Apparently I'm Not Alone in Not Liking Jim Wallis (Updated)

My previous post on Joe Klein was going to be longer, but I followed a link from this post at Hullabaloo and found this at Talk To Action, entitled "The Seduction of Unreason: Jim Wallis vs. the Enlightenment" by Bruce Wilson. Now, I am no booster of the Enlightenment; nor am I particularly fond of the counter-enlightenment (and I think Wilson is wrong, historically, both on the dates of the Enlightenment, and the backlash against it; Isaiah Berlin is much better). I consider myself an early post-Enlightenment thinker, looking for a different approach that is amenable to our changing times. The Enlightenment is pretty much exhausted as a well from which to draw both good and evil. I offer this merely as a footnote, commentary as it were, to position myself in a larger context. On point, allow me to quote the first paragraph from Wilson's post:

During the summer or [sic] 2005, at the beach, I read "God's Politics" and compiled a list of quotes, from the book, which I thought were noteable. I treated the quotes as logical assertions and strung them together as a narrative. The result was hard to distinguish from the rhetoric of James Dobson or arguments of the Family Research Council and, indeed, comprised what may be the central narrative animating the modern American religious right political movement: that American society and the American moral fabric have been unravelling for decades and unnamed "secularists" . . . are to blame.(emphasis added)

Wilson continues:

Wallis' claims on the alleged breakdown of American society mirror identical arguments, advanced by leaders of the Christian right . . .
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Claims made by Jim Wallis and the American Christian right have little to do with facts, logic, reason, analysis, science, or methodical attempts to get a bearing on societal trends and hot to set public policy to push trends in desired directions.

Talk To Action is a liberal Christian blog.

Another link provided by Digby was to this piece by Frederick Clarkson entitled "Jim Wallis gets it wrong about the Religious Right". Again, I quibble a tad with some of Clarkson's points - I agree with Wallis that we are watching the Christian Right, not so much in its death throes as in its decline in power and influence. I am not suggesting they are gone yet, or that they are not still a powerful force, especially as we have a President who has, to say the least, odd views on matters Christian. I am also not saying the Christian right will disappear. It never has, nor will it ever (sorry, Democracy Lover). I am suggesting that the oft-touted, yet-to-happen decline of the political power of right-wing Christian demagogues is happening before our eyes; we need to watch and listen carefully, but it is there. The last nail in the coffin will be the final removal of Bush from the Presidency and the end of Republican hegemony in American politics.

Again, having announced these caveats, I would urge you to read both articles in full, and consider them carefully. I, too, agree with Wallis on various issues, although not on abortion. I like the fact that he has been a steadfast defender of the social dimension of the Gospel, and put that to work in his ministry. Now, though, other aspects, less . . . um . . . attractive(?) are coming out, and I think it high time to move beyond Wallis.

As a side note to all this, I think liberal and progressive Christians need to stop their whining about secular progressives. The seat at the table is ours as Americans, but all discussions around tables can become animated; let the non-Christians speak, and don't get all defensive. Our job here isn't to make converts, it's to work with others (not lead, just work with) to make the country better. We don't have a monopoly on truth or virtue, and we do have some 'splainin' to do to those who might want to ask us some questions. Just because Atrios thinks a lot of Christian rhetoric is gibberish doesn't mean he doesn't like you. He just means that a lot of Christian rhetoric is, to him, gibberish. Lighten up.

UPDATE: This post by tristero at Hullabaloo gets it all in a nutshell. Christians of all stripes are part of the American system, and are encouraged to participate. Please, however, respect the fact that others have different views, and don't be pushy, insistent, arrogant or rude (those last three words are added as a reference to some writing somwhere . . . Oh yeah! 1 Corinthians 13, where St. Paul is describing the nature of Christian love-in-action). That is part of my problem with the emergence of, and recent scribblings by, Jim Wallis. He is arrogant, rude, insisting on his own way. He seeks not to serve but to be served. He seeks not tun understand but to be understood. He seeks not the Kingdom of God, but the assertion of Wallisism in America.

Christian humility should call us to take our umps like the rest of the imperfect, sinful mortals we find around us, not relish our new-found influence with certain members of the political and media elite. Before we demand what others do as conditions for participation, listen to what they have to say to us - and understand. And agree. And remain silent until it is time to speak. Not as some strategy for dominance-through-submission, but as an honest reflection of our own recognition of the limited nature of our understanding, our heartfelt sympathy with those who find much of Christianity either nonsensical or, indeed, abhorrent, and in accordance with the command to be the servant of all.

More than anything else, this is my complaint about Wallis. So eager to be a public figure, he forgets that we have real work to do, and a real way of going about doing that work. There are others out there who understand that, and are doing it. I think we turn our eyes upon them.

Short Take

Joe Klein neither likes nor understands democracy. Hint: It's about giving voters real choices as to who represents them. It's about real people making decisions for themselves, including complaining about elitist pundits who keep trying to tell them what to do.

Ignoring Jim Wallis

That would be my advice to Duncan Black if he knew I existed. Over at Eschaton, Black writes this post, in which he is irked by something Wallis has written. I have never been a fan of Wallis, as I explain here and here. I find Wallis to be little more than a self-promoting media-whore, and I find the following he has among liberal and progressive Christians troubling. Perhaps it is because, in the wilderness years, he was the only liberal Christian voice one heard, even if only softly in the distance. The problem, however, is that Wallis began to see himself as some sort of "leader", and the media began to tout him as one. Wallis' comments that Black quotes are evidence enough that he is behind the curve, and seeking to reserve a place of privilege in public discourse not only for religious liberals generally, but for himself specifically. Rather than defend himself, he does not want his sincerity or liberal bona fides questioned.

Wallis is a media creation, whose "leadership" has produced no lasting movement, or even temporary results. Wanting to paint himself as some prophetic voice, he is more like the right-wing preachers he excoriates than a true prophet. I find him unctuous, and I do not countenance what he says as anything worth heeding, because he is a mirror image of Falwell and Robertson, and personifies much of what I detest about the religious dimension of our social life.

So, I hope Black does not take too much to heart what Wallis has to say. His position is eminently more reasonable, and in keeping with American traditions, than anything Wallis has ever offered as a substitute.

Bush's New Press Secretary

As I noted here, David Broder's column last week in which he offered the prediction of a political come-back for the Bush Administration is among the silliest, sycophantic pieces of non-journalism I have read in quite a while. In an on-line chat, Broder insisted he is not a favorite of the current White House, and challenged anyone to offer proof that he might be.

The Washington Post's resident blogger, Dan Froomkin, does so here (h/t Glenn Greenwald):

The White House press office was so delighted with Broder's column that it sent it out to the entire White House press corps this morning at 6:44 a.m. under the heading: "In Case You Missed It."

You know who a person is by who that person's friends are. 'Nuff said.

Stuck in the '90's

Over at TPM Cafe is this post that surprised me if for no other reason than the fact that there are still people out there talking about the Clinton-Blair "Third Way".* One would have thought that the spectacular failures of neo-liberalism - in reforming the Russian and Eastern-European economies; in creating a global trade regime that was just, equitable, and recognized both environmental concerns and substantively protected workers' rights; to create serious, lasting fiscal and monetary policies that recognized the necessity for discipline and moderation; not so much "ending welfare as we know it" as "tossing people off the rolls and not caring what happens to them" - would have silenced those who still might want to push such an agenda. Of course, as the last six years have proven over and over again, our elites do not let little things like abject failure, political, public policy, and managerial incompetence, and moral vacuousness get in the way of a really good slogan, and apparently the Third Wayers are, like this as in much else, more like Republicans than Democrats.

The truth is, there really was no "Third Way"; it was a rhetorical device used by Blair, but adopted by Clinton to cover a whole host of policy initiatives that were not necessarily hard-core conservative but certainly not liberal in the traditional sense of the term.

The one area where I thought at one time there might be a success was on reigning in fiscal indiscipline and monetary tight-fistedness. The 1990's economic boom showed what can happen when sound tax, fiscal, and monetary policies combine to stoke the engines of the economy. If the Clinton years showed us nothing else, they showed us that anti-tax ideology is simply an illusion; even the slightly progressive readjustments made during Clinton's first term - raising the marginal rates on top earners, increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor, and increasing incentives for middle-income wage-earners to save and invest - combined with a stern discipline on spending and a Federal Reserve that saw its role as staying out of the way of economic expansion - could create an economic juggernaut. Not only have these gains been lost, we are in much worse shape than we were six years ago, and the attempt to make the Bush tax policies permanent would be a horrific blow to any kind of serious economic recovery.

Having said all that, the author's point that such talk might have served us well 15 years ago but is irrelevant now is a good one. Part of the irrelevancy comes from simple historical comparisons - which Administration has served the United States better, Republican or Democratic? Which Administration pursued substantive policies in the interest of the country as a whole, reflected in the success of the country as a whole? Which Administration and its policies is supported by a larger percentage of the American people?

The Third Way leads down a dead-end road, and we are well rid of it. Right-wing Democrats who still quake in their boots over anything that might possibly be construed as "liberal" or (God forbid!) "progressive", and who insist that the left must be tamed if Democrats are to win elections again (this includes non-partisan pundit/hacks like Joe Klein) are just plain wrong, and should not be listened to at any cost. The times they are a-changing, and we need to move more of the Democratic Party with us.

