Competition is a good thing.
It is an especially good thing for political, economic and religious ideas. Why? One reason is because that's the best way we have of sifting out what works from what doesn't. Another reason is that, because we are different, this allows for the satisfaction of different religious styles. Still another is that religion as a whole flourishes as never before when they compete peaceably with one another. It's also a useful reminder of how far we've yet to travel along the road to God; that none of us, individually or societally, are 'finished works' or are likely to be so while we live on earth.
And another very good reason is, whenever an imposed-from-above system, be it religious, political or economic becomes, for all intents and purposes, 'the only game in town' it's never taken too long, till now, for the folks running the system to behave in ways that are discreditable, sometimes egregiously so, to the newly monopolistic 'system' in question. Not to mention how long it can take that same system to shake off the ill effects of once having been a monopoly even if they're not that any more. Exhibit A here is: the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church protecting pedophile priests. Not to mention the probable (and still mostly unreported) horde of imams doing the same (literally) damned thing!
One system fortunate in not having been a monopoly for too long yet is capitalism. Since the Berlin Wall fell and we won the Cold War, capitalism has been largely considered as the only economic system that can work. And for the last decade, have we or haven't we seen capitalists acting in ways that are profoundly discreditable to that same system? Beginning with Enron through the housing bubble and previously reputable brokerages betting against their own clients and culminating in the greatest crash since 1929. Not to mention the questionably deliberate near-gutting of our industrial base, the assault on public education which is still an extremely vital part of our infrastructure, much of which has been allowed to crumble! And it must be said that the Clinton administration, a scant five years after the Wall fell, paved the way for this with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall law, among other things. The over-skewing of wealth into the hands of the uppermost 0.1% is part of this profoundly counter-productive cycle, as is the concomitant loss of real democracy in our politics.
What should we do? Quite bluntly, we need to redistribute wealth to some extent! Justice Brandeis said it in 1927: "We can either have a few very wealthy people, or we can have democracy, but we cannot have both." Most of us are thankfully inclined to opt for democracy. First, the highest tax bracket needs to be at least 50% (which it was under Reagan). Second, public education needs a lot of repair, renewal and stregthening--as does most of our infrastructure. Third, the 'greening' of our economy needs to be pushed forward. This, more than anything else, will produce the number of necessary jobs. Fourth, every business of a certain size or above (I'd recommend this wherever the employer starts not to know all his/her employees) needs to give its employees a chance to 'buy into' the business. As far as possible, employees and stockholders need to be the same people.
We have always said (and we've seen it to be so), people work better when they work for themselves. Well, let's start putting it more into practice! And if they're owners, will they or won't they take better care (including of each other) in, and of, that facility? Surely the answer is 'yes'. Most businesses which are co-operatives are still with us. Even the Grange still exists, although we could do with it being more influential. Now is the time to democratize our economy and the returns from it!!
Co-operatives can and should show a healthier alternative to the capitalism lately turned vicious and downright piratical. This will still take time even if it starts to happen on a larger scale and we need to not allow ourselves to be distracted by divisive 'wedge' matters. I don't even want to call them 'issues' because they don't deserve to be. We do need to listen deeply to one another so that we can speak with one another. Fellow environmentalists, start hearing issues of class. Then let's expand each other's understanding of bread-and-butter matters like jobs. Never mind anyone else's domestic arrangements so long as the families are healthy. And we all need to recognize, and fight, injustice in whatever color it comes!
There will continue to be wealthy and (relatively) 'poor', but a vital, functioning democracy with Judeo-Christian underpinnings needs brackets for both. None so rich as to bid defiance to the government which receives our input and is thereby empowered to act on behalf of all of us, none so poor as to need to scrape in order to stay alive. And there continues to be a vital 'commons' available to all of us. I hope and believe this to be a reasonable 'yardstick' for free societies.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
WHEN I WAS A LAD
When I was a lad the To-day show
Fea-tured good important things to know
Frank Blair gave us weather and McGee the news
And Barbara Walters did good in-ter-views
(And Barbara Walters did good in-ter-views)
But now with Sarah Palin on the show
To-day is just the biggest media ho'!
(But now with Sarah Palin on the show
To-day is just the biggest media ho'!)
Fea-tured good important things to know
Frank Blair gave us weather and McGee the news
And Barbara Walters did good in-ter-views
(And Barbara Walters did good in-ter-views)
But now with Sarah Palin on the show
To-day is just the biggest media ho'!
(But now with Sarah Palin on the show
To-day is just the biggest media ho'!)
Monday, April 2, 2012
IT'S ALL ABOUT RENEWAL & RIGHT RELATIONS
"The new anti-clericals did not perceive that those who used the [Gospel's] language to serve slavery [and its successor Jim Crow] or 'private initiative' or 'the American way of life' were [and still are] in fact perverting the Gospel and betraying the great tradition of revivalism in America. They did not themselves (italics mine) understand that the word of true evangelism is not this bad word that everything must stay exactly as it is [or, worse, regress to some mythical 'golden age] but the wonderful and emancipating word that all things are being made new." Including us--but we must choose to be so remade!
The above passage, without my bracketed interjections and italics, is from the excellently seminal book From State Church to Pluralism by Franklin Littell. What Littell describes here is a cardinal reason why many educated, cultured and intellectually curious people became, and are still becoming, disenchanted with the church. And as the number of such people grow (and, whatever we think of the 'vitiation of taste' and other such elitist chatter, their numbers are growing, especially amongst young adults and especially where intellectual curiosity and honesty is concerned) the churches' influence will continue to decline.
Unless.
