goodfreshthoughts

Who's In Charge Here--Protesters or Police?

2011-12-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

When a swelling grass roots movement of protest--like Occupy Wall Street--bursts out, we can know something is awry and needs addressed. The numbers of people engaging in the OWS protests is a measure of the degree to which the people (en masse) feel our government has let us down. It only remains for the emotion to gain focus.

Meanwhile, conflict at the point of friction is inevitable. By job definition those in governing positions must keep order. The role of the "people" is to evaluate the enforcement techniques of officialdom. In the end, the people rule, but their "evaluation" of enforcement techniques must be as clear headed as should be the professionalism of the police forces. Who can be the striped shirt referees to make the calls about the appropriateness of behavior on both side? You and I have that privileged position. We have our choice of news networks to watch, we view the video clips on TV and the interviews of mayors and injured protesters. And without wearing a uniform or carrying a cardboard sign, we wait for the police to sideline their maverick officers and the protesters to hone their argument and weed out the nuts and drifters.

In a democracy, the "people" can't be wrong, for the people are sovereign. The only question to resolve is who speaks for the people. Supposedly the elected officials speak for the people, and the law enforcers carry out their orders for the good of the community. When the protesters and the police meet in the streets though, the police say they are carrying out the will of the people as translated for them by elected officials; and the protesters say they have a fresher, more direct translation of the "people's" will. The protesters seem to have the better argument when the elected officials prove incapable of doing what the people expect of them in a time of economic crisis.

Police commissioners and the street officers are not spokespersons for anyone. They just carry out orders. But when the protesters conduct their demonstrations non-violently and the police officers resort to bully tactics, democracy takes the bruising. The responsibility to discover who "the people" are and what they want lies with both sides in the street confrontations. The protesters need to hold to solidarity for non-violence--which they have notably done even when provoked by maverick policemen. At the same time, the police should discipline themselves to not respond viscerally when the protesters do not say "yes, sir"--their record is spotty on this.

Since the OWS movement is not showing signs of fading away, hopefully they will hold to their non-violence, find focus, and discover some articulate leaders. And hopefully responsible police chiefs will see to it that their officers act professionally and respectfully toward the frank and earnest "people" in the street. And let's hope against hope that the politicians in this season of election campaigning will grow up, be honest, and face the reality that the real people seem to have a better grasp of reality than the pols are showing so far. Or else we the people may have to resort to the precedents set for us in the colonial times before we went to war for a democratic system of our own composition--such examples as Nathaniel Bacon's disgruntled western followers, who in 1675, burned down the town of Jamestown housing Virginia's government, or the back country Regulators in North Carolina, who in 1766 organized vigilante bands to find justice, or New Yorker farmers, who in 1766 battled a sheriff's posse and released their arrested friends from jail. We shouldn't need to go this far now that we have our democratic system in place--but we'll see.

The capitalist elites crow about how the market is capable of correcting itself in times of economic distress. That doesn't seem to work. Let's see if the political marketplace can perform this trick of self-correction short of outright colonial style rebellion. If not, maybe our founding fathers weren't smart enough in what they handed us.

Doug Good

If Dwight D. Eisenhower were President today, what would he say about the Occupy Wall Street movement?

2011-11-20T22:06:00.000-08:00

We don’t have to speculate.

In his farewell address to the public at the end of his 8 years as President, Eisenhower spoke to what is at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. Issues have shifted and transformed in ways, but Ike’s articulation of the basic principle fits today’s social politics precisely. He spoke of the sinister power of elite groups in our midst who do not have the welfare of the country at heart. He named the two elite groups that had risen to the top in the Cold War time of the 1950s, which he realized had entrenched themselves for the long haul--“the military-industrial complex.”

This catchy phrase has gained dictionary status, but less quoted parts of his speech show his mind embracing more than this particular tandem. He also spoke of the insidious peril of the “scientific-technological elite” that sucks money from government veins to fund the research of professors who have lost touch with ”intellectual curiosity.”

It has taken the worst recession since the 1930s to unshadow the attainment of power by a newly visible elite pair--the “lobbying, corporate money machine.” This club meets all the requirements for placement on Eisenhower’s book shelf of dangerous elites.

Let’s look at Eisenhower’s words and see if you agree:

He said that our country faces “prolonged and complex” issues that would deter us from our goals of “peace and human betterment.” How we handle this is the test. From among the solutions that will be offered, he said, we must find “balance between the private and the public economy.”

Is this not the challenge we face today of finding a solution to our deep national recession--whether the middle class or the wealthy should be able to gain protection from unbalanced calls for sacrifice? The ever widening gap between the rich and the poor belies the presence of any balance.

Ike pointed out that our past progress toward attaining our nation’s goals can be explained by the fact that “our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well in the face of threat and stress. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.” At stake, he said, is our “liberty, dignity and integrity” as a people and a nation.

Ike did not just tell us about the danger of elite groups brokering power, he described its pernicious effect on our democratic institutions.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought." America must be a “community,” a “proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. . . . Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength.”

If the Occupy Wall Street protesters are presenting no threat to public safety, yet the TV news cameras show police arriving in riot gear, brandishing (pointing) rifles, beating with clubs the unresisting protesters for not clearing the sidewalk, and, at UC Davis, pepper spraying students sitting quietly in a row on the ground, yanking a woman by the hair and throwing her to the ground, don’t you wonder who is giving the orders behind the scenes? Is not this a sign of power elite controlling the citizenry?

When the “Super Congressional Committee,” which is charged with coming up with a “balanced” approach to the national government’s financial crisis, fails in their mandated assignment, we might consult Eisenhower on the wisdom he offered. As a high ranking career military commander and two-term President, he was in a position to know what he was talking about when he spoke of insidious control by elite groups in our midst. He saw it then, he called it out, and he made a point of warning that it was not a passing danger. He had us in mind.

Doug Good

Do Obama's Politics Mock God? (How to Read the Bible)

2011-10-16T18:26:00.000-07:00

I recently viewed a YouTube video that accused President Obama of mocking the Bible in a speech where he said Christians misread the Bible. In his speech Obama asked which parts of the Bible we should take literally. He stated:

“Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is o.k. and the eating of shellfish is an abomination, or we could go with Deuteronomy which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith, or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount, a passage that is so radical that it is doubtful our own Defense Department would survive its application.”

By calling this a stunning “mockery of the Bible” the video contributor turned Obama’s meaning on its head. Obama was not mocking the Bible, he was calling down those who misread the Bible. By contrasting Old Testament tribalism with the Sermon on the Mount, Obama was contrasting the words of Jesus, God’s beloved Son, with the human rules of the Old Testament which Jesus revised in the Sermon on the Mount.

The video commentator concluded from Obama’s mockery that a true believer who reads the Bible properly would never “turn the other cheek” when facing a terrorist threat. Now who is mocking the Bible? Obama’s point flew right over the commentator’s head because the responder had a political axe to grind. The commentator is a phony literalist and a confused thinker.

While Obama’s speech honored Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the commentator dissed Jesus’ “turn the other cheek” dictum. He turned biblical “literalism” into useless relativism. It is a sad day when Christians can’t think in a straight line and their politics trump Jesus. The usual biblical literalism is a trademark of Christian conservatism that risks hindering one from appreciating the deeper spiritual truths Christ preached. This is a shame, for there is something to be said for “literalism.“

I would like to contribute to clearing the air of religiously toxic notions and attitudes that pollute serious political discussions. Literalism, when seen as an expression of spiritual reality fittingly defined, can bolster both church and state in their respective collaborative realms. Purity of religion and wisdom in politics are not necessary antagonists. I won’t try to change your political opinions (I have written other blogs for that), but I have another way to understand “biblical literalism.”

Is the Bible the Literal Word of God?

Yes, the Bible is God’s literal word, told by humans who had varying degrees of articulating skills. The Bible is God speaking through assorted testifiers with human and cultural limitations who insistently, often pitiably, misapplied the message in their subsequent attempts to obey and worship--something Jesus repeatedly pointed out to the Scribes and Pharisees. These theological mechanics tinkered with the Word, using human myopia and cultural biases as their playbook. This is what so frustrated Jesus, who tried to display God’s true (literal) “word” to them. Jesus defined the “Word” of God as the “Way", and “we”--he and his disciples--as family heirs. On earth as God’s literal “image,” we, like Jesus who was also a physical human, have the choice to reflect that “Way.” Our earthly testimonials have validity by virtue of our position as “images“ of God. By following the “Way” we reflect the divine image truly. We are It, family, joint heirs. The epigraphic words of the Bible are important, insufficient message carriers in inked form, but humans telling their stories are God’s literal message signs.

