The Rapeublican Party: Juris-My-Diction Edition

It kinda-sorta started with Rush Limbaugh calling "slut" on a woman testifying before a House Committee.  It kicked itself in to high gear when then-Senate candidate Todd Akin announced that women's bodies had a heretofore unknown protection against conception, which is why rape victims don't get pregnant, which is why abortions for rape victims are unnecessary.  Later, then-Senate candidate Richard Mourdock opined that, as God has created the fetus through rape, well, then that fetus is a gift.  Being a fetus (a pre-born baby, in current parlance) it should be provided every protection under the law anyway; it can't help that God wanted it's mother raped so it could come in to the world, right?

Is it any wonder radio blabber Stephanie Miller has called the Republican Party the Rapey Party?

More evidence has emerged that, when it comes to the matter of rape, the Republican Party doesn't quite know when to stop.  House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R[ape]-VA) is holding up the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) because of some additions made by the Senate.  One in particular, apparently, sticks in Cantor's craw.  When accusations of domestic violence occur on reservations, under new provisions, tribal courts would have jurisdiction even when the accused is not a member of the tribe.  Current law limits jurisdiction in such cases to state and federal courts; state and federal law enforcement, however, is usually too far away to be effective, while tribal law enforcement is present, able to react quickly.

As a writer at Huffington Post notes, this comes at a time when there is an appalling level of violence against Native women by white men.

One in three Native American women have been raped or experienced attempted rape, the New York Times reported in March, and the rate of sexual assault on Native American women is more than twice the national average. President Barack Obama has called violence on tribal lands "an affront to our shared humanity."

Of the Native American women who are raped, 86 percent of them are raped by non-Native men, according to an Amnesty International report. That statistic is precisely what the Senate's tribal provision targets.

Just to be clear, the changes proposed in the Senate version do nothing more than allow local law enforcement to act because those with jurisdiction under the current law just can't react in a timely fashion.  As Congress is granted the power to set out the structure and jurisdiction of federal courts (including the tribal courts that operate on native lands under their laws), his resistance to this change amounts to little more than a tantrum.

Over an issue, namely rape, that has become a theme tripping Republican politicians again and again this year.  Which leaves me wondering if Cantor is as smart a politician as people say he is.  I would guess Cantor would insist he is not "defending" rape of Native American women by white men, but standing on some principle or other about which legal system should have jurisdiction in certain kinds of criminal cases.  Except, alas, it is the very class of cases that keep getting Republicans in trouble.  As soon as the word "rape" appears anywhere near a story, it seems to me a Republican politician would run as fast and far as possible.

Which tells me Cantor isn't a very smart politician.

And, yes, if it appears I am giving Cantor the benefit of the doubt, trusting his word on his reasons for objecting to the language in the proposed amendments to VAWA, I am.  Against a background in which white southern men defended the rape of women of color as a right guaranteed by the institutions of slavery and Jim Crow.  So I think I'm going a long way on this one.  All the same, it certainly appears as if the Republican Party has a rape problem they just can't get rid of. 

The Non-Existent Decline

Yesterday, I saw a photograph that captures what some continue to insist is the decadence and moral failure of our country:

In case you're wondering, these are couples waiting in line to get their marriage licenses in Washington.  Please note a few things.  First, they're all white.  Second, they appear to be, at the very least, middle class.  Several of the couples are older (the two gentlemen in the foreground and the women in the front on the right could be, and probably are, someone's grandparents).  Far from crumbling edifice of our social life, this photo demonstrates how . . . All-American those folks wanting to get married really are.  I realize that this picture will make people like Rick Santorum weep, but I fail to understand why.  It's really threatening to the institution of marriage, all these folks wanting to join the club?  Really?

Similarly, a recent article in Atlantic (with thanks to Amanda Marcotte who writes about it both at Pandagon and Slate) takes a look at a popular theory from a quarter century ago that the rise in single-parent families, which tracked pretty closely to the rise in violent crime, was a principle cause of that rise.  The fact is, since the mid-1990's, while single-parent - usually single mothers - households continued their steady rise, the violent crime rate quite literally collapsed.  Philip Cohen, author of the piece, even graphs the changes:

Please note a couple things.  Even as conservatives were insisting we were facing a whole new wave, perhaps even a generation of sociopathic criminals, the homicide rate was in decline.  It has continued to decline even as the economy has continued it lackadaisical performance the past two years.  All the while, the trend in single motherhood continues.

To be clear, now, this is not to say that there is not a correlation between being the child of a single-parent household and having a criminal record.  That correlation continues; Cohen notes it and doesn't deny it.  What he is denying is any factual basis for some kind of broader social or cultural decline rooted in the rise of single-parent households.  Indeed, while it may be the case that, if one either has a criminal record or is in the corrections system it is likely also that one is the product of a single-parent family.  On the other hand, fewer people who are such are committing crimes.  So the old argument from social conservatives that the "breakdown of the family" would bring about some kind of violent, crime-ridden dystopia is false.  As Cohen writes, "I think single mothers—especially those who were raising their kids back in the 1990s—deserve an apology from the conventional-wisdom purveyors of that time."

I keep reading people on the right carrying on about how the United States is in some kind of decline.  The only thing they point out, however, is a stagnant economy which, to be fair, is a problem for folks of any ideological stripe.  They can't carry on about crime.  They can't carry on about the rise of hedonistic hordes wanting to destroy marriage by getting married.  Shoot, they can't even carry on about single mothers being the source of social pathology because, frankly, there is far less now than two decades ago.

Would it be so hard for all these people who insist America is in decline to take a look around and realize the country is in pretty good shape?  What's wrong with celebrating all sorts of really good things, like a declining crime rate and people finally being allowed to marry?

Knee-Deep In The Hoopla

I have to be honest.  The circular stories about the "discussions" between Congressional leaders and the White House are as predictable as sunrise.  While more amusing, watching the Republicans scramble around, attempting to figure out why America rejected them is losing its comedic value only because . . . well, I don't like to laugh at handicapped people.

There are a couple things careening around the political internet that I really feel a need to speak out about.  First and foremost, this idea that Saxby Chambliss should face a primary challenge because he isn't conservative enough would induce laughter if I didn't think the GA Senator a humongous wad of camel poo. After more-than-hinting that wounded veteran Max Cleland was less than patriotic in a couple TV ads, Chambliss won himself a seat in the Big House.  That there are people in the Republican Party who think that just isn't despicable enough to pass their Asshole Test for candidacy should tell any thinking American what the GOP has become.  I heartily applaud any effort to rid the political world of Chambliss's presence, as long as there are enough voices making clear what a horrible person he is.

With the rejection of the UN Charter on Rights for the Disabled, the US Senate managed to make itself look both heartless and stupid in a single stroke.  No mean feat, all things considered, but some commentators announce they are confused that a "decent" man like Orrin Hatch voted against it.  Orrin Hatch isn't a "decent" Senator.  His treatment of Anita Hill was despicable.  His public lectures on the evils of Bill Clinton's penis were tiring.  Even if he were The Last Sane Republican (which he isn't), he knows which way the primary winds are blowing.  This vote was a tactical move on his part.  Whether or not he believes a Treaty that codified the Americans With Disabilities Act as the gold standard for treatment of persons with disabilities was actually an attempt to steal Rick Santorum's daughter and teach her evolution without his consent, well, I couldn't care less (because, you know, Anita Hill again; I don't care for Orrin Hatch).  Hatch has an entire career demonstrating his preference to side with crazy people.  That's not decent, and no amount of special pleading will make it so.

As an aside, the encomiums for Bob Dole by liberals make me want to retch.  The guy was a partisan hack, a nasty political operator who, when he was Gerald Ford's Vice Presidential candidate complained loudly about "Democratic Wars", as if somehow the Kaiser and Hitler and Kim Il Sung and Ho Chi Minh were  nothing more than overseas precinct captains .  That he became some kind of cuddly celebrity after his political career ended is disgusting enough; that liberals who should know better are carrying on because the rejection of the Disabilities Treaty occurred in Dole's presence (in a wheelchair, no less) is ridiculous.  Back when he replaced Howard Baker as Senate Majority Leader, lots of folks noted he was a right-wing party hack with a nasty disposition.  He didn't change his spots because he got old.  He just, you know, got old.  He, more than many people, are responsible for what the US Senate on its Republican side has become.  I'm glad he sat in his wheelchair and reaped some of that bitter fruit.