In this case, unless we wise up and proclaim as we may not have proclaimed it since maybe the Great Awakening, or the Reformation, or maybe even since Theodosius made Christianity compulsory for Roman citizens in 390, that Christianity is NEITHER the bad word that everything must stay exactly as it is or as we pretend to remember it from Leave It To Beaver days NOR the worse word that we must re-attach religion with state and regress to some mythical golden age BUT the wonderful Word that God makes all things new!! And that in and through a relationship with God through His Word--and, best of all, His Word made flesh--we can choose to be made new. Yes, we need to choose almost every day to be so remade; this requires persistence. But I hope it helps to know that, you ask God for that persistence day by day, you'll have it! And the making new will usually take the rest of our earthly lives and into the next life. But, again, probably the most important thing is to persist. Stay engaged with God. Rage at Him when you need to. He can take it and, if David raged, moaned and kvetched at God, so can you. Who else won't you annoy with all that? And God welcomes all honest questions; just don't necessarily expect immediate answers. Be alert for them, though: they can and do pop up when you least expect 'em.
Ingest and always remember this: a robust, living, vibrant faith welcomes questions and challenges, can credibly answer criticisms and smile at satire. It is a weak and brittle 'faith' on the verge of collapse anyhow that fears and/or seeks to suppress questions, challenges, criticism and satire! If you encounter a gathering which looks alive but where questions--or certain questions--are 'not asked', then it's phony and the 'life' of the congregation is but froth on the beer!
One thing which most serious believers try to do (I know I do) is to harmonize our earthly requirements with being called to the Gospel. To do this, here's what I hope are some handy and helpful guidelines:
1) Know the difference between needs and wants: we all need to eat, drink and breathe. We all need a place to sleep and call home. We need connections with one another and with nature. We all need some kind of work that leaves us with some sense of doing something real. Even the handful of us rich enough to not need the money need some kind of work. And nearly all humans want such work, too--ESPECIALLY the poor among us! We need some means of getting around, either private or shared. But I challenge anyone to convince me they NEED a Humvee, a private jet or a beachfront mansion. There is enough for everyone's need, but not everyone's greed!
2) Do whatever we can to help more of us meet needs and to keep greeds within some kind of tolerable bounds. Maybe that would be to be as sure as possible that no one's need is endangered by another's greed.
3) God welcomes questions and has given us all free will; we're the ones that seek to deny or destroy the free will of others. Hence, isn't it upon us to work in ways that open more possibilities to more of us? This means, as FDR said, 'schools must be the last thing on which we economize'. And it means the schools not be test and/or indoctrination plantations, but places which actually encourage critical thought. And this is also why strict separation of religion and state is indispensable to the state's benevolence and to the flourishing of real religion. Real religion is alive today where the government is neutral towards it--including and especially here! Roger Williams was right: "Forced religion stinks in God's nostrils."
4) God makes room for a lot of different things to 'play' together; so should we. This means multiple uses of areas--but excluding what's likely to annhilate all other uses and/or destroy the life therein. Balance is the key here. Keep the ecosystems vital, but not unchanged.
5) Most importantly, put relationships first: the relationship which we each have with God, healthy relationships with one another and with other creatures. By 'healthy' I mean helping each other grow. NO stomping allowed--neither physical nor verbal! And don't be taken down any deceptively easy path: be as sharp as serpents and guiltless as doves. Be shrewd and keep your hands clean. Telling the unpleasant truth is NOT getting your hands dirty, although some will try to convince you otherwise.
But let's start with God, and God's Word (including made flesh) making all things new, and doing it not from the top down but from the bottom up!! There's a world of difference between seeking to infuse society with God's Spirit from the bottom up and seeking to take over the government and enforce top-down conformity of worship and behavior. Nothing is more destructive to real religion and civil society than the latter; nothing vitalizes both like the former. That Spirit can never be forced; it flees from force.
The God we worship is the One Who makes all things new; let us follow in the Way as God gives us strength! Amen and amen!
The above passage, without my bracketed interjections and italics, is from the excellently seminal book From State Church to Pluralism by Franklin Littell. What Littell describes here is a cardinal reason why many educated, cultured and intellectually curious people became, and are still becoming, disenchanted with the church. And as the number of such people grow (and, whatever we think of the 'vitiation of taste' and other such elitist chatter, their numbers are growing, especially amongst young adults and especially where intellectual curiosity and honesty is concerned) the churches' influence will continue to decline.
Unless.
In this case, unless we wise up and proclaim as we may not have proclaimed it since maybe the Great Awakening, or the Reformation, or maybe even since Theodosius made Christianity compulsory for Roman citizens in 390, that Christianity is NEITHER the bad word that everything must stay exactly as it is or as we pretend to remember it from Leave It To Beaver days NOR the worse word that we must re-attach religion with state and regress to some mythical golden age BUT the wonderful Word that God makes all things new!! And that in and through a relationship with God through His Word--and, best of all, His Word made flesh--we can choose to be made new. Yes, we need to choose almost every day to be so remade; this requires persistence. But I hope it helps to know that, you ask God for that persistence day by day, you'll have it! And the making new will usually take the rest of our earthly lives and into the next life. But, again, probably the most important thing is to persist. Stay engaged with God. Rage at Him when you need to. He can take it and, if David raged, moaned and kvetched at God, so can you. Who else won't you annoy with all that? And God welcomes all honest questions; just don't necessarily expect immediate answers. Be alert for them, though: they can and do pop up when you least expect 'em.
Ingest and always remember this: a robust, living, vibrant faith welcomes questions and challenges, can credibly answer criticisms and smile at satire. It is a weak and brittle 'faith' on the verge of collapse anyhow that fears and/or seeks to suppress questions, challenges, criticism and satire! If you encounter a gathering which looks alive but where questions--or certain questions--are 'not asked', then it's phony and the 'life' of the congregation is but froth on the beer!