I am holding on to the term “literal,” but I am giving it a more alive and useful meaning. The Bible is not a theology text; it is a narrative of personal stories; it is God speaking to us about the “literal” meaning of the Way. Human articulation ought not, and need not obscure the literally alive meaning of stories imbedded in the spirit of creatures who are God creatively expressing Divine Experience. Divinely sourced creatures are God-speaking. We are God’s Word, as was Jesus. God’s creatures do not stand apart from God, they are part of God standing. The Gospel of John says the Word, from the beginning, is God, literally. The Word is the Way of literal aliveness. Jesus was God by accepting his Way-connection. By boarding onto the Way we each apply the epoxy of the union of Wayness. God’s word is literal (alive) and we are God’s testimonial image of this. Human stories are in the Bible and all around us literally. We are God in Word, as storied in the Bible, just as Jesus was the Word in God’s Way.

Jesus was able to see through the missteps and small mindedness in the Jewish story writings to underline how the “Way” is the true God-in-action. That is why Jesus did not say to read his theological scribbles; he said follow and join my Way. We are God’s Word when we follow the Way. Humans are God-telling-the-divine-story, and the divine story includes all the warted parts. So, yes, the Bible is God’s literal truth. Jesus, a clear visioned human, saw how to (re)interpret the written voicings of the Old Testament through which God speaks. He said the Way, God’s Word, is better understood as a practice rather than a “creed” signed onto on the bottom inked line. The Bible is God’s literal word because there we read the story of Jesus, a human expression and model of God-the-Way.

Jesus was God speaking, and so are we. God’s word is God’s story. As Eli Wiesel has said it, God created humans because God loves good stories. All of us tell something about God, because we are God speaking. And the Bible is a good source book--primary material as historians would put it. We just need to not lose track of the message as we work our way through the drama and twists of each biblical chapter. If you skip and jump around mistaking the small literals for the big literal, the ending will be too big a surprise to believe, as Jesus’ message was to the Jewish temple leaders. Let’s look at the “literal” message of Jesus’ living testimony and place the Old Testament stories in proper cultural context, as Obama did in his speech, and just as Jesus did when he accepted Pilate’s awkwardly worded suggestion that he (Jesus) was God’s true message translator for the Jewish people.

If the YouTube video commentator wants to be a witness for Christ, he should avoid politics until he gets a better grip on the literal Gospel message.

Class Warfare: Who does democracy belong to?

2011-09-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

The question of “class warfare” is entwined in the current debate over how to pull our nation out of recession. Today’s news is reporting Republican Congressman Paul Ryan saying he opposes class warfare, and that Obama is engaging in it by going after the wealthy with tax increases. The problem is that the congressman recognizes class warfare only when the underclass fights back. He does not acknowledge that the wealthy have already taken and hold the offensive advantage in their effort to control the battle. War does not start when the disadvantaged rally in defense.

There are class interests in any and all societies, of course. In a democracy, all levels have an investment, supposedly for the mutual benefit of all. Our original fight for national independence was guided by the goal of setting up a political system that allowed an open field for all citizens to make their case for fair treatment. “Fair” does not mean any group should be allowed to “control” if it can prove to be more powerful, and the underpowered group should accept the consequences of their disempowerment. That is not the democracy our founders had in mind. James Madison cautioned us about the “tyranny of the majority.” The word “fair” means (check your dictionary) just, honest, average, respectful, courteous, tolerable, with equal prospect for all. Our Founders had both the poor and the rich in mind (read the documents). They knew from participatory experience that Americans were willing, fully capable and energetically desirous of standing up for themselves, whatever their social standing. So they composed a Constitution that both assured the value of the rich folk’s investments and protected the hopes and integrity of the poor. The Constitution, except on the unresolved question of the “institution” of slavery, made internal “warfare” unnecessary, while giving an open field for “familial” squabbling.

The essential meaning of democracy is that we are all in this together for the mutual benefit of all. The people are king. No matter how lowly and uncharming I am, I am a proud family member with an equal claim on the family inheritance. The Constitution is my power of attorney. Fighting over a will is not class warfare.

I recently received an email that included an interesting quote of Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged) that is pertinent to today’s highly charged debate between Republicans (read, tea partiers) and Democrats over our national recession troubles.

"When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you...; you may know that your society is doomed."

Ayn Rand is talking here about the lower working class who labor for wages but are not real producers of “goods,” also those who profit from “graft“ rather than real work. And she complains that our laws work to protect these spongers and cheaters, the implication being that those who really benefit the country and promote a healthy, growing economy are the wise and knowledgeable capitalist entrepreneurs. In other words, the working class is mean and shortsighted while the business leaders are the ones who should write the laws if our nation is to endure.

I respond: This is an unbalanced, therefore flawed, perspective. Our country is not divided between good guys and bad guys. Rand turns the debate into class warfare, and the underclass is the enemy.

In my view we are a democracy, and an informed survey of our history is a study of how the populace has always contended over these social and economic issues. There is no good guy/bad guy split. A democracy has both good and bad guys at every level. Both lower and upper class have practitioners and spokespersons that seek advantage by accusing the other of everything bad imaginable. It has always been this way from 1776 until 2011. Our history is one of glowing contention. In listening to the current hot debates we should not let exaggerated charges fog over the legitimate complaints of those who do not agree with us, as if the “other” side were disingenuous and out to ruin the country. (Welfare queens and doctors who defraud Medicare will sit next to each other in the great sauna hereafter.)

A good rule of thumb to follow would be to automatically discount any statement by the debaters on either side that impugns the other person’s integrity, loyalty, religion, intelligence, or associations. These considerations thrive on bias, misinformation, anecdotal innuendos, and prejudice. You might object that to eliminate these kinds of assessments doesn’t leave much to go on because this is all that the media (including especially the internet ) give us. Note that I did not say “eliminate” these considerations, just seriously “discount” them. Suspect everything that bases its argument on my above list of hot air balloon talking points. I am not saying go ahead and vote for a sinful, crooked fool. I am suggesting we recognize the red flags of bias and slander, particularly when they are accompanied by empty rhetoric and misinformation without providing historical perspective for judging what democracy (the most Christian of political philosophies) is all about. Real democracy is tolerant, inclusive, fair, cooperative, unfrightened, forgiving, yielding and hopeful. It is also loud, vociferous, energetic, and shameless; but let’s not lose our good sense and hoary wisdom in pushing our favorite projects. I love competition, but when the game is over I want still to be able to hug and compliment my opponent for his vigorous challenge, without which I would not have risen to my best effort, nor would he. Any other scenario is a sign of sickness in the body--the kind of sickness that we set out to expel from our body politic in 1775.

If we let it, good history can help us understand whether today we are on the same track as our fabled founders. Are our current heroes leading us astray or are they calling us to uphold the vision of those who gave us our democratic heritage? If our actual history does not appeal to us, then we need to acknowledge that we are charting new and different waters.

I recommend an article by William Hogeland entitled “Tea Partiers Have a Very Mixed-Up Notion of What the American Revolution Was About.” You can get it on the internet but as encouragement for you to read it I have copied it for you here. It should add to the hoary wisdom available to us heirs of the great democratic experiment.

For the sake of brevity, I have abridged the article, and for quick reading have put in bold type the parts pertinent to today’s economic debates. ( You can get the whole article at http://www.alternet.org/story/150097/tea_partiers.)

"Memo to Tea Party: The major political battle during the American Revolution was over the proper uses of money and credit. Not getting government out of the economy. . . .

It can be hard to envision an early America seething with conflict between ordinary, hardworking Americans, stifled in their efforts to get ahead, and the rich, predatory Americans who stifled them. Prevailing historical fantasies of pre-Revolutionary America conjure a modestly thriving yeomanry, along with craftsmen, small business people, and merchants participating together in a representative civics. In this fantasy, income and wealth disparities look minor and manageable; slavery and women’s subjugation are terrible deviations from an ethos of liberty shared more or less democratically by free Americans of all types. The main problem for everyone is the restrictive influence of the British elements in government. The rosy narrative has it that a revolution dedicated to freedom of trade and thought and the proposition that all men are created equal will launch this society on a grand progress, embattled but irresistible, toward a democracy that includes everybody. . . .

Across the political spectrum, fuzziness about founding-era economics, credit and monetary policy persists. The fuzziness helps today’s populist right cast nativism and unfettered markets as essentially American.

