God is not Great - Book Report

I just finished Christopher Hitchens’ blockbuster God is not Great - How Religion Poisons Everything. Hitchens comes off rather crusty, arrogant and slightly irritable in his interviews - but with a fine sense of humor that can go from raspy to scathing in nothing flat. He comes off pretty much the same way in print.

The book is a fun read, but many of the arguments lack punch - not because they are not well thought out, but because they are not well enough defended. I am accustomed to heavy hitters such as Mark Twain and Carl Sagan taking on religious literalism and mystic pseudo-science (respectively) and building impregnable edifices of thought and evidence to reduce these negative forces to so much warmed-over intellectual rubble. Hitchens trips far more lightly through his arguments - engaging, humorous, but not explored from every angle.

One glaring inconsistency is actually pointed out by Al Gore in the book I am reading now, The Assault on Reason. Several of our Deist founders - the very paragons of the Enlightenment that Hitchens celebrates - remained slaveholders even while writing about universal liberty in the most florid language.

Hitchens never even addresses how mores might have developed in a strictly materialist or secular society. There is no evidence that Occidental culture would have been better off without Christianity than with. I argue in my previous blog entry, “Why I am a Christian”, that Christianity is the fount of our best mores and Hitchens never effectively counters my contentions.

I share Hitchens’ deep mistrust of religious fervor and disgust for the destructive distortions preached in the various names of God. I agree with his contention that scientifically, no recourse to the mystical is needed to explain the universe. By these lights, religion appears to be at best an atavism from the childhood of our species. Hitchens sets forth in his final chapters to prove that religion should be left behind and calls for a new Enlightenment.

But the warning remains from the previous Enlightenment and further, I think Hitchens fails to investigate the nature of human reasoning itself in sufficient depth (or really at all) to prove that we can entrust our future to reason alone, uninformed by any of our long cultural religious traditions. The leaders of the American Enlightenment felt that reason should be the foundation of our culture and their accomplishment is stunning - unparalleled really.

But reason does not exist in a vacuum. Human reason is a product of our emotions, a product of our intellectual frame of reference, a product of preconceptions so ingrained that we most often don’t even see them at work. And we wonder why two intelligent persons with only slightly different backgrounds can look at a moral problem, work their way through it with the best of intentions and the best their intellect can produce and come up with answers so divergent as to be nearly unrecognizable.

It is precisely because reason is such a fragile, derivative, refined human product that it cannot be trusted alone. It is our most powerful tool, but not our only tool. I am far from an advocate of organized religion, but at the same time, some sense of the divine, of our common value, of the sanctity of life and of our environment, some sense of awe and some sense of proportion - a recognition of the twin miracles of our self-awareness and our empathetic compassion, and at the same time, of our relative insignificance are frames we discard at the peril of becoming monsters.

God is not Great. Neither is Christopher Hitchens. But it is a tremendously fun read and if you’re in a bit of a snit about the horrible things Muslims and Christians are doing to each other and worse, the way they behave toward atheists, Hitchens scratches that itch quite nicely.

rbs

Bush to Close GTMO???

I am concerned about a report I heard tonight about Guantanamo Bay.

Several Democratic presidential candidates have indicated they would close Guantanamo Bay and the other secret torture camps the Bush administration has been using around the world. Richardson and Edwards both pledged to do this their first day in office.

Now I hear that President Bush wants to close Guantanamo - but of course not the other torture camps. The prisoners we are currently torturing at Guantanamo (using techniques developed in 2002 and later replicated at Abu Ghraib) will be separated and transferred to lower profile facilities worldwide.

I seriously doubt, given the history of this administration, that President Bush has had a revelation about the moral repugnance and ineffectiveness (for intelligence purposes) of torture.

But the administration has realized that Guantanamo Bay is an enormous thorn in their side from a public relations standpoint both with the voters at home and with the civilized world who now see the USA as a rogue state in open violation of international law and moral standards.

Scattering these prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to secret torture camps worldwide will make it much more difficult for the next administration to put a stop to the torture and to make sure that we, the American people, never tolerate such an outrage in our name again.

The broom is in place. The carpet has been lifted. A few thousand victims of institutionalized American torture are about to be swept under it.

rbs

Edwards made the Pledge

On Chris Matthews show on MSNBC, John Edwards has now added his voice to that of Bill Richardson (and to a lesser extent, Obama and Dodd). Edwards pledged that on his first day in office he would close Guantanamo. Unlike Richardson, he did not go on to mention the various secret prisons around the world, but I believe he would close those as well.

I'm waiting for the other Democrats to make the pledge. I don't expect any of the Republicans to do so. Not even McCain.

rbs

Blue Grit - Book Report

Laura Flanders is one of the founding commentators on Air America Radio - the new voice of the American left. Her book, Blue Grit, is an examination of what is happening at the grass roots level of the Democratic party and how this is at odds with the D.C. based national Democratic party establishments.

Flanders holds that the true strength of the Democratic party is at the grassroots and is divided among local single issue groups who are variously patronized and denigrated by the far more conservative national party. In recent years, the Republican party has been a three-way coalition among right-wing Evangelicals, anti-tax Libertarians, and powerful big business interests. The Democratic coalition is far more diverse - including environmentalists, civil libertarians and their vast multitude of client demographics, labor leadership, and consumer advocates.

In Blue Grit, Flanders tells several stories about local Democratic electoral successes despite deliberate neglect from the national party. Among her stories is the newly elected Sheriff of Dallas County, Texas. Their first Democratic Sheriff in decades. Their first Hispanic Sheriff probably ever. Their first woman Sheriff ever. Their first openly lesbian Sheriff. Simply because the citizens of the county were sick of business as usual and wanted someone who would talk straight and get the work done.

Americans will vote for liberal values - if the Democratic party will bother to offer them. But the national party has been chasing the Republicans farther and farther to the right under the illusion that they can out-center the Republicans and the left has nowhere else to go. Blue Grit is a rallying cry to local single-issue liberal groups to take over the Democratic party. It’s really not an astounding work or a great read, but it is good practical advice to us local activists. The American public is better than we think they are. They will vote for liberal values - but only if given the opportunity. The old saw is - run a conservative Democrat against a Republican and the American people will vote for the real thing every time.

I don’t know if Flanders will influence the national party, but she certainly influenced me. I am active in the local Democratic party. Now I will do some research to find those local single-issue groups and try to knit them together under our banner. We can work together and make this a better country.

rbs

A Moment of Hope

A Moment of Hope

Moments ago I just heard Governor Richardson, Senator Obama, and Senator Dodd each separately publicly commit to closing Guantanamo Bay and the secret prisons on their first day as President. I believe that just became a standard plank in the Democratic Party Platform.

(Note - watching it again, I noted that only Richardson made that pledge specifically. Dodd pledged to "restore American civil liberties" and Obama made no pledge, but noted the damage Guantanamo Bay and the secret prisons have done to America's international moral authority. rbs 6-4-07)

Promises aren’t always kept, but I could tell from the way these people spoke that they considered such a move critical to restoring America’s moral leadership in the world. There are a lot of things I really like about these candidates - but there is such a clear difference on this particular issue. The Republican candidates lined up last week in support of the secret prisons and specifically (with the significant exception of Senator McCain) in favor of torture.

There is no brighter line between the presidential wings of these parties than this. I don’t think it could possibly be more clear. This is a moment of hope for those we have oppressed - though they don’t yet know it.

As a sideline - while I have been a fan of Governor Richardson for many years and looking forward to him running for President, I saw tonight what I’ve really liked about Senator Biden for many years. I remember in the midst of the Abu Ghraib scandal that Biden just about came across the table at Secretary Rumsfeld. “My son is serving over there!!! You just made it more likely that he might not come home!!” (paraphrased).

That Joe Biden showed up again tonight vibrating with rage about our failure to stop the genocide in Darfur. It is refreshing to see someone with a true passion for saving lives and for meeting our moral obligation to save life when we can and to treat all people fairly and humanely. I’ve observed that about Biden over the years. When people are in danger, and particularly when that happens because of our actions, he addresses it with powerful moral authority.

I haven’t seen the entire debate yet, so I’m not ready to have overall reactions. When I get a chance, I will see the whole thing and give my reactions here.

rbs

A Sense of Helplessness

I am thinking again about the victims of our government, many of them innocent, imprisoned in our torture camps around the world, most notably in Guantanamo Bay. It depresses me to realize that even the election of a Democratic president will not guarantee justice for these people. I was horrified by the parade of Republican candidates in the debate on Fox TV, stumbling all over each other to advocate more torture - to thunderous applause by an audience of devoutly Christian American patriots.

Of the Republican candidates, only John McCain spoke against torture of the prisoners and he did not address it from a moral standpoint but rather because torture is ineffective as an interrogation method. But we are not torturing prisoners to beat information out of them. We’re doing it to demonstrate our power over them. We’re doing out of a collective sense of helplessness.