One thing which most serious believers try to do (I know I do) is to harmonize our earthly requirements with being called to the Gospel. To do this, here's what I hope are some handy and helpful guidelines:
1) Know the difference between needs and wants: we all need to eat, drink and breathe. We all need a place to sleep and call home. We need connections with one another and with nature. We all need some kind of work that leaves us with some sense of doing something real. Even the handful of us rich enough to not need the money need some kind of work. And nearly all humans want such work, too--ESPECIALLY the poor among us! We need some means of getting around, either private or shared. But I challenge anyone to convince me they NEED a Humvee, a private jet or a beachfront mansion. There is enough for everyone's need, but not everyone's greed!
2) Do whatever we can to help more of us meet needs and to keep greeds within some kind of tolerable bounds. Maybe that would be to be as sure as possible that no one's need is endangered by another's greed.
3) God welcomes questions and has given us all free will; we're the ones that seek to deny or destroy the free will of others. Hence, isn't it upon us to work in ways that open more possibilities to more of us? This means, as FDR said, 'schools must be the last thing on which we economize'. And it means the schools not be test and/or indoctrination plantations, but places which actually encourage critical thought. And this is also why strict separation of religion and state is indispensable to the state's benevolence and to the flourishing of real religion. Real religion is alive today where the government is neutral towards it--including and especially here! Roger Williams was right: "Forced religion stinks in God's nostrils."
4) God makes room for a lot of different things to 'play' together; so should we. This means multiple uses of areas--but excluding what's likely to annhilate all other uses and/or destroy the life therein. Balance is the key here. Keep the ecosystems vital, but not unchanged.
5) Most importantly, put relationships first: the relationship which we each have with God, healthy relationships with one another and with other creatures. By 'healthy' I mean helping each other grow. NO stomping allowed--neither physical nor verbal! And don't be taken down any deceptively easy path: be as sharp as serpents and guiltless as doves. Be shrewd and keep your hands clean. Telling the unpleasant truth is NOT getting your hands dirty, although some will try to convince you otherwise.
But let's start with God, and God's Word (including made flesh) making all things new, and doing it not from the top down but from the bottom up!! There's a world of difference between seeking to infuse society with God's Spirit from the bottom up and seeking to take over the government and enforce top-down conformity of worship and behavior. Nothing is more destructive to real religion and civil society than the latter; nothing vitalizes both like the former. That Spirit can never be forced; it flees from force.
The God we worship is the One Who makes all things new; let us follow in the Way as God gives us strength! Amen and amen!
Thursday, March 8, 2012
DEBUNKING 'REPLACEMENT' THEOLOGY, CONTINUED
Everything about 'replacement' theology bothers me, but lately there's something about it which bothers me even more. Possibly one reason it does that is because I haven't really examined it till now, and it's this: behind 'replacement' theology is the colossally spiritually arrogant assumption that, of course, the Jews got it all wrong because (fill in the blank) but most often it has to do with how ruthlessly legalistic, vengeful and letter-oriented (as opposed to spirit-oriented) they were as opposed to we sweet Aryans, Africans, Arabs or whatever. We are truly loving people. We are the good little boys and girls who are sweet and docile and because (especially when compared with those wicked, ungrateful, kvetching Joos (how would Michele Bachmann mangle that word?)) of that, we got it right! Nyaaaaaahhhh! Nyaaaaahhh! Nyaaaaahhhh!
Right. We would never allow the letter to tie us up in legalistic knots and hair-splitting. We would never avenge one of our eyes with both our enemy's eyes and his relations as well; we would never seek revenge at all! Except on God's enemies, of course. Anyone notice how our enemies are classified as God's enemies as well? While it's probably true that the first Gentile Christians greeted the Good News without the 'baggage' which most Jews carried then, it didn't take them long at all to start accumulating their own 'baggage' and attaching it to God's narrative, now did it? Can we, in good conscience, deny that our eyes (especially the jaundiced eyes of the powerful) might be just as blind as were Annas's and Caiaphas's party in the Sanhedrin (it's worth remembering that 1) they didn't usually meet at night, 2) they didn't summon members likely to disagree with their agenda--sound familiar, Scott Walker et al.?--3)Gamaliel, then the president of the Sanhedrin, was not at Jesus's 'trial'--in short, the Sanhedrin's majority party stacked the deck!) and the eyes of the 'loaded' Jerusalem mob the next day? That we can either accumulate too much extraneous 'religious baggage' and/or be too frightened of losing what we have to see what, and with whom, God is doing? Make no mistake, Annas and Caiaphas and those they led were terrified! Not so much, probably, of Jesus himself as of Pilate and the Romans: I've heard that when Jesus drove the moneychangers from the Temple, Annas, Caiaphas & co. had almost all they could do to convince Pilate this was only a 'domestic disturbance' and not the beginning of a revolt against Rome. Anyone ready to say they wouldn't be terrified under such circumstances? Any guesses as to how much Attila terrified Pope Leo I? Or how other barbarians terrified his successors? Take a long look at both Christian and Muslim history and tell me how much 'baggage' they, and we, didn't either keep from pagan days or didn't accumulate!
The Muslim community, majorities and minorities, is now in the throes of struggle of liberating spirit vs. the lethal letter. Among us, the lethal letter's force is weakened but the Spirit still needs nurturing and strengthening. Even in Israel, that battle is still being fought.