The possibly startling fact is that the major social battle raging before, during, and after the American Revolution was over the proper uses of money and credit in American life. For ordinary people of the period, these were hardly abstractions. The only real money in 18th-century America was metal — silver and gold coin from England, Spain, and Mexico — and for long, terrible periods, money was rarely seen by ordinary people. Small farmers and artisans, wanting to survive and improve their lot, had to borrow. Merchants, gaining access to metal through imperial trading networks, used their money to make money, becoming lenders. Well before the Revolution, Americans defined themselves in practical terms either as “debtors” — poor and working people in small-scale enterprise — or “creditors” — well-heeled merchants growing their money by lending it.
　
Workings of the debtor-creditor relationship will sound unpleasantly familiar. Merchants had the money supply conveniently sewn up. Small farmers and artisans had to post the land and shops they hoped to develop as collateral for the credit they needed. Merchants might set interest rates as high as twelve percent — per month. Default, often predictable at the loan’s outset, subjected borrowers to foreclosures, which in bad times were epidemic. Families became indigent while their land, tools, and homes were snapped up at bargain prices, often by the merchants themselves, who speculated in land as well, and were building immense parcels. The rich got richer.

Is it any wonder that ordinary people viewed this disastrous economic predicament not as some incidental fallout from vigorous free-market competition, but as an egregious, systemic injustice with political, moral, even spiritual implications? They were being held back, exploited, and even ruined by a monopoly on money and credit. And unlike today’s populist right, founding-era Americans did not imagine that government’s simply leaving markets alone would create new and exciting opportunities for them. They believed their governments should make laws to restrain the overwhelming power of the creditors’ metal and protect those who labored and produced goods from those who planned dynasties of descendants living in luxurious idleness.

And remember: unless people had property in excess of certain amounts, they couldn’t vote. Whig elites — the ones who became patriot leaders, lionized today — axiomatically equated the right of representation with property. It took even more property to run for office. Legislatures erected counties to ensure that representation favored the rich and the cities. They placed cash fees on every imaginable transaction, paralyzing working people’s efforts to pursue legal recourse and enriching lawmakers’ friends and families appointed as collectors and administrators. Roads and other infrastructure built at public expense (and by coerced labor taxes) served the merchant interest, not the people’s. Hardly an embryonic American democracy, representative colonial governments were monopolized by forces that small-scale debtors and tenant farmers could only view as a creditor conspiracy to exploit their labor, prevent their participation, and take what stuff they had.

So they organized in vociferous protest. “Mob” is a loaded term; “crowd” is perhaps more fair, and early American crowd action should be understood as a tactic, in the absence of access to the franchise, for pressuring and even changing government. One of the most famous outbreaks occurred in the 1760’s in North Carolina, when ordinary people briefly had a few champions in the legislature. They forcibly closed courts, tore down corrupt officials’ homes, and finally went to war against the provincial government. Royal Governor William Tryon put that rebellion down — but the King’s appointee was more sympathetic to the people’s plight than upscale American legislators and merchants were.

Crowds could be flamboyantly scary and even violent, but they did not run amok, merely venting. In carefully organized disruptions, people moved en masse into courthouses where debt cases were heard, shutting down a judicial process they considered unjust. They felled huge trees across roads to prevent sheriffs from repossessing homes. They enforced no-buy covenants when foreclosed property went up for auction. They staged daring rescues of prisoners held on debt charges. Serving on juries in debt cases, they refused to convict. Well before the famous Stamp Act riots and other acts of resistance to new British trade laws, American life involved orchestrated crowd actions to prevent financial injustice and push government to act on behalf of ordinary people. After the Revolution, the event known as Shays’ Rebellion became only the most famous of the debtor uprisings that continued the people’s struggle in a new political context.
While emulating Shaysite and other debtor crowd actions today would pose an interesting counter-demonstration to Tea Party efforts, the question this history really raises has to do with what Americans want from their government. . . .

Tea Party history insists ordinary, hard-working Americans of the founding era wanted nothing more than to reduce government and keep it out of economic markets. But what those Americans really wanted can be gleaned from their terminology. The rich called them rioters. The people called themselves regulators.

[Any U.S. history survey textbook will tell about the Regulator Movements in the colonies. I doubt, though, that many, if any Presidential candidates know about them.]

A Conversation with Billy

2011-07-24T22:10:00.000-07:00

(Billy is short for “Believer”)

Billy: Doug, sometimes you are hard to figure out; do you believe in God?

Doug: Yes, I do.

Billy: Are you God’s creature, that is, do you think God created you?

Doug: I believe so, but I am not sure. What do you mean by “creature”?

Billy: I mean God is “upstairs” and everywhere. God formed and placed humans in a material location “downstairs.”

Doug: So God and humans are separate dual beings?

Billy: Yes

Doug: But how can I know that?

Billy: The biblical writers tell us so.

Doug: How do I know the writers weren’t kidding themselves?

Billy: They had an inner experience, a calling, a vision.

Doug: Then all visionaries are messengers of God?

Billy: No. Some visionaries are misled.

Doug: When I read the record of Mohammed’s visions and Buddha’s visions along with the visions of the Bible prophets, how do I know who is right?

Billy: God will speak to your heart as you read.

Doug: So God has two ways to get through to us, through the heart and through the written word. But which is primary?

Billy: Well, the heart is the most direct because some people can’t read, and we don’t always have the book open in front of us when we need God’s leading. But the Bible is well verified, so it is the most dependable guide. The heart and the Bible are not going to disagree, so use the Bible to guide you into the personalized messages God has for your distracted and confused heart. Jesus knew that in his absence his disciples would be confused, so he told them to look for the Spirit of God to appear and guide them. Then they could write the messages down.

Doug: So by inference, the Bible is the literal word of God.

Billy: Yes. God would not have it otherwise.

Doug: But what if two literal statements in the Bible don’t match, like did Jesus preach the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) or did he preach it on the Plain (Luke 6), or did he give it twice; or what if the words are in a specific context that doesn’t speak to today‘s changed times?

Billy: The Holy Spirit will make it clear to you.

Doug: So the Bible is not the final word?

Billy: No. I mean Yes. I mean just read the Bible; it has all the answers. Just believe what you read and the questions will go away. Don’t think so hard about it.

Doug: O.K. I’ll stop with the questions. Is it alright if I wonder a bit though? (Oops, that was a question.) I wonder why God created humans and other matter. I wonder if the Bible dispels wondering.

Billy: Certainly, right from the start. I believe God created the universe as a display case for divine attributes, a way to bring out the distinctiveness of godly qualities, to give occasion for enjoying the high mirth and wonder of being God. It is hard to “commune” alone, so God “imaged” humans into existence--creatures that could display god-like instincts and behavior. This is all described in the book of Genesis.

Doug: If I am so like God’s image as to satisfy his (or her) desire for Self communing, then I wonder why I feel myself to be so independent. All my sense experiences indicate that I have a real, biologically confined existence. I wonder about all those humans who do not “believe” in God. If I really do exist--and I “feel” I do as much as “think” I do--then I wonder if it might not be the other way around. Couldn’t I be the creator of God? (I had to ask.)

Billy: What kind of God would you create? Everyone has a different take on the concept. Wouldn’t your God be merely a creature of your imagination? How would you convince others of your idea of the Almighty?

Doug: I would reflect in my heart on all that is good, write a book, and act accordingly,

Billy: That has already been done, except for the “act accordingly.”

Doug: Which book?

Billy: The Bible.

Doug: Which half? Old or New?

Billy: Well, focus on Jesus. He corrected the parts of the Old Testament that were misread.

Doug: How can one misread the sacred word of God?

Billy: By not listening to your heart when you read.

Doug: So literalism isn’t good enough?

Billy: Uh. It’s better than emotionally imbalanced biases and impure motives.

Doug: How do I know that the New Testament doesn’t need the same corrective reading that Jesus applied to the Old Testament.

Billy: Well, humans can’t be the correctors. Jesus, and he alone, was God incarnate. And he said that in his absence the Spirit would interpret things for us.

Doug: So the heart trumps the literal scripture?

Billy: Don’t be so difficult. You are trying to confuse it all by wandering in dead-end corridors.

Doug: O.K. Let me start over. Something must explain my existence! Your explanation seems to stand or fall on what I decide to “believe.” I know for sure that I am here. I look in the mirror and there I am. I pinch myself and it hurts. Also I “feel” I am here because I know loneliness, happiness, fear and comfort. But where did I come from? Well, from Mom, God bless her. But she had a Mom, so by infinite regression there either had to be one original Mom or humankind had to start with an infinite number of Moms all living together in infinite regression. So biologically I am the extension of “the Mom” or all the Moms (God). The only way I can wrap my mind around this is just to suppose that Mom is God and all children are extensions of God/Mom(s), which makes me and all God/Moms “flesh and blood” in communal “spirit.” Which is a way of saying God is incarnate in the form of “creatures.” It is all one category--no dualism. The real question, then, is not where is God in relation to me; the question is how can I figure out who(se) I am? If questions are impermissible, I think that leaves me as a simpleton. If God did not want me thinking and wondering, I don't know what God had in mind for me. I wonder what kind of pleasure God got from “communing” in the Garden of Eden with two simpletons. If I am to treasure the simple, literal message of Genesis, it seems only fair to give more literal detail so as to preclude my heart speaking in error to me as I read.