As I'm engaged in a fund-raising project for the United Methodist Committee on Relief until just before Christmas, my days are far more full and rewarding than trying to find new ways to say, "Ooo!  Look!  The Republicans are insane!"

The Post-Modern Prometheus (UPDATE)

I've been watching the political theater that are the negotiations between the White House and Congress over the expiring Bush tax cuts and mandated sequestration with more than a little amusement.  Back in the summer of 2011, when Congress forced a deal upon the President that included a shadow-play "supercommittee" that did nothing, I could see the writing on the wall.  After the election, we would have a showdown which would be a replay of every stupid standoff between Congress and the White House since Obama took office.

This time, though, things are a bit different.

It appears the President has discovered a spine.  Winning re-election helped.  Winning re-election that included coattails that extended to the US Senate helped even more.  Winning re-election in which Democratic candidates across the country won far more votes than Republican candidates probably made him realize, "I don't have to take this crap from you!".  And so, he isn't.

What adds more than a little comedy to all this is the Republican leadership in Congress acts as if the election and the campaign that preceded it never happened.  Romney who?  Republicans promised what?  They have no memory of the tens of thousands of words they uttered over the months previous, except those about the President's "lack of leadership" and their allegations of duplicity.  With help from Beltway Blowhards, they utter no peep that this entire situation is of their own devising.  Did they, perhaps with good reason, believe in the summer of 2011 they would be dealing with a defeated President Obama?  Did they believe they would be anticipating a Republican Senate just over the horizon, a stronger GOP presence in the House, thus increasing the likelihood that even should Obama refuse to deal, they could pass new tax cuts at the beginning of a new Congress?

Well, none of that transpired.  Republicans ran on everything they've been doing for thirty years and the American people handed them their ass.  When Mitch McConnell laughed at Tim Geithner last week, he must have forgotten that Pres. Obama was offering Congress nothing more or less than the plan that won him a second term in the White House.  McConnell, who's record as minority leader should prevent him from holding any leadership position (if the Republicans were sane), was acting as if we hadn't just held an election, as if the President had never said there were certain things he was going to do, and others he would not do, and that McConnell could just go in front of microphones and offer a word salad and no one would notice.

On a side note, all these Republicans who screeched about the deficit being worse than the Soviet threat should be wetting themselves over the prospect of massive tax increases and enormous spending cuts.  It would certainly eliminate the deficit, now, wouldn't it.

The fact is the entire dance in Washington is something the Republicans created.  Obama has neither the need nor, it seems, the interest, to drag their collective chestnuts from the fire they started.  That he continues to act like a politician who won an election is not a mark against him; on the contrary, it is a sign that he gets it.  The huffing and puffing from the Republicans over what is, by and large, a meaningless bunch of nonsense - tax rates would rise the Clinton-era levels, hardly confiscatory; the spending cuts can only be enacted by Congress, and if they choose to spend more, then they will spend more - only shows how much the Republicans have bought their own bullshit.  No horrid monster ready to kill, they created instead the perfect post-modern political predicament - a meaningless pas de deux which has them dancing while the President stands back and laughs.

UPDATE:  Two things about David Brooks's latest.  Like Duncan says, "this involves Congress taking itself hostage and threatening to shoot the country".  Second, also as Duncan reminds folks on occasion, all this "Grand Bargain" nonsense is ridiculous.  There is, quite literally, nothing the current Congress might or might not do that would constrain or limit what future actions either future Congress's or Administrations can or cannot do.  If Brooks believes in Grand Bargains, he's an idiot.  If he doesn't, then he's a shill for a bunch of stupid hoodlums in Congress.  Either way, it's more of the same empty, meaningless, pomo politics-as-theater, that now includes people like Brooks being congratulated for saying something intelligent when they're actually being quite stupid.

Advent I

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. - 2 Peter 3:8-10

Advent is the beginning of the end of all in us that is not yet Christ. - Thomas Merton

So it begins.  Our journey through the Christian calendar, with time now tuned to God's action for the creation so beloved God in Christ came down to live God's love with us and for us, begins not only the period where we wait for the birth of the Christ-child.  We also are called to wait and watch because the work begun with Christ so long ago continues; the end of the story is yet to come, and each moment is full of the promise of God's recreation.

 As we recall the birth of the promised Messiah, we also long for the final completion of God's Divine work in Christ through the Spirit.  We look back, of course; what else is the time before Christmas but one long season of nostalgia?  We share stories of Christmas's past, of get-togethers and presents and parties.  We remember what it was to be a child on Christmas morning, the overflowing stockings, the presents stacked underneath the tree, sometimes spilling out in to the room.  While nostalgia has been called the antithesis of real memory, it does serve us by reminding us that this is a time apart, a day removed from other days.

Yet, to be truly faithful, we should also hear the call to look ahead.  We need to remember that God's promise made human in Christ is not yet complete.  We are, all of us, a work in progress.  Advent, a time of waiting and preparation for something to come, should not just be about parties and decorating and recalling years past; just as we look forward to the celebration of the birth of the Christ child, we should also be looking forward to that moment when Christ comes to call all creation by name, remaking what was in to what it all can be in and through the Spirit, in the name of the Son to the glory of the Father.  No apocalyptic bloodlust, no chiliastic destruction of the sinful and godless, the promised return of Christ is nothing more or less than the promise to complete what has already begun in and through Christ for all creation: to make of it what God has always intended, to live and be for the Glory of God.

To be honest, however, we should not ignore than this is not some sweet feeling of peace; Scripture is filled with the words of Jesus promising a refining by fire.  To rid our lives, to rid all creation, of the sin that keeps us from full participation in the life of God in Christ through the Spirit is a painful process of death.  We die to our own needs and wants.  We die to the siren song of the delights of the flesh.  We die to the seductive whispers of the promise of power and all the glories that can come through it.  We are called even to sever those ties most dear to us: our families and friends, our spouses and children.  These, like all the rest, are temptations, empty promises of security in a world filled with unrest.  Let me be clear: the family, like the state, like work, like friendship, even the comforts of routine, can be a trap, a way to rest in peace as the world around us burns.  When God in Christ calls us, we are called to leave behind even those most dear to us.  As the world is made new around us, as we hear Christ beckoning us to join in the work of bringing that new creation more fully to life, every thing in our lives is the price we must pay.  The pain we endure when we answer with joy the call of Christ in our lives can be devastating.

This First Sunday of Advent, as we begin, again, to wait and watch, to hear the words of St. Peter in Scripture reminding us that God is patient yet persistent, we should also hear the words of St. Peter that say all things shall pass away.  All things.  God in Christ is calling us even now to live this out, and the price we pay, our own lives, is far higher than we can imagine.  As Thomas Merton reminds us, Advent is a call to begin ridding ourselves of those parts of us that have not yet been brought under the reign of Christ in our lives.  The world remade, the new creation, the promise of fellowship, these are possible in the New Heaven and New Earth that God in Christ through the Spirit is, even now, preparing for all that is.  It is, alas, not yet. Hearing the Advent words "wait" and "watch" are not only liturgical calls to prayer; they are calls to renew our vigilant work, bringing the Kingdom of God here and now, thinning the wall between our sinful time and God's promised New Creation.  This call demands we set all to one side.

Are we ready?

World AIDS Day

Here's what I just wrote on Facebook:

Today is World AIDS Day. I'm old enough to remember horrible jokes and the demise of a diet pill and a President who never uttered the word. I'm old enough to remember the obituary pages that were longer than most stories, the thin faces and waning hopes and strength of the patients. I'm old enough to watch as the first cocktail drugs offered a chance, thankful as people began to recover a bit of their strength, their appetite, the faith that they might live longer than another day. I'm old enough to hold out hope that even places afflicted far worse than we may yet see the same kinds of changes, the same kinds of hope, that I have seen. Today is World AIDS Day and because I'm old enough to remember, I have hope.