*Apparently Bush's Poodle in Downing Street has discovered a Fourth Way, and its called "Do Whatever the American President Does, No Matter Who That Is". Thankfully for us, Blair's toadying is not appreciated by Britons. It is one thing to recognize that one is not a world power any more and defer to one's more powerful allies. It is another to take tht to the extreme of aping that more powerful allies' more stupid and destructive policies.

Discussing Religion in the Public Sphere - The Romney Candidacy and a Recent Poll

Over here at Sadly!No they reproduce a poll that shows that less than a majority of people would vote for an atheist for President, even if that person were otherwise qualified to hold the office. For the past week, Duncan Black at Eschaton has been discussing religion (I commented on it last week) and, as Mitt Romney's candidacy begins to escalate the anti-Mormonism latent within Protestantism, continues to offer thoughts, here and here that continue his rather open, serious, and broad-minded approach to the subject. I suppose I have been avoiding the whole thing, but when I saw the poll at Sadly!No, and as Romney's candidacy continues, I think it important for me to make some things clear, even as my positions change and I may seem to contradict myself.

First, the poll is troubling but unsurprising. Whether we like it or not, we live in a religion-besotted nation, although I would qualify that statement a great deal. I believe that much of our public discourse is religion-besotted, without ever being very clear as to what, exactly, that might mean, the historical roots of the religious dimension often dragged (sometimes kicking and screaming) into public debates, and is too often mishandled and even exploited. Historically, we have actually elected folks who, by today's standards, would be unelectable due to their religious views and practice. Two come to mind: (1) Abe Lincoln, while very often using God in his speeches, was unconventionally religious, taken with the occult, and refused to identify with any organized religion; (2) William Howard Taft (OK, not our greatest President, but certainly our largest, once getting himself stuck in the First Tub because of his enormous girth) was an active member of the large Unitarian Universalist congregation now located on Sixteenth St., NW, about a mile or so north of the White House, although a hundred years ago it was, I believe, up on Georgia Ave. somewhere. We have elected rapists (Thomas Jefferson), serial adulterers (the list begins with Jefferson and ends with Clinton, and includes FDR, Einsenhower, JFK, Warren Harding, and Ronald Reagan), possibly a gay man (James Buchanan was our only bachelor President and had a long-term friendship with another man that followed him after he left the Executive Mansion), and even one or two genocidal Presidents (Andrew Jackson and the Cherokee's "Trail of Tears"; the hounding of the Plains and Southwestern Indians, including the Sioux, the Nez Perce, the Arapaho, the Apache, and even the peaceful Hopi, the only native groups never to be in a formal or informal state of war with the United States government).

We have also had Presidents whose religious chatter was just that; Ronald Reagan is the most recent example, but I might also include George H. W. Bush who refused to receive the Washington-area Bishop of the Epicopal Church in the days before the Gulf War, because the Episcopal Bishop and Church were opposed to the war, and the Bishop wanted to hand-deliver the official statement of the church to the President. Holed up in the White House giving spiritual aid and comfort in those same days was . . . Billy Graham (who actually opposed the war). Having a Mormon as President would be no big deal, and even his candidacy is a good thing as it exposes some of the real vile hatreds many evangelical Protestants feel towards those who hold to a Third Testament.

As a side note, it isn't just Mormons who irk right-leaning Christians; Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, and even Catholics are considered by many right-wingers to be "cults". It is one thing to believe, as I do, that some or even most of the things folks who profess these faiths are either silly, ignorant, or just plain false. It is another thing altogether to call people cult-members, or to question the faithfulness of those who profess these beliefs. Although I agree with Black that there is a thin line between questioning these beliefs and out-and-out bigotry, I also agree that questioning these beliefs, especially when they are trotted out as part and parcel of our public discourse and a necessary part of understanding the candidate as a candidate, is not bigotry at all, but quite necessary and reasonable.

I also agree with something else Black wrote in the second post linked above:

[W]hat you believe is unimportant as long as you have faith in something, and [such a position has] reduced any public discussion of the genuine differences that exist [between and among religions].

He is reminding us here of Eisnehower's silly saying that it doesn't matter what one believes, as long as one believes in something. Black is arguing that beliefs do matter, and that once they become part of our public debate, we need to have a real debate about them. That is why JFK talked about his Catholicism; that is why John Kerry talked about his. That is why Jimmy Carter talked about his evangelical Baptist beliefs. That is why George W. Bush talks about his spiritual renewal after an early adulthood spent in (realtively mild, we assume) debauchery. There is nothing wrong with these discussions, as long as we remember that, once they enter our public realm, they become fodder for questioning, for debate, and even for ridicule. Romney's statement that "we need a person of faith" as President is an opinion (although, if the poll cited above is any indication, it is also a fact), and should become the starting point for a real debate over the role of religion in American public life. We have been needing this debate for a long time, and maybe, just maybe, we are seeing the stirrings of one now. Let us keep the discussion going.

On Immovable Earth and Christian Fundamentalism

My post yesterday on this topic was more of a venting process than anything else. A day has passed, and I have been able to put some distance between my initial emotional response and the story itself, and consider it against a broader background. I have had help from blog roll member Erudite Redneck, who writes in the comments section in response to my own mournful wail over the stupidity:

Most of the fundies who claim to be biblical inerrantists aren't even close, so they should quit pretending, and stop trying to close the doors of fellowship to those of us who definitely are not. The Fixed Earth people are real biblical inerrantists.

Not only is he correct, it brings up a point I had not really considered fully, but needs to be addressed. This kind of thinking, if the word can be used in this context, has always been around, and not just in Christian fundie circles. I once visited the Flat Earth Society's website, and these are earnest folks, and not at all concerned with Biblical inerrancy and Jewish plots. For now, though, our concern is with the fundy wing of this particular idiocy.

It has been a quarter-century since the Christian Right entered the political world in a big way; I remember Time, Newsweek, and US News and World Report doing long pieces back in the mid-80's on the distinction, gradations, and varied positions on a variety of social issues amongst those usually lumped together as parts of the Christian right. The whole "creation science" thing was just then beginning to take hold, and Tim LaHaye's Institute for Creation Research figured prominently in at least one of the articles I vaguely recall.

Creationism is about more than rejecting Darwinism, although that is utmost. It is, as ER points out, rejecting five hundred years worth of looking at the world through eyes turned away from Christian scripture, or at least not allowing Scripture to overturn experience. So, now, as the right begins its retreat - and I believe it is doing just that, although that prediction has been made before - we are beginning to see where the logic of such nonsense as biblical inerrancy leads us. It is easy to make fun of people who believe this crap; it is also easy to reduce it psychological categories - arrested development, fear of modernity, even unfocussed Oedipal rage - but the simple fact is these people are, in the last analysis, nuts.

It would be nice if I could try to account for this nonsense in some other away. I do not doubt the sincerity of their beliefs, any more than I doubt the sincerity of Berkowitz' claim that his neighbor's dog was possessed by a demon who told him to kill women. I believe he believes the story; I just think he is deranged to believe it. In the same way, I believe people who hold that the earth is the center of the Universe, that Copernicus was wrong, etc., etc., truly believe these things. I just believe they are deranged to believe it. There is no reason to argue with them, to discuss the issue with them, to try to decipher meaning, purpose, or anything else that might lie behind these beliefs. They are just plain nuts.

These are the folks who bravely go where few fundamentalists dare; they are consistent on issues of Biblical inerrancy. By being so, they show how intellectually vacuous, and psychologically damaging, such a view is. This is the voice of true fundamentalism. They cannot hide behind rhetoric or dissimulation any longer.

When Journalism Happens at FOXNews, Chris Wallace Should Expect to Be Fired

Perusing news before I wrote about other things, I came across this post at ThinkProgress.org. It needs to be seen to be believed. Chris Wallace, in essence, called Douglas Feith a liar on national television, and produced evidence to prove his point.

A FOXNews anchor calls out a former member of the Bush Administration, and architect of the Iraq war. Has spring come early? What is happening? I'm quite sure there are people all over the country whose heads just exploded in unison as a little reality intruded upon their Fox-induced fantasy.

What next, I wonder?

On Lincoln Quotes

As any reader of this blog should know, Frank Gaffney of The Washington (Moonie) Times headlined a recent column with a fabricated quote from Abraham Lincoln. Via Digby, who lnks to this blog we have some real Lincoln quotes. The whole post needs to be read, obviously, but I would like to put up just one that is as relevant today as it was back when Lincoln said it in 1849:

The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Since this is the exact opposite of both the content and spirit of the fake quote - indeed the entire speech Lincoln gave on the floor of the House is diametrically opposed to the fabrication - it is little wonder it is true. Right-wingers live in opposite world, so it is safe to accept the premise that anything they say is the opposite of reality. (With apologies to my turtle-loving friends to the north who, living in Wisconsin, do not live in opposite world, just in a really cold, cheese-loving land)

The Earth May not Spin, But My Head Does

Yesterday, I read a piece . . . somewhere . . . (I have looked and looked and looked and cannot find the original story to link to; a little help here please, although the piece linked below does have a link also; thank God for the Intertubes) about a Georgia state legislator who has circulated a letter concerning creationism being a Jewish kabbalistic plot; the letter reached a Texas state rep., and now the GA rep. is backing away from responsibility (even though it was sent from his office, on his letterhead etc.; these guys dance so bad, they need new choreographers!). There is a part of me that wanted to be all sarcastic about this - bringing up The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and all that - but I thought better of it because I didn't want to be misunderstood on something as both silly and serious as this. Christian anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are the root of too much evil to snark about, and any Jewish reader who came across even a sarcastic, satiric jibe might be rightly offended. Not only that, but such is just in poor taste; again, the piles of Jewish bodies is a bit too high for my taste.

