without condition or question or desire to fulfill some other obligation prior to setting our feet squarely behind those of the one who calls us.

It isn't the bigotry, which should be assumed. It isn't the quite palpable hatred, either. Rather, there is not a single mention of Jesus Christ. Not one. Somehow, a bunch of folks are talking about God and God's will and doing it without a single reference to Jesus Christ, who embodies God's will for us, a will for life, for freedom; a life of death and single-minded devotion and submission to the discipline of the one who's Way we follow.

It breaks my heart to consider the magnificent pearl of the Gospel cast before these swine. I am saddened to think that it is so easy to answer this call. To set aside all that was, all that made them who they are, to erase from their lives all that would cause them to stumble, and just start walking. Sure, the journey isn't easy. Good Lord, anyone thinking that should have their head examined! But, in the following, keeping one's eye fixed on the one whose lead we follow, whose voice first stirred us from our slumber, what could be easier? What else could make sense?

Having heard the voice of Christ in my own life, I have stopped hemming and hawing, making excuses and tripping over my fear. Way leads on to way, as Tolkien said, and the road ahead is dusty, and long, and the only thing I can do, the only thing that makes sense, is to see the one who called me walking along in front of me, casting the occasional grin over his shoulder at me. I know he knows I'm back here, and I glance away when his eyes flash at me. I keep going because, I see him walking, the holes through his feet not slowing him one bit, the fact that my life is responsible for those holes not dimming the love in his eyes.

Why make mountains out of non-existent molehills? Why not just sing the old refrain, "I have decided to follow Jesus/No turning back, no turning back"?

Grateful

2011-11-23T06:42:00.000-06:00

As you all probably know, Facebook has invited people to spend each day of November giving thanks for something. In principle, this is a wonderful thing. In practice, it seems to be appalling, awful.

The things for which I give thanks, the things in my life for which I am grateful are few. First and foremost, for life itself, the daily surprise and challenge. For my lovely wife, who only grows more beautiful each day. For my daughters, a constant source of surprise and joy and laughter. The three of them together are evidence of the reality of grace in my life, and I tell them this as often as possible.

I am thankful for the animals who share our home, for the ways I see different creatures living (well, usually sleeping, eating, or pooping) out their days, and the occasional nuttiness of the cats, and the simple, unadorned love our dog has for all of us and each of us.

I am thankful for the ability to appreciate beauty. Whether it's the beauty of my daughters' smiles, of my wife's come-hither look, a painting, a photograph, or a piece of music, wouldn't our lives be empty if we couldn't take in an experience and see that glimmer of transcendence we choose to call "the beautiful" within it?

These are the things for which I give thanks, in private, in silence or in inadequate words, to God. Everything else I have in this life is just so much stuff, really. Junk that can clutter up the mind and heart.

I wish you all, and each of you, a wonderful Thanksgiving. Enjoy the fellowship with family and friends around the table. Please, for God's sake, don't muck it up by trying to talk politics. Spend tomorrow, rather, in relative peace and quiet, listening to others, to their lives and experiences. Revel in the tumult of a busy house full of people. And in and through it all, give thanks, whether to God - however you might call the deity you name - or to one another, for the simple, most important joys in life.

The Cult Of The Cop

2011-11-21T08:56:00.000-06:00

I have a feeling some of what I'm going to write is going to upset some folks.

I couldn't care less.

You see it on TV cop shows. You hear it in news reports. You get it from currently serving police officers.

Cops have a tough job. They're out there, putting their lives on the line. Every day could bring a situation that puts their lives, the lives of their fellow officers, or the lives of members of the public at risk. They have to make split-second decisions, and are trained to make the right ones. No one who isn't a cop can possibly understand.

To all of this I really have only one response - Phooey.

Can we chat here? Just for a moment? A quick scan of the Wikipedia article on the history of municipal policing in the United States (I know that Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source, but this particular article is well-sourced) reminds readers that, for most of the time we've had publicly-funded police departments (less than two hundred years now) they were viewed with suspicion by the public. As in most societies, the police served the interests of power. Their attitude toward the poor, toward various marginalized populations in general, was hostile. Violence, while uncoordinated, was rampant.

The professionalization of police departments, including specialized training, an emphasis on community relations, coincided with an increase in the para-militarization of police tactics. By the time we reached the 1990's, rather than one or two specialized units (modeled after the Special Weapons And Tactics, or SWAT, units of Los Angeles), most police forces had some training in military tactics, increased firepower which included military style weapons, and the hierarchy of police forces became much more rigid, similar to military practice.

At the same time, there was an increase in the belief that this was necessary. The 1970's and 1980's saw a rapid rise in violent crime, and a general sense of social decay, particularly in urban areas. Rather than address these matters proactively, city authorities relied upon their newest tool, paramilitary police departments, to control their unruly populations.

Events on September 11, 2001 sealed, in many ways, the cult of the heroic cop. Which is not to deny that police officers that day, and every day, act in ways that are, indeed, heroic. It is not to deny that many communities, in particular those in areas most effected by high crime, want a police presence. After 9/11, however, being anything other than nearly worshipful of police officers became something more than counter-cultural. It seemed an insult to the men and women who died that day trying to help so many people escape the terrible events in New York.

We are living in different times. Violent crime is down, and has been on a downward trend, for over a decade now. In the mid- to late 1990's, it was thought this was a product of better economic times. Even as our economy has burbled and broiled since the collapse first of the tech bubble, then the housing bubble, those rates have fallen and other explanations have been floated, with no definitive answers*.

The various videos and photos of events at the University of California at Davis, symbolized by this photo of University Police Officer John Pike calmly and methodically pepper-spraying a group of students who are sitting down, posing a threat to no one, is starting a discussion, long overdo, on the increased use of military tactics and the overuse of violent reactions on the part of police.

A group of writers at Atlantic magazine is addressing the whole matter of police tactics in the wake of what is, quite clearly, a misuse of official violence.

We have to be able to talk about this issue without (a) insulting or alienating the thousands of police officers who go about their jobs with dignity and professionalism; or (b) forgetting that the institutions of the municipal, county, state, and federal police force exist to maintain the social and economic status quo. Which is not to claim in any way that there aren't really people out there who are dangerous, a threat to others, to society at large, or to the communities in which they live. Rather, we need to make sure we keep focused on the matter of police tactics, in particular the overemphasis on paramilitary training and response.

This is not to call in to question the need for police officers, police forces, or even, on occasion, the need for a strong response in the face of violent activity. Rather, it is to raise the issue of what we, as communities, as a larger society, want to be, how we wish to have those who work to protect legitimate public ends, legitimate matters of public safety and security, act in response to various situations.

Walking along and pepper spraying a bunch of college students who are sitting on the ground, posing a threat to no one, isn't the answer. I hope these recent events, and their widespread witness thanks to the ubiquity of video cameras, cell phones, and the Internet may well begin the process of talking about policing without falling in to the trap of the cult of the cop.

*Personally, I lean toward the demographic explanation. The population cohort that commits most crimes, rather than being far larger than others, as it was through the 1970's and 1980's, is relatively even with others. A smaller number of people who tend to commit crimes means a smaller number of crimes is being committed.

Contra Newt, Part 2

2011-11-20T08:05:00.001-06:00

This is kind of turning in to a theme. I really don't want to pick on the guy. It isn't like he's gonna get the nomination. Still, a commenter wanted to know a few things:

The sick hatred you have for Gingrich is well known. What is NOT well known is any commentary on any of his ideas and why you disagree. Nothing from your "brilliance" indicating any flaw in any of his ideas. I doubt you've taken even a cursory look at anything he's proposed.

I hate repeating myself, but I do not "hate" Gingrich. I know you don't quite understand this idea that political differences aren't something I consider as personal. I know you insisted, despite my repeated claims to the contrary, that I "hated" Pres. George W. Bush. I am not maniacal in my feelings about Gingrich, or anyone else in public life. As I say toward the end, I actually enjoy his presence in public life, because he adds a breath of crazed fun to it. My reasons for the things I saw about Gingrich are numerous, as I detail, with sources available to anyone who knows how to use a search engine.

Google, Art. It's this thing you use on the computing machine.

