Sunday, December 31, 2006

Sweet little Jesus boy .... We didn't know 'twas you.

Just seems like we can't do right;

Look how we treated you.

But please, Sir, forgive us, Lord;

We didn't know 'twas you.



Last Sunday night these were some of the words sung at our church's Christmas cantata, part of the lyrics of the lovely song, "Sweet Little Jesus Boy." Here it seems to me we have the great problem with humanity, with each one of us and all of us together. If only we'd known it was you, O Lord, lying helpless in the manger; if only we'd known, we'd have done right by you. We'd have welcomed you into a warm place, given you honor; as it was, it was left to the stinky shepherds and the illegal aliens who came from their far countries to offer you gifts.



If only we'd known it was you that was hungry, calling to see if someone could provide a little food; if only we'd known it was your rent that was due, or your electricity that was about to be cut off, Lord, we'd have been glad to pay that bill. If only we'd known, Lord, that you lay sick in the hospital, or languished for months in the nursing home, we'd have come to see you. If we'd known you were cold at night, far from home, we'd have welcomed you in. If we had known that it was your house our soldiers broke into, looking for terrorists, we'd have treated that family with a little bit of dignity. If we had known that you were the person with the funny name and the funny look, that we stopped at the airport and rendered under cover of night to a secret prison, we'd have believed you when you said you were innocent.



But Lord, we didn't know. How could we know?



When you were hungry, and we gave you nothing, and thirsty, and we gave you nothing, and you were homeless and we did not welcome you, without adequate clothing and we figured it was your own choice, sick and in prison and we did not come to you? How could we have known?



How could we have known that the least of these, the people we call ugly names, the ones we learn to hate and fear, are your sisters and your brothers? What can we possibly do to keep from making that mistake again?



How could we have known that the death that you died, was to reconcile us with these brothers and sisters of ours, a real and costly reconciliation without which our reconciliation through your blood to God is a fanciful illusion? How could we have imagined that you rose in power for their sakes, and not just our own?



How could we have known that the living God is the Savior of all people, especially those who believe? Could not one of your apostles have written that down?



How could we possibly have known that until we see you in every human being, we have not seen you at all?



Sweet little Jesus boy. We didn't know who you was.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Friday, December 22, 2006

brief test post, and an irony

This is a test post in which I'm trying out an add-on in Firefox that should let me post to multiple blogs simultaneously. Watch this space (or on of my other spaces). While I'm here, let me briefly mention a highly ironic entry at forbiddenlibrary.com:

A Wrinkle In Time. Madeleine L'Engle. Dell. Challenged
at the Polk City, Fla. Elementary School (1985) by a
parent who believed that the story promotes witchcraft,
crystal balls, and demons. Challenged in the Anniston
Ala. schools (1990). The complainant objected to the
book's listing the name of Jesus Christ together with
the names of great artists, philosophers, scientists,
and religious leaders when referring to those who defend
earth against evil. Got it. Let's cross Jesus off that
list, shall we?






powered by performancing firefox

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Monday, November 20, 2006

Act Two, Scene Two

Or maybe it's just a staging of the same one-act play.

Scene one: Unsubstantiated rhetoric about a major Middle Eastern country secretly harboring weapons of mass destruction.

Scene two: The CIA presents findings to the White House that undermines this idea. The findings are rejected, and the rhetoric continues unabated.

Scene Three: Major media campaign in favor of doing something before it's too late.

Scene Four: Military action initiated. When it eventually turns out that there was no good reason for it, everyone blames the CIA for bad intelligence.

Next: Curtains (for hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of human beings).

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Friday, November 17, 2006

Pelosi's Ploy

The talking heads today are all talking about what a big mistake Nancy Pelosi has made in backing Jack Murtha in his failed bid for majority leader, how she has divided her party and weakened her position as the incoming Speaker of the House.

What they are missing is the disarming effect this is going to have on a standard Republican weapon in any upcoming smear campaign. By going to the mat for a positon she has declared, even though the politics were against her, she has shown that she is willing to stand on principle (however misguided that may be perceived to be) without regard to political calculation. She is establishing a character trait for herself as the new Iron Lady, someone with enough backbone to stand toe-to-toe with George W. Bush. She’s no flip-flopper.

Since in the Republican lexicon, Democrat equals Liberal equals Wishy-washy with no spine, this early political move adroitly takes a lot of those talking points off the table. And it was done with little to no real political risk for the party, as the moderate candidate, Steny Hoyer (my Congressman, by the way), had almost no chance of losing and is experienced in working alongside Pelosi. Looking at his demeanor before and after the vote, one wonders if he was maybe in on this thing himself.

It will be interesting to see whether her decision to display a match for what some on the Left consider to be one of Bush’s worst character traits — his refusal to change position or admit he is wrong — ends up working in the Dem’s favor. But it’s a fascinating political move, the import of which has been missed by most observers.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

A turning tide?

I retract my paranoid speculations, admit I was wrong, and rejoice at the resilience of the electoral system, for all its flaws, in America. Turns out that RoveCo has collided with the law of diminishing returns, and the sleeves turned out to be as short as the coattails. Our President’s absolute refusal to contemplate the possibility of a political defeat in the mid-term elections appears to have been cut from the same psychological cloth as his refusal to expect anything but military victory in Iraq. Chances are he has as much as of a plan for dealing with a Democratic house as he did for dealing with an occupied country: none. But I’m in a hopeful mood this morning, and I now fervently hope that in both categories the realities on the ground will educate him in the direction of doing something practical, more realistic, less grandiose, in response to (as Don Rumsfeld* might say) the situation he has, not the situation he doesn’t have.

*(whose resignation was in the works, even as I wrote those words)

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

The Economics of Immigration

Cross-posted.