We so have no business, none whatsoever, acting as if 1) God was a man to dump Israel for us, 2) we're more 'spiritual', or spiritually fruitful, than Israel, 3) God's promises to Israel now belong to us. All that is a steaming, noisome pile of taurine droppings. The only way in which we Christians are the 'new Israel' is the same way that the states in the United States from Vermont forward are 'new states'. The original thirteen might be the 'old states', but they never stopped being states. And God never has, nor ever will, abrogate His covenant with the elder Israel. To say so is like saying our original thirteen states are no longer under the Constitution! No, our business is to stand with Israel as our senior in communion with God, as the trunk to which we branches have been grafted, as our miner's canary who tells us whether there are noxious gases seeping into the mine and as civilization's frontline in (by our 21st century lights) a profoundly savage region.
Let us pray that God may open our eyes to these things so that some of us may turn from our misguided folly regarding Israel and her enemies to where we all need to be for God's Kingdom and our civilization. This is one instance where the interests of both actually do coincide.
Right. We would never allow the letter to tie us up in legalistic knots and hair-splitting. We would never avenge one of our eyes with both our enemy's eyes and his relations as well; we would never seek revenge at all! Except on God's enemies, of course. Anyone notice how our enemies are classified as God's enemies as well? While it's probably true that the first Gentile Christians greeted the Good News without the 'baggage' which most Jews carried then, it didn't take them long at all to start accumulating their own 'baggage' and attaching it to God's narrative, now did it? Can we, in good conscience, deny that our eyes (especially the jaundiced eyes of the powerful) might be just as blind as were Annas's and Caiaphas's party in the Sanhedrin (it's worth remembering that 1) they didn't usually meet at night, 2) they didn't summon members likely to disagree with their agenda--sound familiar, Scott Walker et al.?--3)Gamaliel, then the president of the Sanhedrin, was not at Jesus's 'trial'--in short, the Sanhedrin's majority party stacked the deck!) and the eyes of the 'loaded' Jerusalem mob the next day? That we can either accumulate too much extraneous 'religious baggage' and/or be too frightened of losing what we have to see what, and with whom, God is doing? Make no mistake, Annas and Caiaphas and those they led were terrified! Not so much, probably, of Jesus himself as of Pilate and the Romans: I've heard that when Jesus drove the moneychangers from the Temple, Annas, Caiaphas & co. had almost all they could do to convince Pilate this was only a 'domestic disturbance' and not the beginning of a revolt against Rome. Anyone ready to say they wouldn't be terrified under such circumstances? Any guesses as to how much Attila terrified Pope Leo I? Or how other barbarians terrified his successors? Take a long look at both Christian and Muslim history and tell me how much 'baggage' they, and we, didn't either keep from pagan days or didn't accumulate!
The Muslim community, majorities and minorities, is now in the throes of struggle of liberating spirit vs. the lethal letter. Among us, the lethal letter's force is weakened but the Spirit still needs nurturing and strengthening. Even in Israel, that battle is still being fought.
We so have no business, none whatsoever, acting as if 1) God was a man to dump Israel for us, 2) we're more 'spiritual', or spiritually fruitful, than Israel, 3) God's promises to Israel now belong to us. All that is a steaming, noisome pile of taurine droppings. The only way in which we Christians are the 'new Israel' is the same way that the states in the United States from Vermont forward are 'new states'. The original thirteen might be the 'old states', but they never stopped being states. And God never has, nor ever will, abrogate His covenant with the elder Israel. To say so is like saying our original thirteen states are no longer under the Constitution! No, our business is to stand with Israel as our senior in communion with God, as the trunk to which we branches have been grafted, as our miner's canary who tells us whether there are noxious gases seeping into the mine and as civilization's frontline in (by our 21st century lights) a profoundly savage region.
Let us pray that God may open our eyes to these things so that some of us may turn from our misguided folly regarding Israel and her enemies to where we all need to be for God's Kingdom and our civilization. This is one instance where the interests of both actually do coincide.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
AN UNEXPECTED REVELATION
Missouri slavecatcher Rush Limbaugh has revealed something very important to us in showing us how deeply he lacks decency, kindness or reason. Some of us have known this all along, including (if I may say so) myself, but till now, how many were listening? I knew this ever since I was one of the anti-Falwell demonstrators outside the City Line Marriott (since torn down) in November 1981. Back then, I would've liked to ask the preacher, "If our common Master hung with prostitutes, tax collectors and other sinners, why are you here with the scribes and Pharisees?" Anyhow, Mr. Hawgjowls Limbaugh has made it plain to us: it is the spirit of the scribes and Pharisees that now completely dominates the Republican party. It is the spirit of the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15). It is actually a spirit that wants to tell God He isn't fair in having the sun rise on the good and the evil or in having the rain fall on the just and the unjust. And they use an all-too-human way of determining who's who which boils down to this: Look like us, good. Not look, speak or act like us, evil. Put money in MY pocket, good. Take money out, evil. Get us exclusive earthly power, good. Compel us to share it, evil. The way they act could hardly be further from the behavior of Jesus while he walked the earth or from the God Whose nature Jesus shows and of which he speaks. Maybe something in them knows this--which is probably why public 'devotionals' matter so much to them and why I wonder how long has it been since any of them read Matthew 6:5-8 or Matthew 7:21 or Isaiah 29:13: 'This people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.' It certainly is, Rushie, it certainly is.
If any of today's scribes and Pharisees had either the Spirit of God or a heart which honestly seeks the Lord, wouldn't they understand that the Way comes down to right relation in all aspects of our individual lives and collective life? To do justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with our God--that is, in awareness of how little we can know of God in this life? To put our relationship(s) with God foremost and thereby learn how to rightly relate to our fellow humans and our fellow-beings with whom we share this planet? And to have an inkling of the right-relatedness within the Triune Godhead--Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Some will say that we cannot know what is within God, and they're mostly right, but I suggest the Trinity is a glimpse of the flow of love within God. Then that love flows out to us and all creation while it teaches us how, and invites us, to participate.