I was going to ignore the whole thing - the stupid, like the poor, will always be with us - until I saw this story over at Alternet.org. I urge you to go read it and find out just how seriously deranged creationists are.

I have had some very good discussions with frequent visitor/poster Democracy Lover on issues of the philosophy of science, including the truth-and-reality-status of scientific theories, including Copernicus' (I should just use his real name, Kopernik, because it is easier to make a plural out of; now, I've ended a sentence with a preposition!). These are both fun and deadly serious. Having read this story, however, I think it necessary to make clear that just because I question the ultimate truth and reality of any scientific theory (as a good scientist should), that in no way means I . . . I can't even type what is such a ludicrous sentence!

Ahem.

Epistemological and ontological skepticism over the status of scientific theories in no way countenances the acceptance of an alternative that has failed, for five centuries, to account for mountains of data. Epistemological and ontological skepticism over science is not anti-science; it is putting a wonderful, useful tool in a larger context of human understanding. Period.

That I should feel at all compelled to write the previous short paragraph shows that, perhaps, DL has a point. I still will not question the faith of those who are claiming this nonsense. I will question their mental status, their intellectual capacity, and their seriousness as public figures.

I have been trying to be nice, but I just need to get this last line out of my system, and go listen to something really loud.

WHAT ABSOLUTE MORONS. PLEASE, FOR ALL THAT IS GOOD AND TRUE IN THE WORLD, SHUT THE HELL UP. YOU ARE HURTING ME WITH YOUR STUPIDITY.

OK, I'm better now.

Stoopnagles.

One Iota of Difference (With Corrections)

As a public service, I will give the source of this particular saying. During the early-4th to early-5th century debates among Christians as to the exact status of the relationship between Jesus as Son and God as Father (I will not bore you with the metaphysical details), in order to make the sameness-within-distinction that was thought necessary, some (who eventually succeeded, in having their definition encoded in what has been called the Nicene Creed) came up with Greek idea of homoousios, meaning that God as God and Jesus as human/divine reality shared the same "substance", ousios, divine stuff. There was a large plurality that thought this took the relationship too far and offered up a compromise - the Father and Son were homoiousios, "of similar substance". The addition of that smallest of Greek letters, iota, made all the difference in the world. Or not, according to which resident of Nicaea you spoke to. Thus the saying.

With that in mind, I offer the following observations on evolving discussion over the President in his Constitutional office of Commander-in-Chief. Some would argue that the President is Commander-in-Chief, thus creating an identity between the whole office and one of its functions. A more responsible reading, many argue is the President as Commander-in-Chief, reducing an identity to a predicate. By changing that one letter, "a" to "i", we change everything, not least of which is the horrific, un-Constitutional idea that the President "is" the Commander-in-Chief, thus a military leader even as a civilian. Do those who make this argument not realize that this is, in essence, an attempted military coup d'etat by means of language? It militarizes a civilian office; it militarizes American public life; it places us all under the restrictions and regulations of military discipline.



It is thus that an iota of difference can mean so much.

*After putting the blog to bed for the night, I realized I had made a couple oopsies. First, I put the Christological debates a century earlier - from early-3rd to early-4th centuries; second, I translated ousios as "essence" rather than the more correct translation of "substance". It might mean little to those who don't know the metaphysics, but it means a lot to me who's supposed to know this stuff.

A couple thing . . .

1) As the saying goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. We have to wait twelve hours to see if this post by Joe Klein confirms it, or is a one-off fluke. Klein link to David Broder's latest column in which Broder predicts that Pres. Bush is poised to make a political comeback. There is something so remarkably insane about Broder's column one would almost have to take it for parody. Read the whole thing, and try to understand it as a serious contribution to our national dialogue, or the insights of our most gifted political reporter. One need not wade through the muck on the right-wing blogs to find something so egregiously out-of-touch with simple reality. Klein is indeed right. I think not.

2) Over at Talking Points Memo, there is an excerpt from a speech on the floor of the Senate by Joe Lieberman that is so tiresomely predictable, so full of right-wing cliches and carefully crafted talking points (no pun intended) one wonders if Joe actually wrote it, or had it faxed to him. In fact, he could have forwarded the fax right on and saved all the oxygen he wasted speaking.
An antidote to Lieberman is, as always, Digby, who says the following in a post that deserves to be read several times, especially by a nincompoop like Lieberman:

[U]ntil we admit that the Bush Doctrine[of pre-emptive war] is an illegal and immoral doctrine and repudiate it, we are going to be stuck in this horrible situation where we are the biggest military power on the earth who are mistrusted, feared, hated, and actively resisted.

This reality, not Lieberman's phony "constitutional crisis" (we are, of course, in the midst of one, we just haven't come to terms with it yet), is what we faced with. Most of the American people realize this. One wonders whether Lieberman is deliberately stupid, or so wrapped up in his own view of himself as some moral arbiter that he deludes himself into believing he has any ethical force whatsoever.

Sensible, Thoughtful, Open, Honest - Apparently He Must Be Stopped!

Over at Eschaton, Dr. Black is writing about religion here, here, and here, specifically his own views on "religious consultants" to Democratic candidates (God help us all!), and his discomfort with such claims as that religious liberals could act as the "conscience" of the Democratic Party" (Ugh! Aboslute Ugh!). He then goes on to insist that he is neither hostile to religion nor particularly interested in it; he wants it to be removed from its exclusive pedestal and get down and dirty and open itself to criticism. He also outlines his own rather secular upbringing, although I'm not sure why, other than as a descriptor.

What I like about all these posts are his reasonableness. I even agree with his point about "evangelical" atheists like Sam Harris getting in there and being part of the fray. I also agree with his uneasiness at the comments of "religious consultants" - actually, i find the whole idea distasteful in the extreme; these people need to find other jobs - for the very same reasons Black does. Christians have no monopoly on virtue, on goodness, or on what it means to guide others for right action. One of the most morally consistent thinkers of the 20th century also wrote a book entitled Why I Am Not a Christian. Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Baha'i, Buddhism, the Sikhs - they all have moral codes that are clear, and in some cases (Baha'i, Jain) even more strict than ethic Christians could figure out. To say such things is absurd, counterproductive, and just plain wrong-headed.

I hope Duncan stops being quite so defensive. His words are honestly meant, thoughtful, clear, and honest. He even makes a point many on the left hesitate to do - he welcomes Christian voters into the liberal camp (although he also notes, correctly, that our torturer-in-chief garnered the swag-bag of Christian votes in 2004). I think he is being defensive because he is discovering that, in attempting to be thoughtful, open, honest, balanced, but still critical, he is not playing by the rules of the game. By admitting up front he not only doesn't believe in God, but it just isn't a big deal to him, he is failing to recognize that too many Christians (I can't speak of those of other faiths, because my experience is almost completely with Christians) are so insecure in their faith, and so insecure in their ability to speak of their faith and relate it to their lives, that any admission that God is irrelevant to another's life is ipso facto an attack upon them and the one thing that gives their life roots and meaning and substance. Black's insousciance is a threat because it undermines too many people's belief that there is a necessity to God's existence, and that this necessity is rooted in human beings.

If he were to take my advice, which I'm sure he won't because I doubt he knows I exist, he would end on the note he has - his piece "What I Believe", and go on to other things. His point is made, and those who would attack him will not hear it anyway. They are not interested in thoughtful, nuanced argument. He should recognize that by now. These people need to destroy those with whom they disagree because they are afraid; what they fear most is that Duncan Black and other like him might just be right.

The Truth Sets Them Free to Leave, Apparently

The weekly United Methodist News paper, The United Methodist Reporter, has a page 1 story (which you can find online here) entitled "Q&A: Don't Confuse Political Power, Kingdom of God". It is an interview with Greg Boyd, pastor of a megachurch in St. Paul. Wrestling with the political dimension of the Christian faith and what it means in the United States today led Rev. Boyd to insist that the United States is not a "Christian nation", and that to do so destroys the uniqueness and revolutionary power of the Gospel. One thousand of the 5,000 members left.

Boyd, however, remains unapologetic, as it should be.

This is hardly news, although I am sure it might sound surprising to many. Back in 1993, shortly after giving the benediction(? invocation? now I can't remember!) at Pres. Clinton's first inauguration, Billy Graham gave an interview in which he said that one his biggest regrets was his own confusion of the Gospel and what he called "Americanism". He no longer was as confused, and the last years of his public ministry were spent insisting that the social dimension of the Gospel was about care for the poor, the oppressed, service in love to others, and a broader social vision than protecting fetuses and protecting society from gays. Indeed, Graham's message was much broader and liberal, in the conventional sense of the term, than his son and anointed successor's, Franklin. In today's ADHD media culture, however, this is not just not news, but ancient history, and irrelevant to our current situation.

In any event, I encourage you to read the interview, and discover what real preaching means, and the threat such preaching poses to our self-possession and sense of security. We need more Rev. Boyd's in this world.

