From Kierkegaard's 'Sickness Unto Death'

Currently reading "Basic Writings of Existentialism," I am in the mist of a work called "Sickness Unto Death" by Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard, who, somewhat ironically, is known as the father of existentialism, even though many of his fellow existentialists, Sartre, Nietzsche, Camus, Heidegger and others, were less conspicuously Christian or religious. Some, like Nietzsche, in their writings, leaned heavily toward being hostile regarding religion or the idea of a god, in fact.

That said, if anyone might be interested in exploring existentialism further and wants to remain within the Christian worldview, Kierkegaard would be an excellent choice. The following is the conclusion of the chapter titled "The Universality of This Sickness (Despair)." By "despair," Kierkegaard means humankind's supposed situation in original sin or spiritual "sickness." I found this to be a particularly stirring and elegant summation of this argument.

Ah, so much is said about human want and misery -- I seek to understand it, I have also had some acquaintance with it at close range; so much is said about wasted lives -- but only that man’s life is wasted who lived on, so deceived by the joys of life or by its sorrows that he never became eternally and decisively conscious of himself as spirit, as self, or (what is the same thing) never became aware and in the deepest sense received an impression of the fact that there is a God, and that he, he himself, his self, exists before this God, which gain of infinity is never attained except through despair. And, oh, this misery, that so many live on and are defrauded of this most blessed of all thoughts; this misery, that people employ themselves about everything else, or, as for the masses of men, that people employ them about everything else, utilize them to generate the power for the theater of life, but never remind them of their blessedness; that they heap them in a mass and defraud them, instead of splitting them apart so that they might gain the highest thing, the only thing worth living for, and enough to live in for an eternity -- it seems to me that I could weep for an eternity over the fact that such misery exists! And, oh, to my thinking this is one expression the more of the dreadfulness of this most dreadful sickness and misery, namely, its hiddenness -- not only that he who suffers from it may wish to hide it and may be able to do so, to the effect that it can so dwell in a man that no one, no one whatever discovers it; no, rather that it can be so hidden in a man that he himself does not know it! And, oh, when the hour-glass has run out, the hourglass of time, when the noise of worldliness is silenced, and the restless or the ineffectual busyness comes to an end, when everything is still about thee as it is in eternity -- whether thou wast man or woman, rich or poor, dependent or independent, fortunate or unfortunate, whether thou didst bear the splendor of the crown in a lofty station, or didst bear only the labor and heat of the day in an inconspicuous lot; whether thy name shall be remembered as long as the world stands (and so was remembered as long as the world stood), or without a name thou didst cohere as nameless with the countless multitude; whether the glory which surrounded thee surpassed all human description, or the judgment passed upon thee was the most severe and dishonoring human judgement can pass -- eternity asks of thee and of every individual among these million millions only one question, whether thou hast lived in despair or not, whether thou wast in despair in such a way that thou didst not know thou wast in despair, or in such a way that thou didst hiddenly carry this sickness in thine inward parts as thy gnawing secret, carry it under thy heart as the fruit of a sinful love, or in such a way that thou, a horror to others, didst rave in despair. And if so, if thou hast lived in despair (whether for the rest thou didst win or lose), then for thee all is lost, eternity knows thee not, it never knew thee, or (even more dreadful) it knows thee as thou art known, it puts thee under arrest by thyself in despair.

Here's the entire chapter for those interested.

Vale of tears, ctd.

The woes continued for the Catholic Church this week as documents obtained by The Associated Press show that Joseph Ratzinger, then-cardinal, now Pope Benedict XVI; Pope John Paul II; and other church officials were, by any account, snaillike in investigating yet another minister, Stephen Kreisl, whose record includes being accused of 15 male and female children.

He pleaded no contest to lewd conduct in 1978 for tying up and molesting two boys. He left the ministry in 1981, only to become a volunteer at a youth ministry three years later in Oakland, Calif. He was also imprisoned for six years in 2004 for molesting a girl at his Truckee, Calif., vacation home.

For those keeping score, here's a handy site which is tracking the Church's whole calamitous affair of, how can we say, unholy priests. Here is a detailed New York Times story about it, and here's a link to letters urging then-"Most Holy Father," Pope John Paul II, to defrock Kreisl.

[Photo: A 1985 letter, written in Latin, to the Diocese of Oakland signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The letter said that a California priest accused of molesting children should not be defrocked without further study. - Kim Johnson/Associated Press]

The Catholic Church's vale of tears

For a church which seems absolutely consumed with the topic of sex, from abstinence, to prohibiting condom use in Africa, to circumcision, to homosexual priests, to continued and near ubiquitous charges of molestation of children (some deaf, no less!), readers shouldn't be surprised that the Catholic Church and Joseph Ratzinger, the current pope, is summoning every possible excuse to deflect the allegations.

Indeed, charges against Catholic officials are mounting. Heaped onto the allegations, the short list includes that of:

• Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 55, who is an Indian priest accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old girl, may be extradited to the U.S. to face trial. He was alleged to have sexually assaulted the female church member while serving in Minnesota.