My most-read post is one I wrote four years ago that is critical of the late wife of the Rev. Rick Warren. I took some guff from folks in comments, but I stand by what I wrote at the time:

What is awful about this, a testimony of commitment to compassion and advocacy? Why, the simple fact that this woman had to see pictures of the ravishes of HIV/AIDS, especially children, before she realized that this wasn't something people "deserved". In other words, until she became aware this disease wasn't some plague visited upon gay folks for their perversion, she was happy to keep her eyes closed to the suffering they, too, endured. Indeed, she confesses she had to go to Africa to understand the suffering of those with HIV/AIDS; where is the awareness that thousands, tens of thousands, suffered here in the US precisely because people like her believed they deserved it for their perversions?

While I know there are some who think Kay Warren should be applauded for her advocacy for people with HIV/AIDS, don't count me among them. Even if her mind has changed; even if she no longer believes that gay men and intravenous drug users "deserve" what they get with HIV/AIDS, she wrote whole sections of the human race out of her list of those in need of compassion and fellow-feeling, and the dead piled up because people like Kay Warren had to see pictures of "innocent people" with the disease before she felt compassion.

I should add just a bit, however, perhaps as a confession, with this post serving as further penance for my own lack of  . . . what?  Awareness?  Action? . . . whatever it was that prevented me from seeing as fully as I should what AIDS is and what it has done to huge swaths of the human race around the globe.  In my defense, all I can say is before I lived in a place where there were many living with the virus, with a history of activism to bring attention to those whose lives were stolen from them while far too many in positions of power turned their backs on them, blaming them for their moral failings rather than loving them and working to ease their suffering; before all that, my support for those living with AIDS was limited, my personal investment nothing.

In 1990, I was one of a small group of people who worked to hang some panels from the AIDS quilt in Oxnam Chapel at Wesley Theological Seminary.  Far too large even then to display in any but a few spaces, there was a large supply of panels at the National Cathedral, just down the street; they loaned us a few, and we were hanging them because the Chapel service the next day would focus on AIDS.  As we hung them, one of the panels - it turned out either by accident or act of God - was one in memory of a former staff member at Wesley.  At the same time, I learned there was a then-current staff member who was living with the virus.  This person and I had spent a bit of time chatting together at a retreat earlier that autumn, talking about family dynamics, the cult of masculinity, and other issues.  Early the next summer, he died from pneumonia related to the virus destroying his immune system.  I remember sitting in my quiet room, crying.

In the two decades since then, we have moved quite a distance, I think.  For all there is still so much to do, we should also pause and remember and reflect upon how far we have come.  There are still large parts of the globe where the advances available here in the United States and other industrialized countries aren't available.  While WHO and the pharmaceutical companies continue to haggle over how to get help to those who need it most, I think we should remember and recall that it wasn't that long ago even the prospect of the kind of help we now have seemed impossible, the stuff of science fiction or wishful thinking.

There are, though, lost generations, quite literally.  Parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, countries like Haiti and Thailand and the Dominican Republic, even Russia still have huge populations of second-generation AIDS patients, children born with the virus because their mothers had it.  These same children become orphans when their mothers die, placing huge burdens upon the limited resources far too many countries have to deal with too many helpless and lost children.

Unlike most other health issues, there has always been a huge social and cultural component associated with HIV.  Unlike other pandemics, the effects of this virus carry on for years, perhaps even decades, taxing the social and physical and political resources of many countries even as some groups within all these countries continue to pour down hate and blame upon those who have the virus, insisting it is some kind of just punishment from some deity they call god for their wicked ways.  Their numbers dwindle, yet they still have loud voices.

On this World AIDS Day, let us remember.  Let memory become a tool we can use as we continue to work toward the day when we no longer need a World AIDS Day.  Give money or volunteer for any of a number of private organizations that help out those living with the disease.  Write a member of Congress to support funding for research for a cure.  Send a buck or two to an NGO working in a place the pandemic has ravaged so children and others left outside the borders of human compassion and care might be helped.  These are all things I've done, and will continue to do.

Because I remember how far we've come, I know how much further we still have to go.  The loss of so much potential, of so many smart, funny, thoughtful, insightful, talented people due in no small part to our own lack of compassion and self-willed blindness should be confessed; penance should be a part of our lives, making sure we no longer close our eyes just because, like Kay Warren, we might see those who suffer as not innocent.  Because I remember, I confess I was once callous, looking on, watching as something horrible happened that seemed remote, having nothing to do with me.  I confess I had to encounter the horror on my own to realize what it was.  Because I remember, I continue to do my small part so we might yet celebrate an end to this virus's ravages upon millions of my fellow human beings.

Because I'm Bored

Who said the following:

He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute.

What does it mean?

Discuss. 

Variations On A Pierceian Theme

Charlie Pierce:

It is a fundamental principle of this blog that I can write what is obvious to me, and that which happens right before my eyes, without having to find a "source" to confirm it, much less find a "source" on the other side. (This is the duck-on-the-head principle. If I see a guy walking down the street with a duck on his head, I can write that I saw a guy walking down the street with a duck on his head. I don't need someone else to tell me that they saw it, and I certainly don't need to find someone who will tell me, no, what you saw was a duck with a guy on his ass.)

Much the same, I am quite tired of the whining about "evidence" from a certain someone who never, so far as I am aware, evinces any ability to understand a single sentence I've written; he claims people think and believe things they have categorically denied ever thinking; a person who, at least until now, has shown not a moment of willingness to use a search engine to discover the riches of the internet beyond his tiny circle of favorite reads.

I've been doing this for a while now, and I provide links to sources, and sometimes spend a bit of time making clear whatever point I'm trying to make.  When some dope comes along who disagrees with me and says, "Prove it!", I can only surmise that person can't read.  My other favorite riposte, "Says you," has a special place in my heart, as well.

Suffice it to say that, should you stumble upon this site and spend any time reading it, you will discover all sorts of things, like links and evidence that make clear I actually am referring to real things.  You may not agree with me; that's fine.  You may not like that I take some things for granted that you believe should be argued for; that's OK, too.  One thing, however, should be clear: Disagreement doesn't mean I've failed, somehow, to provide evidence, demonstrated some failure either of simple reading comprehension or interpretation, or otherwise simply made a statement without any support whatsoever.  When I see a man with a duck on his head, that's what it is.  Similarly, when I read people saying Intelligent Design is a scientific theory, I don't need to defend my denial.  I don't need to make clear that some folk's obsession with the sex lives of others, abundant from the frequency with which they start talking about the, demonstrates far more about that person's neuroses than any alleged moral failings they seem to believe exist.

These are things about which I've written far too much.  I've made my positions clear, and have good reasons for holding the positions I do.  When someone comes along and says, simultaneously, that I have never done so, and in fact am a big fat hypocrite who does not live the way I say I do, without ever having met me, without once demonstrating any insight or thoughtfulness about anything, without doing much of anything other than insisting he or she is a far better person than the rest of the world, I see no need, not one, to do much more than chuckle.

Consider this my last word on this particular matter.  You read a post, then whine I haven't provided evidence?  As far as I'm concerned, you're insisting there's a duck with a man on its ass, and I feel no need to "convince" you of anything.

The Better Of Times

‘O my God,’ I say, ‘do not take me away
   at the mid-point of my life,
you whose years endure   throughout all generations.’ - Psalm 102:24

Today is my 47th birthday.  For the past few weeks, just that thought has put me in a serious funk.  I have no idea why, and that hasn't helped my funk.  For some reason, this particular number has made me sit up over and say to myself, "Crap, I'm getting old."  This past weekend, in a fit of the blah's, I spent quite a bit of time listening to music that was popular back when I was younger.  I watched some old movies, or at least clips from them.  What I saw and heard made me wonder if young folks today had any idea how beautiful their parents were a quarter century ago.  Not just beautiful, but talented and thoughtful.

As I told someone in a comment a few days back, I realized I was having an attack of The John McCains.  Pretty soon, I was going to be out back yelling at the clouds.  That certainly helped snap me out of the funk.