Killed in Action

Over at Hullabaloo, Tristero follows up on a story reported a while ago concerning an American military helicopter that went down, and how the Pentagon reported the downing as due to "mechanical failure" without getting too specific. Now, of course, the truth emerges that it was shot down. What he writes concerning the way the story is managed deserves repeating as often as fellow-Hullabaloo writer Digby's dictum, "They lie as easily as they breathe":

[The Pentagon] just didn't want to tell you when it [i.e., the downing of the helicopter] was on the front pages.
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More misinformation. More time wasted arguing over the patently obvious.
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[I]n the real world, when a helicopter crashes and burns in a war zone, it's because it was attacked.
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My God, to be the loved ones o f the people that got killed and have to listen to your government's bullshit about their deaths...

Could it be that the Clinton Adminsitration's experience in Somalia, Blackhawk Down and all that, has convinced the Bush Pentagon that reporting a helicopter downing could possibly be viewed badly in the United States? Any less well than the deaths of 3100 Americans for no reason whatsoever, based in lies and the constitution-shredding vehemence of lying, power-hungry maniacs?

I shall say it again, with Digby (repeat this mantra five times a day, especially as you prepare to view or read news reports): The lie as easily as they breathe.

The Debt We All Owe Joe Klein

I know I should probably stop beating this particular dead horse. Obsessing over the vapidity, faux-elitism, and noblesse oblige of Joe Klein is probably as tiresome as it gets. He will not change, because he lacks a fundamental understanding that his readers are both intelligent and discerning - and think he is too often a self-important, self-promoting blowhard, trying much too hard to prove how smart, insightful, and connected he is.

Having said all that, the headlines for Klein's two posts over at Swampland concerning today's Presidential press conference are as follows:

The Bush Press Conference - The Nonimportant Stuff

The Bush Press Conference - The Important Stuff

For sheer audacious assumed superiority, these win this week's prize for media haughtiness. Couldn't he just type, "Here's what you think" and be done with it? In fact, I think that should be the title of Klein's column for Time. It would be more intellectually honest, and reflect his world-view, viz., I am a Washington-based journalist and author of eight books so I of course know more than anyone.

Is it any wonder he is held in such contempt by so many on the left-blogosphere?

A Note to Mollify My Wife

I feel a need to clarify an issue here, before I get taken to the verbal woodshed by my Other Half for somehow neglecting religious matters in my blog. At this point in time, I feel the most urgent moral, indeed Christian, task, is doing all in one's power to stop an impending war with Iran. I could sit and list all the possible consequences of such a horrid catastrophe from a political, social, military, and diplomatic standpoint, but for me these are secondary considerations. ATTACKING IRAN WOULD BE A MORAL EVIL. If Bush & Co. thought it would be a political and military triumph of the highest order, they would not hide behind anonymous sources, lie, plan in secret (even as a third carrier battle croup steams toward the Gulf), and obfuscate, dissimulate, and fail to tell the complete truth. As Digby says, "They lie as easily as they breathe."(I try to get this in as often as possible; it needs to be shouted from every rooftop) One does not lie about a moral good.

This alone should tell anyone with any kind of mature moral sense that there is something monstrous in the very idea of attacking Iran. Do not doubt for one minute that the moral-morons who currently run our country would leave, as the good representative from Virginia said in the discussion linked below, "every option on the table" which includes, for targets Bush insists are nuclear, nuclear weapons. These are horrors, ladies and gentlemen, obscenities of the first water - and they must be stopped, aborted before they reach the birthing stage. I cannot emphasize this enough: THERE IS NO ISSUE MORE CENTRAL TO THE VERY SURVIVAL OF OUR REPUBLIC THAN THE PREVENTION OF WAR WITH IRAN; THERE IS NO ISSUE MORE CENTRAL TO ONE'S IDENTITY AS A CHRISTIAN THAN THE PREVENTION OF WAR WITH IRAN.

"Something's afoot . . .

. . . and sounds like the generals are doing everything they possibly can to avoid Bush starting an utterly catastrophic war with Iran." Thus Tristero at Hullabaloo in attempting to firgure out the dissonance from within the Bush Administration. Gen. Peter Pace says one thing, the Bush team rolls out anonymous sources to say another, and Tristero's decoding seems not only plausible but a good, scientific explanation, in that it covers disparate, discrete data, and predicts future behavior as well (Team Bush will repeat themselves, Pace will refuse to play along, Pace will get fired, etc.).

Starting a war with Iran, whether one cooks the intelligence or not, is easy if there are representatives as clearly ignorant AND stupid as the one quoted at length here, again at Hullabaloo. What makes this exchange so unbelievable is the fact that Chris Matthews - hardly a leading intellectual - is as stunned as Rep. Israel by the sheer audacious idiocy flowing from Cantor's mouth. This is sock-puppetry gone bad, with someone clearly too dumb to realize he is being dumb. Of course, the fate of America is in his hands, so perhaps we should pull the covers a bit higher tonight . . .

BTW, I followed my own advice and sent emails to my Senators, Durbin and Obama, on the whole Iran thing. Durbin has responded, Obama has not, and I plan on writing to Durbin again, probably tomorrow when I have more time, and can sit and consider my response. I will not write to my Congressman, Rep. Don Manzullo (R - IL16) because (a) he is a lightweight backbencher in the minority; and (b) his greatest achievement has been failing to get emergency assistance for areas of Rockford hit hard by flooding over Labor Day weekend. If a Republican can't get federal funds during an election year for disaster from Republican-controlled Executive agencies, the this person is clearly of no consequence.

I think highlighting Gen. Pace's comments, as well as the utter foolishness of leaving this monumental decision in the hands of morons such as those in the House would be an excellent place to start.

More on the Somali Air Raid

I mentioned it as a bit of a throw-away yesterday, and to be perfectly honest, it was something that popped into my head as I typed it, but reading again what I wrote about the American air raid against alleged Somali "terrorist" sites (if Bush told me Christmas were December 25th, I would want some kind of evidence) strikes me as, well, insightful. I think it is something worth pondering.

First, the plane used - I think the designation is the AR-51, but I am probably wrong - is a modified reconnaisance plane that has multiple .50-caliber machine guns mounted on one side. Directed by ground troops (thus, there had to be some kind of recon force nearby), the place circles low, firing thousands of rounds of ammunition a second, usually tracers (better for tracking purposes at night, but also usually containing phosphorus or small amounts of depleted uranium, thus harmful even in cases where they are not instantly lethal). This was the plane that failed miserably back in the fall of 2001 at taking out senior Taliban personnel in Afghanistan; the story then denied all sorts of things that simply had to be the case for the mission to be such an abject failure, not the least of which was the capture and/or death of a group of special forces personnel near or inside the Afghan capital building which was the focus of the attack.

So, what we had in Somalia were a few strikes over a couple days, using "terrorists" (what else?) as an excuse, against a country with which we are not at war, and indeed is a country only in the sense that most people in the world agree that there is an area of the world called "Somalia". This poor, tortured land, the victim of multiple sieges from nature and larger countries eager to control its access to the Red Sea (not to mention a potential fortune in mineral deposits, thanks to the Great Rift Valley) cannot catch a break, and the United States using this flying weapons platform around, shooting pretty much willy-nilly is like rubbing sea salt in festering sores.

The larger point is that there has been almost no discussion about this raid, or its potential long-term meaning for the United States as we prepare to do something monumentally stupid and evil in Iran. We managed to pull off the raid with almost no press or blogosphere comment, certainly no Congressional reaction, and what should that tell the Bush Administration? That, despite all the heat, there is little anyone can do to stop them once they give the order to "let fly" or "unleash hell" (depending upon which Russell Crowe movie you prefer). That, despite all the heat, any air action, as long as it even looks successful - that is, no plane is shot down, no bodies dragged through the streets, no movie made years later, etc. - the American people are OK with it.

To my mind it is encumbent upon us to demand answers to certain questions: what was the source of information that led the US to believe that there were al Qaeda personnel in that spot at that time in Somalia? Were they credible? Was there some kind of independent verification? Which members of Congress were consulted, when, and what information were they given, as opposed to what the President, the Joint Chiefs, and other Executive Branch personnel may have received? Were all American service personnel extricated from Somalia? What was the result of the attack - was the target successfully killed, was the mission accomplished with minimal loss of life and minimal property damage? Was notice given to the current rulers of Somalia that an American warplane would be swooping overhead, shooting what to all intents and purposes looks like laser beams at a building? Was permission granted? If not, why not? If not, why did the mission go forward?

These are some questions that should be answered, and probably not even the really good ones. I think it is a start, though, and it might show the Bush Team that the anti-war crowd mean business.

"Have the media learned absolutely nothing from Iraq? It really appears that way." - Glenn Greenwald

The title, from this post by Glenn Greenwald, highlights our current dilemma here in the United States, as the Bush Administration works "in secret" to prepare a military air strike against Iran. I put in secret in quotes because, as Democracy Lover notes here, the foreign press is on this story with good, solid information, without the lying denials from American officials as "balance". We are in this strange place right now, where the New York Times prints stories that are Administration stenography, anonymously sourced, with almost no independent verification or evidence. As Eason Jordan writes:

After the bogus Iraq evidence debacle in 2002 and 2003 - allegations that led to war, tens of thousands of lives lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent - only a fool would accept as the gospel supposed evidence against another country that's presented by officials who insist on making their allegations anonymously.

We deserve better from the US government. We deserve better from the western news media.