A good introduction to the life and times of Newton Leroy Gingrich is this profile in the New York Review of Books by Joan Didion. It was later collected in Political Fictions, an anthology of her political writings in NYRB from the 1988 Presdential elections through the 2000 elections. In this comment, I linked to a Frontline Online piece on Gingrich's personal peccadilloes, which, I was quick to point out, I do not believe counts in the balance against any candidate for the Presidency.

As for Newt's "ideas", he has published many books - he claims 24, with 13 bestsellers to his credit; it may be that high, I'm not sure - and I have actually perused several of them, read excerpts and synopses of others. It isn't difficult to do, when browsing in a bookstore, to pick up a random volume and pick through a few pages. I must say his turgid prose style is more than balanced for a fondness for the telling anecdote that, when given the tiniest bit of scrutiny turns out to have emerged from the land of Newt's ass. One of my favorites concerned an example he gave of the stifling effects of American federal bureaucracy. In one of Al Franken's books from the 1990's, he details a long claim by Gingrich that a man had invented a machine that had proved, through extensive field testing, to be superior in its outcomes in giving CPR to patients needing it. He dropped plans, so said the then-Speaker, because the process of applying for a patent, testing the effectiveness of it, having it vetted by various federal agencies became not only expensive, but seemed to the person who had invented it, delaying quick delivery of a device to the public.

The only problem with this little morality tale? It never happened. Furthermore, it actually becomes counter-productive to make stuff up. There are, to be sure, plenty of anecdotes about the stupidity of various government regulations, of the way socially beneficial new ideas are stymied and even killed by the mountains of red tape and the maze of agencies one navigates in order to achieve success. Why not rely on a real example? Why go to the trouble of making stuff up? That is the far more troubling question this raises. One would think conservatives, dedicated to truth uber alles would understand that.

Finally, in today's Washington Post, we have the other side of an argument on whether or not there is an anti-intellectual streak in the Tea Party. Friday had Kathleen Parker weighing in on what was called, in the column headline, the Palinization of the Republican Party. Today it's Nia-Malika Henderson and Perry Bacon Jr., two political reporters, making the case that Perry and Cain are falling and Newt is rising because of the Tea Party's understanding that the Republican candidate for President needs to have a bit more pepperoni between his or her ears than either Perry or Cain.

Someday I may repeat my frustration with the whole "anti-intellectualism" nonsense, a canard the liberals love because it allows them to pretend to be smarter than everyone else, which is usually annoying. Which is why this discussion is so vacuous to me. I wouldn't have commented on it at all, except I found a delicious Newtism at the very end, something that demonstrates Newt's lack of self-awareness, to be generous:

“One of the Republican weaknesses is that we rely too much on consultants and too much on talking points, and we don’t rely enough on actually knowing things,” he said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. “If you’re going to lead the country and change history, you better know a heck of a lot before you start, because there’s not much time for learning on the job.”(emphasis added)

The portion in italics is what leaped off the screen, smacked me in the face, then proceeded to tickle me until I had to pee. The same man who said this, once upon a time wrote the following:

Language: A Key Mechanism of Control

Newt Gingrich's 1996 GOPAC memo

Can we stop right here for just a moment? Please note both the title of this memo and who wrote it. Are you with me on this so far?

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that "language matters." In the video "We are a Majority," Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: "I wish I could speak like Newt."

That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases.

This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.

While the list could be the size of the latest "College Edition" dictionary, we have attempted to keep it small enough to be readily useful yet large enough to be broadly functional. The list is divided into two sections: Optimistic Positive Governing words and phrases to help describe your vision for the future of your community (your message) and Contrasting words to help you clearly define the policies and record of your opponent and the Democratic party.

This is the bulk of the preamble. In essence this memo is a piece of political consulting, and actually produces a list of talking points, rooted in the idea that, as the title says, language is a key mechanism of control. About that list . . .:

Optimistic Positive Governing Words

Use the list below to help define your campaign and your vision of public service. These words can help give extra power to your message. In addition, these words help develop the positive side of the contrast you should create with your opponent, giving your community something to vote for!
active(ly)
activist
building
candid(ly)
care(ing)
challenge
change
children
choice/choose
citizen
commitment
common sense
compete
confident
conflict
control
courage
crusade
debate
dream
duty
eliminate good-time in prison
empower(ment)
fair
family
freedom
hard work
help
humane
incentive
initiative
lead
learn
legacy
liberty
light
listen
mobilize
moral
movement
opportunity
passionate
peace
pioneer
precious
premise
preserve
principle(d)
pristine
pro- (issue): flag, children, environment, reform
prosperity
protect
proud/pride
provide
reform
rights
share
strength
success
tough
truth
unique
vision
we/us/our

Contrasting Words

Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.
abuse of power
anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
betray
bizarre
bosses
bureaucracy
cheat
coercion
"compassion" is not enough
collapse(ing)
consequences
corrupt
corruption
criminal rights
crisis
cynicism
decay
deeper
destroy
destructive
devour
disgrace
endanger
excuses
failure (fail)
greed
hypocrisy
ideological
impose
incompetent
insecure
insensitive
intolerant
liberal
lie
limit(s)
machine
mandate(s)
obsolete
pathetic
patronage
permissive attitude
pessimistic
punish (poor ...)
radical
red tape
self-serving
selfish
sensationalists
shallow
shame
sick
spend(ing)
stagnation
status quo
steal
taxes
they/them
threaten
traitors
unionized
urgent (cy)
waste
welfare

So, the guy who complains about political consultants and talking points once upon a time offered political consultation and talking points.

This might seem a small matter. It probably is. With Gingrich, however, there is such a large volume of these little things, they have added up over the decades to give a good impression to folks who follow stuff like this (I first heard his name and read a profile in a major news weekly about Gingrich in 1985 or so; some folks pay attention and remember stuff even longer than the internet, Art). That impression is easy enough to spell out clearly - for Newt, reality, like truth, like intellectual integrity and merit, is a tool to be used to force whatever outcome Newt desires.

I called Newt megalomaniacal, and I think that's fair. Not because I am any kind of psychologist; if I were, especially if I were, it would certainly be unethical to claim some kind of diagnosis of Gingrich. Rather, I think there is an abundance of evidence available to say with a certain amount of confidence that he has displayed a more-than-normal (even for a politician, for whom a healthy ego is necessary) sense of the grandiose when it comes to his abilities, his potential, the intellectual merit of his ideas and thoughts, and the potential impact upon our national life they, and he, represent. This, in and of itself, is hardly a disqualification for office anymore than a predilection for extracurricular sex is, or at least should be. It is the substance of Gingrich's bloated sense of self. In different historical circumstances, Newt would have spun out his life one of those mediocrities that populate higher education the way moles populate my backyard. He would set up guest speakers at whatever cow college he landed at, produce all sorts of events for students and faculty to engage at an intellectual level; all of them would be poorly attended, and he would rail against the unfairness of it all. All the while treating his female graduate assistants as repositories for his seminal fluid.

I am not picking on Newt. In fact, I enjoy the attention he receives. It adds a certain amount of levity to what is otherwise a pretty dull political season. I know quite a bit about Newt, about his ideas, the history of his career in public life, and even some of his personal history. Even if I didn't, I have provided links here, and a good guide to finding out more if you, Art, wish to do so - Google. Seriously, man, I've told you many times that it's your friend.

Mind's Eye Of Newt

2011-11-18T16:06:00.000-06:00

Since I do not believe polls mean anything, I refuse to speculate as to whether or not Newt's recent rise in said meaningless polls is or is not correct. All the same, since some media outlets put stock in such drivel, it does give us all a chance to revisit our most silly, megalomaniacal politician. Public life offers a spectacle of personality disorders, from the mildly OCD to the outright psychopathic. In Newton Leroy Gingrich, we have the joy of sitting back and watching a man swallow his entire political career whole, with his head firmly resting as far up his ass as possible. Photos don't do the picture justice.

I was reminded of this fact - Newt's best friend, from his own perspective, is Newt; Newt's worst enemy, from the perspective of the rest of humanity, is Newt - when I heard the teaser to this story. I was glad I was making good time so I didn't have to listen to it. It's hard to drive when you're laughing so hard you're doubled over, tears streaming down your face.