There are so many issues that have spun out of control in modern America. I’m deeply concerned about global climate change, runaway budget deficits, the erosion of our civil rights, the deliberate policies to take wealth from the middle class and deny vital services to the poor to enrich the already wealthy. But none of these issues strike me as deeply as our government’s systematic torture of people of middle-eastern descent - some born British citizens, others abducted from around the world.

In my gut I sense that this depravity goes deeper than the Bush administration - admittedly the most depraved Presidency in living memory and arguably in American history. But I think this evil runs deeper. It is a sickness at the core of American culture. The same sickness that created Nazi Germany. The same sickness that perverted the French Revolution and turned it into an endless bloodbath. The same sickness that led Mayan priests to unbelievable orgies of human sacrifice.

Could a President Clinton keep the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay? Would a President Obama close the secret American torture camps around the world? Even with a landslide victory, an incoming Democratic president would be hard pressed to end this madness. The American people have not just tolerated it. Those prisoners are not just victims of our indifference. I believe they are victims of our vengeance, and more deeply, victims of our sense of insecurity.

America cannot control the entire world and each of us feels the world slipping from our grasp - never stopping to think that we never had any right to it in the first place. For a brief moment, America held the world together. We could do it and we had to do it because we were the only industrial power to survive WWII. We got used to it - even though it was a situation that could never last. The rest of the world eventually re-built - and we were wise enough to help rebuild much of it.

But that wisdom has left us and in its place is an ebbing sense of superiority that we have now propped up with clumsy exhibitions of power and cruelty. I have no faith that the victims of Guantanamo Bay will ever be freed or that any of them will ever have justice. They are the most helpless. Some of them were our enemies. Others were innocent. At this point it doesn’t matter that much. They’re all torture victims now. Our treatment of them is not justice. It is sickness.

I have to fight for them. I feel it in my gut. I just don’t know how to. Yet.

rbs

Why I am a Christian

This is the second of a pair of essays exploring my beliefs. The first is entitled: Why I am an Athiest.

I do believe in miracles. Not the virgin birth or the sun standing still in the sky for a day, but there is the miracle of Christianity itself - the survival and infusion of the teachings of Jesus into Western culture. We take this cultural bias for granted, but there is no evidence that egalitarianism could possibly have come to undergird modern Western thought without the unprecedented success of Christianity.

While the Hebrews developed an egalitarian society during the period of the Judges, between their Exodus and the ascension of King David, that equality really only ever applied to other Hebrews. It was Jesus who revived those ideals and preached that they should be universal. There may have been other teachers who put forward such ideas but no one had the success Jesus had.

His teachings fell on fertile ground because of the history of the Hebrews. The idea that all people are, regardless of background or wealth or education or breeding, equally children of God, was, because of their traditions, not entirely alien to the Jewish people.

Another key reason Jesus’ teachings could survive to found the modern world was that he put them into action. And he died for them. And as he died, he did not stop teaching, but made his death an indispensable part of his ministry. The power of his example and his charisma survived in the oral traditions that eventually became the four synoptic gospels - written at least eighty years after his death.

The power and pervasiveness of these teachings cannot be overstated. It is entirely appropriate that the majority of the world uses Jesus’ birth (actually his 5th birthday - close enough) as the dividing line between the ancient and modern eras.

Certainly Christianity has been far more often misused by its leaders and misunderstood by multitudes of followers than followed according to the principles Jesus taught. But despite the holy wars, slaughter of heretics, conversion by the sword, burning of witches, divine right of kings and any multitude of modern distortions of Jesus’ teachings, the idea that we are all of us equal in the eyes of God and should love not only our neighbors but also our enemies has percolated throughout Western culture.

I have heard evangelical preachers claim that the USA is a country founded on Christianity. While untrue - most of the founders considered themselves Deists rather than Christians - it has some validity in that the concept that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights evolved from the teachings of Jesus. The Enlightenment is a product of Christian principles.

Without these teachings, very few American citizens would have cared about freeing the slaves and there would have been no abolitionist movement. Gandhi’s non-violent campaign to free India from the British Empire would have fallen before an unsympathetic, uncaring British public - as happy to kill Indians as to free them. The American civil rights movement of the 1960's would have been simply unimaginable. The Nazi horror would have been seen for what it really was - an extension of the ethos of ancient Rome.

It is hard to imagine a modern world in which Christianity had never flourished. Would some other ethos of universal equality have arisen instead? There is no evidence of any. Islam is a descendent of Christianity. None of the various European pantheisms propounded the idea that all people, regardless of origin, should be treated as equals. There would have been no such tradition for philosophers such as John Locke to draw upon.

I am very far from endorsing any version of organized Christianity. Each carries its own distortions of the teachings of Jesus and several put the word of their own leaders above the word of Jesus. They tend as often to be sources of division and derision as unifiers of people of Christian faith - much less of all people regardless of their religion. While American Evangelical Christian leaders have spent the past thirty years decrying the sins of homosexuals and women forced to make the choice to terminate a pregnancy, if Jesus were here, he would decry those religious leaders - as he did during his life. Christianity should uplift, not oppress.

But the organized Christian religions have, in spite of the worst distortions of their leaders, preserved and propagated the most important teachings of Jesus - that we are all equal and that we should strive to care for all people.

I cannot say I am a good Christian. I have not taken up the cross. I do not give to the poor as I should. Instead, I am saving up to build a gigantic needle which I intend to install upright, pointed toward the sky with the enormous eye just above ground level at an oasis in Saudi Arabia in hopes that Bedouin tribesmen will lead their camels through it.

But I do fight in my own way for the rights of the oppressed. It is usually only talk - and writing - attempting to persuade my fellow Christians that we do have a moral obligation to make a better society for the poor and to free the oppressed. I support same-sex marriage, the rights of women, and human rights. No one should be treated less because of their gender, or sexual identity - or because they are powerless before an oppressive government or sanctioned group.

And I believe in the USA’s potential - that each American should fight hard to make our nation the shining city on the hill that we all know it can be. To offer freedom instead of oppression to all humanity. To care for our own and offer that care around the world. To use our might for the betterment of all humanity - or better, to leverage that might so we don’t have to use it.

For me there is no contradiction between being a Christian and being an Atheist. I don’t create hybrid terms to describe these philosophies. I am neither a Christian-Atheist nor an Atheistic Christian. I describe myself as one or the other depending on context. There is no bright line - that Christianity describes my ethos and Atheism my metaphysical understanding of the universe. It’s far more complex than that. But that’s close enough for starters.

rbs

Why I am an Atheist

I did not initially intend to publish these two essays. I wrote them to work out these ideas for myself. But after I described them to some of my readers, I have been encouraged to publish them - probably because they sound like such a contradiction. How can anyone be both an Athiest and a Christian? This is the first of two essays to explain why I consider myself both - and see no contradiction in those positions.

I grew up in a Christian extended family - but my nuclear family was more or less agnostic. So while I was exposed to the Bible and its great stories at an early age, I was always expected to determine for myself what I believe in. Among the first books I read were two great collections of Mark Twain’s cynical and daring anti-Christian essays: Letters from the Earth and A Pen Warmed Up in Hell. As I recall, I had devoured these along with the Bible by the time I was 12.

I struggled with Christian philosophy and mysticism throughout my life, never willing to believe in the mysteries of virgin birth and all the other hooey - er - miracles... and never selfless enough to follow the shining example of Jesus. Gradually, I realized I have nothing but disdain for the former and only admiration for the latter.

Listening to hellfire and damnation sermons turned me right off of Christianity. No God who could create hell is worthy of worship. Nor have I ever been the least bit interested in the antiseptic, castrated heaven I heard extolled time and again by preachers and virtuous elders.

My bloodline is strongly Scottish, which means that more than with most people of European ancestry, Viking blood runs through my veins. If there is an afterlife, Valhalla is more my speed. Given my choice, I would much prefer a human place - a great hall and grounds filled with good-natured brawls, contests of wit, lots of tawdry sex, bad poetry, worse jokes, fantastic beer, and backslapping good times. A table provided but not oppressively dominated by a loving god, where I could find my old friends and meet new friends for a long quiet talk or a lively jam as the moment feels right. A place with endless wonders to explore.

Nice fantasy, but I see no evidence that the universe works that way. I am an empiricist. Not willing to believe what I don’t see evidence for. Fascinated with the marvelous universe our great scientists and philosophers have been unveiling - or rather the models they have been creating to better describe the universe we live in. They have gone so far, so much further than most of us even know, without bumping into heaven or hell or Valhalla or God and needing none of those to explain the wonders of the night sky. But this is not why I am an Atheist.

We cannot possibly know more than a tiny corner of our universe - a single grain of sand out of all the vast deserts and beaches that have ever existed throughout time. There is certainly plenty of room in this universe for an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God.

Here’s a simple ontological argument for His/Her existence. Think back to the last time you were throwing up. As you knelt there with your head hanging over the toilet - feeling like you were about to die - disgusted because the toilet was not cleaned well enough - as the vomit was surging in your throat... Whom did you call upon? Whom did you beg to for release?

If in such a moment you did not call upon God, then you can honestly say that you truly do not believe in one. It’s been many a New Year since the last time I drank too much champaign, but I remember quite well moaning my need for a God as I paid my dues to the bubbly on a lurching and slightly out of focus New Year’s morning.