Got to get down some thoughts on the question of immigration. It’s a hot-button political issue right now in the United States. I’ll leave aside for the moment the compilation of biblical texts showing how, in the theocratic state envisioned in the Torah, foreigners were to be treated (hints: not to be oppressed, to be loved as oneself, not to be barred from gleaning the leftovers of the wheat and grape harvest, to be included with those celebrating national feasts), and talk in real-world contemporary political and economic terms about the elephant in the room in the whole conversation about illegal immigration in the United States.

Why do people risk their lives to cross the border from Mexico into the United States? The commonly reported answer: to work at low-paying jobs that American citizens don’t want, usually as fieldworkers in agriculture. This much is pretty well agreed upon. Solutions proposed to this problem range from building a hundreds-of-miles-long fence at the border and hiring lots of agents to keep the border “secure” so as to reduce this flow of workers, all the way to providing a means for these “undocumented” workers to gain some sort of legal “green card” status, allowing them to be in the country for the purpose of working at those jobs, and eventually, perhaps, if they go through all the right procedures, begin the long and arduous task of applying for citizenship; all of which, in current political discourse, falls under the pejorative word “amnesty.” There’s all kinds of political conversation going on right now about these matters, and whether an “enforcement-only” approach or a “comprehensive” approach is better for the country. But nobody is talking about what really needs to happen to stem the flow of people across the border.

What is needed is for jobs paying a decent wage to become available in Mexico (and other countries). And what is needed for that to happen, is for the United States government to adopt a policy which will (a) put pressure on governments that do not have a decent minimum wage and, even more importantly, (b) provide economic sanctions in the form of tarriffs, taxes, or other penalties against companies which do business both inside and outside the United States but pay their non-US workers such a significantly low rate that those workers would risk their lives to get over here so they could earn bottom-of-the-economy US wages to support their families.

Full employment at a decent wage within the country of origin would shut down the economic motivation for illegal immigration to the United States. It’s a free-market solution to a social problem. It would keep US jobs for US citizens. The only losers would be, in the short run, coporations which take their profits from the sweat of below-subsistence-wage workers (whether here or elsewhere) and, again in the short run, consumers who might get a real-world free-market shock over the price of beans, bananas, coffee, sugar and other agricultural commodities (and manufactured goods in the case of companies which have shipped their jobs overseas in order to escape the cost of labor in the United States). However, our recent experience with the price of oil and gasoline has shown that at the consumer level we seem quite surprisingly capable of absorbing rather steep price increases in response to market forces.

In the long run, the winners would be:

* workers in Mexico and elsewhere who would get to stay home and support their families without risking their lives at an increasingly militarized border;
* workers in American agriculture, some of them, to be sure, recent immigrants, who could command somewhat higher pay because the endless supply of cheap throwaway labor would have begun to dry up;
* that seemingly large segment of Americans who are alarmed at the influx of illegal immigrants, which would slow dramatically;
* the United States government, which would be able to implement a border policy that requires fewer resources than would otherwise be necessary
* Economies south of the border who would begin to see the emergence of a middle class
* Workers in US industry, who would see fewer of their jobs transferred elsewhere as the differential in labor cost from country to country is reduced.

Now, there is an immigration policy. Anybody want to talk about it?

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Monday, October 23, 2006

Political Paranoia

Crossposted: Philosophickal Ruminations:

"It's quiet. Too quiet.

Fifteen days before the general election, the conventional wisdom is that the Democrats will regain the House of Representatives, and maybe the Senate. Oddly, Messrs. Bush and Rove appear unconcerned; which could be spin, or there could be something up their sleeve. I'm betting on the sleeve.

So I will make a prediction here, in the fond hope that I am wrong.

One possibility is that Rove & Co. still have a genuine October Surprise up their sleeve, something that will frighten and distract the electorate some time within the next seven days, late enough so that reasoned analysis will not be able to gain a foothold in time for the election. A preemptive strike on Iran was my early thought, and I still don't rule it out. The North Korea crisis seems to have been prematurely defused by the evil machinations of Kim Jong Il, who had the audacity to depart from the script and apologize for making trouble lately. Why can't the bad guy ever be as unreasonable as we make him out to be?

But geopolitical events are too unreliable, so here's what my gut tells me: on Election Night, the election will be stolen, right from under our noses. Ohio 2004, which stole the general election for the president largely using electronic voting machines manufactured by Diebold, Inc., was a dry run for the real thing: the simultaneous theft of multiple congressional elections by undetectable electronic vote-tally flipping. Polling will show Democrats winning big until late in the evening, but official results will curiously show the polls to be, suddenly and inexplicaby, unreliable — just as happened with exit polls in Ohio in 2004. It's a bold move that can work in America precisely because none of us really can make ourselves believe that such a thing could happen in America. We'd rather mistrust the voters, the pollsters, our own eyes, than the integrity of the electoral process. The rotten corpse of democracy will lie in the street, and we'll pretend not to notice the smell.

That's my prediction. I do hope to God I'm wrong. For the record, in case I'm not wrong, you heard it here."

Edit: 11/7/06 11:40 PM EDT: Looks like there is a God, I am, thankfully, wrong, and there is a possibility that democracy is not dead in America. However, Ken Mehlman is still spouting puff and bluster about Virginia and Maryland. Since Maryland has gone all electronic, it's a great candidate for pulling one more test run in the Senate race; we'll see if that's where the final "official" results contradict the exit polls. Nevertheless, it does look like the People's House cannot yet be taken out from under us wholesale.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Pacifism in 2006 « The Search For Integrity

Pacifism in 2006 « The Search For Integrity

Crossposted.

Many thoughts have been rumbling in my brain.....

Let's talk about civil disobedience and terrorism. I met someone this summer, a grown man, who had never even considered the idea that being willing to die and being willing to kill are not necessarily the same thing. He wouldn't know the difference between a pacifist and a terrorist.

The provocative claim I want to make is that at some deep level, the suicide bomber and the practitioner of civil disobedience — I'm thinking here of our old friends Mahatma "Great Soul" Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and those who are influenced by them — have, I would suggest, several commonalities and one major difference.