"If you look at the totality of what we accomplished, I had a pretty good speakership. I'd rather have done that than been a caretaker," he said. "I did burn out my party. There's no question [that] by the spring of 1998, they were just tired, and they didn't want to fight anymore, and they didn't want to have any new ideas — I actually had a senator say to me, 'We're not doing any ideas this year.' "

I love this. It's like looking at the world through crap-colored glasses. Newt got the heave-ho because he just wore out those poor House Republicans with his new ideas, his legislative accomplishments, his bold leadership.

I have to wonder if he figures cheating on his various wives with female staffers was all their fault. They just couldn't keep up with his manliness, his desires, his prowess.

Seriously, there is something so deranged in this, it should be remembered going forward. It isn't even rewriting history, because Newt, I firmly believe, sees this as the reality with which he dealt in 1998. Anyone paying attention back then knows it resembles those halcyon days of the second term of Pres. Clinton as much as the Disney version of The Alamo resembles the siege of that mission.

Should Newt make it through the first round of primaries and caucuses (caucki?), we should expect more of these kinds of professorial reflections. The kind of question-free zone in which Gingrich continues to walk - did Brian Naylor do no research at all before producing this story? Did he actually quote someone saying Gingrich is a man full of ideas, professorial in his approach to public life in the same way as Pres. Obama? How could he do this without spit taking all over his keyboard? - may well serve the Republic well. After all, if he winds up with Republican nomination, Obama cake-walks to re-election. In our current historical moment, electing a Republican would be even more disastrous than maintaining the status quo. Gingrich, having slightly less discipline in his personal and professional life than a pithed frog, would certainly provide four years of entertainment, including a whole cycle of female staffers emerging from his office tousle-haired and flushed. I say this only because his personal history is against him, not because I wish these poor women to be subjected to his version of "Serving the President".

I just wish we could stop reading and hearing stories about how full of ideas Gingrich is. Seriously. He isn't. He opens his mouth, whatever falls out gets printed, and that's it. The filter that most people use most of the time, that little voice that says, "Don't say that! It's just nuts!", has no power over Gingrich. The guy said that Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her children, was an example of the results of Democratic social engineering. He said the Columbine HS shootings in 1999 were an example of what happens when we have Presidents getting blow jobs in the Oval Office (as opposed to disgraced former Speakers getting them wherever they can grab the two minutes it takes for him).

Part of me hopes the guy does it, gets the nomination, and just cuts the last frayed moorings to reality. On the other hand, I really, really, really want him to just go away, take his second trophy wife and returns to some public college in Georgia and rails against government all the while pulling in a high salary from the government.

An Annoying Personal Reflection

2011-11-17T16:29:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow night is my last night at the job I have had for the previous five years. Leaving has been a long time coming. I needed all sorts of assurance and reassurance from the Rev. Mrs. that jumping without any visible net was OK. Once I got it, though, I didn't hesitate.

I won't bore you with the irrelevant details. I have been searching for new work, and thanks to Lisa I check each day for new opportunities. I won't deny a certain amount of trepidation in the prospects of waking up on Saturday knowing I am, of my own volition, among the unemployed.

At the same time, for the first time since I graduated from college, I am actually setting goals for my life, planning, and working toward accomplishing those goals. This is really what I want to write about.

When I graduated from Alfred University back in the dim, dark days of 1987, I had been accepted at the Public Policy Analysis program in the Political Science department at the University of Rochester. Two years there would pretty much guarantee me a nice, cushy wonk job. From there, it seemed that the skies were blue, the forecast sunny, and the world would be a field of oysters.

It didn't turn out that way for me. Between September, 1987 and early summer, 1990, my life seemed out of anything resembling control. Looking back, I raced to the notion of ordained ministry in much the same way the old joke about people joining the French Foreign Legion: I wanted to forget. My first year in seminary taught me this, at the very least - I was not cut out for pastoral ministry. I suppose at the time I was going through this realization, it was a bit traumatic, but I really don't remember it that way. In fact, just the opposite. My three years at Wesley were a marvelous time. I learned a great deal, felt myself anchored spiritually, and, most important, was surrounded by a group of people I still consider the best friends I have ever had and will ever have.

Needless to say, I met my wife there. What more needs to be said, right?

Well, a whole lot, I think. Most of the past quarter century since that time leaving the cocoon of Alfred to the harsh reality of life has been spent denying even the possibility of making any kinds of plans for one's life. See, once upon a time, I had plans, and life and circumstances unforeseen intervened, and left my plans in a heap on the ground. One would have thought that being older and wiser (I know I'm older; I only hope I'm wiser) I might change my ways, but the voice of that much younger me, burned by an experience that should have left me me stronger, insisting that making any kinds of plans only collapse because life intervenes. As the saying goes, life sucks, right? So, just kind of float from day to day, hope for the best, and hunker down. Basically, that's been my approach to life since Ronald Reagan was President.

So much for all my preachments on courage, huh. If you're wondering, yes, I am quite aware of what a big, stinking hypocrite this makes me. It doesn't help that hypocrisy is the common cold of human failings.

So, here I am, a guy whose adult life has pretty much been dedicated to the proposition that doing anything long-term is impossible, who has stuck with his own personal status quo out of a trembling fear of the unknown taking flight over the abyss.

And, I have plans.

I've been doing the National Novel Writing Month, less with any thought of publishing the results than with the intent of developing the habit of sitting down, each day, and cranking out a minimum number of words. The goal - 50,000 words for November - isn't really "novel" length. At best, the lower end of the range. Furthermore, I have known since the first of November this was more an exercise in habit formation than anything.

And the habit has formed. Whether I really feel like writing or not, whether the words come easily or with difficulty, I sit and I write. It feels good to do that.

In the midst of this daily writing, I managed a couple weeks ago to write a short story. It is, I think, among the best things I have written. Response from alpha readers has been generally positive. With some polishing, I firmly believe it will land somewhere that will share the belief it is worth reading.

I believe that the best things, the most important things, have been said in fiction. The truth that lurks within the compounded lie of the novel is durable, tangible. Human. I have no interest in beating people over the head with ideas or my own political or religious point-of-view. Those kinds of books are both boring and annoying. The best stories make their point by being recognizably human. I do not believe I will ever write "the best stories". I do believe I have the capacity to write stories that include characters who are recognizably human in situations that are recognizably human.

So, that is my plan. When I finish the whole NaNoWriMo thing, I will go back and do a rewrite based on the input I've received from my alpha readers, then tuck it away, and turn my attention to something a bit more ambitious, even more than trying to write a fifty-thousand word novel in a month. If I feel the urge, I might write more and different things, too. The habit has settled upon my life, and plans and hopes are forming.

For the past five years I've been woodshopping here. Once upon a time, I thought this would be a vehicle to something more. It has become that; just not in the way I once imagined.

So, as I head out to my penultimate night at Sam Walton's emporium, I feel a mix of things. Most of all, for the first time since I was 21 years old and thought I had it made in life, I have hope because I have plans, and know what it will take to move forward.

The Real Challenge For The Occupy Movement

2011-11-15T13:38:00.000-06:00

It was increasingly evident that the powers-that-be across the country were losing patience with the Occupy Movements in various places. For a couple weeks now, stories of police violence in Oakland have made it clear that the tolerance of the ruling classes in various places was disappearing.

It started Sunday in Portland, OR, and was telegraphed on Friday, when the mayor - who repeatedly made the claim he supported the Occupy movement - insisted that police were going to move in at one minute after midnight two days later. Since then Oakland (again) and last night in Manhattan, where police cleared Zuccotti Park. There are various videos abroad the show pretty clearly the police were none too gentle as they pushed the people out. They were, one and all, in riot gear, with state-issued truncheons and pepper spray. What good is it having all these toys if you can't play with them?

I have to admit that I am surprised at the sweep of officialdom's decision to act this broadly. At the same time, it isn't like it should be that surprising. What really troubles me, however, isn't the predictable reaction of state power to a growing, and popular, movement of popular democratic resistance. Instead, this article in particular, while certainly within a history of radical ideas, betrays the heart of the Occupy movement by identifying the institutions of state power with the interests of the people who make up that institution:

Individual officers and even groups have expressed support of certain struggles--most notably, for a time during the occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol last winter. Some participants in Occupy Wall Street, despite regular police attacks, have chanted, "Police are the 99%!"