Then, I got thinking.  I realized, with something like happiness, that we in fact live in quite good times.  Oh, I know the economy still sucks, and there's always the possibility that it could all come crashing down around us.  Still, economic conditions rise and fall; I've been through a couple moderate recessions in the past twenty or so years, along with our current sluggish good times, so stuff like this happens.  If I were to measure how I thought about the times in which we live solely that way, sure, I'd probably be even more depressed than I was before.  Thankfully, I don't.

When I was 18, Ronald Reagan was President.  There was a widespread fear that the nuclear standoff between the United States and Soviet Union was far too fragile and any moment the whole thing could be gone in a hail of fire.  I remember Eddie Murphy making jokes about the first black President of the United States having to be in constant motion, dodging the missiles thrown his way.

I graduated college and started my adult life without a President of the United States acknowledging there was a virus that caused the human immune system to break down; I lived through far too many years with far too many people not caring about the millions of their fellow human beings dying horrible deaths, blaming them for their conditions.  Shoot, in the same concert film in which Eddie Murphy pictured the first black President dodging and weaving bullets and fruit, he could wonder aloud about Ralph Cramden and Ed Norton from The Honeymooners being "funny faggots" and get all sorts of laughs.  How times have changed.

Ours is a remarkably more peaceful world.  Our land is more at peace, more safe, more congenial to lived difference, than at any time in living memory.  While hardly a paradise, it would be ridiculous for me to pretend there haven't been amazing strides in the way we Americans treat those who aren't white, straight, and Christian.  While we still have more work to do, today, this day, the day I realize deeper in my gut that I am a middle-aged man, I want to celebrate that we Americans, and people around the world, live in a far more congenial place than any time in living memory.

Nations that spent centuries at one another's throats have laid down their arms.  Countries whose tyranny seemed endless are learning the habits of the democratic heart.  People around the world are standing up and demanding to be treated like human beings and they are no longer silenced or marginalized.  We aren't there yet, like I said, not by a long shot.  But we have started down the path that might well take us all to a world that has decided to be more human.  These are good things.  They need to be celebrated.

The difference at the top, here in this country, couldn't be more stark between the days of my youth and today.  Ronald Reagan versus Barack Obama?  No contest.  The President's re-election demonstrates that we might yet be getting it.  For all I have been critical of some of the things he's done, I cannot deny the many good things as well; nor can I deny that we as a people have shown that we are better than our history, better than the worst among us even now.  I am quite pleased that I cast my vote for him not once but twice.

So, I may be a middle-aged man, but I refuse to sit around and tell my kids stories that begin, "When I was your age . . ." because when I was my kids' age, the world wasn't a safe place to live for millions of people.  Whole populations were held hostage by the threat of nuclear holocaust.  Hundreds of millions lived under nightmarish tyrants and dehumanizing systems of dominance.  No, I celebrate the world in which all of us live now.  I am thrilled I have lived this long, able to see my country, this land I love, begin to live out even more fully its social and cultural creed that we are a free people.  We haven't arrived at the Promised Land.  We do know it's there, though, if we're willing to open our eyes and look around us.

Coming in time for my birthday was the 2CD+DVD set Octane Twisted from Porcupine Tree.  Recorded in Chicago at a show I attended, I am happy to report it is even better the second, third, and fourth times around.  Here's the last song from their song-cycle "The Incident", called "I Drive The Hearse".

Everything

I find it more than a little ironic that our national day of Thanksgiving comes just after a national political campaign in which one of our major party tried to argue that we should not acknowledge the role others play in our accomplishments.  "You didn't build that", Pres. Obama's off-hand rebuke to an imagined interlocutor who insists higher marginal tax rates are a threat to his or her continued success, became a rallying cry among many on the right.  There was enough push-back against the idiocy that, I think, the President's point is clear: we all need one another, working together, for all of us and each of us, to succeed.

Yet, there is a plurality out there that insists this just isn't the case.  Individual success, whether in business or the professions or the arts or the trades or what have you is just that: individual success.  Never mind the millions who came before, creating the standards by which success is measured.  Never mind the teachers and mentors, the friends and associates who gave us the tools and knowledge.  Never mind the larger society, agreeing together to abide by the rule of laws that gives to all and each certain freedoms so that we can succeed.  Never mind the local officials who work tirelessly and very often with little reward and no recognition to make sure roads and sidewalks are usable and accessible; that our children have the best possible schools, that our streets and alleys and byways don't fill with garbage and waste.  Never mind the more far-sighted in our communities who studied and proposed and pushed through building waste-water treatment facilities, recycling programs, and local ordinances regarding property maintenance so diseases and vermin don't congregate, fester, and spread.

Yeah, why should we be thankful for these things?  What do they have to do with whether or not the local grocer or pharmacist or clothier makes a living, right?

So, today, I'm thankful for everything.  Every single thing that surrounds me.  Not just my family, although Lord knows I am thankful each moment for them.  I'm thankful for the air I breathe.  The water I drink (and use to make my morning coffee!).  I'm thankful for the beautiful, homey home in which we live, surrounded by nearly an acre of beautiful land filled with trees and shrubs and berry-plants and gorgeous wildflowers that color it in spring and summer.  I'm thankful for the years I spent studying, taking tests, writing papers so I could have not one, not two, but three diplomas to hang on my wall, testament not to any great work I've done, but to the hard work and faith of the teachers, professors, and mentors who worked hard to provide a place and space where and when I and others could study.  I'm grateful for those who gave their money for scholarships, for the banks who provided student loans, without which none of that education would have been possible.

I have a wall of books I didn't write.  I read them not because I had some magic ability to read, but because first my mother then a few teachers early on were patient and persistent, giving me the best, most wonderful, most subversive gift ever granted human beings: the ability to read.

Not a thing I possess is mine.  Not a person in my life, whether professional, casual, or intimate, is there because of any grace or gift or charm I might possess.  Even my pets, a wonderful St. Bernard who is without doubt the best dog I've ever known and our glorious black cat, Casper, aren't mine; possessing these living creatures, outside the legal sense in which they are, indeed "ours", would be a moral crime.  No, they share our space, are parts of our family, enriching it immeasurably.

Most of all, I acknowledge this Thanksgiving morning that each moment of my life has been, and will continue to be, a gift from a loving, generous, prodigally loving God.  All that surrounds me, whether natural or not, human or animal or inanimate - not a lick of it is mine.  It belongs to God.  Even the skin that sits on my frame, the heart beating in my chest, the blood that keeps my tissues fed - these are all God's.  I am thankful today because all that is, this wonderful gift, had nothing at all to do with me, and I can revel in my irrelevance to everything save the God who created it all.  I own nothing, am no one of any consequence, yet God knows me, loves me, and has called me by name.

For that, I am and will continue to be thankful, as the Psalmist says, all the days of my life.

I Don't Believe In Global Warming

On the day I planned to write the title post in my little series, fate has delivered me the most marvelous gift, courtesy of that hotbed of anti-Americanism, The World Bank (.pdf):

Uncertainties remain in projecting the extent of both climate change and its impacts. We take a risk-based approach in which risk is defined as impact multiplied by probability: an event with low probability can still pose a high risk if it implies serious consequences.  No nation will be immune to the impacts of climate change. However, the distribution of impacts is likely to be inherently unequal and tilted against many of the world’s poorest regions, which have the least economic, institutional, scientific, and technical capacity to cope and adapt.

--snip--

A world in which warming reaches 4°C above preindustrial levels (hereafter referred to as a 4°C world), would be one of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on human systems, ecosystems, and associated services. Warming of 4°C can still be avoided: numerous studies show that there are technically and economically feasible emissions pathways to hold warming likely below 2°C. Thus the level of impacts that developing countries and the rest of the world experience will be a result of government, private sector, and civil society decisions and choices, including, unfortunately, inaction.

The report itself isn't terribly long, at less than 100 pages of text.

Now, I am quite sure there are some folks out there who wonder why I'm entitling this post and series "I Don't Believe In Global Warming" if I quote a report on global warming.