"Only a fool" indeed. Of course, the Bush Administration doesn't really care whether they fool anyone or not. The plans go on, a third carrier battle group steams towards the Persian Gulf, and the media have become an echo chamber for Bush Administration lies. To quote St. Digby:

What could be more dangerous than having delusional megalomaniacs playing RISK at a time like this?
They lie as easily as they breathe.

It is past time for the mainstream press in the United States to get on this story and make us aware of the reality that we face a horrible choice - we confront the truth that a war is being prepared in our name, an air war that could very involve nuclear weapons being used (as the plans themselves are still "secret", there is no way to tell for sure, but the instability of these people should not allow us to rest easily on this subject), and take appropriate actions to stop it NOW; or we continue in our daze, arguing over toothless resolutions concerning Iraq, a lost cause if ever there was one, allowing Bush & Co. to move forward. I truly believe that the recent air strikes against Somalia were a test case; would we as a public rally to the President as he ordered military strikes outside Iraq? Would the press investigate them? Would Congress? As everyone has been silent on them, it would appear that, apart from any actual military success that may or may not have resulted, the Administration won that round.

This is not to say the US press is completely silent. Two articles in Newsweek, "Rumors of War" by Michael Hirsch and Maziar Bahari and "Doubts About Iran" by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball are both thorough and disturbing. The problem is that two areticles, even in as prominent a publication as Newsweek hardly constitute a united front against the Administration's continued abuses, and the press's refusal to do anything other than enable the lying.

We need to repeat as often as possible, first to others, then to the press, what Democracy Lover said in the post linked above:

Bombing Iran would be a [sic] act of such utter stupidity that any remaining doubts about the insanity of thie adminstration would be laid to rest.

We need to rein them in - the Bush folks and their enablers in the press (discussed thoroughly by Glenn Greenwald here). We need to demand better, and more of the better. In order to stop them, we need facts, as much information as possible.

What Have We Become?

Ever since the attacks on September 11, 2001, there has been an unbelievable discussion going on in this country - whether or not, under certain circumstances, or perhaps under present circumstances, the torture of human beings is not just an expedience, but a necessity (the ticking time-bomb crap, I mean argument). Once-noted attorney Alan Dershowitz has argued vociferously for the permission to torture. The Bush Administration, never a bunch to worry about legalities, has proceeded to torture anyway, and we, like a bunch rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking ship of state, continue to argue whether we should or not. We are torturing. What we need now is to accept this - and stop it.

Beyond the horrors inflicted upon the victims, our national reputation abroad, our constitution, our international agreements, covenenants, and treaties to which we are signatories, we need to consider the very personal toll torture takes upon those who actually perform it. I urge anyone who reads this to click the following links and read, in full (mentioning where you found them), what is written there:

Arthur Silber's On Torture - this is where you start, and you should return to it when you are finished.

Digby here and here for a commentary upon the honest reflections of one "interrogator" and what his experience has done to him.

TRex at Fire Dog Lake on the mysterious death of one interrogator who refused to follow orders (please note the image at the top of the post; if that doesn't hit home, nothing will).

To all these suprebly written, thoughful, and timely pieces (TRex insists on a new verb, "digby", to describe what happens when you want to write somthing, and discover someone has done it first, and done it better, than you; I couldn't agree more) I would only like to add this.

In Peter Padfield's biography of Heinrich Himmler, the author notes that a persistent problem Himmler faced was the physical and psychological deterioration of he members of the SS assigned to the concentration camps and death camps (there is a difference; Bergen-Belsen was a concentration camp, Auchwitz was a death camp). The members became alcoholics, drug addicts, abusive to their spouses and families, suicide was rampant, and the hazing of new recruits, including homosexual rape and enforced homosexual concubinage upon more senior officers all became part of the administrative problem facing Himmler. As older members dropped out, or sought duties elsehwere, the types that eventually ended up in positions of authority in the camps were those Himmler tried to restrict (oddly enough) as unfit for such duty - sadists, and those with borderline or clearly psychotic personalities.

The mental and physical toll upon those who, as members of the SS, were the most elite and most truly believed Nazi propaganda concerning the less-than-human status of their wards, was nonetheless phenomenal. Confronted, not by a stereotype, but a living breathing human being day after day, and being responsible for their pain, suffering, and death destroys the torturer.

I would ask anyone who advocates torture - would you be willing to do what you advocate? Would you be willing, free of guilt, to influct pain and suffering, day upon day upon day, upon a fellow human being?

This must stop. This has to stop. For the sake of the souls of those young men and women who are ordered to do unspeakable things to their brothers and sisters, young men and women ordered in our names, paid for with our money (and our children's and grandhcildren's money), to purposely inflict suffering on others - it must end.

Giving Them the Smack Down - Who is the Real Republican Base?

I have purposely avoided the whole Pelosi-plane phony scandal precisely because it was just that. The big blogs and sites worked hard getting the facts out there, yet still the House Republicans kept at it, even when they had to know it was all a lie. One Democratic member managed, in less than five minutes, to do what many Democrats around the country have been wanting to do for years - put a serious rhetorical smack-down upon Republican nonsense, including refusing, even within the decorum of the House of Representatives, to allow even one instance of reframing or baiting. It was a beautiful thing to behold, and the aides sitting in the background are clearly enjoying it; just watch them smile and snicker as they watch a master rhetorician tear the "Republic" Party in the House and its pet phony scandal apart.

One question that was answered by this entire affair was who, exactly constitutes the base of the Republican Party, who benefits from this whole ado. As the story was disproven almost immediately, yet such "proof" was ignored; as even Tony Snow - God alone knows I find it difficult to say anything nice about this guy - has called the whole thing "silly" and stuck to the facts rather than the "facts" for a change (did his head come close to exploding, one wonders?) - the question, I shall ask again, is; Who benefits from all this?

Certainly not the Repulicans, who look more and more like fools and knaves. There is no public constituency who benefits from this nonsense, either, especially as the whole thing was discredited in no time whatsoever. A clue, I think, comes from this - talk radio and the Washington Times (owned by the Moonies, who also own and manage Insight magazine, that tried and failed miserably to smear Barack Obama) hyped these stories, planting the filthy little lie in the ears of various people, thus starting this particular ball of dung rolling down hill. So, we now understand who is the real base of the Republic Party - Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, FoxNews, the whole right-wing noise-and-lie machine. This is who the Repubican members of the House were trying to please. It was for their benefit the story was kept alive, like a strange but very dangerous and ugly bug in a jar. The only ones who win are those whose ratings depend upon keeping up the noise, even when those whom they nominally support, the Republic Party members of the House of Representatives are demonstrably hurt, and given such a concise and public smackdown.

Short Take

All I have to say about this post at Eschaton, which you should read in its entirety, is that Duncan, er, Dr. Black, gets it all right.

Tucker Carlson - Bow-Tie Wearer, Bad Dancer, Right-Wing Sock Puppet, Theologian

Media Matters has a piece on Tucker Carlson's comments on Barack Obama's church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Apparently, if you can't smear a person by calling them a closet Muslim, perhaps even a closet terrorist (he went to a madrassah, you know, in Indonesia), then you can at least question the bona fides, not so much of his faith, but of the faith of an entire congregation. Man, Tucker, I'm impressed - you managed to get all that in. How do you do it?

The part that has Tucker's tie spinning like something out of The Three Stooges is the church, a predominantly African-American church, includes in its own mission statement what Carlson calls "a disavowal of the pursuit of 'middle classness'", and Carlson says that is somehow, not just un-American, but (gasp!) un-Christian. That would be true if Jesus had been a middle-class white guy from the suburbs, the figure that probably comes up in Carlson's fetid mind whenever he hears the name mentioned. Except, of course, Jesus was a dark, long-haired, carpenter/stone-mason who spoke Aramaic and resembled Yassar Arafat more than he did Jeffrey Hunter (if you haven't seen The Greatest Story Ever Told, you're missing a really campy rendition of the Gospel story; Hunter committed suicide not long after the release of this movie). More to the point, the refusal to pursue "middle classness" is, as a pastor-theologian has pointed out, the refusal to align the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the dominant ethic and lebensweld of bourgoise America. Nothing wrong with that, unless you are an upper-class twit who knows nothing about the actual content of the Christian message, or its revolutionary message.

As per the previous post, please hold on as this particular point of view makes its way around the right-wing. I feel sorry for the folks at Trinity UCC, going about the business of figuring out how to live as faithful Christians, and having a ninny in a bow-tie dis them on national television. There might be some good that comes from this, but we need to make sure the idiocy stops where it started.

The IG Report and the Press - Some Context

When I heard the lead headline this morning on NPR - the business about the Office of Special Plans making up stuff for the Vice-President to use on national television to sell the Iraq war - I wondered why it took nearly four years for the rest of the world to catch up with Seymour Hirsch. Back in 2003, Hersch published a story in The New Yorker detailing substantially the same information that was released by the Inspector General's Office, and suddenly thundered as NEWS. If you win a Pulitzer for whining about Bill Clinton's wierd repulsion/attraction and bad oral sex like Maureen Down, you are a serious journalist. If you pimp a war, and continue pimping it even after it is lost, like Thom Friedman, and win a couple Pulitzer's in the process, you are a serious journalist. If you uncover a massacre by US troops during one illegal war (and win a Pulitzer), write a book detailing the abuses of power by Kissinger and Nixon, write an issue-length story on another alleged massacre that the mainstream press called a "battle", and continue to hound an Administration bent on lying and leading us to destruction, first in Iraq then in Iran, you are not a serious journalist, like Seymour Hersch. Except, of course, Hersch was right, and everyone else - and I mean EVERYONE ELSE IN THE MAINSTREAM PRESS - was wrong, WRONG, WRONG.