But the truth is this: The police force is not, and cannot ever be, a force for social justice.

In reality, the police don't do the job that they do on TV: protect regular people from crime and violence. Instead, they serve and protect private property and the existing racist, sexist, and massively unequal social order.

What makes my discomfort with this even deeper is I pretty much agree with it, at least to a point.

Yet, I am far more sympathetic with the following:

Addressing government authorities, one occupy spokeswoman used the police aggression as an opportunity to refocus on the larger message of the movement:
You claim to support us, and yet you tell your police force to destroy us. Peaceful citizens are being injured in the process. This is not democratic, this is autocratic. … We have said from day one that our fight is not with you, but rather with banks, irresponsible corporations, and a corrupt federal government. By camping outside the city hall, we gave you a choice to decide to stand with us and with working class Americans. Instead, you made the choice to protect unjust social and economic policies that are leading our nation into a state of financial ruin and institutionalized oppression.

More of this kind or thing is needed. We need to address police officers as members of the working class whose jobs, too often, lead them to acts that are contrary to their own interests.

There is little doubt, I believe, that the mild-mannered, establishment commentator Charlie Pierce is correct, however, in his general description of what has happened over the past 24 hours:

Your right to peaceably assemble for the redress of grievances, and how you may do it, and what you may say, will be defined by the police power of the state, backed by its political establishment and the business elite. They will define "acceptable" forms of public protest, even (and especially) public protest against them. This is the way it is now. This is the way it has been for some time. It's just that people didn't notice. And that was the problem with the Occupy protests. They resisted the marginalization — both literal physical marginalization, and the kind of intellectual marginalization that keeps real solutions to real problems out of our kabuki political debates.

Now that the police have moved, en masse, across the country, the next step will determine whether Occupy will go the way of similar protests in Britain that ended after the Tory-led coalition government there sent the cops in to smash some heads, or if they will defy the police, the mayors, and the nonsensical political commentators. I would caution, by the way, that relying on the courts as a bastion of defense is a sketchy plan. They are as much a part of the apparatus of control as the police, who do their bidding.

The question that faces Occupy now is: Do protesters return to Zuccotti Park and the other public spaces they have taken over, in the face of the state making their feelings about the movement clear for all to see? If they do, then Occupy may well be on its way to overcoming the internal debates and divisions, some of the more important of which I highlighted above, and pose an even graver threat to the institutions that would stifle democracy.

Nonsense

2011-11-14T15:26:00.000-06:00

Full confession - I do not read Ross Douthat. Not because he is conservative. Not because he is often skewered by folks like Tbogg and the folks at Sadly,No!. I don't read him because, by and large, I only have so many minutes in a day to dedicate to reading stuff. He is one who has slipped through the cracks, is all.

When the folks at Crooked Timber dedicated a post to a column Douthat wrote on the whole sad Penn State business, I thought it might be a nice idea to find out what it was Douthat had said. First, here's the key point in Douthat's attempt to understand what happened at PSU:

Bad and mediocre people are tempted to sin by their own habitual weaknesses. The earlier lies or thefts or adulteries make the next one that much easier to contemplate. Having already cut so many corners, the thinking goes, what’s one more here or there? Why even aspire to virtues that you probably won’t achieve, when it’s easier to remain the sinner that you already know yourself to be?

But good people, heroic people, are led into temptation by their very goodness — by the illusion, common to those who have done important deeds, that they have higher responsibilities than the ordinary run of humankind. It’s precisely in the service to these supposed higher responsibilities that they often let more basic ones slip away.

Good so far? Paterno screwed up not because he is a fallible human being who acted out of a sense of self-interest and self-preservation, but a hero who, if he has fallen further, had already climbed higher than so many of the rest of us.

Here's what Belle wrote as a summary of Douthat:

The only reason Catholics like Joe Paterno and Darío Castrillón Hoyos are able to commit such uniquely awful crimes is because they are ethical in a way that run-of-the-mill godless folk cannot understand.

N.B.: The Dario Castrillon Hoyos who is named was a heroic Roman Catholic bishop of Medellin, Colombia who, upon being raised to the Crimson and becoming the Vatican's point man on the pedophilia scandal, became the leader of those who denied the existence of such a scandal, tried to claim it was a uniquely American experience, and praised bishops who refused to denounce their priests to secular authorities.

In any event, some commenters at CT are up in arms that Belle wrote what she did about Douthat's column. Except, that is exactly what he said.

And it's bullshit. From beginning to end. To even imagine there are human beings who are intrinsically more in tune with the moral order of the Universe is a marvelous pagan idea. As Douthat describes events, he sounds far more like a classicist describing the role of hubris in Greek tragedy, instead of someone trying to make a serious moral point in some kind - perhaps Roman Catholic, although I can't imagine a serious Roman Catholic ethicist making any claim close to this - of a Christian context.

This is a kind of praising with faint damnation that envisions a Universe where good and evil, virtue and vice, are weighed in a balance. Furthermore, Douthat does a marvelous job reading Paterno's mind, divining all sorts of morally superior reasons for not coming forward, or moving more vigorously to investigate, allegations that a protege of his was buggering little boys in the showers. There is already enough evidence in the public record to make the case that, in fact, Paterno kept mum because he knew, if he pushed to hard, he could lose his job. Imagining he was acting out of an inherently superior sense of right and wrong is not only contradicted by serious ethical reflection. It is also contradicted by the evidence in the public realm.

I'm honestly not sure what Douthat was thinking when he wrote this particular column, beyond - perhaps - attempting to claim that there are individuals out there who are just morally better than others. If that is the case, he probably should have picked a different set of circumstances that the attempt to cover-up serial child rape. It's disgusting.

A Few Words In Defense Of Michelle Bachmann's Whine

2011-11-13T08:51:00.000-06:00

I don't pay attention to the Republican primary candidates' debates out of a sound sense of personal preservation. It seems, however, the latest dust-up might - despite my preferred attitude of bemused neglect - have some merit. Michelle Bachmann is complaining that last night's debate in South Carolina was weighted against her.

Michele Bachmann told reporters in the spin room after Saturday night’s presidential debate here that her campaign has proof that, in the words of a Bachmann spokesperson, debate sponsor CBS News had “a pre-planned attempt to limit” the number of questions Bachmann was asked on stage.

Bachmann has an email from CBS News Political Director John Dickerson she says backs up her claims, but before the controversy could cook off, one debate co-sponsor — the South Carolina GOP — said Bachmann was barking up the wrong tree.

“The SCGOP had no input on how questions were developed or to whom they were addressed,” party Executive Director Matt Moore told TPM. “Congresswoman Bachmann seemed to receive a fair number [of] questions, and had ample opportunities to answer.”

That’s not how Bachmann saw it.

“Clearly, we received an email today, unintentionally, that CBS had an effort not to ask questions,” she said. “That was their effort, I don’t know why.”

“The email was targeted to me,” Bachmann said. “I don’t know if it was targeted to anyone else.”

TPM, which is covering this latest bit of news, offers the following less-than-sterling defense of the decision by CBS to ask Rep. Bachmann fewer questions than other candidates:

CBS’s just hired political director, John Dickerson, wrote an email — apparently to CBS colleagues — noting that Bachmann probably wouldn’t get many questions tonight since she’s basically tanked in the polls. That’s not terribly surprising — also-ran candidates typically get less mic time in a multi-candidate debate.

--snip--

For some context, the TPM Poll Average puts Bachmann currently at 3.2% support nationwide among Republicans. So she’s creeping up on Gary Johnson territory. And well into Santorum-ville.

I have been immune for quite a while to the nonsensical "liberal media!!!" screeching from the right. This case, one would think, is evidence of the real problem with so much of our national political media. It isn't liberalism, or excessive Democratic partisanship.

It's hubris. Stupid hubris.