• Peter Hullermann, a German priest who, after receiving therapy for his pedophilia, was allowed to continue working. Current allegations have surfaced, spanning from the 1970s to the late 90s. Only in mid-March of this year was he suspended.

• Father Donald McGuire, who sexually abused two teen boys in the 1960s and was only convicted in 2006. He also allegedly had sexual relationships with at least seven teenage boys between 1969-2004. Here is a timeline of the egregious mess.

• Michael Teta and Robert C. Trupia — Two more, of which the late Tucson Bishop Manuel Moreno struggled with the Vatican to get defrocked.

I could, no doubt, continue. In the latest episode of blame-shifting, the Catholic News Agency is claiming that this New York Times article fails to mention that the lawyer Jeff Anderson has been the lead attorney in numerous suits against the church and has an obvious vested interest in seeing that new allegations come to light. Lawrence Murphy is the topic of The Times article, and he is accused of molesting up to 200 deaf children.

According to a William McGurn opinion piece, what Laurie Goodstein, the author of The Times story,

did not tell readers is that Mr. Anderson isn't just any old lawyer. When it comes to suing the church, he is America's leading plaintiffs attorney. Back in 2002, he told the Associated Press that he'd won more than $60 million in settlements from the church, and he once boasted to a Twin Cities weekly that he's "suing the s--t out of them everywhere." Nor did the Times report another salient fact about Mr. Anderson: He's now trying to sue the Vatican in U.S. federal court.

And the Catholic News Agency:

According to the Pioneer Press, Anderson charged that the Pope along with his predecessors was"the mastermind, head, of an international conspiracy to cover up their own crimes and keep them above the law."

Donald Marshall, who has accused Fr. Murphy of kissing him and attempting to fondle him when he was a teenager at Lincoln Hills Boys Home in Irma, Wisconsin, also spoke at the press conference.

Now 45, Marshall said he was shocked when he was told that “then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — had a chance to defrock Murphy but instead did nothing,” the Pioneer Press says.

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger "may have not fondled me, but he's no different because he allowed it to happen," Marshall said, according to the Pioneer Press.

In fact, Cardinal Ratzinger was not appointed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) until 1981, well after the abuse took place.

His office addressed sexual abuse cases only when it involved abuse of the confessional until 2001, when it took over abuse cases from the Roman Rota. Allegations against Murphy came to the CDF’s attention in 1996 because of claims he abused the confessional.

The documents provided to the New York Times by Anderson and Finnegan, as well as the Times’ interpretation of them, have been called into question.

The documentation included the minutes of a key Vatican meeting between three Wisconsin bishops and CDF Secretary Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone. However, the same documentation revealed that these Italian-language minutes were translated “very roughly” into English using a computer translator.

Properly translated, the minutes show that the Vatican never ruled out the laicization of the priest, but a lack of records from the archdiocese created barriers to a canonical trial.

In his Wall Street Journal essay, McGurn provided additional documentation challenging the Times’ claims that the priest was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system. In fact, Fr. Murphy was stripped of his priestly faculties, a process McGurn declares the equivalent of taking away a doctor’s medical license.

McGurn challenged the press to continue examining the “hard questions” about Catholic prelates’ action in the Murphy case. However, he suggested reporters provide “some context, and a bit of journalistic skepticism about the narrative of a plaintiff’s attorney making millions off these cases.”

One can only wonder, however, what difference all this makes. We can't dispute the fact that lawyers are in law to make money. That Anderson is, perhaps, taking an active role in uncovering corrupt activity either says something about his good character or his bad character. But it doesn't matter which. The case against Murphy is only one case of a multitude leveled against the Catholic Church. In addition to cases pointed out here, the Murphy case

is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

And now, we have Ratzinger and other Catholic officials equating the ill-fated church with the persecution of the Jews.

If that sounds like a heinous analogical leap, you would be right.

Speaking in St. Peter’s Basilica, the priest, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, took note that Easter and Passover fell during the same week this year, and said he was led to think of the Jews.

“They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence, and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” said Father Cantalamessa, who serves under the title of preacher of the papal household. Then he quoted from what he said was a letter from a Jewish friend he did not identify.

“I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole world,” he said the friend wrote. “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”

Quite the contrary, if any institution should feel a generous measure of guilt at this point, it should be the Catholic Church, and it should apologize to us all for the immoral acts it has both condoned, turned a blind eye to and exacted on humankind through these 1,800 or so years. Not to mention the less unseen, but just as disastrous, effects of teaching young children that they are created innately and spiritually sick and commanded to make themselves better by believing (however forced and obligatory that belief may be) or else face the fire. And in such a lowly spiritual condition, children are taught that confession is where they are to by reconciled to God, who, presumably, made them sinners to begin with. At least Protestantism claims to offer direct access to Jesus without a necessary, and also presumably, an equally or possible more sinful, intermediary, as we have learned, and it's in this sad context that the sex scandals with children only begin, making them, at once, even more internally wanton and deplorable than just the physical act itself.

Current illogical fears, spiraling passions lead to ...