Glenn Greenwald (of course) gets it exactly right:

It is vitally important to ensure that those who were responsible for the deceit that led us into Iraq are identified and held accountable.

But that responsibility extends beyond Bush officials into most of the nation's most influential media outlets.(emphasis added)

Read the whole post.

I think this is an important and necessary point that I want to emphasize. To many mainstream journalists, the business over "flawed intelligence" is "old news" because, well, we're in Iraq, and we should be spending our energies figuring out what to do there. The problem with such a position is that it completely ignores the role the media played in getting us into Iraq in the first place. Responsibility, accountability - these are things the press seems to demand of others, but not of itself. More to the point, the run-up to the war is a sub-set, a horrific instance of a much larger phenomenon in which the press has failed and continues to fail us. An example of the former is the two-year media-frenzy over impeachment, a nightmare from which we are all trying to awake. An example of the latter if the business over "Pelosi's plane", with some examples of wonderful myth- and lie-shattering over at TPM Horses Mouth, here and here. It isn't bad enough that the whole thing is a lie - it has been uncovered as a lie since the very day some idiots started harping about it, and the story seems to have "legs" in the same way centipedes do. The right-wing just keeps it up, figuring that if they keep shouting the lies they will become the truth. And, of course, the press just keeps eating it up. FOR THE SAKE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY, PLEASE JUST STOP!

Tristero at Hullabaloo has an excellent piece on this same topic, and Duncan has this to say on a symptom of the larger disease, as revealed by Tim Russert on the stand at the Scooter Libby perjury trial:

Russert only reports what people agree to let him report.

By admitting on the stand that his conversations with "Washington players" as it were are always off the record unless explicitly stated otherwise, he admitted that he does not hold to certain journalistic standards, and thus allows himself to be used by officials who see a convenient mouthpiece for the drivel they put out. Rather than, say, assuming an adversarial stand and insisting the it be "off-the-record" that is explicit, he has surrendered his journalistic credibility (or at least the last filthy tatters of it) for access.

We have had a victory or two in the past few days, including the whole Edwards' blogger business, and riding the truth about the attempted right-wing smear of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (although it hasn't quite caught on, and the story continues to fester, like a boil on the ass of the body politic). We need to keep working it, keep pushing, not just shouting down, but "Facting down" the noise- and hate- and lie-filled nonsense that for too long has taken over our national media.

Discover Disc Cover

I have decided to start a new blog that deals only with my musings about music. It can be found here. Come have a look-see, and return, if you so desire. I hope you won't be disappointed.

What Happens When Bloggers Go Mainstream

The whole Edwards' blogger affair (just click a link to the right, you'll find something about it) is interesting on several levels. First, it tells us that, despite a certain rhetorical courage (it comes with little political cost as he is out of the Senate and need only appeal to Democratic primary voters for his stance on Iraq), Edwards is, essentially, still a pre-'06 Democrat. He wants to make certain moves to appease more liberal voters, but his eye is still on the money prize (just go and read his televised speech to a conference in Israel; he sounds as much like Joe Lieberman on Iran as anyone), and that means appeasing the DLC types, and bowing under the pressure of the mainstream media. Rather than display the kind of courage that got the Democrats the Senate and House, he is displaying the kind of caution that lost us Congress, and Presidency, for years. Should he fire these bloggers he's hired, he will have proven he is more concerned about the opinion of Michelle Malkin and other truly loony right-wingers than he is with getting out a consistent populist-progressive message.

Another point is the whole brouhaha centers on - what? - the us of foul language? Oh. My. God. Are we in eighth grade here? Ann Coulter calls for the assassination, in turn, of a President, a Supreme Court justice, the fire-bombing of the New York Times building, and harasses 9/11 widows, yet her bony visage is continually corrupting TV networks. Had she called Bill Clinton a motherfucker, or insisted that before he was assassinated, Justice Blackmun should be gang-raped by a bunch of hardened criminals, perhaps she might find her network dance card emptier. And that's just Coulter. Malkin, the one responsible for spreading the nonsense about Edwards' bloggers, is directly responsible for a woman's suicide, has all sorts of ties to racist groups, and spouts off some of the most heinous rhetoric imaginable. Of course, she doesn't use four letter words, so I guess she's OK.

One would have hoped that we could have a more mature conversation in this country, but apparently we are perpetually stuck in Junior High School, where we giggle and clique about, worried over dirty words, and rumors of dirty words. One would have hoped, when the issue exploded over the previous couple days, Edwards would have said, "Yeah, so?" and refused to make another comment. It would have assured at least this blogger that (a) his courage was real, because it came when it counted; and (b) he was more mature than the gaggle of ninnies who want to control our national dialogue, who continually fret over left-wing "foul language" and (gasp!) "incivility". He did not, has not, and most probably will not; like Biden, who managed to mangle his Presidential bid on the same day he declared it, Edwards will most probably find support, espcially out here in the blogs, slipping away. A coward is a coward, and that is as telling as anything.

UPDATE: So Edwards hasn't caved . . . completely. You can see a copy of the press release here at Sadly, No!. I have to admit that I am, well, less than happy, shall we say with the tone and tenor of the statement. Rather than tell the mainstream press and the right-wing bloggers to please, for the love of God and all that is Holy stop, they said, "Gee, you know, maybe I was a bit harsh here and there, and it will never happen again." So, they keep their jobs, but they lose their creative freedom in the process. Sorry, but that's too big a price to pay. I would prefer freelancing for any candidate than whoring under the condition that I dress up nice and play by someone else's rules. That's just me, though.

One lesson we have not learned is to turn a sharp eye to the right-wingers spewing this nonsense; as has been pointed out ad nauseum, they are much worse, and much more consistently worse than anything these supposed "foul mouthed" bloggers have ever posted. Unfortunately, for some reason known only to them, God, and their therapists, the likes of Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter and (gag!) Glen Beck are still on rolodexes all over the mainstream press. I suppose that is the next important task the progressive blogs need to address - this absolute blackballing of real liberal, progressive, and left-wing views from our national media. Anyh thoughts on how to do so?

Two Items

1) Over at AlterNet.org, Matt Taibbi has an article in which he pulls no punches against favorite left-wing blogosphere whipping-boy Joe Klein. I have wondered why Klein has become such a favorite target, and it comes down to two things - his arrogant attitude toward lefty blogs, with his constant "how dare they" pose whenever his integrity or even his thought processes (such as they are) are questioned; and his utter refusal to admit he was wrong about Iraq, and that in being so wrong, he has a duty now that he has seen the error of his previous position to acknowledge the correctness of his adversaries. I find his constant harping on dirty language and civility to be tiresome, to be honest; an additional strike against him (and one Tiabbi brings up).

Part of Klein's problem is that he actually believes that his judgement and understanding are superior to those of us who do not have the kind of access he does. That he has been wrong, again and again and again, should perhaps tell him something about his judgement. That he cannot take criticism should tell him and us something else - he is thin-skinned and needs to toughen himself up a bit. As for the foul language thing, all I can say is, Joe, deal with it.

2) Think Progress highlights part of a Vanity Fair article in which anti-tax guru Grover Norquist, no friend of the neo-con hawks in the Defense and State Department, makes clear that the Bush Administration is gearing up for some serious air action against Iran. You think? Two carrier battle groups and increased troop levels in Baghdad unrelated to any plan for their use in Iraq clearly show that he is plpanning for the likely contingency that Iran would launch a ground war against US forces in Iraq subsequent to some kind of massive air assault against their country.

The time is long past for Congress to put the brakes upon any of this. Forget the surge in Iraq; get on record, not in some nonsensical non-binding way, but in a way that ties the hands of the Administration, forcing some kind of serious consequences (can we all say the word impeachment?) should he ignore the mandate of the legislature and launch. Our current situation in Iraq will come to look like a pleasant afternoon in the park with family and friends should Bush unleash hell upon Iran. And that is only for starters. I cannot emphasize enough - we need to force Congress to act NOW to stop this before it happens. Waiting for the planes and missiles to take off from our ships in the Persian Gulf is far too late; by then we all need to buckle our seat belts for the roughest ride by far we have taken since the Second World War.

By the way, since I was right about Iraq before it even began, I trust my own judgement on this as well. If we attack Iran, we are in far deeper trouble than just a shooting war. The very life and health of our Constitutional form of government will be at stake.

Clarifying My Position After Talking to My Wife

Immediately after I wrote the previous post, my wife read it, and she and I talked about it. For a variety of reasons she took me to task for what I wrote, and after thinking about it, I have decided to change my mind about a couple things, the most important being the whole question of "foregiveness". I suppose I should apologize to someone, but I'm not sure who, so I'll just say, "I'm sorry", and be about what I want to do.

An Open Letter to Ted Haggard:

Dear Mr. Haggard,

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! My name is Geoffrey Kruse-Safford, and I like you am a fellow Christian. I am writing as a fellow-Christian, a brother in the family of God, united by the Holy Spirit in the great fellowship that worships the God who has created us, loves us as we are, and offers us a chance for change and hope for final victory over sin and death. I would hope that you take what I have to say in the Spirit in which it is offered, one of love and concern for a brother who has stumbled but through God's grace shall never fall.