"Polls" at this point in time - before a single vote has been cast - are meaningless. Considering current "polls" have Herman Cain in a statistical tie with Mitt Romney, one would think cooler heads would merely chuckle at them then insist on going about the business of constructing these debates with some sense. The constant tea-reading - it's Perry! no, it's Cain! Gingrich is up! Bachmann is down! - is meaningless drivel. Even Romney's pretty consistent high numbers are meaningless because there haven't been any primaries or caucuses yet. The playing field is level for one simple reason - the current crop of Republican primary candidates haven't had anyone vote for them yet.

So, basing the number of questions any particular candidate will face at any given time based on polls is ludicrous. A good answer here, a bad answer there, a misstep on this one, a clear, concise, knowledgeable response on that one - this, too could change the polls. Most sentient people understand this. None, apparently, work for CBS.

Putting in writing that the debate format is limiting opportunities for some candidates is monumentally stupid. It may well be the case that Michelle Bachmann deserves less attention than some other candidates. We have no way of knowing that unless we as the voting public are exposed to her ideas on specific topics. We can't be exposed to them if she has fewer questions addressed to her, and is allowed a shorter response time than other candidates.

There was a time when these debates were run by the League of Women Voters. Back in those halcyon days, the League made it a policy to just let candidates in, to have a moderator ask questions, then sit back and let them talk. Complaints over the way the League did things were perennial, especially when they had the temerity to refuse to block debate access to non-party and Third Party candidates. It would be preferable to have such institution do these things without any input from any of the candidates or news organizations. The candidates want to debate? Here's the format. Folks who show up will be asked whatever questions we want. Folks who don't show up, well, doesn't that tell us something about them?

I would be more sympathetic to Ms. Bachmann if she, and so many conservatives, hadn't spent decades whining about the liberal media. I would be more sympathetic if this whole incident didn't start before the debate was even over last night. Running as the perpetual victim of Big Blue Meanies who lie in wait ready to pounce is unbecoming, to say the least. Yet, she does have a point. No matter her standing the "polls", she deserved the right to have as many questions asked of her as other candidates did. It isn't "fair" to deny her time just because her poll numbers are low. Even if Josh Marshall thinks it is, or CBS, or anyone else.

Besides, according to the same site that thinks she got about as much attention as she deserved, she did manage a marvelous whopper.

“If you look at China, they don’t have food stamps,” she told the GOP debate moderators. “They save for their retirement.”

I mean, come on. Why deny us the opportunity for more of this preciousness?

Free With The Facts (UPDATE)

2011-11-12T14:38:00.001-06:00

Whenever George Will puts on his Constitutional scholar hat, right-thinking people cover their eyes in shame. It may well be that the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 is an unconstitutional piece of crap. At the same time, the attempt at both the state and federal level to regulate certain speech-acts as beyond the bounds of Constitutional acceptability does have a certain amount of practical merit. No one should be surprised by Will's opposition to a set of rules and regulations that would disproportionately harm the political opportunities of conservatives. When it comes to slinging piles of poo until they stick, the Republicans are the alpha males of our little primate colony.

All one needs to consider is the following on-going meme - the socialism of President Barack Obama. Real socialists carry on about the perfidy, weakness, and general bag-carrying-for-business-and-banks of Pres. Obama and his Administration. No matter. We'll just repeat it and repeat it, and pretend it actually means something and, voila! There are significant numbers of conservative and Republican voters who believe our business-coddling President is V. I. Lenin in a better suit.

It is a dodgy thing, at best, to talk about regulating speech. It is impossible to look for guidance in these matters to the founding generation of our country, because they honored these things, by and large, in the breach. John Adams supported and signed the Alien and Sedition Act which, among other things, criminalized all sorts of political speech. We still have laws regulating seditious libel, for which truth is no defense (something I cannot fathom; there is no rational reason why truth isn't a defense when going after a public figure, except to protect the status quo, so, uh, duh). The Presidential election of 1800 makes our current politics look like a high school student council election by comparison, and the things said about Pres. Obama only approach the kinds of invective Adams tossed at Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, being a gentleman, managed to toss far less lethal poo at Adams.

All the same, our current speech-climate certainly favors those who have no scruples. Those who are quite willing to say anything and everything about candidates, about laws and bills before Congress, about the actual effects of legislation or policy preferences. Which means, in recent history, Republican candidates. The year-long campaign against the Affordable Care Act was an object lesson in the effectiveness of lying in politics. With false statements no longer constitutionally protected, we might well have a situation where the playing field between various parties and their policy preferences becomes level. Even more than removing money from the electioneering process through campaign finance reform, what would our politics look like if all parties were reduced to discussing issues knowing they could not, under penalty of law, make a false statement in the negative about their opponents or their policy preferences, nor could they make any false positive statements about themselves?

It would have a devastating impact upon the economy, because there would be a whole lot of people whose livelihood depends upon lying about public affairs who would suddenly find themselves unemployable. It would also be a nice statement about what kind of society we wish ourselves to be. It would set a minimal standard for our public discourse, now suffering from extreme strains of decrepitude.

Heck, Newt Gingrich might actually be asked a question such as, "Mr. Disgraced Former Speaker, if you truly believe that organs of state power are at the heart of so much of our national malaise, why do you spend an inordinate amount of time seeking to lead them?"

Yeah, I see how silly and utopian my position is.

UPDATE: Augh. I had completely forgotten that, yesterday, I saw this. Rather than rewrite the whole thing, I thought I'd tack it on the end here:

Social scientists have known for a couple of decades that, contrary to its national myths, the US is a country with low intergenerational economic mobility, by international standards. Back in 2001, when I reviewed The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism by Bob Goodin and others, I mentioned that this was already well known. More recent evidence has shown that social mobility is not only low but declining. Yet until recently, popular discussion in the US seemed impervious to this evidence.

Imagine! An entire society impervious to evidence of a reality that should be all too clear. Like about global warming. Or the positive revenue effects of cutting tax rates.

Right now, the Republicans at pretty much every level and their hired guns and willing stooges carry on that each and every attempt by others to regulate economic affairs is dangerous to the likelihood that economic prosperity will grow like some big snowball as it rolls through time, granting to our children and grandchildren greater rewards than we have received. This, of course, distinguishes us from those horrid socialist Europeans who only work 15 hours a week and make do on government welfare checks, smoking their smelly cigarettes and drinking their horrible coffee, wiping themselves with paper towels.

That the reality is the exact opposite of this caricature is no small bit of important information to have moving forward. One would think. Coddling Americans to believe ours is the greatest and bestest of all in everything is the social equivalent of insistently telling one's children that the Easter Bunny brings all that candy and eggs. When said children are college students. We would fare better as a country if we actually started from a position rooted in the reality of certain situations. You cannot design policies that work from false premises.

Empty Words Flowing From An Empty Head

2011-11-10T08:14:00.000-06:00

Ron Paul, a true believer in the racial superiority of whites and the economic superiority of rich people telling the rest of us to suck it up and deal when the world makes lemons out of our lemonade stands, was asked to comment on Elizabeth Warren's recent comments that our social contract demands certain obligations from us even as it offers us opportunities for social and economic betterment. Paul's response - "Socialism!" - was so predictable, and the resulting revision and extension of his remarks so laughably inane, I thought they would make a good drinking game (every time he uses words like "market", "competition", "socialism" participants would have to drink; a ten minute interview would leave a heap of people waiting for the ambulance so they could have their stomach's pumped).

In the course of comments on Charlie Pierce's marvelous post on this same subject, a libertarian entered the fray to defend the idea that public services are socialist.

Things didn't go so well, mostly because the rest of the commenters were laughing at him too loud for him to be heard. That hurt his feelings so he took his toys and went home after telling us that we were mean and stupid and ugly. So there!*

A perennial complaint of mine has been the looseness, the vagueness, and occasional utter vacuity of our public discourse. Words that once meant stuff, words like liberal and conservative, freedom, socialism have become empty vessels, to be defined by whoever is using them. Never directly, of course. We have to guess that, say, when Ron Paul says that public education is socialism, he may or may not be talking about the same thing that Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin (whose views on what constituted socialism were different, but that's the subject for another post) meant when they used the word socialist.

Now, obviously, one of the purposes of public rhetoric is to persuade, and persuasion is very often accomplished better when there is a confusion of terms. Folks who toss around words carelessly in order to get people to nod their heads and agree with them have accomplished their goal - "You like me! You really like me!" - but have made it that much harder to have a serious, honest discussion about matters or real importance.