If anyone needs tangible proof about what I've said for quite some time on where the current wave of frenzied and irrational rhetoric might lead us, here it is:

Associated Press Writers= DETROIT (AP) — Nine alleged members of a Christian militia group that was girding for battle with the Antichrist were charged Monday with plotting to kill a police officer and slaughter scores more by bombing the funeral — all in hopes of touching off an uprising against the U.S. government.

...

The arrests have dealt "a severe blow to a dangerous organization that today stands accused of conspiring to levy war against the United States," Attorney General Eric Holder said.

Authorities said the arrests underscored the dangers of homegrown right-wing extremism of the sort seen in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.

...

David Brian Stone, 44, of Clayton, Mich., and one of his sons were identified as the ringleaders of the group. Stone, who was known as "Captain Hutaree," organized the group in paramilitary fashion and members were assigned secret names, prosecutors said. Ranks ranged from "radoks" to "gunners," according to the group's Web site.

"It started out as a Christian thing," Stone's ex-wife, Donna Stone, told The Associated Press. "You go to church. You pray. You take care of your family. I think David started to take it a little too far."

And this was "Christian" right-wing outfit, no less.

Indeed, Frank Rich with The New York Times recently touched on some of this "rage," in describing the heated fervor over this politically moderate, Mitt Romney clone of a health care bill:

Yet it’s this bill that inspired G.O.P. congressmen on the House floor to egg on disruptive protesters even as they were being evicted from the gallery by the Capitol Police last Sunday. It’s this bill that prompted a congressman to shout “baby killer” at Bart Stupak, a staunch anti-abortion Democrat. It’s this bill that drove a demonstrator to spit on Emanuel Cleaver, a black representative from Missouri. And it’s this “middle-of-the-road” bill, as Obama accurately calls it, that has incited an unglued firestorm of homicidal rhetoric, from “Kill the bill!” to Sarah Palin’s cry for her followers to “reload.” At least four of the House members hit with death threats or vandalism are among the 20 political targets Palin marks with rifle crosshairs on a map on her Facebook page.

All the while, he correctly notes that folks previously cried foul about "socialism" regarding other sweeping overhauls, but

there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.

The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now, were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for president in ’64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a “usurpation” of states’ rights that “would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an insane person into your place of business.” Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of “a federal dictatorship.” Meanwhile, three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since ...

Here's another look from The Atlantic: Anti-Government Unrest and American Vigilantism.

McCain on health care criticism: 'Be respectful'

The reactionary behavior continued this week over passage of the most sweeping piece of legislation in decades, as lawmakers are getting incendiary and offensive messages and voicemails from their angry, to the point of irrational (or, perhaps, some protesters were irrational to begin with), constituents. Rep. Bart Stupak, for instance, an anti-abortion Democratic lawmaker who was key in getting the bill passed, received a voicemail with these comments:

Think about this. There are millions of people across the country who wish you ill, and all of those negative thoughts projected on you will materialize into something that is not very good for you.

Is the caller really talking about Karma here or some sort of mystical conjoining of the minds against a mutually hated individual? If so, that tells us all we need to know about the caller.

Here is content from two other calls from CNN's story:

"Stupak, you are a lowlife, baby-murdering scumbag, pile of steaming crap. You're a cowardly punk, Stupak, that's what you are. You and your family are scum," an unidentified caller said. "That's what you are, Stupak. You are a piece of crap."

"Go to hell, you piece of [expletive deleted]" another caller said.

And here's a video detailing some of the broken windows and other ugly incidents, including one disgraceful act by Rep. Steve King:




In a recent interview with CNN's John King, Sen. John McCain, while not villifying Sarah Palin's recent graphic that placed crosshairs over 20 House Democrats that "we" (McCain/Palin) carried in 2008 who voted for the health care reform bill, McCain did speak against over-the-top, and frankly, offensive and childish gestures by Steve King in front of health care protesters at the Capitol. Encouragingly, before John King even got a question out about Steve King's action, McCain said,

Uncalled for, of course that's uncalled for. Of course that's uncalled for, John. And we see, from the person who yelled, 'baby killer.' But I think that we've gotta urge everybody to be respectful.

While not agreeing with most of McCain's political stances, he has always proven to me that he has a rational and indepedent-thinking mind

Here's the interview:

Historic legislation well on its way

The most fateful piece of legislation since FDR's New Deal programs in the 1930s and the Civil Rigths Act of 1964, the Senate version of the health bill (already passed in the Senate on Dec. 24) passed the House of Representatives by a 219-212 (To correct something: I believe I said previously that it still needed to be approved by the Senate, but that body has already voted on it), and here is a map from The New York Times on how the vote broke down across the nation:




Obviously, the most progressive parts of the country are easy to pinpoint, and less progressive folks, rabble that are easily roused, were clearly on display this weekend, heckling lawmakers and making fools of themselves. After all, when mind power and logic isn't a person's strong suit, all that's left is emotion.

So, what now? Well, the House (still in session as of late Sunday) will vote on the reconciliation bill, which will then go to the Senate for approval. The one that was just approved is one and done and will now go to the president's desk.

The perceived blowback from all this is complete conjecture, no matter what the talking heads might say. As I noted in the last post, the Congressional Budget Office has already released its cost estimate for the bill, but all other theses — impending socialism, uncontrolled debt and, in the most extreme cases, the destruction of America, are the products of guesswork and attempts to inject fear into the public about the bill. Folks said the same thing after FDR's New Deal programs, and we're still here.