There cannot be any better proof of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God - for certainly no such creature would ever show itself directly to humanity. Especially if He truly did make us in His own image. The results would be all too predictable. Indeed they were predicted by Saint John the Divine in the greatly misunderstood Book of Revelation.

If God were to show up, announce Himself, and toss off a few miracles for proof, humanity would splinter as never before. Vast hordes of His worshipers would become mindless slaves. Others would go feral and take His presence as the sign that they must slaughter anyone who ever expressed the slightest variation from their own belief - regardless of what this now clearly present God told them to do or not to do. And a sizeable minority of us would decide that what we were encountering would have to be not a God, but a Fraud... a powerful alien with admittedly knock-out technology and a dangerous god complex who should be thwarted at every turn and destroyed as quickly as possible.

It is not God that I do not believe in. It is religion that I cannot believe. Well - I certainly believe religion exists, but its value in modern human society is more than questionable. Christian and Muslim leaders alike preach often against the evils of secular humanism. If they truly cared about humans as at least Jesus if not Mohammed teaches, they would have to look upon secular humanists not as evil competitors, but as partners in improving our common lot.

Here is a simple test: Do religious teachers choose to join hands to serve humanity or to fight each other with words and deeds and turn our world into a rancorous, bloody mess? The vast majority of religion fails again and again.

Pope Benedict XVI now preaches hellfire and damnation. Islamic mullahs call for war not only against Christianity and the Infidel, not only for murder of Shia by Sunni and vice-versa, but even for murder within their own sects. Evangelical Christianity in the USA has blindly brought our cherished democracy - the greatest gift of the Enlightenment to mankind - to its knees and the hands of their myopic preachers are wrapped in a stranglehold around the throat of our cherished liberties. Nor do I have any praise for Buddhists who counsel withdrawal from the human condition altogether. And as long as Israel oppresses Palestine, Judaism suffers the common judgement along with the rest.

Given the state and the history of religion, Atheism - the absence of religion - does not appear to be that bad an alternative. In fact, I pray that God is an Atheist. God help us if He turns out to be, say for example, a Mormon... There are only a few million of them. The remaining billions of us would then be condemned to whatever hell the Mormons believe in. So I really do pray that God is an Atheist. You might consider adding that to your evening prayers...

rbs

The Politics of Jesus - report

I just finished this book by Dr. Obery Hendricks, Jr. Although a minister, he does not accept the title “Reverend”. I really hope that Dr. Hendricks will write a more thorough analysis of the Old Testament - and the New... But that’s not what this book is. While it contains by far the best biblical scholarship I have ever read, it is primarily a political manifesto.

Dr. Hendricks builds the case for his manifesto first by a breathtaking analytical overview of the Old Testament which alone is worth the price of the book. I will certainly re-read the Old Testament with greatly expanded understanding of its significance - particularly in the description of the early stirrings of egalitarian society from which Jesus no doubt drew his inspiration.

Hendricks explores seven key strategies of Jesus’ ministry in detail:
1. Treat the People’s needs as Holy
2. Give a Voice to the Voiceless
3. Expose the workings of Oppression
4. Call the Demon by Name
5. Save your Anger for the Mistreatment of Others
6. Take Blows without Returning Them
7. Don’t just explain the Alternative, Show It

Hendricks then subjects the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to careful analysis in light of the strategies and goals of Jesus’ ministry. With predictable results - the author takes them apart with precision and only a minimum of rancor.

I will reserve the rest of this post to repeat the manifesto Dr. Hendricks is building toward throughout the book - with the following recommendation... I have struggled with the mysteries and philosophies of Christianity for my entire adult life. They really should be taken separately. I greatly appreciate Dr. Hendricks for doing such a good job of that. One of the best books I've ever read - I highly recommend it. Here’s the manifesto:

“...It is in this spirit, the spirit of Jesus the revolutionary, that we who follow him must call upon the religious and political leaders of America to reclaim our biblical mandate to act justly in our nation and in the world.

“We call upon our government officials and elected representatives to turn away from the greed and imperial ambitions of Caesar to embrace Christ’s call for us to care for those in need of care: the weakest, the neediest, those in the twilight of their days.

“We call upon the politicians to stop the crony capitalism that enriches the few and impoverishes the many.

“We call for provision for all Americans of adequate health care, a liveable minimum wage, and access to an education that can prepare them to be fruitful in the marketplace and to contribute to the common good of all.

“We call upon our political leaders to stop their cynical misuse of religion and “faith” to support exclusionary policies, exploitative policies, policies that deal in killing and death.

“We call upon our leaders to serve the justice of God rather than grasping for political power.

“We call upon all who claim to be politicians “of faith” to return integrity to America’s political culture by embracing the same humility that moved the psalmist to say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart;/ test me and know my thoughts./ See if there is any wicked way in me,/ and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).

“We call upon all who bear the name of Christian to reclaim the holistic spirituality that Jesus taught, not the one-dimensional imitation practiced by many in the Church that frees us from the responsibility to make justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

“Finally, we call upon our politicians to end their ceaseless drive for power and to begin to sincerely serve the needs of those entrusted to their leadership. For the politics of Jesus seeks not possession of worldly power, but to serve the justice of God.”

My book for May: Christopher Hitchens - God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

I’m sure it will be a hell of a read.

rbs

P.S. - please continue to go to the previous post (I’m Mad As Hell) and give me your ideas for the George W. Bush Pack of Lies.

I’m Mad As Hell...

It seems like the old movie was prophetic. It seems like with just a match, America will light up in a great ball of rage. So many people I know are just boiling over with it. So when are we all going to stick our heads out our windows, or run out into the street and say what is on all our minds? “I’m mad as Hell!!! And I’m not going to take it anymore!!!”

What’s stopping us? I think one of the problems is that there are so many things to be so mad as Hell about. The administration of Bush, Jr. has conducted an all-out onslaught against every virtue we Americans hold dear.

We all believe we are charged to be stewards of this earth. But this administration has laid bare our forests, our public lands, our rivers and the very air we breathe to rapine by the worst polluters. We hold human liberty to be self-evident. But this administration has deprived not just foreign people but American citizens nabbed on American soil of the most basic human rights. We believe that all Americans should have a decent chance in life, starting with education. But this administration has raided the entitlements that we all pay for to give obscene benefits to the wealthiest American citizens, both individual and corporate.

Even our language is under assault - the Clear Skies Act, the Healthy Forests Act... my God, the PATRIOT ACT... Truth, it seems, is not to be found anywhere. So where do we start? How do we get over the despair we all feel? After all - it appears that we voted for this administration at least once... And that after we had every opportunity to understand just how bad these people really are.

We need to start somewhere. So, start here. Pick a card - any card. Or actually, let’s make a pack. There must be at least 52 great egregious lies the Bush, Jr. administration has told. Let’s make a card game out of it and sell it. I’m sure we can find a printer - and I have no doubt we could find financial backing.

It would be a kinetic way to express our anger and the profit generated could help do something to bring the liars to justice. Just add a comment and list as many horrible lies of this administration that you can think of. Put some sort of order to it so we can sort them deuce to ace, and by house: Diamonds, Shovels, Clubs, and Crosses. It’s important that the pack reflect the Bush, Jr. administration - it should be utterly heartless.

I’m sure lots of people will buy the Bush Jr. Pack of Lies.
After all, lots of people already have.

rbs

The Politics of Jesus

It’s been a busy week with a new job, several gigs, and work on a lot of new material so I can start gigging on week nights playing solo classical guitar and Celtic harp. I also wanted to leave the last two articles hanging. It looks like no one bit at either. I’m going to have to back up and re-examine my methods. I want to get other people as upset and riled about our prison at Guantanamo Bay as I am. I don’t see any evidence of that yet.

My book for April is “The Politics of Jesus” by Dr. Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. I am about halfway through it. I will post a book report when I finish it. I can say that it is a revolutionary work particularly suited to my sensibilities. I have never been impressed by the Christian mysteries any more than those of any other religion. I have always taken a very empirical approach to metaphysics.

Obery bypasses the mysteries to focus on the political strategies and tactics of Jesus. He maintains that Christianity took a wrong turn at Constantine and as a result, many Christians do not see Jesus for the political activist he was executed for being. Obery analyses the Regan and Bush, Jr. presidencies by these values with particular attention to the impact of their policies on the poor. I’m in the midst of the chapter on the current President. More soon.

rbs

Uses of Torture

I should contain my anger and try to provide more information and analysis and a little less spleen. So I did a little research. My site references are at the end of this article.

The rationale behind President Bush’s authorization of “moderate pressure interrogation techniques” such as “water-boarding” is that we have to get as much information as possible from these people about threats to the security of the US and US assets worldwide.

Torture is torture - no matter the technique. Whether you chain a prisoner in a fetal position for days until his muscles cramp painfully or you use a whip to tear his flesh, the psychology of dehumanization, physical pain, and long-term damage inflicted by the State is pretty much unchanged. The results for the State are pretty much the same, as are the psychological effects on the prisoner. The only real difference is how long it takes to torture the prisoner to death.