When Ron Paul speaks, the English language dies a little bit. Language needs to have substance, referents, a common stock of mutually-agreed-upon definitions in order to be effective. Communication can only take place when all parties have at least general agreement that the words they are all using mean the same thing. Calling public education "socialist" fails utterly. Sitting and blabbing about home-schooling and vouchers and choice and competition are meaningless beyond stating one's personal preferences. Because there has yet to be a study conducted on the alleged benefits of competition in education that has borne out the claims of its proponents, intellectual honesty should, in a perfect world, force them to admit they support ideas that are about as useful as leeches in treating fevers.

The Constitution, for all its flaws, both originally and on-going, is a remarkable document. It is even more remarkable because it means none of the things Ron Paul thinks it means. Born from the minds and hard work and politicking of men steeped in an understanding republican ideals and virtues gleaned from reading Montesquieu, Locke, and other commenters upon the benefits of mutual obligation in human society, the Constitution is chock-a-block with references to the common good because that lies at the heart of the social contract represented by the Constitution. American society is not an experiment in economic freedom. It is, rather, an experiment in republican governance, which needs active participation among its various factions (to borrow a word from the Federalist Papers) always with an eye toward achieving certain ends for the benefit of all. Sometimes this is best done by voluntary organizations (De Tocqueville was a big pimper of the idea that, in the United States, voluntary associations worked to flesh out the social contract; he was conservative in the classical sense, wavered between an allegiance to monarchy and a kind of grudging admiration for American republican institutions without being blind to their flaws). Sometimes, the state in some form - local, county, state, or federal government institutions - has to intervene to achieve the ends all see as beneficial to the nation as a whole.

This language of republican civic virtue is dead, slaughtered by mindless blathering from people like Ron Paul whose minds are like old Commodore 64 computers, limited in their capacity to respond to inputs because their programs only contain certain programmed responses. I am underwhelmed by arguments of libertarians not because of any reflexive ideological principles. I am underwhelmed because they are vacuous, ignorant, and, when even partially implemented, corrosive upon our common life.

It is nice on occasion to laugh at the stupidity of Ron Paul, and to make the uninteresting and unremarkable observation that the things he says are without any political, historical, or intellectual merit whatsoever. It would be nice, however, if we had more people who insisted that recovering at least some of the language of republican virtue, of this sense of mutuality that lies at the heart of the American social contract, was necessary to heal the wounds inflicted by so many decades of stupidity.

*If you scroll down and read through all the comments and replies, you will see my Facebook avatar - a tarsier. I have decided, rather than use various pictures of myself or my family, that this tiny primate is the best representative for me in public discourse.

Rick Santorum Is A Horrible Human Being

2011-11-09T19:20:00.000-06:00

I wasn't going to write or say anything about the spreading scandal at Penn State. At the heart of the scandal is the now established fact that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was caught, on at least one occasion, performing a sexual act with a child. Along with Sandusky, who should wear his testicles in a bag around his neck without actually severing them from his body, the scandal has brought down the athletic director, a vice-president and, today, legendary head coach Joe Paterno.

I wasn't going to say anything because . . . well, good Lord, what is there to say? Hooray they caught a pederast? Hooray the people who covered up the fact he might well be a serial pederast have lost their jobs (cold comfort to the molested children that some rich people have to live off their savings . . .).

Then, I read the following:

Nine years ago, it seems, Rick [Santorum] sponsored, for the honor of "Congressional Angel in Adoption," Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach who is presently accused of multiple acts of child molestation and rape, and whose long career as a predator may well bring down the whole football program at Santorum's alma mater. Obviously outraged, Santorum reached deep into the well of his anger and pulled up this bucket of mealy-mouthed slop:
"Look, I pray and hope that he [PSU coach Joe Paterno] didn't do anything he shouldn't have done, but it certainly looks horrible for the university, horrible for the football program and obviously people were fired, should be fired."
Of course, as the report above says, since the Penn State scandal broke, Santorum "has been circumspect in his comments about it. (He is not implicated in any way.)"
By contrast, here's what he once said about gay marriage:
"This is an issue just like 9/11. We didn't decide we wanted to fight the war on terrorism because we wanted to. It was brought to us. And if not now, when? When the supreme courts in all the other states have succumbed to the Massachusetts version of the law?"

All these phony family values jerk-offs are now revealed to be nothing more or less than the moral equivalent of parasites, sucking the life-blood from our country even as they grow fat. Santorum doesn't even have the fortitude to mention that, you know, there might have been some children whose lives were ruined by this "Angel" Sandusky, and gee, it might be more horrible these kids have to live not only with this trauma but that it was covered up by people who had a legal responsibility, years ago, to report it to authorities?

These were children who were raped, Mr. Santorum. The tragedy here isn't what's happened to Penn State athletics. The tragedy is what Penn State athletics, in the person of Jerry Sandusky, and later the others higher up the food chain who tried to shove it under whatever furniture was lying around, did to those children. That's the tragedy.

Even an immoral liberal like me understands that. Why can't a sanctimonious pus-bug like you?

Thoughts on Non-Violence And The Occupy Movement

2011-11-04T17:54:00.000-05:00

[N]o one can be non-violent in an unjust society.
James Cone

I had, even without knowing it, absorbed this idea so deeply that I uttered it, two years after first discovering it, in a seminar on liberation theology.

I read James Cone's best-known works - A Black Theology of Liberation and God of the Oppressed - my first semester at Wesley. His work was deeply affecting, shaping much of my ensuing considerations on theological matters. It was not until last night, standing in my wife's office and randomly scanning God of the Oppressed that I realized just how much I had absorbed so many of the lessons he taught me.

In a chapter on Christian ethics and liberation, Cone has a section on the issue of non-violence. From the perspective of black liberation in North America, and the issue of non-violent resistance in the pursuit of justice in any context, the matter of non-violence is of particular centrality because of the prominent place it held in the thought and praxis of Martin Luther King. Far more radical segments of the African-American community disparaged King's insistence on non-violence. Some preached outright revolution, although they were a small minority. By and large, however, the impatience of many in the face of white intransigence led them to see King's approach as ineffective.

Cone's discussion, seen in the context of the larger discussion within the African-American community over the question, begins, after some introductory remarks, with the observation in the epigram above. It can be shocking, I suppose, for those who believe that America is a just society, or that non-violence as a tactic is, or perhaps should be, the norm in the pursuit of justice. By stating baldly that such views hide the reality of systemic violence, Cone challenges the entire discussion at its heart.

Over a couple years of seminary education, I had kept a special place in my heart for Cone's thought, even as I moved on to so many others. My last semester, in a seminar on liberation theology, there was a discussion of the eschatological thought of Martin Luther King, the place it held in his broader program of the pursuit of racial justice and reconciliation, and, of course, non-violence. I made a small point - despite King's best efforts, the Civil Rights movement was anything but non-violent. From the streets of Montgomery, AL during the bus boycott through Little Rock to the waves of terrorism visited upon the Freedom Riders and the volunteers during Freedom Summer when folks, black and white, went to the deep south to register African-American voters to the fire hoses and attack dogs Bull Connor unleashed on school children, violence was at the heart of legalized white supremacy in the United States, and it wouldn't give up without a bloody fight.

I recall little more than the sense that the other members of the class acted like I had farted in church. The passing of a quarter century (at that point in time) had only set King's non-violent resistance in an ever-deeper and thicker foundation of stone. Saying, in essence, that this bright shining monument to American ethical exceptionalism was wrong was, for all intents and purposes, an indication of just how wrong I would always be.

Except, well, I wasn't wrong. The facts of the matter are simple enough. An entire system of entrenched social, cultural, racial, political, and economic power depends upon the threat and use of force to maintain itself. After chipping away at the edges of the legalized dehumanization of African-Americans, the on-going demands by more and more people for dismantling not only segregation but the entire structure that propped it up, from discrimination in hiring to laws restricting the African-American franchise, would only be seen as a threat to the entire order. The gears of American economic and social progress have been lubricated for much of its history with the blood of blacks, and the poor, and immigrants. Pretending otherwise doesn't make it any less the reality with which we have to live.