Neither slavecatcher Rush nor any for whom he speaks could have any inkling of this--and sorry little, if any, of God's Spirit. If they did, they could not be so ruled by such an evil killjoy of a spirit--one that wants us all to pay for any joy in our lives with ten times the sorrow and/or bile of bitterness! A spirit bitter, crabbed and ungenerous that roused Dickens, when he saw it, to righteous wrath! A spirit which wants to take as much enjoyment from our lives as it can, and make our joy directly proportionate to enriching its masters, already bloated with excess of earthly wealth, still further!
We must make this Limbaugh's Joe McCarthy moment. We already know he, and his minions, have no sense of decency. Hence, there's no question to ask, but only to repeat the statement of fact to ClearChannel's advertisers until they all pull their ads and compel ClearChannel to pull this loathsome slug who's polluted the airwaves, and our political culture, for far too long. And let the other purveyors of toxic talk take notice and, like the demons on hearing Christ's name, shudder.
If any of today's scribes and Pharisees had either the Spirit of God or a heart which honestly seeks the Lord, wouldn't they understand that the Way comes down to right relation in all aspects of our individual lives and collective life? To do justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with our God--that is, in awareness of how little we can know of God in this life? To put our relationship(s) with God foremost and thereby learn how to rightly relate to our fellow humans and our fellow-beings with whom we share this planet? And to have an inkling of the right-relatedness within the Triune Godhead--Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Some will say that we cannot know what is within God, and they're mostly right, but I suggest the Trinity is a glimpse of the flow of love within God. Then that love flows out to us and all creation while it teaches us how, and invites us, to participate.
Neither slavecatcher Rush nor any for whom he speaks could have any inkling of this--and sorry little, if any, of God's Spirit. If they did, they could not be so ruled by such an evil killjoy of a spirit--one that wants us all to pay for any joy in our lives with ten times the sorrow and/or bile of bitterness! A spirit bitter, crabbed and ungenerous that roused Dickens, when he saw it, to righteous wrath! A spirit which wants to take as much enjoyment from our lives as it can, and make our joy directly proportionate to enriching its masters, already bloated with excess of earthly wealth, still further!
We must make this Limbaugh's Joe McCarthy moment. We already know he, and his minions, have no sense of decency. Hence, there's no question to ask, but only to repeat the statement of fact to ClearChannel's advertisers until they all pull their ads and compel ClearChannel to pull this loathsome slug who's polluted the airwaves, and our political culture, for far too long. And let the other purveyors of toxic talk take notice and, like the demons on hearing Christ's name, shudder.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
LEADERSHIP?
'Forty years ago (in the 1930s) the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead thought it self-evident that you would get a good government if you took power out of the hands of the acquisitive and gave it to the learned and cultivated. At present, a child in kindergarten knows better than that.' These words were written 37 years ago by a man I consider one of my 'mentors': Eric Hoffer.
He wrote in the wake of sixty-odd years of wars and revolutions brought about by the type Winston Churchill called 'bloody-minded professors'. I also might call them the world's second-most recent versions of this world's Wackford Squeerses--some of whom actually believe they make a better world by making more of us miserable. I'd say our current Wackfords are the Islamists and, also, their 'Christianist' counterparts in this country.
But to return to the main point: men who cared nothing for money, wealth or riches made charnel houses of Russia, Germany and much of Europe besides, China and other, smaller, countries. Now we see before our eyes the evil that men do who lust after riches as after nothing else. And if we don't change course now, we'll be on a trajectory right back to feudal times--maybe even with, God save us all, a new Holy Office! (Inquisition, dude!)
'Crisis in leadership' is, I'd say, a much-overused phrase. But what else can we call what we now have? The people with ideas to 1) get us off the fossil-fuel tit and onto cleaner, renewable energies 2) thereby restart our economy for real 3) make our educational systems more equitable and thereby continue to keep the economy humming are mostly far from power while those with actual power seem, for the most part, to have as much useful ideas for action as they have knowledge of either ancient Sanskrit or ability to read cuneiform! And such ideas as most of them do have are about as relevant to most of us right here, right now as is cuneiform or Sanskrit!
'Occupy' does seem to be more leader-full than leaderless to me. And now I say, let all of us either in Occupy or sympathetic with it step forward--now. By and large it may be too late for the year now beginning, but 2014 and 2016 are coming right quick! Let's continue organizing--including starting political campaigns. And let's do something else I see as very much in tune with Occupy's spirit: explore ways in which to mount inexpensive, low-cost campaigns. And this isn't only because most of us haven't much money, although that fact dovetails with this idea. But more than that, do we or don't we want to rebuke the overweening power of wealth and do so as sharply as possible? Not possible, say you? Who saw Occupy coming? Why not use social media and, perhaps, other online ways which Anonymous might create and teach to us all to get the messages out?
Finally, we need to ask ourselves these questions: between Lenin, Mussolini and those that followed them along a path of horror on the one hand and the still mostly faceless and fecklessly greedy and incompetent traders and banksters who've all but ruined us--what, if anything, do these groups have in common? What sort of person or persons do we need to avoid having in positions of economic and/or political power? As I sit here and mull this over, it also occurs to me if, at least to some extent, the 'anti-intellectual' strain in our politics perhaps confuses the actually knowledgeable and authoritative person with the authoritarian 'know-all'? Dislike of the former is largely unhelpful; aversion to the second is profoundly necessary. Obama can come off as a 'know-all' but he is actually the real article. The Gingrinch is a near-perfect specimen of the latter. I think we need to beware of anyone who sounds as if they know it all and also act as if they've nothing to learn from you, me or any of the 99%. Any one of us can always learn something new from anyone. So let's beware of such creatures, whether they act professorial (Gingrich) or anti-perfesser (Palin, Bachmann, Perry). One things both groups seem to have in common is a belief that they know and/or own it all--except, of course, their own malfeasances, mistakes and misdeeds!