For example: Genesis does not go into enough literal detail to quell some thoughts that my heart (God’s spirit?) whispers to me. I think (in the spirit of the grand story) that God put the “tree of knowledge” off limits because God did not want Adam and Eve getting answers that did not have thought-inspired questions attached first. I don’t see the Genesis text calling such thoughts of mine "out of bounds." Not only does Genesis not say that Adam and Eve should not wonder about things--which inevitably leads to questions. The Bible says in John 8:32, “the truth [sound, complete knowledge] shall make you free.” Which of these two literalisms, which seem to contradict each other, can I put in my truth basket? If truth is limited to what can be said in literal terms, Genesis should be the last word. I can’t help but think that you are telling me that each literal remark in the Bible stands confidently as final in its particular context, and the big picture is only for Bible authors and saints to understand.

Billy: That’s it; be happy with little pearls. Thinking and wondering will just make you unsettled. You still don‘t get it, do you? Just read the Bible, and not between the lines. God came down to us as Jesus, to tell it to us straight. And his friends wrote it all down. I believe Jesus, as God, spoke fully enough to cover the bases. You don‘t need any more.

Doug: But I thought Jesus was born here as a human. I wonder how God got “into” him. I wonder if God “created” Jesus like Adam, or maybe Jesus just swooped in from heaven. If the Garden of Eden is our template, it seems that as God's embodied wisdom, Jesus' message would be like the fruit of knowledge on the Eden tree--forbidden to tap. I’m having trouble with literalisms. I can’t help but wonder about things.

Billy: Stop wondering. It‘s very simple. Jesus was born as a baby just as you were.

Doug: So that’s how God does it. Then I too must be a God-manifestation. With a beard and a robe, I expect I should look a lot like Jesus. Jesus said he looked forward to the time when he and his followers would be one with God as he was. (John 17:22-23)

Billy: Don’t take that so literally.

Doug: What ? ?

Billy: Doug, you are just like Adam and Eve--a big sinner. Those two had lots of questions; the tree of knowledge symbolizes answers. God told them not to eat of its fruit, in other words don’t ask questions.

Doug: Genesis doesn’t say "eating is asking."

Billy: Sometimes God speaks between the lines.

Doug: I see. Wait, no I don’t see.

Billy: For heaven’s sake, just believe.

Doug: Believe what?

Billy: We already went through that. Get serious.

Doug: I’m more serious than you might believe. To me, my questions become God speaking to me. It’s in the Bible, literally, not between the lines: “ask and you shall receive.” (John 16:24) I don't think Jesus was just kidding.

Billy: Doug, sometimes I wonder about you.

Doug: There you go! Keep wondering. Questions are inspiringly wonderful! What good is a boxed answer without a revealing question attached (I wonder)?

Doug Good

Shoud Osama Bin Laden's Mother Have Considered Abortion?

2011-05-10T11:38:00.000-07:00

If logic is important to you, and you approve the killing of Osama bin Laden, I would expect you also to approve of abortion. It is simply a matter of consistency, holding to the principle that humans have the power and the right to decide who should live and who should die.

“What?” you immediately protest. “No fetus has ever killed thousands of people in terrorist acts. This is apples and oranges.”

“But,” I respond, “Bin Laden was once a fetus, destined to kill thousands. Would it not be better to have aborted him?

“Come on,“ you insist. “Arbitrarily choosing which fetuses to allow to live and which to eliminate is a crapshoot. What if Osama’s pregnant mother was carrying the future Mother Teresa? We pro-life advocates affirm that every baby is a creature of God, therefore it is not our place to abort. Rather, it is God’s will that we accept and work with whatever results from pregnancy. Osama Bin Laden is one of those results. Killing him is the sensible and just way to deal with the results, but not before he was born.”

“Why not?” one might teasingly suggest. “Abortion for mere convenience of the mother is a different question, but logic that allows killing a killer, provides an argument for abortion as a preemptive measure. Just move the time table up, and allow abortion as preemptive action when we recognize the strong probability of future heartbreak and misfortune that unwinds from the birth of an infant with marring birth defects, or birth into a pitiably dysfunctional environment, or imminent child abuse from a resentful or irresponsible mother. By categorically declining the abortion option, we become torturers, culpable participants in preventable scenes of personal suffering and social trauma ready to unfold. Killing before the fact to prevent certain expected tragedy, and killing after the fact, when tragedy has become history, is a mere matter of timing."

I am not drawn to the above argument, but it has logical consistency. If the premise is applied evenly to abortions and assassinations, the conclusion of each follows in like kind from the argument as thus set up; both abortions and assassinations are valid or invalid by the same reasoning. If I should decide that killing Osama bin Laden now is the proper way to handle the problem and bring justice, then I have good reason for the use of abortion as proactive justice, or abortion as early stage, preemptive euthanasia. This conclusion follows patently from the premise that we humans serve as God’s virtual magistrates for administering justice in this earthly domain. The problem with this chain of logic is that it is marinated in solipsistic self importance. Its merit depends on our presumptive claim that we humans have full and rightful authority to speak for God.

The first clue that we are not qualified to carry out this high level, supposed assignment is that, unlike God, we do not have prescient knowledge of a fetus’ future to make abortion judgments that would cohere with our capital judgments about villains bearing criminal records. Indeed, killing murderers in God’s name is not consistent with God’s own obvious hands off approach that allows fetuses like bin Laden to come to full term and enter the stage of human drama. A second clue is the logical inconsistency of pro-lifers killing murderers.

The best way to determine if we are mirroring God’s intentions in these matters is to look at the record. Granting that humans are God’s creatures, the daily commission of abuse and mayhem in every generation since Adam and Eve makes it clear that eugenics (a first cousin to abortion) is not God’s mode of propagation control. As for thieves and murderers, God provided refuge for Cain, and Jesus ushered the thief on the cross into heaven as a rebuff of Roman style executions. This looks to me as if God is consistent regarding the fate both of fetuses and criminals. When we take a stand on abortion and capital punishment that is gutted with logical incoherence, we should take notice. Is our God an inconsistent, illogical God? Is the God we are trying to image, a God who is both anti fetal-slaying, and at the same time pro assassination? If the answer is yes, how does such brutal irony escape our notice?

Personally, I feel killing Bin Laden was the right thing to do. But how then can I be pro-life about abortion? I can’t, logically. So I stand defenseless in the great abortion debate, along with all other pro-lifers who wanted the bearded terrorist killed. And any pro-choicers who favor execution of criminals are in an equally awkward position. If we embrace the irony and discard logic as not useful in this tortuous issue, we find ourselves making internationally important decisions in a cloud of moral and philosophical confusion.

I think the way out of the quandary is to make a distinction between morality and practicality--and not make morality serve our practical purposes. I agree that we had to “put Bin Laden away,” and I think the most practical way to do this was to kill him, but I see no moral justification for doing so. And I oppose abortion on a moral basis, but at the same time see no practical justification for wholesale pro-life decisions.

So while logic is of no help here, at least I admit it and do not self-righteously proclaim that my position in the debate is “God’s position.” I only take my stand on what I think is the best thing to do at a given moment, and give an understanding nod to those who disagree.

God has given us the freedom to stumble around in the trouble we cause for ourselves until we, someday, will arrive at a consensus to do everything God’s way from the start. This is what the future millennial reign of the returning Christ means. I expect we, the human race, will reach that millennial finish line, or should I say starting line. The descriptive expectation of the “return of Christ” is a metaphor for the moment when we reach that point of critical mass in the development of our understanding. That is why Christ has not returned yet--we are not ready. It does not look like we are making much progress, hence the seemingly irresistible urge to want Christ to return in a swooping, triumphal descending from the sky.

Last week-end’s capture and bloody death of a mass murderer in truth has had numerous historical precedents. The clue to my astonishing optimism is the evidence that this time, internationally, we consider the question of how to “handle” Osama bin Laden as worthy of debate. That is a pretty feeble sign of progress, but then, time is a relative matter.

To turn a phrase around: a thousand years is as a day. Humans had been around a long, long time before Jesus was born, yet he was quite an optimistic fellow. He was not characterized by numbing resignation.