But centuries of human experience and direct research has proven that torture is pretty much useless for the purposes of interrogation. Nazi doctors carefully documented the results of torture on controlled subjects and found exactly what the Holy Inquisition had revealed a few hundred years earlier. Under torture, a person will say anything he thinks his torturer wants to hear - anything to get the torture to stop.

Torture is, however, extremely effective for obtaining false confessions and for terrorizing populations into submission. For this to be most effective, torture victims should be psychologically reduced to supporting their torturer before they are returned to their communities. People who knew them should see a dramatic difference. There needs to be a random element to torture - people who are not obviously subversive should be tormented while some actual subversives (the loud and ineffective kind) go unscathed. It has to be a long term project to have real effect and it must be undergirded by a real threat of pervasive and almost omniscient surveillance of every moment of the life of every citizen.

George Orwell’s 1984 is a superb fictional exploration of this kind of society - so much so that the author’s name has become synonymous with the tactics and strategies of maintaining such a society and particularly with the use of language to conceal or whitewash the State’s actions and intentions. The Bush administration has been accused of “Orwellian” language. “Detainees” is one of dozens of examples. It evokes the image of passengers at an airport who have to wait for a few hours for their flight to arrive.

The Guantanamo Bay “detainees” have been waiting for years in isolated cells, sleep-deprived, removed from all human contact even with the people who feed them, chained, tortured by water and by temperature and subjected to sensory deprivation. Under this duress, even the strongest and most devout will eventually crack up. Whenever they are returned to their homes, they will be broken people - a compelling example of what happens to poor people when they even think about defying or just grumbling about the US. Isn’t that the point?

If not, then just what are we doing with the “detainees” in Guantanamo Bay? It cannot be justice. If it were justice, we would put them on trial. It cannot be information. If it were information, we would be using proven interrogation techniques of befriending these prisoners, making them believe we are sympathetic to their concerns and gaining their trust. They might not live in comfort, but we would not be seeing FBI reports detailing, and indeed Presidential memorandums authorizing torture (whatever Orwellian linguistic guise it is couched in).

Logically, therefore, we must be in the business of terrorizing large populations of poor people in the developing world into subjugation to American rule (or rule by American proxies). If so, perhaps the War on Terror should be renamed the War OF Terror. Below are websites with more information about the history of torture. Don’t take my word about the Nazi experiments and the Inquisition - or about the current status of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. I will gladly provide documents about their treatment - indeed I have posted some of these in the comments on my previous two posts. Look it up. Here are some websites you can start with:

http://lawofwar.org/Torture_Memos_analysis.htm
Memoranda regarding treatment of Afghan prisoners of war
This article contains links to complete texts of the memoranda analyzed within. It’s a good starting point because it summarizes the history of the legal briefs that undergird the Bush administration’s use of torture on prisoners both at Guantanamo Bay and by extension in the various secret American prisons world-wide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
A good starting place for information about the history of the US Guantanamo Bay facility. Everything I have been saying about the FBI documents is actually in this article. Wikipedia has identified this site as needing additional references and that there may be both unsupported assertions and possibly emotionally loaded language in this entry. But the entry does contain a lot of references and the details appear to coincide with the information I received from Brent Mickum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Torture
International definitions and prohibitions against State sponsored torture
This article is a great starting point. It contains articles about ethical arguments for torture, historical uses, the Nazi experimentation and a lot of links to related articles. While Wikipedia is never a definitive source for anything, since it is user-driven and user-created, it is a great resource for finding more definitive sources.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/
Amnesty International USA. At the top right of this page, select Torture from the drop-down menu under “What’s Going On Where”. As of this posting, that will take you directly to a menu that starts with Guantanamo Bay - a pressing issue for Amnesty International. There are ways to get involved. I am investigating them and I am determined to go further in my political advocacy.

http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr276/stone.htm
Analysis of George Orwell’s increasingly prophetic book 1984. I recommend you scroll down and read the segment on Newspeak.

And of course, there are the documents that were provided to me from the law firm of Spriggs and Hollingsworth in Washington DC. I will send these to anyone who asks for them. Please take just one small step and get involved. E-mail this blog to someone. Write a letter to your Congressional delegation. Give some money to Amnesty International. Start a blog. Comment on this one to let other readers know they are not the only readers. Send Brent Mickum a supportive e-mail for his work defending the prisoners (bmickum@spriggs.com). No hero is going to stop this. It will take several voices to make a change. Even the smallest action you take will help.

rbs

Storm the Gates

I have sent letters to my Senators and Representative. I am still working to develop contacts within the Richardson campaign. I think we would be well served if he and the other so-called “second tier” Democratic Presidential hopefuls were to storm the gates of Guantanamo Bay. Because they are in Congress, Congressman Kucinich and Senator Biden have standing to inspect the prison and interview the prisoners.

Where today is our General Eisenhower? When Ike saw the horror of the Nazi death camps, he ordered that every American soldier and every German citizen be marched through them so that any denial of the Holocaust would have to contradict the actual experience of a million eyewitnesses. Many of our soldiers and many of the German citizens suffered nightmares for the rest of their lives about what they saw. It was an enormous human cost - so very small in comparison to the inhuman suffering caused by the Nazi horror.

The American horror is now spread around the world and we are, each and every one of us, entirely responsible for it. The Bush administration and those directly involved with the operation of Guantanamo Bay - the shining flagship of American torture camps worldwide - have not only the blood of their victims on their hands, but the sludge and tar with which they have defiled all of us, our flag, our Constitution, our immortal souls. They have made us all torturers - each and every one of us. Because we are the government, we are guilty by our acquiescence. When the gates of Guantanamo are finally thrown down, it is we who should be compelled to march through and look in horror upon what we have condoned.

And for speaking out against this horror, I harbor at least in the back of my mind, the fear of the knock on the door at night. It isn’t paranoia. It’s the Patriot Act. An American government that captures foreign citizens and tortures them for years on end without ever charging them or giving them a fair and public hearing, can just as easily do that to American citizens. Indeed, each of us may, under the Military Commissions Act, be declared an unlawful enemy combatant and be shipped off to a torture camp.

Don’t believe me? Ask yourself... if Blackwater mercenaries took you off the street tomorrow and declared you an “unlawful enemy combatant”, who would come to your rescue? We are no longer innocent until proven guilty. By these unconstitutional acts of the last Congress, signed into unconstitutional law by President Bush and unchallenged (indeed because of deft bureaucratic tactics, nearly unchallengeable) in court, we are now only innocent until we are accused. In such times, how would a Patriot act?

We Americans have been dilatory. We have be craven. We have been cowards to allow our government to do this. But I cannot go and storm the gates. I must ask those who hope to lead us to do so on my behalf. Alone, my voice will probably not convince them to do so. So I ask you to write your Congressional delegation and I ask you to write to hopefuls Richardson, Kucinich, Biden, and Gravel to storm the gates of America’s torture camps. Free the innocent. If there is any way left now to prosecute any prisoners who can reasonably be indicted - then by all means, let us fairly indict and fairly prosecute them.

But I fear we have gone to far and the torture we have visited upon those we hold who truly are guilty and dangerous to us, puts them beyond the reach of American Justice. They have already been subjected to too much American Injustice and for that cruel and unusual punishment, we probably have no choice but to set them free and only hope to watch them carefully enough to prevent any mischief they may try to start against us.

I asked how would a Patriot act. I am appending more transcription of the documents I received from Brent Mickum to show you exactly how a Military Commission acts. You can read it in the comments appended to this post.

Do I sound angry? If so, it is because I am angry at myself for not doing more and for not speaking out sooner. My true emotion is horror. This American nightmare has to end. We have become that which our greatest generation fought and died to defeat. Raise the alarm! America needs to wake up!

rbs

Letter to Congress

I am sending the following letter to my Representative in Congress. I will send similar letters to my Senators Lugar and Bayh. I am still working to develop contacts close enough to Governor Bill Richardson that I can send this information to him with some realistic hope that he will bring it into the political conversation. I don't know if it will be politically useful for him in his bid for the Democratic nomination - but I hope he can put it to good use.

I will append in the comments some of the text from the FBI reports and later from the Seton Hall documents. Simply put, this is an unbelievable outrage and if we are to maintain even the slightest pretense of civilization, not to mention virtue or moral courage, we must put a stop to this. My letter to Representative Carson follows. I will drop it in the mail tomorrow morning.

Honorable Julia Carson, Member of Congress
Julia M. Carson Government Center
300 East Fall Creek Pkwy N Dr, #300
Indianapolis IN 46205

Dear Representative Carson:

I am deeply concerned about the treatment of foreign prisoners in our custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and other places around the world. While watching CSPAN, I saw a lawyer who represented some of these prisoners reading from a released FBI document that described the torture of these prisoners witnessed by an FBI field agent.