Commonalities:

* Both act from a deep religious conviction, or from an ideological commitment that arises from an overarching religious view of the world.
* Both are convinced that they are doing something for a cause much greater than themselves.
* Both are willing to go outside the law to achieve their goals.
* Both are radically committed to taking responsibility for their own actions.
* Both have made up their mind that their actions are taken on behalf of the oppressed.
* Both are familiar with the religious concept of martyrdom. Both are willing to die.
* Both believe history is on their side.

Now for the difference.

* The practitioner of civil disobedience has made a decision to renounce violent action as a means to a good end.

In that one thing, the terrorist has more in common with the authorities than he does with the practitioner of civil disobedience. The terrorist and the government authorities he opposes are agreed that violence is a legitimate way to solve problems.

Because they challenge that very idea, the practitioners of civil disobedience are a greater potential threat to oppressive governments than a bomber could ever be. It's just that to really practice civil disobedience, a huge level of clear-headed commitment, courage, and integrity is required. Such people are, seemingly, all too rare.

Martin Luther King, Jr. applied what he learned from the New Testament to the social conflicts of mid-twentieth century America, and instructed enough people in nonviolent methods of confrontation that a great social revolution brought about change, without recourse to the kind of violence that some, who also wanted change, were convinced was going to be necessary to make it happen. Indeed, King explicitly repudiated violent methods and trained people in the methodologies of nonviolent civil disobedience. Building on a similar vision, the bloodbath everyone expected to see with the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa didn't happen, because leaders arose who learned and applied the same lessons. Reconciliation, a word rooted in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ himself, entered the global political vocabulary at that time.

What I'm saying is this: Nonviolent confrontation works to bring about large-scale transformation in modern societies. It worked in Poland with the Solidarity movement. It worked when Gandhi led an independence movement in India. It worked to bring about enormous social change in the United States and in Africa.

Of course, when the authorities meet up with a leader who engages in nonviolent confrontation and teaches others to do the same, that leader often finds that several things occur. Think about this with regard to, say, Gandhi, King, and Nelson Mandela.

* First the leader is opposed, denounced, spied on, inveighed against, sometimes imprisoned, and the people he trains in nonviolent methods are often confronted violently. There are casualties. People die. Often as not, at some point the dead include the outspoken leader.
* Second, the movement is found to succeed, and eventually gains some advocates among those who wield power. Transformational change occurs. The advocate of nonviolent confrontation is now treated with respect, though perhaps posthumously.
* Third, some among those who have followed this leader begin to move among the powerful. This is a dangerous time, because they are now tempted to forget some of what they have learned and begin to use the methods (including legitimated violence) that tend to be available to those in power.
* Fourthly, the population at large is encouraged to do two things at once: continue to neglect the actual teachings of the leader, while also admiring said leader's character.
* Finally, an officially sanctioned personality cult emerges as a substitute for the study and practice of the leader's ideas and methods. His ways are forgotten, and instead, let's say, his birthday is made an official holiday.

Time passes. Oppression and violence again begin to portray themselves as the only real and practical way to solve problems in the world. The leadership vacuum begins to be filled by those who combine violent ways with unwavering faith. Things get worse, unless and until someone remembers, and a new leader takes courage and begins to practice the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

And that new leader, like his predecessors, will be denounced by those who would prefer, instead of studying and following those teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, to promote instead a cult of personality, satisfied that he too is sufficiently honored by making his birthday an official holiday.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Tinsel Wing: Meta-abuse of government secrecy

If integrity is characterized by openness, what do we call Meta-abuse of government secrecy?

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Words are important

My thoughts today on who's saying what about the disruption of a terrorist plot in London can be found over here. But to save you time:


Mayor Bloomberg of
New York today referred to the foiled plot to blow up multiple
airplanes as a “criminal conspiracy” and emphasized the the central
role of the NYPD (”the best police force in the world”) in keeping New
Yorkers safe from future attacks. The intelligence and the disruption
operation, resulting in the arrest of 21 at least 24 suspects, was carried out by Scotland Yard.


To the extent that terrorist acts are being prevented or pre-empted,
worldwide, it is thanks to the work of law enforcement, and the
cooperation of law enforcement agencies internationally. Plots have
been disrupted in a number of European countries, who are not at war
with anyone, as well as in Canada, in addition to (one presumes) the
US. But hizzoner was off-message; the rhetoric you will soon hear from
the US talking heads, starting with heads of government agencies and
the head of government himself, will quickly turn the conversation away
from the effectiveness of law enforcement and back to the concept of
“war.” [Edit: As predicted, George W. Bush lost no time in getting
in front of TV cameras to say that this event is a reminder that we are
at "war" with "Islamic fascists."]
But it was not an act of war
that disrupted these terrorists. No armies, navies, marines, bombs,
explosives, commandos even, were involved. It was good police work.


Wars happen between nations and involve armies and air forces and
things getting blown up, and, inevitably, the deaths of many people.
Wars also have beginnings and endings that are more or less
identifiable. Police work, however, is never finished, even on days
when no one commits a crime.


But the war rhetoricians will tell you that to think of terrorism as
criminality and the efforts against them as police work is to be soft
on terror and an act of surrender. They are wrong. When even a good
nation begins to act lawlessly, then terror has already won.



Stumble Upon Toolbar

Saturday, August 05, 2006

On the nature of Christianity

Reposted with revisions, from early 2004:

On another journal, a friend has posted the following assertion:

Christianity is a death cult. Do good. Spread the word. Die.

He prefaces this with an insistence, which should be obvious to anyone who gives the matter more than fifteen second thought, that the call to take up the cross is an invitation to death, and not just any death, but death of a most painful, humiliating and violent kind —the kind of death suffered at the hands of the state by those who are legally deemed to deserve not only the end of their life, but to be held up as an example of the pain and punishment that goes with criminality.