Sitting around discussing non-violence, whether tactically or as an end in and for itself misses the point made most clearly by H. Rap Brown: Violence is as American as cherry pie.

I have been thinking about these matters in the wake of the rising official violence against Occupy protesters in Oakland, CA; the tentative and sporadic violence in New York against Occupy Wall Street; scattered beatings and arrests at various Occupy sites in Maine and Tennessee. I suppose I have been thinking that one can gauge the success of the perceived threat of any protest movement by the reaction of the organs of state power to it. With the rising tide of anti-Occupy violence, it should be clear that the folks in charge see the threat to their perquisites and prerogatives as very real. Thus, the attempt to stifle them through the use of police power utilizing the para-militarized weapons and tactics developed over a generation of "law and order" policies.

I have no answer to those who insist on asking what other choices folks who are protesting have. The reality is, despite the best intentions and most thorough indoctrination in the methods and ideology of non-violence, the police are going to have no worries using any and all the methods and weapons at their disposal to thwart a threat to the existing order. It would be ideal to think that such tactics would or could end systemic injustice.

I just don't think so. Which breaks my heart.

Neither Seminary Nor The Church But Tired, Stereotyped Cliches Put Forward By The Flavor Of The Week Is Our Problem

2011-11-03T13:42:00.000-05:00

Anytime someone insists they have "the answers", that is the moment you need to change the channel. By and large, "the answers" are actually statements the person has repeated over and over again, creating questions afterward that make "the answers" sound really good. They aren't really answers, anyway; they are marketing points, ad copy for folks to show the world how smart and clever they are and why they should be paid a whole lot of money by others just to show up and talk.

Such, I would submit, is Brian McLaren. His self-description from Google for his eponymous website is "author, storyteller, and theologian". Sounds marvelous! You get to his website and you find . . . Brian's books, reviews of those books, and Brian's recommendations for books. Plus Brian's sermons, Brian's talks, links to articles Brian has written.

For someone who is ordained clergy, Brian seems to work awfully hard to make sure the world knows all about Brian.

In any event, McLaren has written an article as part of a symposium on theological education that, to my mind, does nothing to advance any agenda other than making sure Brian McLaren's name continues to circulate as the latest snake-oil salesman to tell smart folks in the church how much they need to pay him to reward them for being smart.

[T]oo many seminarians step out of seminary and straight into a brick wall. When they arrive in a local congregation, they experience nearly the opposite of their positive seminary experience. Church members seem to want:
1. A familiar closed environment where old answers to outdated questions are repeated in predictable ways, and no new questions are allowed to disturb the peace.
2. A rigid sectarian environment where the boundaries between "us" and "them" are constantly reinforced and celebrated.
3. A superficial environment where spiritual vulnerability is dangerous and where institutional and/or doctrinal maintenance trumps spiritual hunger and thirst.
4. An insular environment which maintains aloofness, fear, or disdain toward the world and its problems.
5. A demanding consumerist environment where people seek religious goods and services tailored to their exacting standards and tastes.

Except for the last item, which merely restates the obvious point that American Christians are going to act like Americans in the way they view any social or cultural institution - one among a variety of choices that are sought to fulfill certain needs or perceived wants rather than a way of being an alternative community gathered around a shared commitment to an external authority - the list above is so old and stereotyped, I'm surprised it hasn't been copyrighted.

The body of McLaren's text continues:

[R]ecalling that Jesus himself was unable to transform the Temple establishment of his day, and remembering that Paul was run out of a good many more synagogues than he was welcome in, I'm not sure that any amount of training can equip seminarians for transformation in churches that are quite happy with how they are—or were, thank you very much. It may sound harsh for me to say, but I think it is unethical to send gifted, idealistic, and high-potential young leaders into intractable, dysfunctional congregations that will grind them up, disillusion them, and damage them for life.
And I have met many who fit this description.

To the first part of this, I would say that Jesus did indeed transform the Temple establishment, just not the way they feared. Apparently, McLaren didn't quite get what Jesus said when he talked about destroying the Temple and rebuilding it in three days.

To the last sentence, however, I would ask just this: Who? Who are the gifted, excited clergy whose professional lives have been destroyed by churches? What are the congregations? Where are they? What denomination? What are the statistics on clergy burn-out, on overhead-versus-ministry/mission ratios in church budgets?

It is almost too tiresome to ask the simple questions. We can reward ourselves for all the marvelous things gained through a seminary education without ever considering whether or not the one thing we haven't really gained is either wisdom or perspective. The kind of disdain for the local church on display here, a disdain that forgets an important part of what it means to be church, is breathtaking.

Does McLaren not understand that the church is full of sinful, broken people? Does he not get that even at our best, local churches do a pretty piss-poor job of incarnating the Spirit of Christ in the world, yet somehow it has managed to survive, even thrive? Does He not understand that folks like St. Paul, the author of the epistles of St. Peter, and of the Revelation of St. John the Divine all addressed the fact that some local congregations just weren't up to snuff?

Seriously, dude. You want to comment on the future of theological education, don't set up straw arguments about straw congregations, insist you know some of this first-hand, and then not even have balls enough to name some names. You could comment on Edward Farley or David Kelsey. You could talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the professional graduate school model as applied to ministry. You could look at a sampling of seminary curricula from denominationally affiliated schools versus non-denominational (say Duke Divinity School versus Harvard or Vanderbilt). You could examine the relationships between theological schools and local churches, forged through student-pastor relationships that allow students attending seminary to also serve local churches.

You could do a whole lot of things you didn't do. Instead, you rewarded seminarians for going to seminaries and chastised local churches for being congregations of sinners. Without actually providing any data to back up any of the claims you make. Not even a single anecdote. For a self-professed storyteller, that's pretty lame.

There are many challenges the churches face. Seminaries, too, struggle to come to terms with shifting paradigms in education, as well as the fundamental relationship of theological higher education in service to the traditions both of free inquiry in a research university and the church which called the seminary in to being. There is the general decline in religious affiliation in America, and the decline in particular among the old mainline Protestant churches, who nevertheless continue to fill seminary desks with students and pulpits with clergy.

McLaren didn't address any of these things. Instead, he made up some stuff that folks have been saying for years about all those energized seminary graduates getting chewed up and spit out by dysfunctional local churches, without once putting a face or a name or some numbers to the claim. He told seminarians they were just too good for the local church. He told local congregations they weren't good enough for the wonderful people coming out of seminaries.

Honest to God. What a crock of shit. The only thing that makes it worse is some folks whom I respect think McLaren's take is right on target.

A Message To Some Folks I've Encountered On The Internet

2011-11-02T16:20:00.000-05:00

If you think this is addressed to you unfairly, you might well be wrong.

Starving The Beast

2011-11-02T08:54:00.000-05:00

It is a column tailor-made for the blogosphere. Dana Millbank's piece in today's Washington Post is a parody of blog writing, an example in "Blog Writing 101 - How To Be Outraged, Lesson 4: Sarcasm and Superiority":

After preaching for weeks about the urgency of Washington taking action to create jobs, lawmakers decided to put their mammon where their mouths are. And so on Tuesday evening they descended from the mountaintop and came forth to anoint a jobs bill of biblical proportions:

“H.Con.Res 13 — Reaffirming ‘In God We Trust’ as the official motto of the United States.”

The grace of this legislation, taken up on the House floor, was not immediately revealed to all. “In God We Trust” has been the nation’s official motto for 55 years, engraved on the currency and public buildings. There is no emerging movement to change that. But House Republicans chose to look beyond the absence of immediate threats and instead protect the motto against yet-unimagined threats in the future.

It's all right there. The smug superiority, the condescending tone, the sarcastic aside that our national motto, whatever its merits or demerits, is not a fit topic for symbolic legislating in these perilous times.

What should come as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than a day or so perusing the internet's political corners is that less than a few hours after posting, the column already has over 300 comments. SageThrasher wrote:

This piety posing could have come straight out of Machiavelli, see: "How to keep the rabble quiet: act holy." A motto that actually confirms something about American values is "E pluribus unum," which worked just fine until 1956. It certainly inspires higher ideals than the Talibanesque nod to passive fatalism and religious supremacy over secular politics implied by "In God We Trust." It also hints at genuine cooperation as necessary to succeed--something else worth thinking about.

andrew23boyle wrote:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"

It doesn't say "A religion". It says "religion" in general. It is no better to officially endorse a number of "religions" than it is to endorse only one.