If our government can treat any humans in this way, it is only a heartbeat away from using torture on our own citizens. When I heard of people from foreign countries chained in a fetal position, soaked in their own urine and subjected to loud rap music and extreme temperatures for hours, I was deeply sickened to think that my government could do this. There is simply no justification or excuse for this kind of barbarity.

I am sending you a few of these documents. Your staff can obtain these and more from the defense team at Spriggs and Hollingsworth, law partners in Washington DC, and thereby feel more comfortable about their authenticity. The lawyer I received these from is George Brent Mickum, IV, Partner (bmickum@spriggs.com).

Everyone else in the world knows we are doing this. There is no denying it. Our own FBI agents are writing about it in official documents. This is an outrage that no Christian people can tolerate. Please do something.

Thank you for your long and outstanding service to the people of Indiana and the United States.

rbs

GTMO

I am presenting the following correspondence verbatim for several reasons. First, I have long been concerned about the treatment of our prisoners at Guantanamo. While watching CSPAN, I heard a lawyer explain the conditions our government is subjecting these people to. I was horrified - far more so because it wasn’t just his word. He was reading from an official report by an FBI field agent. This released government document described in dry detail conditions that can only be described as torture.

So I looked up that lawyer on the CSPAN website and sent him an e-mail requesting .pdf copies of these government documents. Within hours, I received a large number of documents. It will take me a few days to read them and I am not yet certain how I will display them. But I want you to see this. Nothing makes the horror of our failure as citizens so chilling as government documents dryly detailing torture of prisoners, several of whom are guilty only by association.
(If you want a copy of the documents Brent Mickum sent me, please contact me by e-mail and I will gladly forward them to you.)

I can only express my admiration for Mr. Mickum and his law firm, Spriggs & Hollingsworth (Washington DC), for discharging their responsibility as citizens to address this wrong. In a future blog entry, I will discuss the awful implications of our treatment of these prisoners. These are not the actions of a free nation. These are not the actions of a true democracy. These are by no means the actions of any nation that aspires to Christian virtues.

Here is the conversation between myself and Brent Mickum. It is instructive both for the story that he tells and for how easy it is to reach out to people like him and spread the word. It is the very least we can do as citizens.

RBS wrote> Dear Mr. Mickum:
Thank you for your work with the Guantanamo prisoners and for your appearance on CSPAN explaining your experiences.

In your appearance, you referred to a number of government documents that have been released - in particular, an FBI report detailing what a field agent saw of the treatment of the prisoners.

Can you make .pdf of these documents available? I would like to link to them or post them on my blog. I think it's critical for the American people to understand what is being done in our name. I don't have a big readership yet, but I'm working on it.

Thanks again and keep up the good work!

Robert Bruce Scott

Brent Mickum wrote> Thanks for your kind note. I must say, in the early days, I used to receive a great deal of hate mail. Not so much these days. Nevertheless, I'm always shocked that there are people who are totally unwilling even to consider that any of the 800 prisoners might be innocent. Is the Bush Administration's record on credibility so great that we should take their word for it? My opinion is that the record is pretty poor. That leads me to a sad conclusion that some of these folks are directing their hate at the prisoners, in a fashion similar to what we saw in the South in the 1900s.

Anyway, thank you again. Folks like you make me feel that I'm doing the right thing after all. Please write to your congress men and women and senators if you feel strongly.

Attached are the documents you requested. In another message, I'll post you some reports. Please forward them along as I believe that the more people know, the more they will make their voices heard.

Regards,
Brent

RBS wrote> Thank you very much for these documents. It will probably take me a few days to make my way through them and longer to figure out how to post them in such a way that they are easily accessible. Until then, I will let people know that I have them and will e-mail them on request.

I was very encouraged by your work and your law firm's willingness to spend the money and take the business risk to do this work. Your partners should be congratulated as well for supporting your work. Rest assured that I will write my Congressman, Julia Carson, my Senators Richard Lugar and Evan Bayh and encourage my readers to write their representatives as well to highlight and support your work.

I am volunteering for the Bill Richardson campaign and I will forward these materials to his campaign as well. I have a lot of faith in his commitment to human rights and I hope he will bring the issue into general discussion.

Thanks again - and please keep me on your mailing list. I will do what I can to spread the word.

rbs

Brent Mickum wrote> Send your congress persons a few pages from the FBI documents and perhaps copies of the executive summaries from the Seton Hall reports.

I have no objection to you giving out my name if folks want copies of documents. Frankly, the internet is one of the best ways of getting the word out. We on the Defense Team are shocked that more of the country is not aware of what is going on. The rest of the world is.

Thanks again,

Brent

JTC Thinks....

RBS> wrote:
The only changes I made to what JTC wrote were to run the spell checker and break it into paragraphs. It came to me as one gargantuan paragraph. I present JTC’s thoughts to prove that I am not a lone voice in the wilderness. It’s important to me not to be seen that way as the history of such individuals tends to be dismal. Ask John the Baptist.

JTC> wrote:
Feel free to post whatever, man If you want to re-write, give yourself co-authorship credit; some of my rhetoric may need a touch-up :-). J.

RBS> wrote:
Well said. Actually, I'd like to post what you wrote on my blog and credit you for it.

JTC> wrote:
Cool. I also think that Richardson has advantages (as does Edwards) and we have to get past the stupid idea that the Dems can win without a southerner or westerner on the ticket. We know that Bush (with assistance from his brother) stole the first election, and that because there had not been such blatant theft of the Presidency before, not a single Senator spoke up to investigate the Black Caucus' legitimate concerns re: vote fraud in several close states, including Florida. And we know that there was massive, systemic voter fraud in Ohio in 2004.

I don't think that Hillary or Obama can win, except as a VP candidate. They are just not seen by the south and west as being "our kind of people" even though their views are pretty solidly aligned with most of the country, including the south and the west. It has nothing to do with gender or race, it has to do with being perceived as northern liberals which in the south is as dirty a thing as one can call someone.

Richardson has the west, the Hispanic vote, and conservative credentials while being liberal enough on the policies that really count (environment, restoring the Constitution, etc.). Edwards has been attacked as a "trial lawyer" but in this particular election a competent person who has been fighting for the "little guy" against the overbearing Repiglicans can easily make that a plus.

Although I'd love to see Gore get back in the race--he can come back with a fire in his belly that his previously wooden demeanor would be erased by and can directly attack the President where most candidates can't or are afraid to.

He can say things like "if people think we can't set a deadline for Iraq to take over for itself, they must be drinking something stronger than coffee, because that makes us occupy that country forever"

or "if bringing the troops home before the mission is accomplished, let's not keep changing what we need to accomplish. We've done everything we can, and given them a democracy--if they can keep it, as Benjamin Franklin once said about America. We've sacrificed enough blood and treasure to allow the six different rival sects--not just two, but some people in the administration can't count up to six--to work together if they have to. With us there, they don't have to."

or "Rebuilding America is more important than rebuilding Iraq. When New Orleans and Mississippi and Florida are rebuilt, when we stop being the #1 reason young men are flocking to anti-American causes around the world, we become a stronger and safer society."

or even "what this country needs is someone who doesn't rely on faulty intelligence and the dreams of a self-styled Presidential Monarch. The President is the people's servant, not the official wiretapper, kidnapper, torturer, gulag-runner, Constitution-underminer of the nation. Let's make one thing clear: this President has broken the law and admitted it. He claims it was to keep us safer. Yet he cannot prove one single instance in which he's actually done that, while incidents of terrorism and hate for Americans world-wide have risen under his law-breaking policies.

We need something better in the white house than faulty intelligence. And we need something better than Senators and Representatives who ignore what their constituents want by an overwhelming margin just because they want to keep spreading fear. The only reason we are more fearful now, that the world is a more fearful place now, is that America is no longer the shining moral beacon it has been for centuries. And that is squarely on the heads of not all, but quite a number of Republicans, including this secretive, law-breaking President and his inept cronies from Rumsfeld to Brownie to Gonzales to Miers and the list goes on.

When the President jokes about his Vice-President shooting someone in the face as "the good old days" it's easy to see how he can ignore reality. He makes Nixon look like a Saint, and the Communist Dictators look like they were running an open society. That's why only 3 in 10 still believe a word he says.

And my friends, that is fewer than the number of people who believe that Elvis is alive, that there are aliens among us and that we never landed on the moon. We are never going to win over minds like that. But we've already won over the rest of America. Let's not let what happened before to us happen again. Let's not let our policies add to our enemies and reduce our safety. Let's not shred our Constitution in the name of supposedly better--and completely unproven--security."

Sorry I droned on a bit there :-). Hope to see you on the 7th. See you at work Monday!
J.

Ethical Realism - Report

I finished reading this book last week, but I wanted to process it a little before I expound on it. I highly recommend this book to every American citizen and especially to those holding or running for national office. There is some evidence that at least Bill Richardson and possibly Joe Biden understand the principles involved. The book is aimed squarely at foreign policy, but the principles work quite well for domestic issues and even on a personal level.