Doug Good

When Does Life Begin

2011-04-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

In the debate over abortion, the beginning of life is important, of course, for it marks the presence of a human being. Most pro-life advocates feel life begins at conception with the joining of sperm and egg, and that the embryo is the start of a person. Pro-choice advocates opt for delaying recognition until the birth moment, or wait at least for the moment of viability, though some are willing to affirm life for the fetus, as a gift by the choice to not abort. I prefer to remove the question from the realms of theology and medicine and turn to personal experience. After all, shouldn’t I know better than anyone when life began for me?

“Yes,” you say, “but even though psychologists can take people under hypnosis back to memories in the womb, is memory the real test of self-awareness?”

I say it doesn’t matter. I don’t think we need to answer that question. Awareness is awareness; it has to be there whenever memory grabs hold. Awareness does not depend on mental acuity. Awareness is life saying, “Hi,” to the brain; it is not the other way around.

In other words, my life does not need a starting point, because starting points are human inventions tacked on later for ordering purposes. Life is for living, not for measuring. It is silly to even talk about when it began. Self-awareness inhabits my body; it always has. I am my vitality, and that essence needs no material entrance point for existence. Life is transcendent consciousness. My body is the form my life took, through which my life speaks. And I continue, until biological death, as a so-to-speak whom my parents named Doug, because I “came to hand” and they “felt” a connection with me. Life was not “given” to me; life is “there” to be experienced by my low-level awareness, temporarily limited by my material awareness mechanisms.

According to quantum physics (and who is to argue with good science) consciousness does the “possibility collapsing” of the quantum wave [God]. My awareness choices are my sharing in the entanglement with transcendent consciousness. I was “born” into a physically expanding experience of awareness one autumn morning in 1943. I “mattered” that morning on my own turf, by the cutting of my umbilical tube. In the limited sense of the term, “birth,” I was born, but life is consciousness, a non-individual ultimate essence, and did not begin “then.” My body is but an availability through which my life chooses to speak. A serendipitous mutual sharing of the “vital” and the “physical” outside of time. Others may date the birth moment for temporal convenience.

Pinning down a time when life begins for a fetus is an imaginative exercise. Yet we can know the difference between life and non-life by asking if “feeling” is present. Is an embryo without feeling? (I’m not talking about pain or nerve stimulus.) Who are we adults to say? But feeling is a signal of life. As theoretical physicist, Amit Goswami notes, “Even the primitive prokaryotic cell has the capacity of self-reference; it ‘knows’ in some primitive way about its separateness vis-à-vis its environment.” (Creative Evolution, p.231)

God did not create a human (Adam) and then concocted a “life’ to infuse him, connecting the two elements at some moment of conjunction, leaving us to wonder when each new human form actually comes to life. Forget the abortion controversy of when a fetus is a person. “Life” does not have a “beginning.” Life is. All consciousness is a part of God-consciousness. Creator and creature are symbiotic. My body is God focusing in on a “Doug way” of being--so far a 67 year long, measured focusing. My body that I wash, and feed, and move around, and my existential sense of being are one piece. “I was born” when my existing consciousness-possibility morphosized (as with Adam in another man-version.) The original Garden of Eden twins (Adam and Eve) are my quantum siblings.

I realize this is an uncommon way to look at it. But to me, it seems that the old standoff between science and religion can be considered passé. Scientists and theologians may not be reading each other’s books, but they are beginning to sound like mimics (if you are up on your reading.) Goswami again, “Quantum physics is introducing God-consciousness as the agent of downward consciousness.” (p. 32)

As I understand it, my life came about with an abrupt “collapse” from multiple “possibilities.” My sensual physicality embraced a consciousness urging, and the entangled hierarchy (of heaven and earth) resulted in a healthy cry in the hospital labor room. By biblical analogy, Cain’s “coming to life” occurred in the same manner (quantum possibility collapsing), as with Adam and Eve. We say Cain was born like the rest of us humans, because the Bible says so, and our mental awareness records indicate so. But as data of quantum physics now reveal, each member of the human species taps a real, vital “body” of consciousness that we supramentally identify as oneself, otherwise known as the soul.

My “human” birth was merely a matter of physical viability. To be really alive calls for a new, better birthing--a wakening to my connection with, my entanglement in, my experiencing of the vitality, the feeling of the supramental knowing of entanglement in God-consciousness. The Creator and createe are not separable except in my foggy, material, stunted perception.

This makes the abortion debate a moot issue. “Life” is not extinguishable. Whether we abort a fetus or slay an adult, all that happens is the “un-manifestation” of a life. The material demise may be emotionally traumatic for loved ones left physically functioning in our world, but from the quantum perspective it is not tragic (in the classical definition of this word). Before scientific theories arrived to explain how the universe functions, the only comfort we had as we face the certainty of death was what Jesus offered Nicodemus --to be “born again,”-- that is, to reconnect my material experience with my full born consciousness.

“Come on, Doug. You sound like you are trivializing an act of terror and violence. Do you mean to say that abortion is an insignificant issue, and killing a fetus is acceptable because life goes on to find another manifesting location? Don’t just dance around the issue. Tell me, if your daughter were raped, would you be for or against abortion?”

I would be against it; I want another grandchild. But the decision is for the biological parents to make, the woman having the deciding vote. Whether it would be a sin or not depends on circumstances, not on whether a “life” is cancelled. Indeed, we readily permit intentional killing without judgment in other circumstances--euthanasia, self-defense, capital punishment, killing enemy soldiers (in just wars). Any of these examples of permissible killing will find someone objecting. But sin is not determined by a preponderance of consent. Ordered societies must agree on rules to be followed, but that is ethics, not morality. If all killing is immoral, we should bring the soldiers home immediately.

“Now Doug, you have finally slipped over the edge into gibberish. I had a perfectly good idea of who God my creator is and where I came from before you started in on this “consciousness” stuff. Aren’t you contradicting the Bible?”

Not at all. The new discoveries of quantum science fit nicely into what the Bible and other sacred writings tell us. Are you happy with what macro-materialists Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin had to say, paradigm setters who failed to investigate the micro, inner world? I am not satisfied with these scientists’ explanations of where I came from and the meaning of life.

The good news is that front edge science now has proven that the limited view of Darwinian materialism is flawed with inadequacies and paradoxes, and Newton’s advanced degree is from Material University. The best, most up-to-date scientists are agreeing with the spirit mystics of all religions that life is more than random self-erupting physicality. Materialism explains very little of what each of us knows and feels, and what we are irresistibly moving toward till the day our bodies quit and free us to “live” unbounded. We will then discover that “we” are all entrained together in a flow of “life” beyond temporality. 　

The nature and source of life is critical to the arguments on both sides of the abortion issue. But both sides mischaracterize the nature of life. Both sides need to recognize that humans, as a species, are not the arbiters of life, either to ignore, delay, or preclude it (pro-choice), or to define its fate and destiny (pro-life). Both sides characteristically argue as if “life” is coterminous with material asperience (yes, I just coined that word--Latin root, to breathe). The assumptions of the debate couched this way are neither scientifically sound (see Goswami on quantum physics) nor biblically accurate (see Jeremiah 1:5, Job 32:8).

Whether to abort or not is a decision of far reaching implications, but whether it is right or wrong depends on other factors than asking when life begins. The more appropriate question is, “What is best?”, which has no set answer. If rules of thumb are to be our guide, Jesus would not have performed good acts on the Sabbath, nor called Lazarus from the tomb.

In a democracy--the form of government most compatible to Christianity--laws of the land reflect the best light that virtuous citizens have on important issues, but when spiritual people disagree in their search for how to act in the face of decisions about starting, ending, prolonging, punishing, confining, or celebrating life, an enlightened inspection of the meaning of life is certainly pertinent. The best science and truest religion do not wear material blinders or lean on catechetical theology. We should pay attention when science confirms teleporting, distant viewing, extrasensory messaging, out of body experiences, and non-local influences (yes, it actually does, cf. Dean Radin, Entangled Minds), and when sacred texts inform us that God knew us before we were formed in our mother‘s womb, and that Jesus reappeared bodily to many witnesses after his crucifixion. We should eagerly embrace the opportunity to nuance and enhance the concept of when life begins.

Doug Good

Long Live the People--in Wisconsin, Lybia, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain

2011-03-01T11:03:00.001-08:00

Whatever is behind the curtains in the current Wisconsin political drama, the media presents a picture of a contest between a Tea Party Republican administration and the prerogatives of the public employee unions. Governor Walker insistently says the motive and purpose of the proposed state legislative bill is not to discriminate against unions but to resolve the state's severe budget crisis. But when the protesting union spokespersons yielded to the Governor's money demands, Walker repeated his push to ban collective bargaining--end of story. There is nothing left to argue over now except the integrity of unions. The unions‘ “inalienable” right to collective bargaining is vital to their ability to defend members against victimization by business and industrial tyrants.