The phrase "In God We Trust" does just that because it endorse and lends official validation to any number of philosophies or ideologies that believe in a "god" while excluding others that do not. Since it is not the Republic's business to declare for this or that "religion" , the Republic has no business making such declarations.

Furthermore, Congress has MUCH better things to do with its time.

This is why I can never call myself a Republican. They talk a good game about personal liberties but then turn around and try to use the state to force their religion on everyone else. We need a "Mind you own business party". The radical wing can be the "Mind your own g-dd-amn business!" party.

So, from a nonsensical bit about a meaningless resolution come forth the frothing masses to denounce an overt danger to our secular Constitution and multicultural, multireligious society. While I doubt the commenters really get too worked up about it all, even taking the time necessary to think through such sentences, reaching such conclusions, seems like far more work than the event itself deserves. Yet, it serves its purpose of feeding the beast.

Yesterday, a story broke on TPM that Ann Coulter, who manages to eliminate any sexiness her image might dredge up the moment her mouth opens, said something that sounds pretty racist. I'll be perfectly honest. I neither know nor care whether Coulter is a bigot. By and large, Coulter wants only one thing - attention. Stuff like this is designed to drag out even the most casual reader of the day's events. We can all feel better about ourselves that we don't associate ourselves with someone whose public persona is, to say the least, horrible.

Then there's the latest wankfest at Dan Trabue's blog. No disrespect to Dan, who seems like a really nice guy, thoughtful, tentative. Sadly, Dan feeds the trolls, so they keep coming back. A modest observation that there are links between Hebrew prophetic announcements regarding the LORD's justice and the OWS protests becomes yet another 100+-comment wankathon. Instead of telling folks like Doug and Art that his observations are just that, they are entitled to their views, but please go away and stop bothering me, Dan still believes, long after such behavior should have been as discredited as negotiating with Republicans on taxes, it is possible to have a discussion with them.

They aren't interested in discussion. By and large, they demonstrate little understanding of the topics involved. They get off on pissing off folks by saying outrageous things. Like Coulter. Like House Republicans. Not to say that there are not some among House Republicans who believe legislative action reaffirming our national motto is a good thing. They probably do. The reason the leadership allowed it come up and take up time on the floor is simple - it is a slab of meat to the lions, some bread and circuses for the masses. Meaningless in any substantive way, it is a political gesture of the most transparent, crass sort. Rather than spend 800 words in the precious op-ed space of one of the nation's leading newspapers, Millbank might have spent 800 words on what happened to former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine Mutual Fund, or the obvious anti-democratic sentiment among the leaders of the EU as they shout in rage over the Greeks determination to vote on the latest round of austerity.

As you may have noticed, I've been mailing it in with the whole music-thingy. Bored bored bored would best describe my feeling about that. Rather than be bored, I gave it up, which is fine with me. All the same, I'm not going to sit around here and feed the beast of internet nonsense, showing how more outraged I can be than the next person over meaningless drivel. Spending even a few minutes showing the world how much smarter I am than everyone else does little more than demonstrate I have way too much time on my hands.

So, I'm not gonna feed the beast. Observing the various rituals of the political internet, I believe that was once a promising venture in new ways of doing national dialogue has become, and been for a while, a ritualized dance rather than a serious attempt at informing or persuading anyone. Far better to be constructive in one's pursuits than end up being the liberal version of Ann Coulter - saying stuff just to get attention.

My Little Town

2011-10-31T15:47:00.000-05:00

Trying to find a song that describes my hometown has been difficult. My first instinct was something bland - "On the Border" by Al Stewart, say. Because Waverly sits right on the border of New York and Pennsylvania.

Dumb.

Then, I thought back to the Paul Simon chestnut, "My Little Town". That song resonated with me for a long time.

It's unfair, though, because "my little town" isn't really that town.

Would I end up using "My Hometown" by Bruce Springsteen? How sad would that be?

Then I got to thinking about the reality that I actually have many fond memories of growing up there. It was a good place to grow up, a great place to be a kid because we had the run of the place. As a kid you could start your day right after breakfast and go until after dark, just checking in enough so the parents knew where you were.

I also got to thinking about all the folks I knew growing up who married their childhood sweethearts and now, decades later, are still together, enjoying their middle years and the rewards that come with it. Which, of course, led me to thinking of the girl or two I dated in high school. Nothing big, and rest assured those women are much better off having moved on fairly quickly. All the same . . . yeah, those memories are nice.

So, in honor of being reminded that my childhood and youth were actually a really good time; that the people with whom I grew up have, by and large, turned in to really interesting adults; that I am so happy for those I knew who found their life's partner right there in the middle of nowhere . . .

It's Only Real When Glenn Greenwald Discovers It

2011-10-30T18:02:00.000-05:00

I have had a long-term love-hate relationship with Glenn Greenwald. By and large, I agree with much of what he says. At the same time, he is the first person who would tell you how important Glenn Greenwald is, how intelligent, insightful, and most of all correct Glenn Greenwald is.

He has a new book out. With Liberty And Justice For Some: How The Law Is Used To Destroy Equality And Protect The Powerful is a book whose topic is important, timely, and I would urge everyone concerned over matters of justice under the law to purchase it, read it, and share it with friends.

All the same, reading some of Greenwald's promotional posts in his Salon column leaves me with just one question: Does Greenwald really believe he's stumbled on to something new here?

The book focuses on what I began realizing several years ago is the crucial theme tying together most of the topics I write about: America’s two-tiered justice system – specifically, the way political and financial elites are now vested with virtually absolute immunity from the rule of law even when they are caught committing egregious crimes, while ordinary Americans are subjected to the world’s largest and one of its harshest and most merciless penal states even for trivial offenses. As a result, law has been completely perverted from what it was intended to be – the guarantor of an equal playing field which would legitimize outcome inequalities – into its precise antithesis: a weapon used by the most powerful to protect their ill-gotten gains, strengthen their unearned prerogatives, and ensure ever-expanding opportunity inequality.

--snip--

The past decade has witnessed the most severe crimes imaginable by political and financial elites: the construction of a worldwide torture regime, domestic spying perpetrated jointly by the government and the telecom industry without the warrants required by the criminal law, an aggressive war waged on another country that killed hundreds of thousands of people, massive financial fraud that came close to collapsing the world economy and which destroyed the economic security of tens of millions, and systematic foreclosure fraud that, by design, bombarded courts with fraudulent documents in order to seize homes without legal entitlement. These are not bad policies or mere immoral acts. They are plainly criminal, and yet – due to the precepts of elite immunity which were first explicitly embraced during Ford’s pardon of Nixon — none of those crimes has produced legal punishments.(italics added)

Seriously? Greenwald's a really smart guy, the kind of lawyer I would want if my back were up against the wall, not least because of that personality quirk that seems to come across so clearly in both his column and his tweets - he's kind of a jerk, convinced as he is of his own purity and righteousness.

The American legal system has, by and large, always existed to protect the prerogatives of the powerful. This isn't something that only came to pass with the pardoning of Nixon, or was only embraced during the 1970's. Even a cursory understanding of American history makes one familiar with the myriad ways the courts and the law work to maintain the socio-economic status quo. In the middle of the 19th century, there was a German observer of rising bourgeois democratic institutions who noted that they seemed geared toward the protection of privilege. Which is why he didn't really have much faith in democratic and republican institutions to protect the rights of the oppressed classes in society. Marx understood that they were designed and worked precisely the way they were supposed to - to protect the powerful and privileged.

It's the kind of breathless, earnest insistence that he has discovered something new, something that has suddenly burst to full flower around us, rather than the latest iteration of a long-running struggle that bugs me. Again, get the book, read the book, pass on the book. Remember, however, that the phenomena Greenwald discusses is as old as human society, a problem with which any society struggles, a struggle we are currently still losing. Having the information Greenwald provides, the perspective of one dedicated not to any ideology or part but the Constitution is important. He hasn't discovered something new, however, all his pretense to the contrary.