It is not a new observation, of course. Just a few decades ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer zeroed in on this same point with the opening words of his book The Cost of Discipleship: "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
And in every generation (so I assert), there has been a conflict between people who actually GOT the message and wanted to do what Jesus had preached, and those who wanted to stabilize it into a real religion, usually one that provided them with a meal ticket in the process.
—to quote my friend again.

So let me suggest that there is a moral equivalence between (a) the proffered promise of eternal life, which translates (in popular imagination, by a process encouraged endlessly by that party which also embraced Constantine and the ascendancy of the kingdoms of this world) into dreams of a future heavenly existence, but which more properly refers to something that begins with a transformation of this present existence, and (b) the call to embrace death— one's own death, that is to say, whether understood merely as the inevitability of mortality or as the necessary beginning-point of the all-embracing transformation. Christianity sees death as the gateway to life — to this life, not just (or, perhaps, at all?) a life in an otherworldly future. Those who have died have been set free. Those who know how to die well have a message that can set others free. Those who, having died, have lost the fear of death, are free to do the good that such fear would otherwise restrain them from. Thus in those intervening decades between the writing of the New Testament and the establishment of Christianity as an acceptable religion under Constantine, Christians were known, among other things, for their willingness to care for the sick in the midst of plague, giving no regard to their own risk. Like the martyrs, their contemporaries, who faced flame and wild beasts, they took joy in such tasks, by which they bore witness to the Message they had received. Abundant life and the bold embrace of death were one and the same.

Thus letter-writers Paul, Peter and John could talk about death as already having happened, and the new life as that which was the possession only of those who had truly died. To Paul, this meant living in the power of the resurrection. To John, it meant living in love, and thus without fear. To Peter, it meant. being partakers of the divine nature and living the rest of this earthly life by the will of God.

The conflict is always between those who see such things as somehow indicative of otherworldly hopes, and those who see them as descriptions of what it means to fully embrace the instructions of that incredibly charismatic rabbi, Jesus, on how to live in this world, that is, how to embrace death — not only its inevitability, but its painful reality — while living.

It is better to die in screaming agony than never really to live. Live wholly. Do what you can. Die well.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Small signs of hope

Lebanese and Israeli Bloggers Empathize Online reveals a slightly hopeful trend that is going on under the radar. On both sides of an active conflict, there are people who respond to one another as human beings. I'm not sure that governments, or even leaders of political movements, will ever get the "love your enemy" thing, but people on the ground may provide another narrative than that given by either side.

Pullquote:

More generally speaking, what comes out of these conversations—through blogs or interspersed commentaries between Israelis and Lebanese—is a feeling of powerlessness and sadness regarding this conflict over the civilian losses it has caused, and over the policymakers of their respective countries and their international allies who have subjected them to this fait accompli. Hope is also present in these conversations, for while many Lebanese bloggers today feel hate toward Israel and will now refuse any contact with Israelis, most of those who communicate online do not consider themselves as “enemies” but as “neighbours”.


Perhaps the will toward reconciliation will outlast the will toward annihilation, as life trumps death. All that the purveyors of death can do is kill, themselves or others, or (more often) both. But creative striving toward peace does not have death as its endpoint, but new life, a hope and a future.

Unfortunately, each side in a conflict can also envision peace — what is now being called, by some, a "sustainable" cease-fire; sustainable if and only if by the time it is proclaimed one side has clearly won, and the other clearly lost. Every empire and every dictatorship imposes such a peace upon the territory it has subdued: a peace built on terror, not on opposition to terror. But this kind of false peace is actually what is not sustainable. It is of this kind of peace that the seeds of new conflict are sown, as could be shown by many historical examples.

For my own part, I would say that any nation which for any reason belittles, discounts, repudiates, eschews or diminishes talk of forgiveness or reconciliation and all that goes with it, has forfeited, indeed explicitly repudiated, any meaningful association with the values that would truly be necessary for it to be called — as some would like to do — a "Christian" nation. In the New Testament, reconciliation, forgiveness and restoration are the means by which God is made known in the world, by which it proclaims that the Kingdom of God has already arrived: that peaceable kingdom in which every man is free to invite his neighbor to sit with him under his own vine and under his own fig tree. If Israelis and Lebanese are still seeking, while missiles and bombs are falling, to call each other neighbor, not enemy, we can yet pray with hope: "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on Earth..."

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Quote for the day

Lest we forget....

MODERATOR: New question. How would you go about as president deciding when it was in the national interest to use U.S. force, generally?

BUSH: Well, if it's in our vital national interest, and that means whether our territory is threatened or people could be harmed, whether or not the alliances are -- our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force. Secondly, whether or not the mission was clear. Whether or not it was a clear understanding as to what the mission would be. Thirdly, whether or not we were prepared and trained to win. Whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped. And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy. I would take the use of force very seriously. I would be guarded in my approach. I don't think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we've got to be very careful when we commit our troops. The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. . .


And one more:
[BUSH:] If we don't have a clear vision of the military, if we don't stop extending our troops all around the world and nation building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road, and I'm going to prevent that.

—The First Presidential Debate, October 3, 2000.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Birth Pangs

For those who are paying attention, this week's comment by Condoleeza Rice, on the occasion of her holding out from what would have been a consensus about a call for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, containing the cryptic phrase "birth pangs of a new Middle East," sends a coded signal to a huge number of American evangelicals that the United States is seeking to become a midwife to the onset of the Great Tribulation.

Disclaimer: "Rapture" is an evangelical technical term, and the entire dispensatonal-millenial belief system that promotes it is a latecomer to Christian theology. Suffice to say here that while I have an insider's understanding of what all that is about, neither I nor the faith tradition that has nurtured me find reason to make use of it. I'll leave for another day all the ins and outs of interpretation involved. However: even though this is rather an intramural discussion among Christians, it has huge implications for how people think about the course of world events.