The answer is simple: That global warming is happening, and happening because of human activity, is not subject to "belief", however that particular word is understood.  I do not "subscribe" to the "belief" that the earth is getting warmer.  It is getting warmer.  I do not "believe" that human action, specifically the burning of billions of tons of fossil fuels, has ejected more and more CO2 to the atmosphere.  I can see for myself:

 Whether it's evolution or climate science or particle physics or heat exchange in chemistry, I neither believe nor disbelieve in any of these things.  Precisely because, however one defines the word "belief", or describe the human activity of "believing", to say one "believes" in any particular scientific theory already demonstrates an ignorance about what science is and how it works.

To those who might insist I've never ever said anything about science before, just check it out for yourself. I have defined, repeated that definition, given examples, talked about what isn't science - many, many times over the six years I've been writing here.  If you missed it, or don't know how easy it is to find out what I've talked about numerous times, at the very least I've provided a handy link here for you to check it out for yourself.

I don't believe in global warming for the same reason I don't believe World War II ended on May 8, 1945.  I don't believe my daughter was born on June 7, 2001.  I don't believe that elementary particles behave both as particles and as wave functions.  I don't believe any of these things because "belief", however one chooses to define that word, just doesn't enter in to it.  At all.  Ever.

I don't believe in global warming because I accept the scientific evidence.  That isn't a matter either of belief or common sense.  It is, rather, a matter of knowing how science works.  Those people who insist otherwise demonstrate by that very insistence they have no idea what they're talking about.

For far too long, time and energy has been wasted trying to tell people who are either too ignorant to know better, or know perfectly well what they're doing and don't care, how wrong they are.  It is far better to continue to discuss these topics without reference to creationists, global warming deniers, and any other person or group who is little more than contemporary alchemists and astrologers.  Call them out for who and what they are, then just carry on, letting them have their hissy fits and tantrums while folks who understand, at the very least, what a strange, complicated world we live in and, for all its flaws, the only way to make sense of that world is scientific understanding.

Yawn: My Response To Creationists

I've been putting off writing about the phony "evolution versus creationism" debate in this little series mostly because wading in to the cesspool of creationism makes me feel stupid.  I suppose I could link to the "Institute for Creation Science" or the Creationism museum in Kentucky, which is supposed to have a display of primitive human beings living cheek by jowl with dinosaurs (who, apparently, didn't get Noah's memo to show up at the ark?).

Instead I decided to link to this guy.  In a post entitled "Science Already Recognizes Intelligent Design" we read:

It has for a long, long time.  As Greg Koukl notes, consider archaeology, forensics and the search for extra terrestrial intelligence. All infer, with good reason, that you can detect whether something happened without being caused by another agent or whether there was an intelligent being behind the creation of something.

The movie “Contact” was a shining example of the self-parody of materialists.  While mocking those who believe in Intelligent Design, their litmus test for extraterrestrial life was whether patterns they viewed had evidence of design.

Forensics is all about looking for evidence of design. And archaeology correctly infers design.

Earlier today, a friend of mine posted a link to a "Surrealist Letter To The Rectors of European Universities".   In comments, someone wrote the following: "How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?  Answer: Fish!"  That makes far more sense than the preceding, while standing as a model of logic compared to what follows.

We agree there is a gap in understanding some things about the universe. The Darwinists plug it with the “naturalism of the gaps.”  They don’t know what caused it, but it definitely wasn’t an intelligent designer. They have no argument other than blind faith.  We don’t have the same gap.  We logically infer from the evidence that some things — such as life and the indescribable complexity and design of the universe — had to have come from a powerful designer.  Even atheists like Richard Dawkins concede that the universe appears to be designed.

There are some folks who take the time to deconstruct nonsense like this.  I refuse, preferring to treat people who write this way much the same way one professor invited to "debate" the issue responded to his interlocutors.

Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics
need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist
to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite
an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a
Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and
that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars.
Creationism is in the same category.

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren’t members of
your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed
journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by
scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish.
Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas
that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly
explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying
to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or
scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel
Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the
prominent mainstream journals.

“Conspiracy” is the predictable response by Ben Stein and the
frustrated creationists. But conspiracy theories are a joke,
because science places a high premium on intellectual honesty and
on new empirical studies that overturn previously established
principles. Creationism doesn’t live up to these standards, so its
proponents are relegated to the sidelines, publishing in books,
blogs, websites, and obscure journals that don’t maintain
scientific standards.

Now, the person to whom I linked will probably cry "Foul!" because he writes about Intelligent Design, rather than creationism.  To which I will only copy and paste what Federal District Court Judge John Jones wrote in his opinion tossing out the Dover Area, PA School Board's requirement to teach Intelligent Design alongside evolution:

The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory. 

You can call it "creationism" or "creation science" or "Intelligent Design", but it all comes down to the same thing: demonstrating not only a magisterial ignorance both of the creation stories in Genesis as well as the traditional Doctrine of Creation alongside an almost comical ignorance about what science is and how it works.  There is no need to "respond" or "rebut" what are not "arguments".  The constant demand from creationists for attention should be met with silence broken only occasionally by the laughter from those who understand that every time a creationist writes something, they again demonstrate exactly why they aren't taken seriously.

I will stipulate, however, that the very notion that scientists "believe" something demonstrates how little allegedly faithful Christians think of their own faith, willing as they seem to be to strip the word belief of any real meaning this way.

Say The Magic Words

I'm quite sure a whole lot of oxygen will be wasted on the Sunday blather hours about Benghazi.

I'm still trying to figure out what, precisely, has John McCain's and Lindsey Graham's panties in such a bunch.  My impressing is they are really really mad that UN Ambassador Susan Rice didn't go on television the Sunday following the attacks and screech, "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!  AL QAEDA!!!"

That's the scandal.

On Friday, former CIA Director David Petraeus went to Congress and said that the main points Rice hit in her explanation were vetted not just by his agency, but all the intelligence agencies investigating what happened.  While there was a growing consensus that the events of September 11 were more than just a spontaneous demonstration, there wasn't evidence enough to make any conclusive statement one way or another.

The President came out the day after the attacks and called them . . . acts of terror.

The US and Libyan law enforcement were working to find out who carried out the attacks, with an arrest made in Tunisia in October.

As actual events unfolded, and more definitive evidence came to light, it became clear that, whatever else was going on around the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, there was a concerted effort by a cell of terrorists working in that city to wreak havoc.  No one, as far as I know, is saying otherwise.

So, still, I wonder.

Do any of those carrying on about Benghazi actually read news papers or pay attention to what officials are telling the American people?  Because everything I just wrote is and has been out there for anyone to read.  It all came out before the election, so it isn't like it only emerged after so the news wouldn't hurt Pres. Obama.  And, since we're talking about that, how does an event that demonstrates a big intelligence failure as well as a lack of appropriate security for our officials, regardless of the specifics of the event, somehow help the President?  Even if no terrorist group had been involved, perhaps especially so, the killing of four Americans in this manner isn't exactly proof that the Obama Administration had it going on in a very dangerous part of the world.  Which isn't to say that the President, or anyone else, is directly responsible for their deaths, either.  All I'm saying is . . . well, there may be a scandal here, but it's more along the lines of allocation of resources and communication among intelligence agencies, rather than going on TV after the event and telling the world what we know based on evidence.

There has been a whole lot of talk that the President, or someone associated with him or his office, directly intervened to prevent some kind of military response.  Now, I have no idea if this is true, or if it is, why it's important because, honestly, I can imagine all sorts of reasons that might have occurred.  The thing is, there is nothing more than a bunch of unsubstantiated claims made by people who either cannot have any such knowledge or are not providing all the details.  The thing is - there's no real evidence that a military response was even planned.  There's no evidence that the people on the ground in Benghazi called for assistance, and if they did, none was sent.

I seem to be returning to a theme here: no evidence.

There's been a whole lot of speculation and questions usually beginning, "Isn't it possible . . .?"  To repeat myself: Even Santa Claus is possible.  Most such questions, however, are either unanswerable or contrary to available facts.

So, what this boils down to, again, is Ambassador Rice went on TV, saying things she was given by our intelligence agencies.

And that's wrong.  Unlike John McCain screaming that he doesn't have any information while missing a meeting at which he could ask questions of people directly involved so he could get answers.  And getting made at reporters who point this out to him.