Specifically, I am writing to you concerning your recent completion of "therapy" for your sexual confusion, and all that surrounds the events that led to your very public and painful fall from public favor last autumn. My concern here is that, quite honestly, I do not believe you have dealt honestly with the problem of your own sexual confusion, and the damage such confusion has wrought to yourself, your family, your church, or the public at large. As President of the National Association of Evangelicals, you were in a position of some authority, speaking on behalf of millions of faithful Christians around the country. During the time in which you were leading your double life, you were vocal concerning issues of gay rights, specifically arguing that such demands were a demand for "special rights"; that same-sex marriage was a threat to traditional marriage, indeed to the very social fabric; that any recognition of the legitimacy of same-sex desire posed such a threat.

One of my fervent wishes was that you would have emerged from your sexual counselling with a greater awareness of the nuances of your own sexuality; specifically, I would have hoped for a statement in which you acknowledged a certain level of same-sex desire. You need not have come out as a gay man; bisexuality, or even a certain ambivalence concerning exclusively heterosexual feelings is neither unknown nor would it have been surprising considering your own actions and life choices. I was sad, therefore, to read that you are "definitely heterosexual". I would have hoped for a more honest assessment of your own sexuality.

I say this because it leads me to two points. First, I do not believe you have dealt at all with your own sexual confusion in anything like an honest way. This failure tells me that you are still living within a view of the world in which your greatest sin was committing same-sex acts. Second, this lack of self-awareness, this refusal to honestly appraise yourself and your actions, and the depth of national anger aimed at you, is exacerbated by your refusal to denounce your previously-held positions vis-a-vis the social position of gays and lesbians.

As to the first point, by refusing to deal honestly with the problem, and seeking a cure for something that is not a sickness, you are not facing the problem as it exists; you are still living within some kind of bubble of denial in which, if you can only rid yourself of desire for men, you will be cleansed of sin. Same-sex desire is no sin; love is never wrong. Your sin was not gay sex. Your sin is lying - to yourself, to your family, to your church - concerning the reality of your own sexual ambiguity. Had you emerged with a statement in which you not only acknowledged that ambiguity, but accepted it as how God has made you, and therefore part of the good creation that is Ted Haggard, I would have rejoiced.

Instead, you continue to deny who you are, and I fear you will fall back, not necessarily with Mike Jones, but perhaps other willing partners, professional or otherwise. We lie to ourselves best, because there is no one to hold us accountable. Unfortunately, the psychological toll is tremendous, and when the break occurs, it can be devastating, as you have learned. I would pray for your sake, for your family's sake, that you open yourself to new possibilities, including the grace to accept a less rigid understsanding of human sexuality in general, and your own in particular.

As to the second point, my own anger and frustration with your refusal to acknowledge not just the reality but the legitimacy of ambiguous sexuality is compounded by your silence on issues of gay and lesbian rights. One would have hoped that, having been shown publicly to be sexually confused, you would have made certain retractions of public statements and positions concerning the place of gays and lesbians in the church and in the life of our country. As you refuse to countenance the reality of your own tendency to enjoy the company of other men, however, I doubt whether you would consider such retractions as warranted. You need to understand, however, that the public positions you have held have injured people, as you were part of a larger socio-political movement that sought to deny to those like yourself who have same-sex attraction any place in our national life. You have a responsibility not only to be honest with yourself about your own sexual ambiguity, but to those who have suffered in part because of your very public stance and work to make amends.

As a Christian brother, I am offering my help by giving you the opportunity to be accountable for your actions, both personal and public. In light of all the events surrounding your removal from the pulpit, and the very public nature of the pronouncements concerning your own sexuality, I do not feel untoward in making this offer. I believe it encumbent upon all Christians to hold each other accountable. Jesus said to those whom he healed, "Go, and sin no more." First, you need to recognize the reality of your sin was not performing gay sex. Your sin was breaking faith with your family, and refusing to confront the reality of your own sexuality in a way that was either healthy or honest. As you continue to refuse to do so, I would ask that you consider the option that you are, in fact, if not a gay man, a man who certainly has same-sex desire. It may take time to discipline these feelings, put them in their proper place, and continue to live a life of integrity and honesty. But first, you must make public a statement that you are not "definitely heterosexual" because that is simply not true. Honesty about yourself is the necessary first step to true healing, and a true assesment of what actually took place last fall.

Second, I would insist that part of your accountability would be to read what you have written and said, whether from the pulpit, in conferences, news conferences, even in private correspondence, that in any way is discriminatory or harmful to sexual minorities. I would then insist that, like St. Augustine at the end of his life, you print a book, the proceeds of which would go to the church of your choice for education on sexual realities in the church today, entitled Retractions in which you would publicly denounce any previous such statement you had made, and offer detailed reasons as to why that statement is wrong. Such a public conversion, the metanoia demanded by Scripture and tradition as a sign of true salvation, would serve as a sign that you were now dealing honestly with the reality not only of your own sexual ambiguity, but also dealing with the reality of sexual variety as part of God's good creation. Such a public statement of error would be followed by tireless efforts on your part, working for the full inclusion of gays and lesbins into the life of the society and the church. Surely you must recognize this double necessity. It would not be "penance" in the traditional sense, but rather an honest outgrowth of your own recognition that life and human beings are more complex and wonderful than you used to believe true, and that such complexity is a part of the mystery that is God's creation.

I offer this letter in the Spirit of love that unites us, the Spirit of faith tha guides us, and the Spirit of hope that offers us comfort in times of affliction. I would also offer the same your wife and family, as they struggle through these difficult times of change. Hold fast to what is good, St. Paul wrote, and that would be first those who love you. May God's peace and mercy and love shine in you and through you, sir.

In Christ,
Geoffrey Kruse-Safford

Ted Haggard, Sexuality, & Foregiveness

So Ted Haggard has been "cured" and is definitely heterosexual. Never mind three years with a male prostitute (not to mention alleged but denied methamphetamine use). Never mind a record of anti-gay statements and work all the while he was servicing a man for money.

Sexual confusion, never explored in youth, repressed through a virulent hatred fed by a bigoted and narrow religious world-view can be explosive. I am a firm believer in the "continuum" theory of human sexual desire, and that all of us, from time to time, might feel an urge to explore avenues we might not normally consider. Usually, this occurs in adolescence, a time when we are figuring out who we are, and trying on new identities as often as we try on new shoes and pants. Unfortunately for Haggard, that outlet was denied him in youth, so once he was an adult with a certain amount of freedom and power, he abused his position to the detriment of his family, his ministry, his honor, his integrity, and potentially his health. I do not doubt that, more than likely, Haggard is primarily or at least preferentially heterosexual. That is not to deny the reality of his gay encounters, it is only to (potentially) place them in some kind of context within his sexual psyche.

As sexual identity is something that cannot be programmed or set (apart from seriously deviant forms, such as pedophilia, bestiality, and other extreme sexual perversions), but is hard-wired into us, I doubt if his time in sexual rehab has changed Haggard's sexual identity one iota. Therefore, to come out and say he is "definitely heterosexual" is a lie. It compounds three years of lying, not just about himself, but about his views concerning gays, gay sexuality, and gay sexual acts.

When Jesus forgave people, he told them to "Go, and sin no more." Apparently the new standard is "Go, and bugger no more, or at least don't admit to it publicly." I do not wonder about the ultimate foregiveness coming from God, as that is not dependent upon anything we human beings do or can do. The question, however, is how seriously we are to take Haggard, taking all these things into consideration, and the insistence that honesty - honesty about ourselves; the integrity that follows from living out truthfully the life God has given us; loving others fully and without condition, including sexual orientation - is necessary in order for acceptance back into the community of faith to take place, I cannot help but feel that Haggard is making a quite public show that is meaningless on its face, and only a useful tool for him to return to his previous seat of power. That makes me sad, because this was an opportunity for real growth, real change, for a real, honest, integral life to emerge from the ashes of the brokenness of Haggard's sin. Unfortunately, he has taken the easy road, a road Jesus himself said was broad, and led straight down (as it were).

While I do not doubt God loves Ted Haggard just as he is, I wonder if Ted Haggard loves Ted Haggard just as he is, sexual confusion and all. Until I hear from Haggard that his sexuality is more complex than "definitely heterosexual", and expresses that reality by working for the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the life of the society at large, and specifically the church, I withhold any foregiveness I can give, for the simple reason that I do not think he is sorry for what he did. He is sorry he got caught.

The Greek word in the Bible that is often translated "change", referring to a spiritual change is metanoia, quite literally a turning around, a one-hundred-eighty degree turn. It is a complete and utter transformation of a person's life. Haggard has not done that at all. That is why I do not think he is really sorry; he has not changed, he has only said he was confused, won't do it again, and "Hey, I'm straight!" He has learned nothing - not humility, not compassion, not the depths to which human longing can take us if it is not directed properly through a disciplined life - and so I withhold foregiveness and will continue to hold him accountable for his actions, not just in the future, but right now.

Health Care in a Global Economy in Joe Klein's Universe

Over at Swampland, Joe Klein has this on John Edwards' health care proposal. While not saying this or that about the proposal itself - I haven't read the whole thing, and much of the discussion has been about (gasp!) tax increases to pay for it. One thing Klein points out as a con against the plan is that it is continues the employer-based insurance system that has existed in the United States; by creating certain unfunded mandates for private employers, Klein argues that, in a global economy, this places a competetive burden upon US companies.