Some of us would actually like to follow Jesus, and some want a ringside seat at fulfillment of prophecy. Many, no doubt, think the two are the same thing. And since biblical prophecies are replete with predictions of calamity, we have the bizarre sight of followers of the Prince of Peace acting as cheerleaders for more calamity. I wonder if this is what the Master wishes, when he comes, to find his servants so doing.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Monday, July 24, 2006

The Stealth Veto

The New York Times reported this morning that the American Bar Association is issuing a report strongly denouncing the current president's practice of issuing "signing statements" after putting his signature on bills passed by Congress.

In a comprehensive report, a bipartisan 11-member panel of the bar association said Mr. Bush had used such “signing statements” far more than his predecessors, raising constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws on the ground that they infringed on his prerogatives.

These broad assertions of presidential power amount to a “line-item veto” and improperly deprive Congress of the opportunity to override the veto, the panel said.

The issue now being revealed has to do with the linkage between the proliferation of these signing statements (more than 800 so far) and the paucity of vetoes (one) in the Bush presidency. It's very simple: If the president doesn't veto a bill, Congress has no way, short of impeachment on grounds of violation of the "faithfully execute" clause, to directly address his refusal to comply with portions of it.

And since Congress wouldn't give him the line-item veto, he just went ahead and took it, on the sly. With no opportunity for Cogress to override. Sweet. When the King finally dissolves Parliament, will anyone even notice?

For further reading: Fellow blogger Tinsel Wing has provided a "top ten" list, first published early this month by the Boston Globe.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Friday, July 21, 2006

Till Death Do Us Part?

Cross-posted.

I’ve seen a lot of people get divorced, some after decades of marriage. I’ve been one of those old-fashioned folks who really would like for the marriage vows “until death do us part” to mean something. Lately I’ve decided that really, they do.

One of the last few conversations I had with the mother of a large family before she died had to do with this topic. She had seen numerous family members go through this painful process of separation from their spouses. She said this to me:

“You know, sometimes I think in the church [meaning, our little congregation] we’ve made a mistake, because we’ve been so anxious not to judge people or condemn them who have been divorced, that we’ve not really talked about what a terrible thing it is.”

I agreed that divorce is a tragedy in every case, even when it seems like it was the right thing to do, even if there’s no blame to be placed on the divorced person, even if later on the parties experience growth and change for the better in their (now separate) lives. We should never pretend that something heartwrenchingly painful and soul-destroying has not occurred.

So I got to thinking again about the wedding vows, and whether or not they mean something that is somehow true even in those cases that end in this tragedy of divorce. And I realized, that divorce itself involves a kind of a death, and that makes the marriage vow true “until death do us part” even in those cases. No one gets a divorce without something dying, or having died. You hear it in the language: “I felt like I had died inside.” “It seemed that there was no life in our relationship anymore.” “I knew it was over.” People in this process go through deep mourning, just as real and severe as when one mourns a loved one’s passing. All the stages of grief apply: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and at the very last, acceptance. The tragedy is real, incontrovertible. The difference is that what has died is not a person, but a relationship: something as real, in the realm of the spirit, as anything can be.

For the believer in the living God, however, it is necessary to go through that mourning, and receive the promise: blessed are they that mourn. It is possible to acknowledge the depth of the tragedy, without imposing a rigid requirement that the person live the rest of their lives in its shadow. We bury our dead; we say goodbye, and turn to the next task of life. We don’t pretend there has been no loss, but neither do we devote our existence to building monuments to that loss. We look for new life, new joy, beyond this death a resurrection. We comfort one another, and are comforted. We remember the good. We create new relationships. We live again.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Monday, July 17, 2006

The Calculus of Death

News reports at the hour of this writing indicate that the attacks by Hezbollah rockets on Haifa and the towns of northern Israel have resulted in 24 Israeli deaths, while the retaliatory barrage of Israeli airpower on targets in Lebanon have killed at least 170 human beings. What I see no one asking is this:

In the deadly calculus of war, are we prepared to accept that a lethality ratio of a little better than 7 to 1 deaths, in the name of a right to self-defense, is acceptably proportional, so long as the seven are somehow associated with the bad guys?

By that calculus, America should be perfectly happy to kill about 21,000 Saudis and Yemenis and whatnot in retaliation for 9/11. Except, oh, wait: we substituted Iraqis, didn't we, and raised the ratio by another order of magnitude.

Remember, it's the bad guys who have no respect for human life. That's why we have to kill so many more of them, than they ever do of us.

Or maybe I just never was that good at math.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Lies, damn lies and FUD

This is SOOOOOOOOO evil!

An outfit calling itself "Hands Off the Internet" has just fielded a television spot opposing Net Neutrality. In 30 seconds it makes a series of utterly false claims and even more twisted buzzwords, designed to have the following effect:

1. Convince the viewers that some nutcases out here are trying to get congress to ENACT something called "Net Neutrality" thus preventing "progress" and "competition" on the internet.

2. Pretend that when a major newswpaper such as the Washington Post editiorializes that Congress should "stay out of cyberspace," this supports the goals of the backers of the ad, when in fact it does just the opposite by supporting the status quo, which has been assigned this label of "Net Neutrality."

Thereby,

3. Stirring the emotions of an unthinking public to bring an outcry that in fact is contrary to the interests of that public's actual opinion, which is generally that, yes indeed, rules governing how internet access is distributed SHOULD NOT CHANGE.

I am about willing to pay a hundred bucks cold cash* to anyone who can demonstrate that this "Hands Off the Internet" organization is not a wholly-owned or fully-funded creature of the telecommunications giants, whose goal is to get congress to ACT by enacting NEW arrangements that would allow those companies to impose control of bandwidth based on content, and control of content based on the payment of big money. This corporate control of the flow of information is what is referred to in Orwellian style, in the ad, as "competition." Make no mistake: The opponents of so-called net neutrality want to make it less likely that the average surfer will ever see what YOU post to the internet.

Expose them. Please.

(a public service rant.)