Interestingly, Walker demonstrated the impurity of his motives by unwittingly disrobing himself in a taped conversation with a prank phone caller who convincingly posed as billionaire Tea Party supporter, David Koch. (See http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/?akid=6565.242732.lImH-y&id=483275&rd=1&t=29.) Walker self-righteously portrays his legislative move as a response to a budget crisis, but if the "power" of unions is not under attack in this bill, Charlie Sheen is a model of sweetness and light.

But it is more than a local fight. The Wisconsin legislative standoff and street protests are like a spark caught in the wind as multiple other states are echoing similar emotions. Pre- and post-election maneuvering by political hopefuls encourages talk of "blue" vs. "red" states and a "polarization" of the population on political issues. One can group the issues in various ways, but whether it is Tea Party vs. liberal Democrats, Sarah Palin vs. Michael Moore, Fox vs. CNN, or Scott Walker against Unions, those on the "right" say our liberties are threatened, those on the left complain of a war on the middle-class.

In the power contest I have a foot in two camps, as a sole proprietor and as a teacher's union member. As a small business owner I believe in private enterprise where I compete in the open market, where it is up to me to weather the economic storms and reap the rewards when my efforts pan out. But I also am a student of history and know what it was like in America before unions. It was worse than not good. I have personally received a healthy payout when my teacher's union caught the chancellor cheating on our paychecks, took him to court and won. (They are now pursuing another law suit.) There are two sides to the “power” issue.

As long as our democratic system prevails, one group is perceived to have “too much power” only when the balance is off. Which means one group is exercising more power than the power another group is able to exercise at the moment. All groups need a fair share of power, or there is no democracy. To bar any group from the realms of power is tyranny. In a democracy the unions need to have power to balance off the power of the employers. “Too much power,” like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I would acknowledge that unions have been known to exercise their power detrimentally at times (notably the prison guards in California). But the power manipulations of corporate entities, the insidious impact of private fortunes, and the culture of criminal unethical standards make the pretensions of union power look mild (I did not say innocent, I said mild) by comparison.

In a very broad sense, our country’s history is a longrun playing out of power competition. The reason the Madison,Wisconsin street protestors struck such a chord of alliance from “people” across the nation is because the issue rises above matters of budget crisis and unions. Who has the most to fear these days--those who feel their personal liberties are threatened by "big government," or the middle class 8-to-5 workers who recognize a loss of equality as the gap of rich-to-poor spreads? (See my recent blog, “How to Mis-Read the Constitution.“) Whether our nation is in a crisis of polarization or not depends on historical perspective. In my mind, Americans are engaged in a “power struggle” in a form particular to our generation, but not peculiar at all. It is the haves and the have nots, the meek and the mighty, contending for advantage. Democracy will always be this way. Can we make it work again for a fair and satisfactory resolution of conflict between private and public sectors as we have in the past?

The same competition in the form of “power struggle” between "the elite" and "the people" is rising to the surface throughout Africa and the Middle East. In the African and Arab countries where dictators have been ruling, the "people" are feeling a new solidarity, which was hard to enliven without the kind of instant technological communication now available. In the U.S. the difference is that we have a democratic system already in place, and the competition for power is nothing new. It has taken on different faces at different times, but it was there from the beginning---at least from when the federalists and anti-federalists sparred over the new Constitution in the late 1780s.

Today, in Wisconsin, it carries the features of Tea Party sympathizers versus the unions, but world-wide it is the tyrants against the “people.” Our democracy was birthed in this very same game. We have always wanted to be an example to other nations of the worth of our young democracy. Shall we mischaracterize and give up the game just when other peoples are feeling courageous enough to follow our “spirit of ’76” ?

Long live the people.

How To Mis-read the Constitution, and Pretend to Patriotically Support Democracy (Tea-Party-style in Wisconsin)

2011-02-19T21:26:00.000-08:00

First, let us define "democracy"--that is, the democracy that our revolutionary founders had in mind and that our Constitution represents and enables. Once we establish this defining tool, we can then look at the Constitution’s clearly stated words to discover the trick often used to misread it.

Simply put, democracy proclaims: The people rule. Who are the people? That would be us. That is all of us, meaning all not part. We are all in it together, a unit. This includes the fat ones, thin ones, the tall and short, the socially and mentally challenged along with the genius geeks, those with funny accents, and those with birth defects and modern day leprosies like cancer and aids. It even includes the lazy and public-offending relatives we all have.

Why are there so many of these misfits and ne’er-do-wells burdening our society? Well, because the high energy, multi-talented folk like you and I who rightly deserve our privileges are a minority--that‘s why. That is just the way it is. Put the minority, the right people, in charge or we will all drown as our nation sinks beneath the waves; and then where is all our talk of inalienable rights and happy pursuits. It is not right that the unfit should be put on an equal footing with the rest of us (the minority), is it? But there is that pesky word--minority. If our country is going to continue to prosper and become a beacon to the world, of morality, political advancement, and high living standards, the smaller, better lot of us need to call the shots, because our experience and talents are what brought our country to its height among nations.

Wait! What came over me? That last paragraph is precisely where “democracy” as set forth in the Constitution goes off track. How can we say that one particular party is the (exclusive) voice of the American people when the two major parties historically have traded electoral victories back and forth almost equally over time. (Check the record. Even today neither of the two major parties controls both national legislative Houses.) Democracy is the form of government our Founders incorporated to secure inalienable rights for all the people. How can this mean anything other than that we all are in this together, each on equal footing, including those out of office and out of favor. Certainly those with more energy, ambition, and marketable talents (combined with some unadmitted good luck) will advance themselves personally to enviable stations in life. But this only secures them membership in a minority elite, and democracy is not about minority rule. (Nor was born-in-a-barn Jesus enamored with the rich and powerful few of his time.)

As the people in the streets of Cairo, Bahrain, Tehran , and Wisconsin are displaying, “here is what democracy looks like.” It appears that the key issue in Wisconsin is at heart a contest between laboring unions and private (elite) enterprise. I heard a Wisconsin resident reporting the mood of the people cheering the unusual legislature-rebellion. He said there is much talk about, and expectation of, “recalling” legislators who are supporting the Tea Party Republican Governor. (Under a peculiar Wisconsin rule the Governor, who has been in office only a few weeks, can not be recalled during his first year.) My point is that Democracy is not politicians, it is the people standing up for the rights of all.

Now let’s look at the Constitutional rails that lay out the track for our democracy and see where the sleight of hand is introduced. The first seven Articles provide the schemata, and the Amendments set forth special assurances and details of protocol to verify the intent of the document. The first amendment deals with a list of daily activities (religion, press, assembly and petition), and diagrams the floor, ceiling and walls of the room the people occupy. Or a better metaphor than a room would be the “public square” where people interact, or march, or swarm. This amendment guarantees anyone and everyone’s right to talk, gather, and pressure without the restriction of laws and decrees of the powers that be. If it turns out that the Democrat legislators in Wisconsin, who “walked out,” represent the “voice of the people” (a “voice” other than that of “interested” spokespersons), then we have an exciting, graphic, all-American display of “democracy” in action--not unlike what is seeming to sweep across the screen of Africa and the Middle East. The lantern of democracy that our Founders hung as a “beacon on a hill” may appear at times to flicker, but whether it’s beams can reach far enough to dispel the shadows in distant lands, or whether the Arab “people” are responding to the same inner light that warmed the American colonialists, is an open question. But if the colonial Committees of Correspondence and horse-riding messengers played a starring role in our democratic uprising, today’s internet technology certainly has the capacity for stirring a common feeling of human (people) rights across wider geographic territory. It will be interesting to watch. Wisconsin, show us again how it is done.

Having given my definition of “democracy,” I will try to more briefly explain the “trick” used by some for derailing the Constitution’s diction. It has to do with taking words out of context. The “context” is the lodestar.

For example, Amendment 2 speaks of the un-“infringed” right of the people “to keep and bear arms.” Note that this phrase alone holds no context. So what is the first part of the sentence? A “militia being necessary to the security of a free State,” is the reason for individual gun possession. Owning a gun was necessary because the freedom of the State depended on the existence of the militia. That was the reality of the time. Without the militia we would not have beaten the British military invasion. (Read the story.) We don’t need the militia now to protect our nation. We have the most powerful national army in the world. And we don’t need militia groups to protect ourselves against our own government. It could degenerate to that, but to think that it will is to distrust the strength of democracy. To think that guns are more powerful than the energy of a finely functioning democracy is nothing more than shivering paranoia. Often our elected officials surprise us once in office, but as we have repeatedly demonstrated in our history, we take care of that with impeachment, recalls, marches, civil disobedience, media events, and now Facebook. Play it out for us Wisconsin (and Cairo).