I, personally, am not to going to live in fear or loathing of the government, its programs or anything else. As I've noted to friends, if we have the resources to help people, in this case, 30 million, we should; damn the politicians, and damn the lobbyists who line their pockets. Calls from Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and others that we are headed toward socialism are laughable. Too many of those same politicians have a vested interest in the capitalistic status quo that they would never let us take their money.

What if the bill is flawed? If parts of the bill are not working, the parts can later then be retooled; this has been the story of decent legislation made better down through the decades. The key, after nearly a century (!) of debate on the topic, was action, and we saw historic action today, regrettably, without Republicans. Clearly, parts can be made better, and we can leave it to lawmakers to improve the bill. As Jim Wallis, author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street -- A Moral Compass for the New Economy (www.godspolitics.com) said,

... despite the very flawed health-care bill coming up for a vote this weekend, and the even more flawed processes that we will witness during its debate and vote, I believe (as does Sojourners) that something is better than nothing, and that this bill will hopefully be only the beginning of a process, and a first step toward comprehensive health-care reform. We simply cannot walk away from the 30 million people without health-care coverage who would benefit from this bill. And it is absolutely clear to us that simply doing nothing and letting the opportunity pass once again for beginning to reform the health-care system is a formula for everyone's health care getting worse -- more people being uninsured, higher premiums for those with insurance, continually diminishing benefits for us all, more family bankruptcies, and more people literally dying without proper health care.

I'm not quite as "bleeding heart" as this guy, but something clearly had to be done. When we, as a country, keep folks uneducated, poor, unhealthy and frightened, we can more easily control them. The measure of a strong government, however, is when we have a health, educated and thriving body politic, as Tony Benn said in the movie, Sicko, in this telling interview:




A 1948 leaflet issued in England, as read by Benn:

"'Your new National Health Service begins on the fifth of July. What is it, how do you get it? It will provide you with all medical, dental and nursing care. Everyone, rich or poor, man, woman or child can use it, or in it part of it. There are no charges, except for a few special items. There are no insurance qualifications. But it is not a charity. You are paying for it mainly as taxpayers, and it will relieve your money worries in times of illness.' Now somehow, the few words some of the whole thing up."

Now somehow, the few words sums the whole thing up."

Celebrities and Scientology

Kirstey Alley's recent brouhaha with The Today Show about whether Alley's new Organic Liaison diet program was a front for Scientology again makes me wonder how desperate some folks have to be desire something to fill a perceived spiritual void that they will believe some of the craziest nonsense ever invented (I highlight some of it here), and even donate money so they can become higher ranking members of the cult. Today, for instance, in writing story about the diet, noted that Alley donated $5 million to the organization about two years ago, giving her the Diamond Meritorious Award. Tom Cruise received the award in 2005 for donating $2 million. According to Wikipedia, among the ranks of other well-known celebrity Scientology members are: John Travolta, Juliette Lewis, Kirstie Alley, Catherine Bell, Nancy Cartwright, Beck, Jason Lee, Edgar Winter, Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Anne Archer, Lisa Marie Presley, and opera singer Julia Migenes.

As it turns out, money really does by happiness and peace of mind, however strewn that path may be with sci-fi silliness. Here some other celebrities who have reported donated large sums to the church, along with their "awards:"

• Nancy Cartwright, 50, Patron Laureate Award: $10 million
• Kirstie Alley, 57, Diamond Meritorious Award: $5 million
• John Travolta, 53, Gold Meritorious Award: $1 million
• Kelly Preston, 45, Gold Meritorious Award: $1 million
• Priscilla Presley, 62, Patron Award: $50,000

Lay folks, as this New Yorker story reported about celebrity Scientologist, have to pay the piper for enlightenment as well:

An initial twelve-and-a-half-hour auditing session costs between six and seven hundred dollars, Greg LaClaire, a vice-president of Celebrity Centre, says. (Aspiring Scientologists can mitigate the expense by choosing to be audited by a fellow initiate rather than by a staff member.) In the Holiday 2007 Dianetics and Scientology catalogue, a deluxe Planetary Dissemination Edition E-Meter—billed as a “tool for Golden Age of Tech certainty,” to assist in “faster progress up The Bridge”—was offered, in “Diamond Blue,” for five thousand five hundred dollars.

Some, of course, have realized the falsities and possible abuses inside the church and have cried foul. This article relates some of their painful exoduses from the organization:

Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.

They signed a contract for a billion years, in keeping with the church's belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.

But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a journey they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars for courses and counseling and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them.

Thus, Scientology isn't all that different than other religions in some regards: fantastical stories, claims that it produces inner peace and vanquishes internal and/or spiritual demons and driven by power and influence. Because it's human nature, celebrities can't necessarily be faulted so much for clambering after their spiritual selves in this way. But it's crushingly obvious that they, and to a lesser extent regular Joes fooled into the believing in the cult, like the family above, are purchasing their faith, similar to how fraternity and sorority members purchase their friends, both amounting to a deplorable and disingenuous business.