We also need a variety of 'markers'. One has to be the willingness to take 'radical' action coupled with the readiness to shape it pragmatically. FDR is still a good model of this: he took action and was ready to experiment but he was no ideologue. And being no ideologue never meant he lacked principles. He once said this when asked about his 'philosophy': "Philosophy! Philosophy? I am a Christian and a Democrat--that's all." Well, make the 'd' lowercase and add 'Judeo-' to 'Christian' and that's good enough for me. Which leads to another necessary marker: leaders need to know the difference between infusing society with God's Spirit and keeping government and religion separate. Everyone has to understand that religion and state both do better when strictly separate--and spiritual infusion has to be from the bottom up and never from the top down. A third marker needs to be a leader has to have some idea of who s/he is independent of any office they might hold. We don't need any hollow wo/men who seem to need power so bad they'll sell their office for it.
I could probably say more, but this'll do for now. Think these things over, everyone: perhaps even as we hear the notes of Auld Lang Syne tonight. A blessed New Year to all of you.
He wrote in the wake of sixty-odd years of wars and revolutions brought about by the type Winston Churchill called 'bloody-minded professors'. I also might call them the world's second-most recent versions of this world's Wackford Squeerses--some of whom actually believe they make a better world by making more of us miserable. I'd say our current Wackfords are the Islamists and, also, their 'Christianist' counterparts in this country.
But to return to the main point: men who cared nothing for money, wealth or riches made charnel houses of Russia, Germany and much of Europe besides, China and other, smaller, countries. Now we see before our eyes the evil that men do who lust after riches as after nothing else. And if we don't change course now, we'll be on a trajectory right back to feudal times--maybe even with, God save us all, a new Holy Office! (Inquisition, dude!)
'Crisis in leadership' is, I'd say, a much-overused phrase. But what else can we call what we now have? The people with ideas to 1) get us off the fossil-fuel tit and onto cleaner, renewable energies 2) thereby restart our economy for real 3) make our educational systems more equitable and thereby continue to keep the economy humming are mostly far from power while those with actual power seem, for the most part, to have as much useful ideas for action as they have knowledge of either ancient Sanskrit or ability to read cuneiform! And such ideas as most of them do have are about as relevant to most of us right here, right now as is cuneiform or Sanskrit!
'Occupy' does seem to be more leader-full than leaderless to me. And now I say, let all of us either in Occupy or sympathetic with it step forward--now. By and large it may be too late for the year now beginning, but 2014 and 2016 are coming right quick! Let's continue organizing--including starting political campaigns. And let's do something else I see as very much in tune with Occupy's spirit: explore ways in which to mount inexpensive, low-cost campaigns. And this isn't only because most of us haven't much money, although that fact dovetails with this idea. But more than that, do we or don't we want to rebuke the overweening power of wealth and do so as sharply as possible? Not possible, say you? Who saw Occupy coming? Why not use social media and, perhaps, other online ways which Anonymous might create and teach to us all to get the messages out?
Finally, we need to ask ourselves these questions: between Lenin, Mussolini and those that followed them along a path of horror on the one hand and the still mostly faceless and fecklessly greedy and incompetent traders and banksters who've all but ruined us--what, if anything, do these groups have in common? What sort of person or persons do we need to avoid having in positions of economic and/or political power? As I sit here and mull this over, it also occurs to me if, at least to some extent, the 'anti-intellectual' strain in our politics perhaps confuses the actually knowledgeable and authoritative person with the authoritarian 'know-all'? Dislike of the former is largely unhelpful; aversion to the second is profoundly necessary. Obama can come off as a 'know-all' but he is actually the real article. The Gingrinch is a near-perfect specimen of the latter. I think we need to beware of anyone who sounds as if they know it all and also act as if they've nothing to learn from you, me or any of the 99%. Any one of us can always learn something new from anyone. So let's beware of such creatures, whether they act professorial (Gingrich) or anti-perfesser (Palin, Bachmann, Perry). One things both groups seem to have in common is a belief that they know and/or own it all--except, of course, their own malfeasances, mistakes and misdeeds!
We also need a variety of 'markers'. One has to be the willingness to take 'radical' action coupled with the readiness to shape it pragmatically. FDR is still a good model of this: he took action and was ready to experiment but he was no ideologue. And being no ideologue never meant he lacked principles. He once said this when asked about his 'philosophy': "Philosophy! Philosophy? I am a Christian and a Democrat--that's all." Well, make the 'd' lowercase and add 'Judeo-' to 'Christian' and that's good enough for me. Which leads to another necessary marker: leaders need to know the difference between infusing society with God's Spirit and keeping government and religion separate. Everyone has to understand that religion and state both do better when strictly separate--and spiritual infusion has to be from the bottom up and never from the top down. A third marker needs to be a leader has to have some idea of who s/he is independent of any office they might hold. We don't need any hollow wo/men who seem to need power so bad they'll sell their office for it.
I could probably say more, but this'll do for now. Think these things over, everyone: perhaps even as we hear the notes of Auld Lang Syne tonight. A blessed New Year to all of you.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
BOTH SIDES NOW?
Ever since Newtie said the 'Palestinians' were an invented people--and, by the way, I do believe he told a truth few want to hear, for a change--I've been mulling that over in light of other things I know since long before Gingrich said that and also in light of what others have had to say about the Gingrinch's words.