The key virtues of Ethical Realism: First and foremost, Prudence. A virtue badly missing in our internal and international policies. The Bush administration has been like Captain Janeway on the ill-fated series, Star Trek Voyager - lunging from one extreme to another and surviving primarily on unbelievable luck - surviving, but just barely. No sense of restraint, careful observation, and the steady, measured approach that are the hallmarks of courage.

Other key virtues: Humility, Study, Responsibility, and Patriotism. All quite missing in the current administration. These are the virtues that made the great moments in American history great - and that were conspicuously missing in our many darker moments. The authors point to several American Presidents who exhibited these virtues. They prominently mention Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, but their highest praise is reserved for Harry Truman.

While Truman and Eisenhower clearly despised each other, they followed and established the Cold War policies that kept our world from turning into a glowing radioactive ash heap. The authors argue that the current situation requires not another Cold War, but the kind of keen observation, revolutionary thinking, and frightfully subtle and hard-nosed diplomacy that made the Cold War successful. (The authors do make it clear they agreed with Eisenhower that the Cold War became too militaristic - their praise is primarily for the diplomatic and economic strategy).

Like Communism, radical Theocracy (in this case Islamic), thrives best in chaos. Therefore, creating wealth, stability, and popularizing scientific education is the best antidote. The authors present a number of very hard-nosed strategies to bring that about. The most interesting to me was their argument that the USA should insist that Europe take ownership of the Israli/Palestinian conflict. The USA can facilitate negotiations, but it will take extensive reparations to both the Jewish and Palestinian people - and this is owed to both by Europe.

According to the authors, Europe owes the Jewish people for centuries of displacement and terror - and the Palestinians for taking half their land to create a Jewish state in partial repayment of that debt. The authors argue that Israel and Palestine should be carved out of the Middle East and made part of the European Union - both as partial repayment of Europe’s debt and to take the countries out of the Middle East political system.

Another key diplomatic point would be for the USA to encourage Russia to host talks between the USA and Iran - to create the Moscow accords (giving Russia prestige and improving American/Russian relations). At all costs we must avoid a war with Iran. Iran is our natural ally in the Middle East. If only we can keep moderate pressure on the increasingly unpopular Iranian government, the people of Iran can gradually take control of their government and craft a moderate, democratic, Islamic state that would fit more closely with the attitudes of the average Iranian. The only thing that will make the Iranian government popular again would be an attack by a western power - particularly by the USA.

Very good book - highly recommended. I could say a lot more but I would just about have to write the entire thing out. This is the best foreign policy book I have read in a very long time.

rbs

Crazy Like FOX

I’m about to take you down a very dark road, so strap in... Okay, time for a little logic here. It’s often assumed that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove, Rice, Gonzales, Bremer, et. al., are stupid. Liberals and a growing preponderance of Moderates point to the many terrible mistakes of this administration - the series of missteps in Iraq that made the country completely ungovernable, failure to respond to the human tragedy of Katrina, letting North Korea get the bomb, beating the war drums against Iran while we’re still embroiled in Iraq, pulling out of the Kyoto treaty when global climate change is so clear a threat, under-funding local police forces which leaves us wide open for another terrorist attack ... This has to be the most incompetent administration in American history - right?

But something doesn’t make sense here. Look at the players. Dr. Rice is probably one of the most intelligent people in the administration. Cheny, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz have been chasing each other around the halls of power for a half-century. Many of these people did not start out anywhere near as rich as they have become. And they are firmly in power. These are not the attributes of stupid people. So let’s assume, for the moment, that they aren’t...

Who could profit from letting New Orleans twist after the wind? The culture of this deeply Democratic, predominantly African American city is - with its population - scattered to the four winds. Whatever emerges from Lake Charles, it will not be the cultural powerhouse that New Orleans was - at least not any time soon.

Who could profit from pulling the USA out of Kyoto? Only the oil companies. The former CEO’s of some are now in the administration. And why make it impossible for the U.S. to pull out of Iraq by dismantling the Iraqi Army and purging the Baath Party? Unless, perhaps, there was no exit strategy because there was never meant to be an exit. As I write, the USA is building at least fourteen permanent American military bases in Iraq. An Iraq meant to be a puppet state in perpetuity, always under the American boot?

Certainly North Korea is more of a threat now, benefitting no one except the purveyors of the embarrassing failure of Star Wars. What about those war drums with Iran while the US armed forces are bogged down in Iraq? Well, we’re just going to have to hire more mercenaries who can more easily operate outside international law and standards.

Finally, what about leaving the USA open for another terrorist attack? Perhaps driven by some relatively low power nuclear weapons from North Korea? Or all that nuclear material we somehow failed to purchase from the former Soviet Union? Can you imagine how quickly Americans would accept draconian measures - even martial law - even an emergency dictatorship if someone blew up Los Angeles harbor with a small nuke?

So, are they stupid? Or are they crazy like FOX?

I think I’m going to go look for a nice big patch of sand to hide my head in.

rbs

Gore Nader

In an unbelievably ironic twist of fate, Al Gore has become the Ralph Nader of the conservation movement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore

rbs

AIR!!!!

(Submitted to the Indianapolis Star and NUVO, March 19, 2007. Think GLOBALLY. Act LOCALLY.)

I just got in from my evening walk and I feel like I was just poisoned. What is happening with the air in Indianapolis? When I moved here in 2003, this was a clean city. I don’t remember any bad air days. But these past two years our city has really started to stink.

Several mornings I have noticed that smell like a big old rotten french fry. I’ve been told that is the smell of boiling pigs bladders - used in the making of insulin. But tonight was different. Tonight (Monday, March 19, 2007) it was like breathing atomized nail polish. My tongue is numb. My eyes are watering. My head feels light. My nose is burning. It is really bad out there.

I live right in the heart of downtown - the most densely populated census tract in the State. What happens here affects all the students living at and around IUPUI, the teaming throngs of young professionals in Riley Towers, and the doctors and other professionals living along the canal.

Why does our city stink? What is being done to change it? Who is working on this? It’s really time to clear the air.

rbs

Shut Up and Sing

I saw this book - haven’t skimmed through it yet. But you can guess from the title it’s about the Dixie Chick who spouted off about George Bush to a country music crowd. Larry the Cable-Guy quipped, "That’s kind of like walking into a trailer park and yelling, ‘Wal-Mart sucks!!’" There seem to be quite a few people who think that entertainers should just entertain and keep their mouths shut about politics.

If you read my St. Patty’s Day post, you can guess my reaction to that attitude can be summed up in five words: "Blow it out your ass!" I have been performing on stage for more than twenty years - most of that time I have been the front man. I have spoken about my political and patriotic feelings many times from stage. But carefully - that’s just my style. I’m not trying to persuade people to do anything other than think about it. Just think about it. And there are plenty of political songs that are good for prodding the gray matter.

I am really concerned about this culture of not talking about politics. You can’t talk about politics at work - or you might lose your job. Talk about politics in a bar and you might get thrown out - or start a fist fight. Talk about politics with your friends and they get fidgety and really want to do something else. That’s just not American. Politics is our national sport. It should be a full contact sport with people fully intellectually engaged.

Look at our history - political newspapers printing all kinds of slander about each other, barroom arguments lasting late into the evening, rowdy public meetings that often devolved into shouting matches. This fear of speaking your mind about politics is something new - dates to the McCarthy era, but it seems like it’s become part of our culture. Be bland. Blend in. Keep your mouth shut. Shut up and work. Shut up and shop. Shut up and eat it. Shut up and sing. Just Shut up. Sieg Heil.

Not me. Not you either, I hope.

By the way - that Saint Patrick's Day thing below - I did that last night at Locals Only and again at Deano's Vino. No one came up to me and said, "How dare you talk about Iraq??" I did get a few people who said, "I'm with you brother!!" And I did notice quite a few people paid attention while I was saying it - and more than a few heads were nodding in agreement. Maybe some of those people will find their way here. I can hope.

rbs

Saint Patrick's Day

Dear Friends:

I'm giving you the lyrics to "The Wearing of the Green" and, for your amusement, a few of my thoughts to go along with them.
Please sing along - I'm using the first four lines as a chorus after each following verse:

Oh Paddy dear and did you hear the news that's going round
The Shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground
Saint Patrick's Day no more to keep, his color can't be seen
For there's a Bloody law against the wearing of the green

I met with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand
And he said, "How's poor Ireland and where does she stand?"
She's the most distressful country that ever you have seen
For they're hanging men and women there for the wearing of the green

Then since the color we must wear is England's cruel red
Sure Ireland's sons will never forget the blood that they have shed
You can take the Shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod
But it will take root and flourish there though under foot it's trod

When the law can stop the blades of grass from growing as they grow
And when the leaves of summertime their verdure dare not show
Then I will change the color that I wear in my corbeen
But till that day, please God, I'll stick to the wearing of the green


We take a punk approach to a lot of our music, which is why I'm not singing the last two verses. But here they are, for those sons and daughters of Ireland (of whom I may or may not be one, not really sure - sorry - I'm Scottish. And Choctaw. Primarily) who are with us today to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day.