* [edit: I get to keep my cash. See the page listing supporters of handsoff.org, including AT&T, Cingular, Bell South, etc... According to Sourcewatch.org,

The bulk of HOTI's financial support comes from the newly re-formed AT&T, which has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into HOTI ad campaigns, including extensive advertising buys across the blogosphere and in mainstream and beltway press. Nowhere throughout these ads is it disclosed that the effort is funded by the nation's largest telecommunications companies and lobbyists. Instead, HOTI ads are fashioned to look and feel like genuine grassroots efforts, backed by broad popular suport.
]

[EDIT as of August 1, 2006]: There is a slashdot discussion today rehashing the arguments, and buried deep within is a link to an excellent summary of the issues involved.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Friday, July 14, 2006

A quote for today

[War] is instinctive.  But the instinct can be fought.  We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands!  But we can stop it.  We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today.  That's all it takes!  Knowing that we're not going to kill today!
                -- Kirk, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.0

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Nine Dollar Gasoline

Had a dream last night.  It seems the federal government had finally decided to get serious about the dependence on fossil fuels, and announced a program for alternative energy transportation to be put on the fast track.  I don't remember the details of that program, but in conjunction with that came another announcement:

Effective immediately, the retail price of gasoline, nationwide, would be set and frozen at nine dollars ($9.00) a gallon.  

Presumably this would serve as consumer protection on the high side (to keep the price from going to, say, twelve).  But in the immediate effect, there would be two consequences:  

1.  Short-term decrease in demand, some of it permanent as people adjust to different ways and schedules of getting from place to place.

2.  An immediate revenue stream to fund the change to alternative energy sources, presuming that the difference between this madated price and what the market would bear is forfeit to the government for that purpose.

Good thing I woke up when I did, eh?

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Infallible presidency?

We know that the claims for papal infallibility extend to formal occasions only, when the senior pastor of the world's Roman Catholics speaks "ex cathedra." Apparently our Chief executive is on more sure footing than that, at least according to this lawyer whose salary is paid by your taxes:

The President Is Always Right

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Saturday, July 08, 2006

A real slogan to fight for?

What if people started upholding the values espoused by Jesus and his apostles? Check this link to the One Commanment campaign.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Saturday, June 10, 2006

economic musings (a fragment)

Been thinking about economics.

The current prevailing economic/political paradigm is one of growth/surplus. The equations go something like this. Economically, sustained growth is the Holy Grail. A healthy economy is a growing economy. You know you’re doing well if you have a higher level of economic activity, productivity, profit, and so on, this year or this month than in the previous period. This idea drives all the talk that we hear about the markets, stock prices, employment, goods and services, international trade, the whole ball of wax.

Now, if you overlay this underlying presumption about the virtue of growth, which is really a corollary of the notion that profit is good, therefore a lot of profit must be very good, with another basic economic assumption that has driven Western thinking since at least the days of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, namely that the economy as a whole is also a zero-sum game, then something else comes into play. The pursuit of a surplus economy against a backdrop of limited resources leads to the virtue of deficits. Simple accounting: where there is a profit, somewhere there must be a loss. So the vision of sustained surpluses cannot be extrapolated to a global economy, because somewhere there has to be a loser: other nations, the working class, future taxpayers. You can only keep this thing going as long as all the balls stay in the air. It all crashes down the day the last payment comes due. So the name of the game becomes to put off that day of reckoning, or see that it falls on someone else. This drives trade policy, and inevitably, military policy. One of the great benefits of a huge military in the service of unlimited expansion is that the military is a great way to generate a huge amount of totally non-productive economic activity. That keeps the balls in the air, and also keeps those in the game that might get tired and want to get out.

But what I’m interested in is whether there might be other possible models for an economy. When a surplus economy collides with limited resources, you get a zero-sum situation with all the attendant evils: wars and rumours of wars, a widening gap between rich and poor. Profit is good, living wages diminish profits and are therefore bad. Is there another way?

Historically, other ways have occurred. What I’d like to explore is what I want to call a sufficiency economy. Here the goal is not surplus, not profit, but sufficiency, and of course here I will be talking about sufficiency for, in the first instance, living breathing humans. But even if we could think about sufficiency for those non-human (not to say inhuman) artificial persons, that is, corporations, whose profits are today thought to be the only real moral good in the universe, this would not be such a bad idea either.

In a sufficiency economy, the goal would be to have enough economic activity for the purpose of making sure that all participants are fed, clothed, adequately housed, and allowed to enjoy their life as well as they can. There is actually a biblical precedent for this, and several attendant mandates.

The precedent is found in the story of the manna in the wilderness: every morning, when the manna would appear on the ground, the people would go out, household by household, to gather food for the day, and “he who gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack.” Those who tried to hoard a surplus found that it putrefied overnight. Sustained activity was assured, because new food had to be acquired each day; but there was no chance of anyone garnering a profit from the needs of others.

The mandates that support this way of thinking are many, but I’ll mention only two to begin with. One was the prohibition against any one person acquiring large tracts of land, enforced in part by the second, which was the release of debts every seventh year. One of the major driving forces behind a profit/suplus/deficit/debt-driven economy, the creation of a permanent debtor class, or a situation of permanent indebtedness, was anticipated and cut off at the knees by these provisions of the law of Moses. The goal was not to create an unattainable Utopia by the elimination of poverty (“the poor you will always have with you”) but to provide for its continued mitigation and relief by both structural and social means (therefore you shall be openhanded and not close your heart against your brother).

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Monday, June 05, 2006

Nothing to see here. Move along

Or was that, MoveOn?

This affects us all. Take a look. The issue is something called Net Neutrality.

save the internet

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Friday, June 02, 2006

No Comment


Does the church ever send a mixed message?

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Jesus isn't magic

Could hardly have said this better myself. A highly recommended article.