First thing worth mentioning: between 1920 and 1948, the Palestine mandate actually saw slightly more Arab immigration than Jewish. The latest figures I've seen have 498,000 Jews versus 558,000 Arabs. One of the inconvenient truths involved here is how often Arab 'leaders' (self-chosen as often as otherwise) have said, from Jemal Pasha's protege and Hitler's ally Haj Amin el-Husseini right up to officials of the PLO including Arafat himself (who, by the way, was Haj Amin's nephew) that there is, essentially, no difference between Jordanians, Syrians, 'Palestinians' and Israeli Arabs. And that the press for a separate 'Palestinian' state is, essentially, today's road to get to Shoah II.
Second thing: without Israel, why should there be anything here but what Mark Twain illumined in Innocents Abroad? A deserted and denuded land, where no more than 250,000 inhabitants scratched for a profoundly bare living. Yet between 1870 (about that time) and 1920 the population of Eretz Israel doubled. Why? Because the Jews were returning and bringing new life and new hope into the land. They actually started coming fifteen or so years before Herzl's congress in Basel. These Jews were known as the Bilu. This was an acronym from the Hebrew phrase Beth Yakov Leku Venelkha, meaning 'House of Jacob, let us go up!' Even when only the Bilu were coming they brought new opportunities into the land. By 1900 and after the new Zionist movement continued the process. So if Mexico invites Israel to decamp to Baja del Sur and gets an affirmative response (yes, G-d forbid!) the UN will probably have a large number of crooked beggars on its hands (and the higher up, the more crooked!) of which they might tire remarkably quickly. Famine, dispersion and re-denuding of the land would surely follow. As to other possible reasons for the population doubling between 1870 and 1920, give me leave, I pray you, to doubt that Western medicine had yet cut into the appalling mortality or that the people of 1920 in 'Palestine' were significantly better nourished (and hence more resistant to disease) than the inhabitants of 1870. Let him or her with proof positive step forward; otherwise open your flap and be known for a fool.
Third: having said all this, I confess to a certain unease about the phrase 'an invented people'. Could not Israel herself be an 'invented' people, albeit created by their relationship with G-d through His Word and mighty miracles on behalf of His first and abiding people? I certainly know myself to belong to an 'invented' people--what else are we Americans? Many years ago I moved from one apartment to another with the help of an Anglo-Irishman who looked remarkably as if he were Donald Sutherland's younger brother and who said, "The only time Ireland was ever one country was when the Brits ran it all." So, even though Irish and Scots (at least Highlanders) are apparently of the same stock, how 'invented' are the Irish as a people? If Brian Boru (whose first name I share) had survived Clontarf, maybe he could've started that consolidation rolling but, alas, things didn't happen that way. And how invented is India, with its northern and southern languages and peoples belonging to completely different groups? And so on ad nauseam.
However, there's invented and there's invented. Specifically, invented for what most of us (mostly regardless of our culture of origin) would call 'positive' reasons--such as bringing G-d's light before the nations, being a refuge for the oppressed, a beacon of liberty (ESPECIALLY religious liberty), liberte, egalite, fraternite, establishing peace under just rule of law or adding to economic democracy. No nation is meant to be sovereign over all the rest, much less a subsumer of them all as Islamists seem to want the Arabs to swallow the rest of us! It's not that the 'Palestinians' are an invented nation; too many nations are also that. No, 'Palestinian' nationality was invented, and is still largely used, for the most negative reason of all: the annhilation of another people and the destruction of their nation-state, the one place on the globe where they know they can protect themselves. This is also why all 'Palestinian' nonviolent resistance campaigns have collapsed: they are unwilling to recognize the humanity, much less the equality, of their opponents. And this is also why the 'Palestinians' are not like other 'peoples of color' either here or in India or South Africa so much as they are like our Tea Partiers: they are so angry over the loss of a 'superiority' they barely had if they had it at all, but now with not having anyone else to humiliate with impunity and having that lack aggravated by having a member (or members) of a previously humiliated and cowed group placed over them is driving one group and a preponderance (?) of the other over the cliff into the sea of political (and actual?) lunacy.
I know that those who hate Jews will do so regardless of whether or not the Jews can protect themselves or not and I hope all those (underneath all their sophistries) who are simply galled by Jewish blood no longer being cheap are consumed by their gall and rage. May they all die with foam on their lips!!
But here's where it feels to me as if G-d intervenes. Those of us who know Scripture know G-d's ways are not our ways and He seems to enjoy surprising us. Recent studies have shown that a whopping ninety percent of 'Palestinians' and Israeli Arabs have Jewish DNA. Not Edomite, not even Israelite, but Jewish. To top it off, 'Palestinians' have DNA closer to the Ashkenazim (!!!) than to the Sephardim. I at least have to ask the questions: Did these 'Arabs' come to Eretz Israel for more than just opportunity? Why did they come to 'Palestine' when their neighbors stayed home? Did something in their DNA or unconscious call them 'home' as it were? And what, if any, 'positive' purpose is or can be served by 'Palestinian' nationality? What, indeed, does G-d require of Israel? Not to give up its state and power, no. It's especially not for Aryans trying to wash the (mostly inherited, true) scent of Jewish blood off their hands to self-righteously lecture Israel on this matter. If they want that scent off their hands, let them show that they will have Israel's back this time as we say in the 'hood by words and actions!
But back to the question: why should there be 'Palestinians' as such? Is it time for them to rejoin their real brethren and return to the Torah and become Israelis? Or is that at another spot in their road ahead? I claim to have absolutely no answer to any of the questions I raise in this post, but I believe they're worth raising nonetheless for a' that, as the poet said.