But if at last our color should be torn from Ireland's heart
Her sons, with shame and sorrow, from the dear old soil will part
I've heard whispers of a country that lies far beyond the sea
Where rich and poor stand equal in the light of freedom's day

Oh Erin, must we leave you, driven by the tyrant's hand
Must we ask a mother's welcome from a strange but happier land?
Where the cruel cross of England's thraldom never shall be seen
And where, thank God, we'll live and die still wearing of the green!

Traditional upbeat, cheerful Irish melody. Lyrics by Dion Boucicault.

And they came, by the millions, to escape the great potato famine. And they were pretty much looked down on by established American society, even though, unlike most other immigrants, they spoke English reasonably well.

And when the got here, they were immediately drafted and sent by the tens of thousands to die in the American Civil War. A war that wasn't really about freeing the slaves, but it ended up being about that.

And the descendants of those Irish immigrants went on to settle the American West, wresting it mile by bloody mile from the American Indians, who weren't really all that wild about giving it up.

And today the descendants of those Irish immigrants, and the descendants of the African slaves they helped to free, and the descendants of the American Indians whose land they took (and I'm sure there are plenty of Americans who have all three bloodlines) are now embroiled in that horrible bloody mess over there in Iraq.

I'm not speaking for Jon, by the way, just for me. I just think this is a really good song to remember on Saint Patrick's day and I really hope you'll sing it along with me - here's the chorus again...

Oh Paddy dear and did you hear the news that's going round
The Shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground
Saint Patrick's Day no more to keep, his color can't be seen
For there's a Bloody law against the wearing of the green

If you want to know what I think about all this, that's why I've started blogging. If you come here, I hope you will share your deepest, most seriously considered thoughts by using the comment function for everyone to read. That conversation starts here. Thanks for coming.

Happy Saint Patty's Day!

rbs

Why am I Blogging? (Part 2)

At this point, this blog has a readership of about two. Maybe four at the most. Do I want a larger readership? Eventually. But first, I want to persuade you. It is ourselves we must change.

I don’t think I can convey how unbelievably fortunate we are that a Missouri farmer accidentally became President and set us, against all odds, on a course of frightfully subtle economic, political, and diplomatic action that avoided direct war with the Soviet Union and Communist China while containing the one and courting the other. Call it blind, dumb luck. Call it the hidden hand of God. But please, don’t ever count on it happening again. That is not how our participative, representative democracy is designed to work.

I am blogging for two reasons.

I need a workshop in which to examine how to discharge my duty as a citizen of the United States and as a human. I cannot leave my burden of responsibility to the next person. I cannot entrust it to some leader - even one I vote for. My opportunities to discharge that duty are greatly limited by my need to scratch out a living, express myself artistically, and manage to get myself into better physical health. But from those to whom much is given, much is expected. And I have been given a lot. As a middle-class American, I am easily in the top 30% of the happiest, most comfortable people in the world. My debt, therefore, is enormous.

The second, and equally important reason is to persuade you, my at this moment two-or-at-the-most-four readers, to re-examine your duty as a citizen and as a human. I know you personally. I believe you have even more to offer in the way of serious thought and leadership than I do. I am not trying to persuade you to spread my world view. I am trying to persuade you to use your knowledge and involve your friends and everyone you trust as an intellectual, a humanist, and a patriot, to build a community that will create a new world view.

In my previous blogs, I discussed the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary process. But there is no Harry Truman. Maybe there is a JFK, but if you remember, JFK was no great visionary when elected. He was a fairly average American who experienced a stupendous revelation in the midst of the Bay of Pigs disaster. If it weren’t for that disaster and the soul searching it led Kennedy to do, our nation and our species might never have survived the Cuban missile crisis.

We cannot trust any leader. We must choose one, but even the best leader will be helpless to dig us out of our current crop of species-survival-threatening quagmires without a groundswell in popular American opinion about how to face these crises.

So I am asking you, as an intellectual, please get involved. Re-examine your world view. Re-examine everything you believe about America and our role in the world. Re-examine your ethics. And re-examine your ideas about what citizenship means. Can you help develop the philosophical and ethical underpinnings for such a critically needed sea change in American popular opinion? Can you help create the mechanisms that will create and guide that sea change?

rbs

Ethical Realism

I am considering moving my blog from blogspot to myspace, where, as a prominent local musician with a prominent site, I may attract more readers. Because my political views are extremely moderate, I doubt it will harm the band - probably be helpful if what I have to say seems reasonable.

In my grazing through the various political chum for sale, I have come across another book that appears to cut through the debate to the core problems we are experiencing that are keeping us mired in a foreign policy of depraved morality and deprived of any sensible pragmatic foundation or direction.

The book is Ethical Realism by Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman. Here are the sentences that made me decide to purchase it for in depth study:

"Even after the debacle of Iraq, there is therefore at present no real opposition in America when it comes to foreign and security policy. The Democrats are bitterly, and rightly, critical of the monstrous incompetence displayed by the Bush administration. But they do not themselves have an alternative strategy or philosophy to offer, and too often content themselves with offering similar messianic platitudes about American greatness and the transformative power of democracy."

The authors, one a liberal British journalist and the other a former neo-con foreign policy wonk for the Heritage Foundation, claim to put forward a world view that would be more conducive to American national interests and at the same time have better ethical moorings - with the understanding that straying from our cultural moral underpinnings is ultimately destructive to our vital national interest.

After skimming through it (and I have now skimmed through dozens of political philosophical books) it looks like this will be as good if not a far better read than the Hart book - The Courage of Our Convictions. Interestingly enough, Gary Hart endorsed it quite strongly.I will post a book report soon enough.

rbs

Bloody Sunday comemmoration: Obama and Clinton

A few moments ago I watched addresses given by Senator Barak Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton using the commemoration of Bloody Sunday (the Selma Alabama bridge crossing, not the Irish one) to garner support from the critical African American portion of Democratic primary voters. While it is a grave political error to assume that American Blacks vote as a block, there is a powerful, if aging, demographic made up of the veterans of the civil rights movement of the mid 20th Century who play a critical role in the Democratic primary.

Neither Clinton nor Obama can simply assume the mantle of leadership for this critical voting block. They do not have time to earn it from their deeds - neither was old enough or geographically positioned to play a major role in that movement. They will have to earn it not with words, but rather with their ability to move people to action and inspire a belief in social justice.

Senator Obama based his address around a metaphor of Moses and Joshua. Dr. King deliberately compared himself to Moses - and the comparison is very clear. Obama called himself a member of the "Joshua generation" - a generation charged with completing the work of bringing the faithful to the promised land (an uncomfortable analogy if you read the account of the slaughter of Jericho closely.) It was a good address - not as comfortable and powerful as his announcement - but reasonably rousing. The most important point, in my mind, was a deliberate echo of JFK’s inauguration speech. "We must ask not only what government can do for us, but what we can do to help ourselves." Like many African American leaders, Obama was calling for positive change to start within the community.

Senator Clinton did far better than I expected. Her tone and presentation were more relaxed and friendly than I have seen before. Obama set forth his claim to Selma by talking about growing up black in America - "Don’t tell me I’m not coming home when I come to Selma..." Clinton’s approach was more oblique. She claimed the civil rights movement provided the opportunity to run for President to Senator Obama, Governor Richardson, "and yes, for me too." Clinton pointed out that as the civil rights movement was underway, it was still against the law in Alabama for women to serve on a jury: "I know where my chance came from and I am grateful to all of you."

For these senators, the commemoration ceremonies were not a time to talk about policy, but rather to court the old-guard civil rights warriors by demonstrating their commitment to equal rights and their passion to fight for the underprivileged in America. In this, I felt that Clinton was a bit more convincing. Both did quite well, bringing their respective audiences to their feet.

Some wag on one of the news channels said that this would be a win for both candidates. I think he was right.

rbs

Democratic Candidates Forum in Nevada

CSPAN has run the Democratic Candidate forum in Nevada several times now and I have caught most of it. I have found television news to be, on the whole, vacuous and uninformative CNN and MSNBC have proven to be about as informative as Fox. You can pretty much ignore their coverage and analysis of this event. They chose the most banal sound bites and entirely missed the drama of the event.

I suppose one reason I am so interested in American and British politics is not only because they are so terribly important, but because it is a great, vast story - far better than any fiction. So much promise and hope - such terrible failures. The forum was, in its way, quite riveting and I watched it several times. Note - my quotes are not exact - more like paraphrasing.

Unfortunately, Senator Obama was not there. I don't think that was a good choice on his part. The forum amounted to a series of job interviews with George Stephanopolus as the interviewer. Here are my impressions:

Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut: I met Chris Dodd in DC long ago - shook his hand and told him I was a fan of his work with the Family Leave Act. He's a short, stocky man with a brash voice that sounds like gravel and shockingly white hair. A strong grip. His presentation was genial and he touted his legislative work, but he didn't say anything that particularly inspired me. I think he's probably a great guy and I hope he remains in the Senate for a long time. We need him there.

Senator Hillary Clinton of New York: Clinton has real charisma and star power - especially for the first few seconds. Her mastery of the issues is nothing short of impressive and comprehensive and her commitment to universal health care is inspiring.