I am not arguing against individual gun ownership. I am only saying that the reason usually offered for unrestricted gun access is without context in the Constitution. The second Amendment is time-relative and out-dated, just as the Electoral College is. If our own national government turns into a tyranny and becomes a “threat” to the people, we could again amend the Constitution to reembrace militias and reinstate uninfringed gun ownership, just as we could amend to end the Electoral College. The Constitution was written by and for the “people,” who always hold more power than any imposed tyranny, as per India's ousting of Britain, the USSR’s deposing of Gorbachev, or Egypt's ousting of Mubarack --- and stay tuned.

I have made my point, but I will close with two additional quick examples of how debaters “trick” us by de-contexting their argument. The church and state “separators” use the first amendment as their mantra, but “separation” is nowhere to be found in the amendment. It only prohibits Congress from being a religious puppet master.

My other example comes from my history class where one of my students thought the textbook said the Bible supports slavery. He quoted, “Slavery, after all, was sanctioned in the Bible.” Yes, that is what the textbook says. But, looking more closely, the preceding sentence said, “English people had few moral qualms about enslaving other humans. [So for this reason, as they thought,] Slavery, after all, was sanctioned in the Bible.” The bracketed words I added are clearly implied and make the context of the statement plainly the obverse of what the undiscerning student thought. A few sentences later the text makes it clear that the English settlers “had not yet fully developed the meaning of race and slave.”

Ignoring context (dismissing nuances) is what makes the arguing game fun, darn it. But when our Constitution begins with the words, “We the People . . . , in order to form a more perfect union . . . , establish this Constitution,” who are “the people”? The Wisconsin citizens swarming in the streets in support of the en masse walkout of opposition party legislators are an integral part of “we the people.” The Constitutional context with its democratic scaffolding assures the inclusion of critics as "people" who may remain unbowed when the “system” breaks down.

Bring it on, Wisconsin rebels, and show us the distortion of context the Tea Partiers paint as they pose as the sum of the real “people.” And we people “don’t need no guns” to demonstrate our power. Guns are the crutch of the weak and frightened.

Doug Good

Let The Shooting Begin

2011-01-16T21:36:00.000-08:00

In the aftermath of the Loughner massacre in Tucson, much discussion is occurring in the public media about whether this kind of violence is being encouraged by prominent people (Tea Party spokespersons, TV and radio talk show hosts, etc.) making remarks about taking care of our problems with strong-arm, sometimes explicit violence-in-kind, responses.

Whether such inflammatory remarks come from the right or left, from conservatives or liberals, is not the issue. Desperate situations seem to invite desperate reflexes. The temptation is always strong to "fight back" in like manner, with the idea that only violence can match up to violence. If we can't "hit back" personally, we can talk big, hoping others will hit for us.

Yes, the Second Amendment of the Constitution seems to sanction individual initiative to shoot back when threatened, by allowing citizen possession of "arms." But note that this is an "amendment." The writers of the Constitution did not include it. Indeed, as James Madison explained in his Federalist Papers essay, he thought the additional assurances (that became the Bill of Rights amendments) were not necessary because the new Constitution was meant to establish a positive construction of democratic procedures upon which to build our national society and culture; the Constitution, as adopted before the amendments, left it for the states to deal with unstipulated details.

Not to diminish their importance, but the rights bolstered by the first ten amendments, and indeed most of the subsequent ones, deal with procedural matters, updating with details where further explication was felt needed for the times. The Bill of Rights is not a list of inalienable privileges; rather it is a short compendium of protective assurances, statements of protocol. If you think the right "to bear arms" is a God-given inalienable right, re-read the New Testament. The Second Amendment spoke to a fear of personal safety in a young nation pushing into a continental wilderness inhabited by tribal nations, and still harboring British troops. It was not set against a backdrop of fear of our own political system. The Constitution itself takes care of any sense of helplessness against internal political tyranny. In short, the colonial precedent of local citizen militia groups is an outdated recourse grasped today by people isolated in their self-perceived powerlessness or motivated by shady ambition. Even if Washington D.C. belt-way politics should elevate a party or a President into a position that forcefully tyrannizes citizens, our national track record shows that we know how to take care of it. As Tocqueville said, Americans are good at making retrievable mistakes. Panic is without honor in our virtuous constitutional system, despite an undercurrent of pull and tug.

To my mind, a "desperate" physical retaliatory response is always the worst, most ineffective solution. It might give the threatened person "time' to take a breath, but always makes matters worse in the long run. Indeed, you can not "fight" your way out of a deep hole. "Fighting" may gain you some foot space within the hole, but it only gives the enemy pause (maybe) to recoil. If you are actually in a desperate position (and "fear" is a blunt, seriously inadequate tool for measuring "situations"), you have already taken a hit. Fear only measures pain, it does not analyze sound data.

My model for this is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. At that point, he had already taken the hit, and he knew it. It was not fear that led him, in advance at the Last Supper, to tell Judas to go ahead and do what he intended to do. In the Garden, Peter felt desperate and lost his mind. Jesus knew his disciples probably had a chance to overpower a Roman arresting party, leaving him more room in his hole to fight on. But he acted sensibly and responsibly, and his disciples lived to tell about it. I am not saying this non-violent strategy will prevent the good guys from getting hurt. I am saying if we truly are in a "desperate" situation, we already have taken the "hit." The biological and/or psychological pain may be staunched by fighting back, but the crippling is only thereby delayed.

I heard that when Jared Loughner was tackled, one person who grabbed the dropped gun had the impulse to shoot Loughner and take care of him right now, but decided not to. Rare wisdom. I acknowledge that now we must endure a long, costly judicial process to get Loughner put away. But if the tackler had shot the assailant on the spot after he was subdued, the event would have been nothing more than a "shoot out."

I am not talking about shooting Loughner while he was still firing. I'm talking about embracing post-trauma violence rhetoric--Ann Coulter or Bill O'Reilly style. Do we want "desperate" situations decided by shoot outs? Puerile talk about "taking out" those who "scare us" is a first cousin to insanity.

Fortunately, Jesus was not easily "scared' by his tormentors, even when he understood the odds at Gethsemane. He knew he really did have the advantage overall. Heroes often die in the heroic moment, but if we do not have quality heroes, we are left with guides who shoot first and ask questions later. By quality heroes, I mean those who know of ways to escape from a hole without letting the challenging dueler choose our weapons, and escalating the problem into a shootout. The Loughner tackler who did not shoot the restrained killer on the spot was smart. The damage (20 victims) was already done. The moment for fear was over. If we remain at the level of desperation for determining decisions, we act as I heard many throughout the country reacted ---gun sales jumped the next day for the kind of semi-automatic assault weapon (Glock 19) Loughner used, apparently bought by people who wanted to get possession of an emotion quencher before Congress updates and stiffens gun control laws in the aftermath.

It appears that George Washington, who led our violent rebellion against Great Britain, had learned by the 1790s the lesson that I am promoting about the moral deficiency and long term ineffectiveness of violence as a tactic. In contradistinction to the mood of the country (a mood still looming today) that we should consolidate our blessed destiny--"win the West"--by intimidation, President Washington tried, abortively, to establish a policy of conciliation and honest negotiation with the Native Americans. And in his Farewell Address he admonished us to stay out of European affairs and alliances that would only drag us into foreign conflict and wars. This man knew something about violent frenzy.

My heroes are three--Apostle Peter's master; the Tucson man who threw himself on his fallen wife and absorbed the fatal shot; and the tackler who grabbed Loughner's gun but did not shoot back. Heroic actions may not always prevent immediate sacrifice of life or limb. But when the damage of violent attack is already done, or the "fear" of attack is shown to be a squint-eyed miscalculation, I prefer to count my advantages and jump more assuredly out of the "hole."

Yes, you say, but that is easy advice while sitting in your study philosophizing. You ask why I don't get out of my chair and get started attacking my immediate challenges for today? Well, I like to think that my three heroes acted as they did only because they had thought through these things and made their heroic decision from a well of understanding rather than a spring of emotion. There is a place for enneagram type five personalities. I'll be ready for when I am drafted into an emergencey, but for now I won't keep quiet.

Shall we let the shootout begin, just as in days of yore, when cowboys (and modern day Presidents) knew how to take care of problems?

Doug Good

The Christmas Revolution: Radical Goodness

2010-12-28T12:37:00.000-08:00

At this Christmas season, year 2010, I pause to reflect on the stunning significance of the birth of a baby who understood intuitively what many of us have been missing because of materialistic static. Only after years of reading the Bible has my clouded brain begun to understand what Jesus must have discovered by the age of twelve when he discussed Scripture with the teachers in the Jerusalem temple--to their amazement. At the similar age of twelve I was watching flannel graph lessons in Sunday School, taught by Mr. McGee, a barber. (The most profound thing I learned from him was how to knot a neck tie.)