As soon as actual evidence emerges that anyone in a position of authority did something wrong, I don't see a scandal or a cover-up.  All I see are morons who lost an election stomping their feet because they didn't get their own way.

Because I'm Busy

So I'm not only doing something I haven't done in a while, it's actually copy-catting the great Tbogg, who's also returned to doing random ten stuff.  It's easy.  Plug in the iPod, hit random, then go.  If you want to play, because I really want to play but it's seven a.m. and I'm going to be busy until after midnight so bite me if you have better things to do.

Sorry.  Not bitter at all.

Ahem.  Ten random things:

Are You Ready, Eddy? - Emerson, Lake, and Palmer
Out of this World - Marillion
Epitaph (Live, 1969) - King Crimson
Down to the River to Pray - Allison Kraus
Riders On The Storm - The Doors
Dr. Funkenstein - Parliament
Annie Enemy - Abigail's Ghost
Some Day - Blackfield
Dark Hollow (Live Acoustic) - Grateful Dead
Love Ain't For Keeping - The Who

And something extra, just because . . .
On the Road- Tom Waits

I think that last one made me feel better.

What's The Matter With Kansas II: Takers, Moochers, & The 2012 Election

In 2004, the book What's The Matter With Kansas made quite a splash when it wondered why voters in one of our most Republican states were, in fact, Republicans when the actual policies the Republican Party pursued, and even how many were framed, were demonstrably counter the interests of the people of Kansas.  There has yet to be a satisfactory answer to that question, but the election just passed and some at least of the fallout from that election is demonstrating that many Republican voters in general seem to be as clueless as folks in Kansas.

One of the more memorable campaign moments was the captured video of Mitt Romney telling donors that 47% of Americans are moochers, paying no taxes and expecting "free stuff" from the government.  After not only losing the Presidency but watching many more liberal Democrats win both Senate and House elections, John Hinderaker admitted that "takers" had become a majority, winning the election over the "makers" or, as loser Joe Walsh called them in a debate with Tammy Duckworth, "the people who matter", "the job creators".  Adding Paul Ryan to the ticket, America received a lesson in the facile "philosophy" of Ayn Rand, who shares with J. R. R. Tolkien two things: their books are usually encountered first in high school; continued fascination with the books of both  writers in to adulthood usually results in people laughing at you.

Since the election, some bozos have started yelling "Secession!", and some have even been chuckling madly at the thought that states like New York and California and Illinois might starve because all those red states have all the farmers and food.

Real evidence - which has proved itself to be irrelevant to many in the Republican Party - indicates that, in fact, it was not the "makers" who lost last Tuesday.  The map below, copied from the linked article at The Economist (a well-known bastion of socialist thought) shows the results of 20 years of tax and fiscal policy on the fifty states.

Please note that the vast bulk of states that voted for the President - the "takers", according to Hinderaker - actually take in more in federal taxes than they receive in services from the federal government.  On the other hand, except for Texas, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Georgia, the states that went for Mitt Romney are welfare queens, receiving far more from the federal government than they pay in taxes.

As for the Blue States starving, well . . . according the the Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture, the top five counties in the United States for agricultural sales in 2007 were all in California.  ERS also has a downloadable Excel spreadsheet (you can find it here) that ranks the states by net farm income.  Of the top five, only Nebraska voted for Mitt Romney.  California and Iowa are the top two; Illinois and Minnesota are four and five.  The spreadsheet also includes a listing of farming efficiency.  Of the top five states whose net farm income per acre are highest, only North Carolina (this time, and only just) went for Mitt Romney.  The top four are California, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut.  So, not only will the Blue States not starve.  Blue States are actually better at doing farming than Red States.

Another map, one that's been circulating on FB that purports to show that more people actually favor the Republicans and Mitt Romney, shows the voting breakdown by counties across the country.

I would suggest that this map is, what's the word I'm looking for?  Is it misleading?  Irrelevant?  Consider one county in New York.  New York County, the city of Manhattan, has a population of just over 1.6 million people.  That's just one county in New York.  The entire state of Wyoming has a population of 568,000.  Median household income in Wyoming in 2010 was $53,802.  New York County - just one county, mind you - had a median household income of $64,971.  So there are more people in New York County than the entire state of Wyoming.  They also make more money (one benefit of this map, beyond making the point that Obama won where there are actual people, is a person can use Census data to find out what the people who live in different places are like).

In other words, it was the moochers who lost.  Poor moochers, no less.

The thing that makes me go, "Hmmm", however, is "Why?"  The states the receive actual benefits from the federal government would prefer to have someone in office who would cut off the money flowing to them?  Folks in these states who are carrying on about secession would be severely hurt, both in terms of fiscal soundness as well as the availability of services, by secession.

I suppose it's simple ignorance: They have no idea how much they receive from the federal government, and how losing that would impact their lives.

Which is why, again, I think the Internet is wonderful.  It's just so easy to find out that millions of Americans are protesting against their own best interests.

Congratulations, Republican Party!  Please, don't change.

Don't Know Nothing 'Bout Nothing At All

I usually am averse to posting things that others far better than I have already covered.  In this case, the illustrious Tbogg covers the main points without ever once losing sight of the fact that the entire story is insane.

I heard about it listening to the Thom Hartmann radio program today.  Hartmann even had Field Searcy on, and Searcy was doing his level best not to sound bug-dung nuts.  He failed miserably.

Searcy said that, since Cobb County, Georgia has adopted a sustainable growth plan that fits in with the United Nations recommendations for sustainable growth, Agenda 21 is no longer just some weird conspiracy theory but actual fact.

Prodded by Hartmann, Searcy made clear that he is not only crazier than an outhouse rat in August, but also dumber than a bag of hair.  Searcy went on and on about zoning laws - ZONING LAWS!!! - that might prevent property owners dispensing their property in any manner they see fit by, say, restricting the number of single-family houses that can be created on a particular parcel of land.

Hartmann was gentle with Searcy.  He said, basically, that was how zoning laws worked.  That sustainable development is something most communities work toward in order to control sprawl, maintain control over traffic patterns, noise and air pollution, control local resource distribution; these are the reasons we have zoning laws, so communities aren't like Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin, but grow and develop in ways that are, ahem, sustainable.

Searcy allowed there should be a balance.

Which is what zoning laws do.  They attempt to reach a balance between the preferences of any particular property owner and others in the community who will be impacted by decisions that property owner might make as to how that property is used.

It occurred to me that while Searcy may be a loon, there are many who don't have to subscribe to the whole "Delphic Mind Control" business yet may hear "sustainable development" and freak out.  Because, obviously, the last thing we need are communities that grow in ways that don't undermine their ability to remain viable.

Your conservative Americans, ladies and gentlemen.  They don't even know what zoning laws are or how they work.

I do so hope the Republican Party doesn't do too much reforming over the next two years, because we'll lose the entertainment value of watching ignorant people explain things they don't know anything about to people who are suddenly flush with new, wrong, knowledge.

Get Your Mind Out Of The Gutter: Reading Barth's Special Ethics II

As with the previous post, I found a marvelous paragraph just a bit further on that makes clear Barth has little interest either in moralizing or moralizers when it comes to sexual ethics.  On the contrary, after going after his favorite target, Emil Brunner, for overemphasizing the role of sexual ethics within the larger topic of Christian Ethics in general, Barth goes on to say a few things about how we should approach the topic.  Again, a point I've made several times over the years, but has yet to sink in with at least some of those out there who continue to believe there's something especially horrid about human beings having sex (even sex that's approved of).  Also, the "misspellings" of "connection" and "center" appear in the text, translated as they were by British doctoral candidates:

In this connexion, a definite warning must be issued on this particular question of the relationship of male and female, not in opposition to Brunner but in opposition to a widespread opinion.  It is disastrous to suppose, as many,do, that the word morality should be employed almost exclusive, or with an arbitrary and painful over-emphasis, to denote what is considered good and right in the relationship between man and woman, or with even greater restriction in what is called sexual intercourse.  Naturally we have to enquire with the greatest attention what is both generally and specifically commanded and forbidden, obedient  and disobedient, in this sphere.  And the matter has its own dignity and importance.  But we should not act as if God's command began and ceased with what may be included under the seventh commandment in its broader or narrower sense.  If we really wish to do justice to this point we should not treat it as the punctum puncti, being obsessed by it and measuring both itself and all other points primarily and abstractly by it as it were the focus of the whole question of obedience.  The open or secret excitement and agitation with which we usually think and speak of this matter must be quieted.  I do not conceal the fact that I say this with special reference to what is for various reasons a particularly bad habit of man minister and their wives.  The focus of the question of obedience is that of [our] responsibility to the command of God . . . .  From this center there are radii in every direction and therefor in this too.  but none of these radii, let alone of the points on the periphery reached by these radii, can be itself a centre.  This is equally true of the point to which we now refer.  Nor is it only a formal error to concentrate on this question.  A special concern for this matter may well be an evasion of other and much more urgently relevant aspects of the divine command.  This preoccupation may well be only a convenient possibility of justifying oneself to oneself, to others and finally to God in view of a prior or subsequent innocence on this score.  And even worse the preoccupation may well be a radical transgression of this special aspect the commandment.  So much secret dissatisfaction with one'  own conduct in this sphere, so much vexation at defeats which cannot be reversed and seem to cry out for revenge, so much indirect indemnification for virtue unwillingly maintained, so much repressed but in point of fact extremely virulently lust, can find vent in this preoccupation.  Once can be properly concerned about sexual ethics only when one has a clear head and a firm heart.  Given a clear head and firm heart, sex will cease to be isolated and made a false absolute, either in theory or in practice.  It will be understood in its vital connexion with the real centre and with other aspects of the divine command and of the obedience we owe it.  Therefore let it be said as a definite warning that the [person] who in reading or hearing ethics begins to pay attention only at this point incurs the suspicion of being aa doubtful character.  And we can only advise or appeal to [one such] to drop the matter for the time being and to consider how [one] might best come by the clear head and firm heart which will enable [such a one] to give it proper consideration.  A diversion from sexual ethics to the point of departure of all ethics and therefore to God and oneself is perhaps a fundamental requirement for many and even the majority of [human beings] in this matter of sexual ethics.-CD, III, $, pp. 118-119.

Assumptions And Prior Commitments: Reading Barth's Special Ethics I

To those who understand anything about theology, to admit I'm reading III,4 of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics in a desultory way might seem, at the very least, an odd statement.  After all, would one confess to reading Crime and Punishment in a lackadaisical fashion?  Being offhand in perusing Sense and Sensibility?  The fact is, however, it has never been easy to find snatches of time to do more than read a few pages at a time of any particular book. The benefit in regards reading Barth, however, is it gives me time to consider what I've read.  Neither casual nor concentrated reading render much in the way of genuine reflection on some works.  Plodding can be a help.

This and the next post are little more than quotes, offered to echo points I've made many times, but with Barth's inimitable style and pizzazz.  In this case, at the beginning of Section 54, on the special ethics regarding the relationship between man and woman, and especially as it relates to matters of marriage and human sexuality, Barth begins straightaway making clear there are definite theological presuppositions to what is to follow, presuppositions without which the entire enterprise of theological ethics (in this, as in any area) a hopeless muddle.  He has already made this point many times and places throughout the massive volumes he's already written.  That he finds the need to do so again can only mean, to this reader, that the point cannot be stressed enough: We don't do theology and it's related discipline of Biblical exegesis, like children who have never encountered something new.  As members of the Church, we are already in a variety of relationships - with God, with our fellow Christians, with the life and history of the Church as it has existed and will, we hope and believe, continue to exist - that determine our reading, interpretation, and understanding.  These prior realities shape must shape our reading and understanding, or we're just babbling, making of any particular passage of Scripture or doctrine of the church an idol, rather than doing our work thoughtfully, mindful of the grace we have already received and in which we are doing the work of theology.

I've made the same point many times myself over the years.  You can't read the Bible or talk about theology outside of these realities; yet, many people continue to believe they can point to various verses of the Bible, whether they have to do with human sexuality, or marriage, or social life, or whatever, and repeat them as if their meaning were simple and clear enough outside the larger framework within which they need to be considered.  Not just historical, mind you.  Historical criticism and its variants are only useful if done within the even more concise and mindful and faithful understanding that doing Christian theology means doing Christian theology; that is, doing it as people of faith.

So, anyway, without further ado, here's the Doctor from Basel on doing Christian sexual ethics as a Christian.  I will attempt, by the way, to correct the sometimes confusing tendency Barth has to reduce references to humanity and God using the male pronoun:

That [human beings live] in response to God [the] Creator was the first of these lines, and in veiw of this we have attempted in the previous section to understand the command of of as the command to fulfill this responsibility and therefore to be free before God and for [God].  A second principle with regard to {humanity's] being is now to be distinguished from the first, namely, that [humanity], in and with . . . creation, and therefore as [humanity] may exist as [humanity], is destined to be the covenant-partner of God, and that this determination characterises [humanity's] being as being in encounter with . . . fellow [human beings].  {This] ordination to be in covenant relations with God has its counterpart in the fact this . . . humanity, the special mode of [our] being, is by nature and essence a being in fellow-humanity.  And so we must view the command of God the Creator with special reference to this natural manner of [human] existence.  As God calls [us] to [God], as [God] summons [human beings] to serve [God], [God] also addresses [humanity] concerning [our] vocation to be a covenant-partner with [God], and therefore concerning this natural correspondence, concerning . . . humanity.  And that means in concrete terms that [God] directs [us] to [other people].  [God} wills that [our] being should fulfill itself in the encounter, the relationship, the togetherness of I and Thou.  [God] commands [us], invites [us] and challenges [us] not merely to allow . . . humanity as fellow humanity to be [our] nature, but to affirm and exercise it in [our] own decision, in action and omission.  [God] commands [us] to be what [we are].  But this means that [God] takes [human beings] so seriously in [our] vocation to be in covenant with [God] that [God] calls [us] to freedom in fellowship, i.e., to freedom in fellowship with others.  [God] calls [human beings] to find [ourselves] by affirming the other, to know joy by comforting the other, and self-expression by honouring the other.  We have now to understand the divine command as the call to this freedom - the invitation to humanity.  Humanity, the characteristic and essential mode of [our] being, is in its root fellow-humanity.  Humanity which is not fellow-humanity is inhumanity. For it cannot reflect but only contradict the determination of [humanity] to be God's covenant partner, nor can the God is no Deus solitarius but Deus triunus,  God in relationship, be mirrored in the homo solitarius.  As God offers [us] humanity and therefore freedom in fellowship, God summons [us] to prove and express [ourselves] as the image fo God - for as such [God] has created [us].  This is the deepest and final basis on the form of the divine command which we have not to consider.-CD, III, $, pp.116-117.

As usual with Barth, he buries the lede.  Which is why that entire paragraph had to be transcribed to demonstrate the point. 

Tawdry

When I heard the news on Friday, I was surprised, like everyone else.  My immediate reaction, knowing no more than most of the rest of the world, was to chastise Petraeus for not keeping his zipper locked.  Not because I care one way or another about the private lives of public people; I'm more tired of sex scandals than I am of the election just passed.  Knowing we'll have to endure several weeks of ridiculous nonsense, moral posturing, and all sorts of questions that are dumber than an entire book by Jonah Goldberg bodes ill for the holiday season.

After a few days, as details about what happened, how the investigation began, it has become clear that, far from some conspiracy to dethrone an American hero who was stopped in his tracks saving American lives by our Kenyan overlord in the White House, it seems the other folks involved in this business were more than a bit unhinged.

Whether or not Petraeus should have resigned is a question that might seem entertaining.  After all, as Echidne points out people from Bill Clinton to David Vitter have survived sex scandals just fine.  All the same, he did resign, and it's probably a good thing.  The emerging facts of the case - an FBI agent who disses the chain of command because he thinks there's some kind of cover-up; emails from one woman to another that probably are quite nasty (I haven't seen any of them yet, but I can imagine); two extra-marital affairs that created bitter feelings all around - seem to demonstrate that, at least in this case, a personal peccadillo created a professional exploding volcano.  Getting Petraeus out of any official capacity forces him to deal with the mess he created, instead of making the President lose political capital defending a man whose actions and associations are more than an embarrassment.