There is one problem with this analysis. In a global economy, US companies do business all over the world, and abide by tax and regulatory regimes that make our system look positively libertarian. Just consider the mandatory holiday time in Europe - four weeks mandated vacation in Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium; six weeks in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, New Zealand (not Europe, I know, but you know what I mean). Tax policies in these countries, for all the current trend toward corporate friendliness are, in comparison to our own, almost confiscatory. Yet, hundreds of US-based companies do business and profitable business in these environments. So, rather than place such an onerous burden on employers, perhaps they should be taxed and provide universal health care - kind of like these other countries have.

Of course, in Klein's world, none of this exists. Or does it? I wonder if he even understands the realities companies face overseas. Or cares.

Pundit Accountability

Of course, Duncan had to put it perfectly. I wonder, exactly, who these folks think they are. To whom are they responsible, beyond their editors and publishers and the producers who continually put them on the air? If not to the American people, then whom? Their own consciences? What?

Back in the late 1980's there was some discussion concerning journalistic oversight. There was a move to make newspaper ombudsmen more visible, forcing some kind of accountability. Yet, the arguments raged, mostly over First Amendment issues, often highlighting tabloids and scandal sheets as a counter to the more respectable journalism of the mainstream press. If that is the standard against which they wish to be judged, or to which they wish to be held, I suggest their sights are awfully low. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. It does not guarantee freedom from accountability. A person can get up and say, or print, or blog, any thing they please. If they expect to be free from criticism, however, they might want to consider another line of work.

Punditry is a dying art, thankfully. Even as Klein, Broder, Shields, Kristol, Friedman, and the rest of the mouthy class continue to spew forth their opinions as truth, their perspective as wisdom, and their contacts with various Hill and EOB staffers as connections, they are taken less and less eriously, not just by the right and left, but by the broad mainstream of America. Just read the comments section of Swampland whenever Klein posts - he is hardly treated with the respect he thinks he deserves.

Opinions are like something else everyone has, as the saying goes, and too often what is produced in mainstream punditry is reminiscent of what flows from that ubiquotous orifice. One need not lunch with members of Congress of Supreme Court Justices in order to figure out what is going on, and use judgement, common sense, and insight to form an opinion. The people are finding their voice, and the official pundit class needs to shout to be heard. And whine about other people taking them to task for being wrong.

Why Did I Write About Purity Balls?

I have berated myself a bit because of my post on the Colorado Purity Ball, because, I wondered, what possible relevance does it have to my own interests, etc.? I suppose this is rationalization of some kind, but I realized that these were done in the name of the Christian faith, and therefore deserved some kind of comment. They deserve more than an "icky-poo", however much that may be my first reaction.

First, the taboo-pushing nature of the Balls, done in the name of "Christian family values", shuld provide, for a disinterested observer, a peek into the nature of those values. It might not be a question of bordering on certain, ahem, inappropriate relationships as it were; indeed, I doubt if you asked the question that most participants would understand such a qualm. Rather, if one sees it from another point of view, the striking thing is the authoritarian patriarchy of such an event. It is not so much the quasi-incestuous nature of such vows, but the fact that daughters pledge to their fathers that which should be kept to themselves until it is shared with a man outside the family. Control over sexual behavior, responsibility for such behavior, is transferred from the individual girl or woman to a man, whose responsibility it is to guard it.

The second thing to notice about these ceremonies is their public nature. We often prefer to keep our sexual behavior, and our decisions about it, as private as possible. One of the cultural right's complaints about American society is its highly sexualized nature. Yet, here, right here, a very public display - an entire ceremony, complete with all the trappings of a festive occasion - regarding the sexuality of young women. Moving from the private sphere to the public sphere in this way creates an entirely new set of problems; now we have a social event in which the sexual behavior of young women becomes a matter not just for public scrutiny and comment, but examination.

Finally, and I know this question should not have to be asked - where are the ceremonies in which young men make similar pledged, either to their mothers or to their fathers? Of course, such pledges would violate certain rules of patriarchy, espcially those in which young women are perceived less as persons and more as property of men. Men do not need to make a pledge such as this because they do not owe anyone an explanation for their behavior, whereas women do. THe subtext, of course, is (to be crude) young men can dip their wicks whenever they want to, without consequence, without responsibility to anyone but themselves, whereas these young women are pledged and, if they become sexually active, they owe their fathers not just an explanation, but the fathers, implicitly, can punish them for violating their vows. Of course, if all these young women are chaste, the response may be, with whom could the young men possibly canoodle? We shall merely let that question hang in the air as one of profound naivetee . . .

I submit that such events as these, as bizarre and borderline taboo as they may be, will not become either very popular or very numerous. Nor do I think they will have any effect whatsoever on the sexual behavior of young women; quite the opposite, I think they might actually enhance the possibility that young women become sexually active, because, having made such a public display of their chastity, they now have a respectable cover for their private behavior. Such ceremonies, in other words, would encourage duplicity and promiscuity, rather than enhance honor and abstinence.

My one question, and it might seem irrelvant to most is - where is either the Biblcal, theological, pastoral, historical, or liturgical warrant for such a ceremony being done in the name of the Church of Jesus Christ? This is neither rhetorical, nor is it asked naively. I want an answer, not some kind of cultural answer, but a serious, thoughtful response to this in the terms set forth within the question above. If no answer is forthcoming, then maybe some Christians somewhere should maybe, you know, stand up and say something about this horror show being done in our name.

Note: I have been having serious computer problems, and it may be a couple days before I get them all fixed. That and time limitations and the weather (I have a broadband connection that doesn't work as well as it might in heavy cloud cover) seem to be conspiring against me spending the kind of quality time I want doing this. That includes commenting on my freinds' blogs, repsonding to comments, etc.

Ick . . . Just . . . Ick

There is a link over at Alternet.org to an article in Glamour magazine on a tradition in Colorado called a "Purity Ball". Like a cross between a cotillion, a wedding, and a prom, fathers and daughters dress to the nines, get together, and the daughters (I can hardly keep my gorge down as I type this) pledge their virginity to their fathers. They promise to remain abstinent until marriage, making the vow public. They do it, however, in a way guaranteed to make most thinking, emotionally stable parents want to wash the creepy icky off.

You know, as a father of two girls, even if they wanted to do this, and insisted it was important to them to do so, I wouldn't do it. The gag-reflex is just a bit over-stimulated by the whole idea of my daughter pledging her purity to me.

I have to go shower again.

Asking the Right Questions

Democracy Lover and Dan Froomkin (h/t FireDogLake for the link) both offer specifics and general rules for a proper journalistic approach toward Bush Administration claims concerning Iran. DL does a good job, not only of asking the right questions, but of answering them with facts, without hype, spin, fearmongering, or nonsense. Froomkin offers both specific and general guidelines to an industry that quite simply failed us in the run-up to the war in Iraq, and now refuses to admit it failed.

What astounds me more than anything is the persistent reliance in the mainstream press upon sources who, quite simply, are conniving, duplicitous, and conspiratorial. More to the point, as the rhetoric heats up, has no one noticed that much of the nonsense spewed by the Bush Administration is almost identical to that put out in the fall of 2002 in the run-up to the Iraq war? They changed one letter, "q" to "n", and the rest is the same tired, nonsensical drivel that proved so fatal to tens of thousands.

The Bush Administration lied about Iraq. They lied about lying about it. When they were caught, they lied about lying about lying about it. They are institutionally incapable of telling the truth. The American people know this; have you seen polls recently? Why doesn't the press corps jump on board? Why doesn't just one journalist, when confronted with Bush perfidy, say, "You know what, I'm not buying that sack of monkey crap"? It would end, right then, right there.

And if wishes were horses, I'd have a stable full.

At least there are those out here who know what the press should be doing. The task is to get them to do it.

I Guess I'm un-American

I couldn't care less about the Super Bowl today. Not if Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice threatened to come to my house and explain to me what victory in Iraq would look like; not if Ted Haggard would explain how he is being cured of being a gay man by a bunch of closeted homosexuals; not if the Britney Spears/Paris Hilton sex video were played at half-time - if any of these things occurred, the amount of emotional and other energy I would put into the game would still be less than zero. That's right, I actually am working at not caring.

I do wish I didn't sound tedious, or earnest, or sophomoric, or humorless, but I just can't seem to get excited about what is, after all, less a football game than it is a media event when things are the way they are - here at home, in Washington, in Iraq, and maybe, just horribly maybe, in the Persian Gult as we race towards an apocalypse with Iran. The whole thing is about as fake as it gets, and the worst thing is that people get sucked into it - they feel they have to go to parties, or hold parties, or root for one team or another, or bet in office pools, or whatever. Just because everyone else is.

No, you don't.

I wish you all a football-free, hype-free, care-free Sunday. Spend the time watching a good movie, having special time with a significant other, shopping at your favorite store (everyone else will be somewhere watching the game, so even malls will be empty), or listening to your favorite music and reading a book. Anything but switching on the idiot box and watching a game that really, really, doesn't mean a thing, listening to imbeciles prattle on as if anyone cared ot listen to them. Commentators are a hold-over from the days of radio, a hold-over that should be discarded. I think we can watch the game without being told what is happening.

DO I sound like your typical humorless liberal yet? Good. The whole thing is making me so grumpy, I think I need to go listen to some Tom Waits to cheer me up. Enjoy the rest of your day.