Unfortunately, Senator Clinton's tone is stentorian - she sounds like she's shouting when she has a perfectly good microphone on her lapel. For moments, when she was talking directly to Stephanopolus, who worked for her husband and is a family friend, you could see tremendous warmth and charm that is very reminiscent of her husband and I found myself wishing that charm could come forth when she was speaking to the crowd. If she can find that part of herself - speak to a crowd as if she were speaking to a friend - she would be simply unstoppable.

But I have two reservations about her. Philosophically, I am disinclined to see our Presidency become so openly dynastic. There are still some other Bushes hiding in the bushes and I don't want to see the presidency traded between two powerful families. More concretely, she is the only legislator running who voted for the war who has not recanted. I don't believe for a second that any of the Democrats who made that horrible mistake were truly boondoggled by Bush. They were steam rolled by a cult of personality at its unbelievable zenith - now discredited by its own stupid, evil incompetence.

Former Governor Tom Vilsak of Iowa: Boring and uninspiring. Vilsak wants to pull out of Iraq but doesn't offer any clue how to do so without leading to an even worse disaster. No foreign policy credentials. We've had way too much foreign policy incompetence - we must have someone who can handle this. Vilsak is going nowhere - hopefully. That's not to say I don't think he's a great guy - he probably is. I just don't want to see him become the nominee. I should add that Dodd also offered no clue about how to handle the chaos that will result from just pulling out of Baghdad - he just did so far more charismatically.

Former Senator John Edwards of South Carolina: What a charmer. Edwards is clearly dedicated to labor and is the labor candidate. He is a born organizer and a tremendously effective fund raiser. He is throwing cleverly disguised barbs at Clinton every time he apologizes - quite convincingly - for his vote for the Iraq war. He takes responsibility for the vote and does not try to justify it - it was a terrible mistake. That gives him a lot of moral authority. Not presidential material though. He would make a good VP candidate both because of his charm and because of his ability to raise money.

Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico: I have been impressed with Bill Richardson for a long time and I knew he would eventually run for president. He doesn't have a chance - but he would make a magnificent VP. His experience and credentials simply dwarf all the other Democratic and Republican candidates combined.

If any of the Democrats win, Richardson will either be at their side as VP or he will find a place very high up in the cabinet. He would make a hell of a Secretary of State. His ability to negotiate peaceful solutions to tense, violent situations is nothing short of stunning. President Clinton sent him all over the world as his primary troubleshooter. As a VP candidate, he could have tremendous impact in the West. He also had one of the best lines of the night (which, not surprisingly, none of the news channels picked up): "I have two minutes in my opening remarks to tell you how we can get out of Iraq, fix health care, address global warming, and resolve all these other problems we face. I can do that in four words. Elect a Democratic President!"

Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware: I have liked Biden for many years. He is a straight talker. His lack of artifice pretty much disqualifies him from the Presidency but it is so refreshing. I think Biden understands Iraq better than anyone else and has the best plan for getting us out while minimizing the mess we will leave in our wake. He would make a magnificent Secretary of State.

Biden had several good lines: "I don't think our soldiers should be in a city of 6 ½ million knocking on doors. I think the President should be on an airplane to every national capitol around the world building consensus for a loose federation such as the Iraqi constitution calls for. Iraq will never be peaceful until each of its populations have control over their own lives - their own police, their own laws, their own marriage institutions, with a central government that controls the borders, the army, the currency and assures oil revenues are equitably distributed but does little else." He also said: "President Bush will leave the next president with no margin for error. None. You need to look at all of us and decide, who has the character and the experience to take this challenge when the stakes are so high."

Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio: Kucinich looks like he just ate spinach. There is something terrifyingly infantile and self-destructive about this strange little man. I would hate to work for him. It just looks like he has inner demons gnawing at him - every expression, every move. That being said, I am really glad he is in this race. He won't win anything, he will remain a Representative for the rest of his days, but he gives all the Senatorial candidates the good thorough kicking they so richly deserve.

No one had anywhere near as powerful a presentation or anywhere near the moral clarity and purity of heart that Kucinich presented. No one gave better sound bites - all quite blithely ignored by the media: "It must be very difficult to offer yourself as a candidate to the American people and be forced to admit that you were misled - fooled - hoodwinked..... by George Bush" And the crowd went absolutely wild. Kucinich then said: "But this is serious. Look at the consequences of being misled by George Bush." and he discussed the Iraq debacle. From that moment on, he had the crowd spellbound. No one else had anywhere near that impact.

Kucinich organized 120 Democrats to vote against the war: "We need a President who makes the right decisions when they count. When lives are on the line. Not six years later." His plan to end the war is to end the occupation immediately and replace American troops with UN troops, clear the corporate hogs out of Iraq, and pay reparations for the more than 600,000 innocent Iraqis who have died as a result of the war. "We must stop trying to steal the oil that belongs to the people of Iraq. Why did we go into Iraq?" And the audience shouted: "Oil!!!"

Kucinich's vision for universal health care was bright and clear. "Single payer. No role for the private insurance industry. 31% of the cost of health care goes to service the insurance industry - stock benefits, administration, marketing, paperwork. With that, we could afford to insure everybody."

In 2004 I was very skeptical about Kucinich's trade policy ideas - but they sound awfully good now. "NAFTA, GATT and the WTO were developed for the benefit of the large corporations. There is not a word in any of them about labor conditions, slave labor, environmental protection." Kucinich wants to scrap them all and go back to bilateral trade agreements that hold each trading partner to the same standards we have for workplaces in America. I don't think the free-trade bell can be un-rung, but I do believe that all those agreements must be modified to carry language protecting labor organization, workplace safety, and environmental quality.

Former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska: Gravel is not running for anything. He is out campaigning to bring an end to the Iraq war now. His vision for how to do it politically is very clear - the Democratic Congress should force a direct showdown with the President. "Everything they're doing - non-binding resolutions - even if they were binding they would be unconstitutional. Like it or not, the President is the Commander in Chief! But Congress has the authority to make war, and to end war. Let them vote to de-authorize the war and the congressional Republicans will wither on the vine. It will force a constitutional crisis that the American people will understand."

Gravel also brought out a suggestion to replace the income tax with a sales tax - which was interesting but will go nowhere and only served to dilute his main message: "Whether the American people elect a Democratic president will depend on how they see the Congress act with respect to Iraq over the next two years." Gravel is very old and very emotional - he teared up when he raged: "George Bush lied to us!! I told people - his lips are moving and he's lying to us!! Just like Lyndon Johnson lied to us thirty years ago!!!!"If you get a chance to see this forum, you should watch it. It was really quite moving. Especially the presentations by Biden, Kucinich, and Gravel.

rbs

Why am I Blogging?

Well, it turns out I seem to think I have a lot to say. Stuff I want to share with other people. And my folks told me I probably ought to.

Music - I have published my own music (for sale on cdbaby.com) and reviewed music I like. I will review some of that here.

Politics - I am very shy about discussing my political views at work because I work in State government. Even if my views fit the prevailing administration, I hope to continue working when another administration takes office. I don't plan to talk about my State government here - at least not specifics. But I have a lot of thoughts about national politics I want to share and gather people's opinions on. I'll post those here.

Family History - Family lore has it that my great-grandfather was killed by another Indian for stealing a horse. I don't know if it's true, but this is a great place to tell those stories that have been handed down. I will probably simply copy what my parents have written about their family histories. I will avoid talking about the living relatives here - or at least the more colorful stories about them from my youth. So stories like the peach surprise or the cat table talk will simply have to wait a half-dozen decades or so...

Literature - I published a book of short stories in 1998. I still have a few hundred copies laying around. I also published a book about my sword collection (long gone). I may tell some of those stories here.

Seminars - I've given quite a few. I might put some of the ideas I've developed here. I've been wanting to produce a seminar on the proper use of Power Point. Most Power Point presentations I have seen were abominable. People know how to use the software, but don't have a clue how to use the gray-ware in the heads of their victims - er - participants. Just don't get me started. Well... too late. I'll probably say something about it.

My First Wife - During the divorce, I promised myself I would never say anything bad about my first wife and if anyone else has anything bad to say about her, please don't say it here. She was part of my life for about 18 years, so I may mention her on occasion.

I'm sure there will be other topics, but these will do for now. The real reason I want to do this is politics. We stand on the precipice - when have we not? It's just that recent precipices have involved possible extinction of the species. Actually, our species will probably survive even the worst of global warming - it just won't be very pleasant. If we don't want to live in a dictatorship or a theocracy, how much less will we enjoy living under the draconian measures that would be required if we let global warming get out of hand?

Well, more like if we don't take rather draconian measures now to ameliorate the problem, twenty years from now someone's going to be giving us tickets for exceeding the per-person methane release allotment. "That's one fart over the limit... You know we have to limit emissions because of global warming... That will be $1,800.00. Didn't you read the pamphlet about not eating beans?"

Like I said earlier - it appears I have a lot to say. But I also want to read what other people have to say about what I have to say.

I've got some stuff stored in the computer. I'll start with those.

rbs