One more thing.  Attacking Petraeus's lady-friend in all this has already begun, and I know that's considered good sport to go after the hussy who brought down a "great man", but you won't read any of that crap here. She and he are both adults, both married, and both aware of what they were getting themselves into.  Her behavior, at least as far as any of us in the public know, may demonstrate some obsessive elements, but that does not mean she is more morally culpable than he is.

So far from some weird, Brobdignagian conspiracy to cover the President's butt as House Republicans demand answers that have already been given about the events in Benghazi a month ago, the unfolding facts seem to demonstrate it is exactly as it first appeared: Petraeus stepped down because he had an affair that impeded his ability to do his job effectively.  Of course, that's not really it, either.  Getting caught impedes his ability to do his job.

As a side note, I'm looking forward to the book from the FBI agent whose "worldview" convinced him there was a cover-up.  To be published, no doubt, by Regenry Press.  The right will soon enough have a new hero.

Reality? I Can Take It Or Leave It

As I've said many times, a guiding light of mine is the simple proposition that words mean things.  Tossing verbiage around without thought or care, then taking that same word-tossing to the next level and insisting that, Humpty Dumpty like, we can just make words mean whatever we wish, well, that's enough to make me wonder about sanity.

For several years now, reading various places around the Internet, the phrase "reality-based community" has been bandied about, not only as a counter to Karl Rove's "We're an Empire, we create our own reality," nonsense.  The meaning of the phrase has expanded to include the claim that science deals with "reality" and religion, well, to quote a commenter at the science blog Pharyngula, "begins with bullshit."

"Reality" is a word I detest.  Like "morality", and "truth", and "belief", and "nature", the word has become unhinged from any reference point.  Does it mean our common, everyday experience of the flow of space-time?  Does it refer to the mathematical equations that demonstrate how matter and energy are, at a basic level, interchangeable?  Does it refer to the flow of human events that we, being human, privilege over many other events?  One could go on asking questions of this sort, and I confess they all sound a bit pedantic, but the point, I hope, is clear.  That which we call "reality", at least in our mundane sense, is by and large a facade, a construct of our human sense organs coping with a variety of inputs and attempting to make sense of those inputs in a way that maximizes our survival advantage.  Were to have, say, the olfactory abilities of some dogs or carrion-eaters, say, the world would be "real" in a fundamentally different way than it currently is to us.  If we had the ability some snakes do, to "see" heat emissions, our "reality" would be a very different thing indeed.

With the help of several different branches of science, we have come to learn over the past century or so that what we call "reality" or "the physical universe" is not at all what or how it appears.  Indeed, "physical" is hardly what I'd call any particular object that has mass, considering even the most dense elements and objects are still, by and large, empty space.  In the early decades of the 20th century, physicist Niels Bohr (who counts Olivia Newton-John among his grandchildren) developed a model of the atom, what was once considered the most basic unit of physical matter, that looked quite a bit like a solar system.  Around the central nucleus, which consists of neutrons and protons (positively charged particles) there swirl various layers of electrons (negatively charged particles; and please note, "positive" and "negative" are conventional designations rather than describing anything inherent in the particles themselves).

The problem with the model was, no one had ever seen an electron.  By the time the First World War was over, there had been enough experiments working on the mass of atomic nuclei and their constituent parts to get a rough approximation of the masses of both protons and neutron.  In theory, the neutron was a particle with no charge that was, in fact, a proton and an electron fused together.  Except, the difference in mass between the proton and neutron was almost statistically negligible.

Furthermore, while it was easy enough to follow the effects of what were supposed to be electrons, it became increasingly apparent the particles themselves were probably beyond anyone's capability of "discovering" in a conventional sense.

In the 1920's, Werner Heisenberg went a bit further.  Studying elementary particles - the stuff that was discovered to make up protons and neutrons and electrons - Heisenberg made the claim that, for all intents and purposes, such things didn't actually exist.  The equations made clear they should exist.  The experiments constructed to demonstrate the correctness of the equations were then and continue to be consistent within striking orders of magnitude.  Yet, no one has ever, nor probably will ever, see a boson or a meson or, God help us all, a graviton.  First of all, one of the consequences of General Relativity is that energized particles behave both as objects containing mass and also as energy waves.  There are packets of light energy called photons, yet light also behaves much the same way waves do - with amplitude and frequency.  Heisenberg stipulated, further, that while it was well enough to give the equations their due, since they were confirmed by experiments, it was probably better to let the paradox rest and act as, for the sake of any particular experimental procedure, these particles exist.  It is a position that is known as "operationalism": we cannot know whether or not there "really" are "things" out there we call elementary particles, since the only confirmation we have of their existence are particular scientific tests that in themselves only demonstrate that certain events happen, rather than there are any such "things" in and for themselves.

Erwin Schrodinger, in a famous complaint aimed at Heisenberg, said that operationalism, combined with Heisenberg's more well-known position that we cannot know both the position and momentum of an elementary particle, led to the paradox of the cat in the box.  The cat was both alive and dead, Schrodinger said, under Heisenberg's working theories.  To which Heisenberg replied, "True enough.  Until we open the box to find out whether or not the cat is dead."  Without observation, the propositions, "The cat in the box is dead," and, "The cat in the box is alive," have an equal chance of being accurate.

Another part of quantum mechanics that makes a mockery of "reality" is the idea that a quantum event somewhere here on earth has a direct and measurable effect upon a quantum event in a star in the Horsehead Nebula.  Known as quantum entanglement, it is the proposition that, against any classical ideas of what was known as "local reality", action-at-a-distance (which Einstein, whose theories led to this and a host of other issues he didn't like, called "spooky") was a basic part of the physical make-up of the Universe.  For years, the position set out by Einstein and some colleagues that this unacceptable state of affairs showed that quantum mechanics was incomplete held sway.  In 1964, John Stewart Bell proposed that, in fact, what was known as the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky paradox was in error, and, in fact, over the course of a series of trials, there was an increasing probability of determining how two seemingly unrelated quantum events were, in fact, related.

Now, many physicists chuckle when the positions taken here - that there is an inherent nothingness to reality; that there is an inherent unpredictability to reality; that an event at point (a), without either any time lag or physical contact, can influence an event at point (b) - are expanded in various fictional settings.  Most even the most well-versed scientists would insist these phenomena are highly localized and specialized.  Just because we cannot know both the position and momentum of an elementary particle does not mean Schrodinger's cat is both alive and dead until we open the box to investigate, they say.  Schrodinger, it seems, made a category mistake (no pun intended).

To an extent, this is a perfectly sound argument to make.  After all, I wouldn't think of trying to shove my head through a wall, even though I know both the wall and my head are mostly empty space.

Which position, of course, begs many questions, not the least of them being: What is reality?  It might well mean our everyday reality we encounter.  Yet, again and again, it was precisely scientific investigation of that everyday reality that revealed the paradoxes discussed above.  Which leaves me asking, again, what is reality?  Would it be possible to operate as if quantum mechanics governed our macro-world?  Of course, in some ways, it does.  If you're reading this on a computer, you can thank quantum mechanics for that.

Back in the early 1990's, philosopher Jonathan Searle wrote a longish book entitled The Philosophy of Mind. Over and over in that book, Searle repeated that reality is and I quote, "elementary particles in fields of force."  While this might well be a good working definition in some circumstances, the fiction that the word "particle" creates - that there are these "things" out there we call elementary particles, rather than energy traces from collisions that fit with mathematical predictions concerning the behavior of small masses of light elements colliding at near the speed of light - renders this "definition" of "reality" untenable (there are a host of other issues with Searle's book, but this one always nagged at me).  In fact, while we may be able to express, with a certain degree of confidence, through certain mathematical equations, the statistical regularity of certain events (without ever being able to approach precision on all such events; more precision one way leads to less precision the other), this hardly means we understand what the word "reality" means, or to what it refers.

When I read people talking about how they're so scientific and are part of the reality-based community, I figure they flunked Physics 101.  Because if they're relying on science for their understanding of reality, then they have some problems.