In response to Tea, Coffee parties, Kool-Aid Party emerges

Hastings, Neb. — In a bold move, and in continuing with beverage-inspired movements sweeping the country, a grassroots body of concerned residents has begun meeting across the country as part of The Kool-Aid Party, which touts itself as a colorful and fruit-filled alternative to the blander, and oftentimes, sugarless Tea and Coffee parties.

Dubbed the Party of Cool, The Kool-Aid Party met for the first time this Saturday in homes across the country in groups of five or six.

"The Tea and Coffee parties are sugarless alternatives, bro," said 19-year-old Mark Windsor. "We're the real deal. The government and Lipton and Starbucks have gone too far."

Party supporters typically met for about 10 minutes in some 2,500 residences to sip the sweet nectar of Kool-Aid and talk about their dismay for government spending gone wild.

The Kool-Aid Man, apparently equally disgruntled by wasteful government spending and the sudden upsurge of coffee and tea consumption, crashed through the dining room wall of one supporters' home here in Hastings, screaming, "Oh yeah! Kool-Aid to the rescue!"

"Like, man, you know, I've always been about promoting having fun and drinking tasty beverages," the Kool-Aid Man said as he brushed off chunks of brick from his blue jean shorts. "But, you know, like, this is about more than just promoting drinks at this point. The Kool-Aid Man has had enough of government intervention into my fans' lives. It's time to stand up and break walls and be cool to one another ... you know what I mean, bro, like, governmentally?"

Sally Gunter, who owns the Hastings home with her husband John, said she was encouraged by Kool-Aid Man's enthusiasm, but wondered how she was going to afford rebuilding her wall.

"I mean, my husband was laid off last Tuesday, so we're kind of in a rut," Gunter said. "I work at a local school here in town, but that's only going to pay the immediate bills. That's one reason why we wanted to get involved. The economy is in such bad shape; we felt like we needed to find our voice. But it gets pretty cold here in Hastings at night."

Kool-Aid Man didn't seem to have immediate answers for the Gunter family.

"Oh yeah! I can get them some of that free Kool-Aid nectar, but about the wall, oh man!" Kool-Aid Man said, as he scratched his glass handle in bewilderment. "The commercial producers always paid for the property damage."

Texas BOE knows best, ctd.

I previously wrote on this topic at this link.

Seemingly antithetical to anything that could be called educational planning, planning based on science and the record of history, that is, the Texas Board of Education handed down a 10-5 preliminary vote in favor of amending the state's social studies curriculum, with many of the decisions, maddeningly, falling along conservative political or ideological lines.
For instance:

Ken Mercer, a member of the State Board of Education, wants Texas students to know about both the good and the bad that government can offer, he said Thursday.
So, he introduced an amendment to state social studies curriculum standards that said: "understand how government taxation and regulations can serve as restriction to private enterprise."
He said the students need to know that over-regulation and over-taxation can inhibit innovation and stifle industry.
His fellow member, Terri Leo, agreed. She said it's especially important today, with issues like cap-and-trade and "policies that are based on supposed global warming theories."
The amendment passed.

And from USA Today:

As part of the new curriculum, the elected board — made up of lawyers, a dentist and a weekly newspaper publisher among others — rejected an attempt to ensure that children learn wshy the U.S. was founded on the principle of religious freedom.
But, it agreed to strengthen nods to Christianity by adding references to "laws of nature and nature's God" to a section in U.S. history that requires students to explain major political ideas.
 They also agreed to strike the word "democratic" in references to the form of U.S. government, opting instead to call it a "constitutional republic."
In addition to learning the Bill of Rights, the board specified a reference to the Second Amendment right to bear arms in a section about citizenship in a U.S. government class and agreed to require economics students to "analyze the decline of the U.S. dollar including abandonment of the gold standard."

And possibly the most ridiculous example I can find, one that smacks of anti-intellectualism all around is the case of the children's book, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Bill Martin Jr., which the board of education moved to ban because, and without doing a lick of fact-checking, members thought it was written by Bill Martin, who indeed penned, "Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation." The latter Bill Martin, however, is a philosophy teacher at DePaul University in Chicago.
From the The Dallas Morning News:

Hardy's motion is "a new low in terms of the group that's supposed to represent education having such faulty research and making such a false leap without substantiating what they're doing," said Michael Sampson, Martin's co-author on 30 children's books.
The social studies standards update, which started last spring when groups of educators met to suggest revisions, has brought criticism from the right and the left about politicizing the process. As trustees worked their way through a draft this month, political ideas like imperialism, communism and free enterprise were at the heart of some of the changes.

The good news is that the person holding the board's most conservative's, far right member Don McLeroy, was ousted by lobbyist Thomas Ratliff earlier this month. Said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network:

Voters sent a clear message by rejecting the ringleader [McLeroy] of the faction that has repeatedly dragged our public schools into the nation's divisive culture wars over the past four years. Parents want a state board that focuses on educating their kids, not promoting divisive political and personal agendas.