Excerpt:

Rather than the magic Jesus, there is a very real and powerful Christ whose teachings continue drawing the world to his kingdom community from many neighbors. Ironically, many who preach about absolutes and literal interpretations use situational ethics and complicated arguments to explain that Jesus did not mean what he said.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

decoding Dan Brown

Okay, so I finally swallowed my gum and got a copy of The Da Vinci Code, and read it. I wasn't so interested that I would pay for a new copy, so I got a used one through Amazon. I read it out of a sense of professional duty; in my line of work, people are likely to ask me what I think of this book (and movie, which I don't intend to inflict on myself for a while yet).

Full disclosure: I really, really can't stand the way Dan Brown writes. I got through maybe five or ten pages of Angels and Demons and couldn't bring myself to read further. He's juvenile, overdramatic, does not know how to portray simple human emotions, so he doesn't try; he just tells you that his characters are scared, shocked, confused, puzzled, worried, relieved or whatever. So, okay, going in I have a fairly well-formed resentment at a guy that can have the chutzpah to pass this stuff off as good writing, and actually make money at it. Fine.

Add to that the myriad ways he gets his basic facts wrong (I counted at least six separate errors in one short but particularly egregious paragraph, and that's not the whole of it by any means). So okay, as fiction it's junk, and as reliable material for anything like history, it's worse than junk. And the cryptography is grade-school level and implausible to boot. What's left, then, is a fairly ordinary page-turner of an adventure story, with a few puzzles and twists to keep the pages turning.

I'm not about to take up the cudgels on behalf of post-Constantinian Christianity, but really in this instance there's no need. For all that he bashes, in various ways, the institutional Church (and some of its colorfully imagined components), the bashing is limited to an idea of a monolithic mind-control organization which, to the extent that such a thing exists, would not be worth defending. As to the big controversial idea that he expropriates from the 1983 book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which is supposed somehow to be in danger of shaking the faith of millions, even if it were accurate, I've only got two words:

So what?

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Kurt Lortz


Kurt Lortz, a friend of mine for thirty years, died Monday.

Steve and Kurt Lortz are the brothers responsible for the now hard-to-find game Panzer Pranks and Kurt's never-published Dark Worlds, which, after it was replaced, pursuant to a creative dispute with the publisher over certain details, by the moderately successful Call of Cthulhu, continued to be developed as a more generic (non-Lovecraftian) vampire-hunting roleplaying game. Back in 1976, Steve introduced a number of us to the role-playing-game concept; Dungeons and Dragons was a fairly new thing back then, and Steve knew the authors, or at least Dave Arneson, pretty well. So Steve taught us game mechanics and something of the basics of how to run an rpg, and has gone on to design more games and sculpt a lot of miniature figures, making him fairly well-known in gaming circles; whilst Kurt, his more flamboyant younger brother, did research into arcane background material, and with his flair for the dramatic could be counted on to create conditions for a dynamite (sometimes literally) interactive story. Many nights we spent, with various groups of unwashed geeks, into the wee hours and beyond, especially as we playtested the various iterations of that great project, Dark Worlds. But we might also be discussing the great questions of life, delving into spiritual truth or political untruth.

Some people you meet, and get along with, and spend time with pleasantly enough, because you happen to live nearby and have some common interests. Other people you choose, and keep in touch with no matter what the geography, and despite how interests may change. I've known Steve since the fall of 1968, and Kurt since 1976. We've kept in touch because we wanted to, and have become legends in one another's lives. Locations, relationships, marriages, various jobs and responsibilities change over time; but friendship has remained a constant. So it was that this past March when I was in central Indiana for a day or so, I called Steve, and the two of us took a few hours and went to visit Kurt, who due to a series of deteriorating health conditions, was by then residing in a nursing home outside Indianapolis. For the past several years Kurt has been teaching in a private school, and had continued to do so until this most recent series of hospitaizations. He was absolutely devoted to his students. Last year he told me how he had, over the previous year, battled successfully against an agressive cancer, and consciously used his own situation as a teaching tool for those in his charge. He wanted them to learn how to face the realities of life, including suffering, with dignity and faith, and he was proud of how they had succeeded. Now the cancer was back, along with other issues. But he was still the same Kurt: deadly serious about facing reality head on, but full of humor, able to laugh at himself and evoke laughter, and at the same time able to make every situation into a larger-than-life story. He had a laptop computer in his room, on which he was composing music. Our visit together was like old times, though his body was failing him: confined to bed and wheelchair, painful sores on his body, his hands wrapped in bandages, periodic bouts of pain so severe that sometimes he would pass out from the pain. But in heart and spirit bouyant, the twinkle never leaving his eye, always full of gratitude to God for his grace. It was a good visit. I couldn't help wonder if it might be the last.

Last night, Steve phoned to give me the news. There had been time enough for his family to gather, some from far away, and be with him in his final moments. Steve told me that when the moment came, strange to say, they felt like dancing, the way you would when a runner on your team breaks the tape at the finish line. I'm sure you just would have had to be there.

Kurt Lortz: a legend in my life, large in every way. A man of courage, and dignity, indomitable faith, and utmost loyalty.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Christianism

TIME.com: My Problem with Christianism -- May 15, 2006 -- Page 1
I've been troubled for many months by the co-opting of the label "Christian" to mean a set of views and agendas in the current political climate that may or may not have anything to do with actually following Jesus. A couple of years ago, James Earl Massey suggested to a group of pastors his view that, indeed, we should think of ourselves, not as "Christians" but as "Christ-ones" or something like that. The linked article reflects much of the concern that I think many people feel.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

A distorted Reflection

Just thought I'd provide, for the benefit of anyone who cares (and the several billion who don't), a little rumination on the title(s) and similar identifying marks of this blog.

The blog ID, as in, subdomain in the URL is chance-meeting: chance-meeting.blogspot.com.
The blog title is "dancing on the edge of doom"
The blog owner is identified as "Over the Left Shoulder"

I'll take these in reverse order.