First thing worth mentioning: between 1920 and 1948, the Palestine mandate actually saw slightly more Arab immigration than Jewish. The latest figures I've seen have 498,000 Jews versus 558,000 Arabs. One of the inconvenient truths involved here is how often Arab 'leaders' (self-chosen as often as otherwise) have said, from Jemal Pasha's protege and Hitler's ally Haj Amin el-Husseini right up to officials of the PLO including Arafat himself (who, by the way, was Haj Amin's nephew) that there is, essentially, no difference between Jordanians, Syrians, 'Palestinians' and Israeli Arabs. And that the press for a separate 'Palestinian' state is, essentially, today's road to get to Shoah II.
Second thing: without Israel, why should there be anything here but what Mark Twain illumined in Innocents Abroad? A deserted and denuded land, where no more than 250,000 inhabitants scratched for a profoundly bare living. Yet between 1870 (about that time) and 1920 the population of Eretz Israel doubled. Why? Because the Jews were returning and bringing new life and new hope into the land. They actually started coming fifteen or so years before Herzl's congress in Basel. These Jews were known as the Bilu. This was an acronym from the Hebrew phrase Beth Yakov Leku Venelkha, meaning 'House of Jacob, let us go up!' Even when only the Bilu were coming they brought new opportunities into the land. By 1900 and after the new Zionist movement continued the process. So if Mexico invites Israel to decamp to Baja del Sur and gets an affirmative response (yes, G-d forbid!) the UN will probably have a large number of crooked beggars on its hands (and the higher up, the more crooked!) of which they might tire remarkably quickly. Famine, dispersion and re-denuding of the land would surely follow. As to other possible reasons for the population doubling between 1870 and 1920, give me leave, I pray you, to doubt that Western medicine had yet cut into the appalling mortality or that the people of 1920 in 'Palestine' were significantly better nourished (and hence more resistant to disease) than the inhabitants of 1870. Let him or her with proof positive step forward; otherwise open your flap and be known for a fool.
Third: having said all this, I confess to a certain unease about the phrase 'an invented people'. Could not Israel herself be an 'invented' people, albeit created by their relationship with G-d through His Word and mighty miracles on behalf of His first and abiding people? I certainly know myself to belong to an 'invented' people--what else are we Americans? Many years ago I moved from one apartment to another with the help of an Anglo-Irishman who looked remarkably as if he were Donald Sutherland's younger brother and who said, "The only time Ireland was ever one country was when the Brits ran it all." So, even though Irish and Scots (at least Highlanders) are apparently of the same stock, how 'invented' are the Irish as a people? If Brian Boru (whose first name I share) had survived Clontarf, maybe he could've started that consolidation rolling but, alas, things didn't happen that way. And how invented is India, with its northern and southern languages and peoples belonging to completely different groups? And so on ad nauseam.
However, there's invented and there's invented. Specifically, invented for what most of us (mostly regardless of our culture of origin) would call 'positive' reasons--such as bringing G-d's light before the nations, being a refuge for the oppressed, a beacon of liberty (ESPECIALLY religious liberty), liberte, egalite, fraternite, establishing peace under just rule of law or adding to economic democracy. No nation is meant to be sovereign over all the rest, much less a subsumer of them all as Islamists seem to want the Arabs to swallow the rest of us! It's not that the 'Palestinians' are an invented nation; too many nations are also that. No, 'Palestinian' nationality was invented, and is still largely used, for the most negative reason of all: the annhilation of another people and the destruction of their nation-state, the one place on the globe where they know they can protect themselves. This is also why all 'Palestinian' nonviolent resistance campaigns have collapsed: they are unwilling to recognize the humanity, much less the equality, of their opponents. And this is also why the 'Palestinians' are not like other 'peoples of color' either here or in India or South Africa so much as they are like our Tea Partiers: they are so angry over the loss of a 'superiority' they barely had if they had it at all, but now with not having anyone else to humiliate with impunity and having that lack aggravated by having a member (or members) of a previously humiliated and cowed group placed over them is driving one group and a preponderance (?) of the other over the cliff into the sea of political (and actual?) lunacy.
I know that those who hate Jews will do so regardless of whether or not the Jews can protect themselves or not and I hope all those (underneath all their sophistries) who are simply galled by Jewish blood no longer being cheap are consumed by their gall and rage. May they all die with foam on their lips!!
But here's where it feels to me as if G-d intervenes. Those of us who know Scripture know G-d's ways are not our ways and He seems to enjoy surprising us. Recent studies have shown that a whopping ninety percent of 'Palestinians' and Israeli Arabs have Jewish DNA. Not Edomite, not even Israelite, but Jewish. To top it off, 'Palestinians' have DNA closer to the Ashkenazim (!!!) than to the Sephardim. I at least have to ask the questions: Did these 'Arabs' come to Eretz Israel for more than just opportunity? Why did they come to 'Palestine' when their neighbors stayed home? Did something in their DNA or unconscious call them 'home' as it were? And what, if any, 'positive' purpose is or can be served by 'Palestinian' nationality? What, indeed, does G-d require of Israel? Not to give up its state and power, no. It's especially not for Aryans trying to wash the (mostly inherited, true) scent of Jewish blood off their hands to self-righteously lecture Israel on this matter. If they want that scent off their hands, let them show that they will have Israel's back this time as we say in the 'hood by words and actions!
But back to the question: why should there be 'Palestinians' as such? Is it time for them to rejoin their real brethren and return to the Torah and become Israelis? Or is that at another spot in their road ahead? I claim to have absolutely no answer to any of the questions I raise in this post, but I believe they're worth raising nonetheless for a' that, as the poet said.
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