The bad news, at least for students, is that

social conservatives claimed at least one victory as Ken Mercer of San Antonio successfully fended off a GOP challenge from Austin attorney Tim Tuggey. And conservative Brian Russell forced an April runoff with educator Marsha Farney in the race for the seat held by outgoing Christian conservative Cynthia Dunbar.
"I hope we can keep our conservative posture," Mercer said of the board.

Since when does education break down along party lines or even ideological lines?  I will now return to some corner silently weeping.

Why Israeli-Palestinian resolution is impossible

Yesterday's New York Times editorial, titled Diplomacy 102, suggested that it "would be a very important start" if

the (Obama) administration would hold both Israelis and Palestinians “accountable for any statements or actions that inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of talks.”

And continuing:

We also hope that if progress lags (in moving forward with a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine), the administration will be ready to put forward its own proposals on the central issues of borders, refugees, security and the future of Jerusalem.

Mr. Obama has another chance to move the peace process forward. This time he has to get it right.

But the Obama administration has no chance to "get it right," as his predecessors had the same bleak prospects. Why? Because the conflict betweem Israel and the Palestinians go back thousands of years, with each side claiming, for religious and imperialistic reasons (which are often intertwined) that they are the "true" proprietors of the disputed land.

Case in point, Elizabeth, apparently on Israel's side, commented on the above-referenced editorial:

There will be no true peace in the Middle East until the Arab world acknowledges that the land of Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people there can be no peace.

Jews were living in ancient Israel, Judea and their capital of Jerusalem for over 1,800 years before the birth of Muhammad and over 2,000 years before the Muslim Conquest of the Holy Land.

Just because our ancestors were expelled into exile by the Romans does not mean we Jews have forfitted our rights to our ancestral land.

Now that does not mean there cannot be a peace agreement with the Arabs, it does mean though that this history deserve recognition.

Similarly, just as Palestinian refugees need to be recognized so too do the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab countries in the 40's and 50's.

The key to resolving this conflict is understanding the history and connections of the other side.

Meanwhile, Efraim Karsh's book "Islamic Imperialism," which makes the case that the push for Islamic expansion among Muslims is the key to understanding the constant and unending turmoil in that region, quotes numerous Arab sources touting Palestinian ownership of the lands. Citing Palestinian Authority Television from Oct. 2, 2000, Karsh records:

Since [the caliph] Umar and Saladin we haven't given up our original rights in Jerusalem and al-Aqsa, our Jerusalem, our Palestine. If time constitutes the [the criteria of] existence, then Israel's temporary existence is only fifty-two years long while we, the Palestinian Arabs, have lived here for thousands of years, and we, the indigenous population, will eventually expel the invaders, however long it takes.

Or, Karsh notes,

In other words, the "Question of Palestine," is neither an ordinary territorial dispute between two national movements nor a struggle by an indigenous population against a foreign occupier. It is a holy war by the worldwide Islamic umma to prevent the loss of a part of the House of Islam to the infidels: "When our enemies usurp some Islamic lands, Jihad becomes a duty binding on all Muslims." Like other parts of the world conquered by the forces of Islam, "the land of Palestine has been an Islamic trust (waqf) throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, [hence] no one can renounce it or part it, or abandon it or part of it." This makes the present struggle over Palestine a direct extension is Islam's historic fight against its two foremost medieval enemies — the crusaders and the Mongols:

"The Muslims had faced those invasions and planned their removal and defeat, [and] they are able to face the Zionist invasion and defeat it. This will not be difficult for Allah if our intentions are pure and our determination is sincere; if the Muslims draw useful lessons from the experiences of the past, and extricate themselves from the vestiges of the [Western] ideological onslaught; and if they follow the traditions of Islam."

So, this isn't a battle that's going to be won, I don't think, with Diplomacy 101 or Diplomacy 102 because the struggle itself predates modern diplomacy, democracy and rationality itself. The millennial struggle for that section of the Middle East can be reduced to only one of three conclusions: the efforts or intentions of Muslims regarding Palestine have simply not been to Allah's liking (thus conflicts continue) or Allah is impotent to assist Arabs in reclaiming the land from Israel or Allah wasn't there in the first place. Since the Koran was strewn together in the 6th century, much of it replicated the Bible, and coming long after even the New Testament was written, I would conclude the latter.

As Karsh correctly notes,

Only when the political elites of the Middle East and the Muslim world reconcile themselves to the reality of state nationalism, forswear pan-Arab and pan-Islamic imperialist dreams, and make Islam a matter of private faith rather than a tool of political ambition, will the inhabitants of these regions at least be able to look forward to a better future free of would be-Saladins.

But that's not the stated call for Muslims. The stated purpose, as Karsh notes, and as I have referenced previously, has been consistently the following down through the centuries:

• “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god by Allah.’ – Muhammad’s farewell address, March 632


• “I shall cross this sea to their islands to pursue them until there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah.” – Saladin, January 1189


• “We will export our revolution throughout the world … until the calls ‘there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah’ are echoed all over the world.” – Ayatollah Khomeini, 1979


• “I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is not god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad.” – Osama bin Laden, November 2001

Thus, forging peace in that region, while reason and logic are far from its shores, becomes impossible while that particular brand of religion entangles every strain of independent thought.