"Over the left shoulder" is, by some accounts, the location of that invisible companion, Death, who accompanies the wise on their earthly journey; I should say, accompanies all of us, but the wise get their wisdom (again, by some accounts) from an awareness that he is there, which is to say, that life is short, fragile, and terminal. Presumably there is some connection with the left shoulder being the one on which our Savior bore his cross, and thus there is a link to the call to discipleship specifically as relates to the continual awareness and constant embrace of one's own mortality, which results, strangely enough, in the overcoming of the morbid fear of death which, though unspoken and ofen unacknowledged, so often otherwise has a tendency to rule our lives: "If any one would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me; for whoever seeks to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the good news, shall find it."

"dancing on the edge of doom" is wonderfully ambiguous as to its origins, but aficionados of J.R.R. Tolkien will recognize it as evoking the image of Gollum, holding aloft at last the Ring, still encircling Frodo's finger (which has been bitten off) —dancing madly a victory dance, just before losing his footing.... and plunging into the Cracks of Doom, thus destroying himself and the Ring together, and despite all, fulfilling the Quest of the Ringbearer.

Those without an intimate knowledge of that scene may instead get an idea of a reference to an unbridled optimism which celebrates life no matter how immanent the impending demise, whatever form it may take, might be.

Both of these together, or either one, could be taken as a metaphor for the precarious situation in which our world, geopolitically speaking, now finds itself; and might indeed also be seen as a defiant affirmation in the face of all obstacles that life is still worth living; even that the worst disaster, as that which indeed befell Gollum in the midst of his victory dance, can lead to unanticipated benefits, the defeat of evil, a changed world.... hence it is intentionally, whatever else it may seem to be, an image of a perhaps irrational, but nevetheless incontrovertible, hope.

Finally: "chance-meeting" is another LOTR reference. Sometime when all the action is past, one finds Gandalf and Aragorn reminiscing about the first time they encountered one another, at the inn in Bree, setting in motion a confluence of events that led ultimately to the protection of the hobbits on their way to Rivendell, the formation of the fellowship, and the Quest itself, the fall of Sauron and the beginning of a new age. The narrative of that encounter is summed up with the words: "A chance-meeting, as we say in Middle-Earth."

And thus entangled with the irrational hope of this blogger is the possibility that in such a humble corner of cyberspace as here, just as in a back-room of the inn at Bree, something might yet be set in motion that could save the world.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

It's all so strangely connected

No harm done, they said. She was probably just a pencil-pusher with a desk job, they said. What's the big deal, anyway, they said. That was then. Apparently, this also was then:
Reports: Plame Was Monitoring Iran Nukes When Outed

So who's going to be held responsible for Iran's new-clear program entering the Fact-Free Zone? Hmm, lemme guess.... In the Accountability-Free Zone of our fearless leaders, the only people who get shot at are the messengers.

Or maybe we'll eventually learn that Valerie was finding out, and reporting to her superiors, that Iran was actually, as they now insist, wanting to enrich uranium for alternative power, not for weapons. Of course, with the damage to our intelligence capabilites diminished following her outing, we have lost access to sources that could have confirmed or refuted that. What to do when you don't know and now can't find out? Better safe than sorry, eh? Two birds with one stone...

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Thursday, April 20, 2006

See The Kingdom (another shameless plug)

See The Kingdom

It appears that the site listed above wants more traffic. I'm trying to help. Is that so wrong?

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Looky, looky

Some well-reasoned thoughts....
Iraq and the Legacy of Abraham

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Death and taxes....

.... the only two things that are sure, according to the reputed wisdom of Poor Richard, the alter ego of Benjamin Franklin. At least, that's the way the story goes. Well, death seems a sure thing, and we've dealt with more than our usual share of it lately, leading to the grim subtitle of this particular space. As you may know, in some views of the way the world works, Death is a friend that hovers over a person's left shoulder, providing helpful guideance toward that inevitable moment when one takes flight, beyond the left shoulder, into... the great beyond.

Taxes, of course, are another matter. They can be dodged, cut, deferred, delayed, avoided, evaded, but of course the categorical imperative kicks in (Thank You, Emmanuel) and since now everybody's doing it, the burden of how to pay for today's excesses falls not quite squarely on the shoulders of the unborn, who must at all costs be allowed to come into the world, because God loves future taxpayers, especially the ones who are going to be born rich enough to know how to game the system. God bless 'em, every one. Pass the pudding.

I've taken the high road, filled out my filing, and claimed my own personal refund from my so-much-more-than-bankrupt government. Evidently it's the patriotic thing to do, since the official word is that deficits don't matter. Heigh-ho.

On a day perhaps not unlike this one, a taxpayer in ancient Judea, who didn't mind giving the image of Caesar back to Caesar, borrowed a donkey for a few minutes or hours (hm, under current IRS rules he would have had to report the rental value of the animal as income, and of course if he did any favors for the owner, maybe a healing, then said person would owe the gummint a percentage of the value of health services rendered.... but I digress). He faced the twin evils of taxes and of death with equal equanimity, it seems, giving both their due and, as the tale is told, emerging all the richer (and more alive) for all that. But some of that is next week's story. This is a tale in which everybody wants to be on the side of the good guys, no matter what role in the drama they have played. This week's special: the rehabilitation of Judas Iscariot.

Hail, George Orwell.

Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is Strength. War is peace. And, apparently, treachery is loyalty.

Is this a great planet, or what?

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Friday, April 07, 2006

It has to be said...

Now that Apple Computer has quietly made it known that its new Intel-based Macs will be able to dual-boot into Windows, we finally will have a basis for benchmark comparisons which will be.... well.... Apples to Apples.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

adding to the white noise of the infosphere


Since it seems to be the thing to do to proliferate personae in various places, here is yet another venue for the same. This blog exists essentially for the purpose of giving me an identity for commenting on the posts of others, but who knows? The standard cyber-intro will follow shortly. Or not.

This page intentionally left content-free. Watch this space for more information.

Still watching?

Never mind, then. Get a life.

Stumble Upon Toolbar