Talk radio echo chamber claptrap

If you haven't heard of radio host Michael Savage, he's another in the long line of neocon talking heads who wrap their heads in the American flag, while attempting to make readers tremble in their boots about the socialist spiral in which we are apparently unequivocally headed — at least for the next three years.

On Tuesday, he devoted most or all (I didn't get to listen to the whole thing because I was traveling away from the radio signal) of his show to theories that tie President Obama (He calls him Barack Hussein Obama, and for reasons that escape me, he insultingly pronounces the second syllable in "Barack" with a short-A sound) with the Red Army Faction, Herbert Marcuse, Frankfurt School and even more wrongly, Mao Zedong.

Here's a clip (apologies for the poor quality)

He said last night that unlike the Red Army Faction, Obama is not seeking a violent revolution toward a socialist "takeover," but a nonviolent one, more along the lines of Marcuse's line of thinking and others. Savage calls it a "quiet revolution:"

I realize it's not the meat and potatoes that you've come to expect from talk radio, but we have to do it. We have to do it so you understand the danger we're in. You have to do it until you understand how little time is left before there's a total takeover of every aspect of your life from cradle to grave, which starts with health care reform.

Thus, Savage isn't unlike any of the other right wingers out there attempting to frighten folks into thinking the Obama administration is up to some big conspiracy to bedazzle us into socialism. For one, the lawmakers, even Democrats, who very much benefit from this capitalistic free-for-all era corporate lobbying wouldn't stand for it. Second, Obama's only got four more years, eight at the most. What does Savage think is going to happen in that time? Health care reform doesn't bring any new far left agendas to the table. We've already passed bills in this country that could, like health care, be called socialist, and numerous presidents prior to Obama were charged with the same crime.

So, we hear the same old claptrap over and over, and it's tiring. You don't want a few seeds of socialism (an economic system) or communism (a political system ... Savage seems to use the two interchangeably.) in this country? Good. Call your lawmakers or state lawmakers and tell them you want to abolish your local police station and your local sheriff's office. Tell them to do away with county-maintained fire departments. Tell them to stop working on the roads. Tell them to shutter the Federal Reserve so we can go back to trading in gold and silver and bartering. Tell them to do away with Medicaid, which helps children and disabled people, and Medicare, which helps the elderly. Tell them to offer up all Forest Service land to speculators, since that worked so well the last time. Public schools? Closed. Everyone will be home schooled from now on. Public colleges? Unnecessary and filled with folks who think too much.

Obama will either be our president in 2012 or he won't. The propogators of such nonsense will either continue the frenetic push to get people infused with fear and loathing for the administration, or they will tone their rhetoric back if a Republican gets in office and level the vitriol at whichever Congressman or woman seems the most progressive. The country will move on just like it did after FDR enacted his giant New Deal.

By the way, the Red Army Faction was actually an anti-imperialistic organization responding to the Vietnam war, German capitalism at the time and Germany's concealment that high-ranking officials were former Nazis. While it by no way excuses the violence and death caused by the organization, Savage fails to mention much in his incendiary, fear-mongering rhetoric.

And one final thought: Savage actually said that Obama's policy on economics was to take from the middle class and give to the rich. He calls it "reverse" Robin Hood. Has he even been paying attention? Has he heard the $250,000 figure tossed around ... reversing Bush's policy of giving tax breaks to the rich? I don't know about Savage, but I don't consider someone who makes more than 250k middle class at all. Maybe he has a different income gauge than I do. But I'm sorry to break the news: 250k is not a middle class wage level by any stretch. See here.

Christianity and the nation’s founding

In a New York Times Magazine preview titled, "How Christian Were the Founders?," Russell Shorto writes about members of the Texas State School Board's attempts to paint a more Christian picture of the United States' founding via changes to the state's social studies curriculum guidelines, guidelines which the article contends,

will affect students around the country, from kindergarten to 12th grade, for the next 10 years.

because of that state board's influence on how other states choose its curriculum material.

... Tom Barber, who worked as the head of social studies at the three biggest textbook publishers before running his own editorial company, says, “Texas was and still is the most important and most influential state in the country.” And James Kracht, a professor at Texas A&M’s college of education and a longtime player in the state’s textbook process, told me flatly, “Texas governs 46 or 47 states.”

In the article, Shorto speaks with numerous members of the Texas state board and with college professors and other experts. In fact, for the most part, the only non-experts to which Shorto speaks, are, you guessed it, the very ones who will have such a weighty influence over what students are taught for the next 10 years.

While some amendments the state board has considered — one which would ask students to study Americans who have contributed much to our history (Ed Kennedy was omitted, while Newt Gingrich was included, for instance. For the record, Hillary Clinton was included, but one could make a convincing case that Kennedy had far more influence in Washington in his 30 years of service) — drew seemingly along party lines, other amendments dabbled into religious territory.

The majority of the article dealt with this conundrum: Is America a Christian nation (or should it be) and should our textbooks present that case? Noted atheist Sam Harris in his, "Letter to a Christian Nation," meant "Christian nation" in the more nebulous sense based on pure numbers: as of 2008, about 76 percent of Americans claim to be Christian in one way or another. Fifty-one percent are Protestants (Thus, reducing the number even farther of actual Evangelicals who might be in favor of more fervently merging government and religion).

Cynthia Dunbar, current visiting associate professor of law at Liberty University School of Law in Lynchburg, Va., is one member of the Texas State School Board who seems to think this is and should be a Christian nation in the second sense. Shorto visited one of her lectures, and in The Times article, he writes:

Her presence in both worlds — public schools and the courts — suggests the connection between them that Christian activists would like to deepen. The First Amendment class for third-year law students that I watched Dunbar lead neatly merged the two components of the school’s program: “lawyering skills” and “the integration of a Christian worldview.”

Dunbar began the lecture by discussing a national day of thanksgiving that Gen. George Washington called for after the defeat of the British at Saratoga in 1777 — showing, in her reckoning, a religious base in the thinking of the country’s founders. In developing a line of legal reasoning that the future lawyers in her class might use, she wove her way to two Supreme Court cases in the 1960s, in both of which the court ruled that prayer in public schools was unconstitutional. A student questioned the relevance of the 1777 event to the court rulings, because in 1777 the country did not yet have a Constitution. “And what did we have at that time?” Dunbar asked. Answer: “The Declaration of Independence.” She then discussed a legal practice called “incorporation by reference.” “When you have in one legal document reference to another, it pulls them together, so that they can’t be viewed as separate and distinct,” she said. “So you cannot read the Constitution distinct from the Declaration.” And the Declaration famously refers to a Creator and grounds itself in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Therefore, she said, the religiosity of the founders is not only established and rooted in a foundational document but linked to the Constitution. From there she moved to “judicial construction and how you should go forward with that,” i.e., how these soon-to-be lawyers might work to overturn rulings like that against prayer in schools by using the founding documents.

Shorto correctly observes:

Besides the fact that incorporation by reference is usually used for technical purposes rather than for such grandiose purposes as the reinterpretation of foundational texts, there is an oddity to this tactic.

Though it was less erudite than Dunbar's lecture probably was, I once read a letter to the editor in which the writer indicated that we are, indeed, a Christian nation based on The Declaration. But several problems exist with this line of reasoning. First, as the article notes:

“The founders deliberately left the word ‘God’ out of the Constitution — but not because they were a bunch of atheists and deists,” says Susan Jacoby, author of “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.” “To them, mixing religion and government meant trouble.” The curious thing is that in trying to bring God into the Constitution, the activists — who say their goal is to follow the original intent of the founders — are ignoring the fact that the founders explicitly avoided religious language in that document.

Another problem exists with Dunbar's "incorporation by reference" case: The Declaration of Independence is just that. It's a declaration. It's not law. As Shorto's article states, it's undeniable that the early history of this country oozes with religious overtures, from the Pilgrims to Anglicans to Quakers Baptists and many others. And while one cannot study American history without encountering religion along the way, one can study the founding and the Constitutional Convention without injecting religion into the equation. As Shorto notes:

In fact, the founders were rooted in Christianity — they were inheritors of the entire European Christian tradition — and at the same time they were steeped in an Enlightenment rationalism that was, if not opposed to religion, determined to establish separate spheres for faith and reason. “I don’t think the founders would have said they were applying Christian principles to government,” says Richard Brookhiser, the conservative columnist and author of books on Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris and George Washington. “What they said was ‘the laws of nature and nature’s God.’ They didn’t say, ‘We put our faith in Jesus Christ.’ ” Martin Marty says: “They had to invent a new, broad way. Washington, in his writings, makes scores of different references to God, but not one is biblical. He talks instead about a ‘Grand Architect,’ deliberately avoiding the Christian terms, because it had to be a religious language that was accessible to all people.”

I am not opposed to religion courses with the sole purpose of studying the story of religious influence and growth in the country, and even history textbooks that include some discussion of religious groups if its relevant to a certain topic, like religious condemnations of slavery in the 19th-century, for instance.

But the Founders knew full well that at the time that the majority of the people in the country were and would be Christians. Heck, many who took part in the Constitutional Convention were Christians in some sense of the word. Here's a full rundown. Many of the most notable ones (Jefferson, i.e.), however, were deists, and one can't deny that. Many were products of the Enlightenment and rationalism. But the Founders, even those who believed in Jesus, were far ahead of their time and had the foresight to realize that a free society must both protect people's right to worship ... and their right not to worship. They were all-too familiar with a near-theocracy in Great Britain, in which the Church of England was (and still is) the official national church. The Founders sought to create a place more free from whence their ancestors came.

Unfortunately, the evangelical crowd is seeking to reverse that, and that should make anyone with an appreciation for the Constitution and this diverse country pretty ashamed. So, to reiterate, this isn't a Christian nation in the sense that many evangelicals wish it were, nor should it be. If it was, it would be a theocracy, and I don't think folks who are fighting to reinsert Jesus and the creation story into textbooks fully understand the implications of seeing their goals carried out to their fullest ends. If they did, they would view modern day Iran, the former Islamic caliphate in the Middle East, the Crusades or the current wave of Islamic nutcases who want to establish a modern caliphate, and they would shutter.