We are not told that preadolescent Jesus impressed the temple teachers with scholarly shoptalk, but rather with his unusual intuitive wisdom and his searching questions. We know from his New Testament teachings that he recognized how the traditional Jewish scriptures were spun out of post-Eden perspectives, and that the unvarnished narratives of human fumblings to understand soul issues were in serious need of more illumination.

I hesitantly admit that I was into my third decade of life before I sensed how jolting is the transition from the Old to the New Testament. I had long been puzzled by how un-Christlike it can be to quote selectively from the Old Testament to support contemporary moral stances, or lack thereof, but the fog began to lift as it occurred to me that Jesus was remolding what the temple teachers were expounding. His insistence on rebirth was a re-casting. The first book of the New Testament--Matthew--strove to provide a segue from the Old by emphasizing how Jesus was a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. But fulfillment of prophecy is not the same as agreement with inadequate notions. Obviously, for Jesus was executed because his seemingly new message was a threat to the keepers of ethnic messiah expectations.

What I celebrate at Christmas is the arrival of a radicalization that would yank the world out of a post-Eden stupor. Jesus' radically new covenant is well presented in the New Testament, and ironically (if you are up to date) his message is resonating today with many non-Christians, even scientists. God's people are all human beings, and his message is a spirituality that supersedes all catechisms. It is a language of the heart that outranks the brain--thank God.

My prayer for the New Year is that we as Christ-followers do not fall behind in tapping into the jolting insights Jesus gave up his life to inaugurate.

Two Cars In One Garage: Conservatives, Liberals, and Polarization

2010-11-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

We hear it said often today that, sadly, America is becoming increasingly polarized--that the Democrats (liberals) and Republicans (conservatives) are carping at each other beyond restraint, and that civility is a forgotten art. I am not happy about it, but neither am I alarmed. A quick glance at our national past turns up plenty of political incivility, beginning with the so-called Revolution of 1800, when the supposed atheist and first opposition leader, Thomas Jefferson, captured the Presidency, on through anti-Catholic riots, anti-slavery confrontations, charges that FDR was a communist, McCarthyism in the 1950s, and so on. Familiarity with dissension reduces the scariness of this American habit.

Polarization is latent in any public conversation because the general population will always cluster in a generally consistent ratio around the two summarizing but contrasting varieties of opinion--Conservative or Liberal. I heard of a recent study suggesting DNA may be a factor in how we settle into one camp or the other. Just as I don’t worry about newborn baby boys losing out over baby girls in nature’s coin toss, so I am at peace about the future of my camp holding its own over time. Since George Washington was elected as the first President in 1788, we have had 28 (philosophically) Republican administrations and 27 Democratic.

Individually, we may move around in our position on the political spectrum with various issues at stake, but whether due to nature or nurture, our personalities tend to categorize us. I think it is good advice to avoid the “far” positions of both left and right, for if anyone calls the other person a betrayer, a fool, or some other word intended to separate the world into the acceptable and the unacceptable, you can know that person is deficient in savoir faire. Example: when Glenn Beck calls Barack Obama a socialist, or when Michael Moore calls George W. Bush a criminal. Conservatism and liberalism are distinguishable but not mutually exclusive. Language of exclusion aimed at the opposing camp masks the commonality that Americans have in a democracy. At any given moment, the politically wise and socially astute will listen for the tone that characterizes each camp respectively and evaluate what is needed to keep our ship of state balanced and upright in the storm.

During most of George W. Bush’s administration the conservative party dominated American politics and policy. In an environment of crisis, he chose to use the power of “fear” to motivate followers. When Barack Obama sought the Presidency, he tapped into the power of “hope” to surf into office. These terms are more descriptive than definitional, but they suggest two other terms that do not normally excite controversy--liberty and equality. This pair of words is thought to represent the key pillars of democracy, terms of collaboration in our early struggle for independence, twin goals of our new government. But a closer look at them shows a difference in “tone” that hints at the relationship of conservatism and liberalism in our country.

- Liberty implies the overthrow of tyranny, a release from harassment; it suggests
unbounded opportunity, unrestricted freedom and protection of personal, individual rights.
- Equality implies honest and mutual respect, social harmony, sharing of resources and
benefits; it suggests cooperative teamwork, and removal of social distinctions.

Patrick Henry displayed the first (conservative) tone quality when he shouted to his oppressors, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Thomas Jefferson captured the second (liberal) tone quality in his declarative notice of all men’s equal endowments at birth and open path to happy pursuits. Both men are sunny representatives of our honored founding generation.

Those early years were a honeymoon period, when we were busy setting up house, buying new furniture and hanging pictures. Over time, the energetic practice of speaking our minds, and the human urge to manufacture self-esteem inevitably illuminated the differences of opinion about how to assure the continuance of our young democratic experiment. In the early years of our republic these two philosophical gemstones of democracy--liberty and equality--locked arms in felicitous harmony. But potential friction lay just below the surface. With the chafing of time, the distinguishing tone of each philosophical disposition took on some edginess, particularly when each group had its turn out of office and was playing the opposition role

- Conservative liberty lovers saw challenges to their prized possessions. The less optimistic
among them soon felt a twinge of “fear” when the impractical liberals took office. Their personal
maneuverability was at stake.
- Liberal equality lovers felt a creeping hint of suspicion that their new status was at risk in
the hands of conservatives who networked noiselessly with each other.

One popular U.S. history textbook (Beth Norton, et. al.) notes that in 1964, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act and opposed the national Social Security system. “Like many conservatives,” the authors state, “he believed that individual liberty, not equality, was the most important American value.” Recently, some political analysts conclude that the failure of the Democratic party to withstand a big comeback by the Republicans in the 2010 mid-term elections was because President Obama seemed more concerned about helping the poor while regulating the business class, rather than trying to encourage capitalists who knew better how to bring the country out of depression.

George Washington and fellow compatriots would be disheartened to see Liberty and Equality so at odds.

Conservative and liberal dispositions are family; there is no reason they cannot be respectful siblings. The trick is to pull on both ends of the rope to keep it taut, without trying to yank the other pullers into the mud puddle in between. America showed the world how to set up a democracy, but we still have a way to go to understand how justice (guaranteed protection of rights) and mercy (equal, unqualified standing) make a serendipitous combination. The Apostle Paul did not use the terms conservatism and liberalism, but in I Corinthians 13, he picked up on the characterizing tone of each. He spoke of hope (which flows from the equality fountain) and love (which flows in a state of liberty where fear and uncertainty are cast out). So if real liberalism is “hope” and real conservatism is a tolerant absence of fear, we can know if our favorite political prophets are on the right track when we properly characterize their message.

Let’s look at the messages of the current politicians asking for our allegiance. I’ll list the characteristics, you provide the names. In my chart below, which puts Liberals on the left and Conservatives on the right, I acknowledge the liberals look good and the conservatives look not so good. But I am only parroting what I hear the respective spokespersons proclaim. I put these characterizations in my own phraseology; but they (maybe unwittingly) are self-characterizations by members of the respective camps. I don’t pay much attention to far-leftists, so my phrasing reflects what Obama and responsible Democrats espouse. It happens that the Republicans, who are having an affair with Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, are allowing the far-right to speak for them. I recognize that there are crossovers and some renegades, and neither camp would necessarily agree with my word choices; but in abbreviated form, here is what I hear each saying when I listen to both. If you think my chart is unfair to either position, then, for example, check out Obama’s public statements, and John Boehner’s media pronouncements. Then turn on the TV for a few minutes of FOX news, then CNN. Both liberals and conservatives unashamedly display themselves. Neither side is wholly or indelibly positioned on the cheerful scale, though Conservatives currently are milking the negatives as if they were positives and are getting good mileage out of it. We will see if this tone shifts any with their party now in power in the House.

Liberals - Hopeful. Conservatives - Fearful.
Liberals - Champions of equality. Conservatives - Champions of liberty (personal).
Liberals - Calmly confident. Conservatives - Actively challenging.
Liberals- Group oriented. Conservatives -Self-oriented.
Liberals - Idealistic. Conservatives - Elitist.
Liberals - Spiritual. Conservatives - Religious.
Liberals - Nuanced. Conservatives - Cheerleading.
Liberals - Modest. Conservatives -Triumphal.
Liberals - Sharing. Conservatives - Possessing.
Liberals - Patient. Conservatives - Impatient.
Liberals - Open field vision. Conservatives - Tunnel focus.
Liberals - Concerned about tree roots near sidewalks. Conservatives - Concerned about sidewalks next to trees.
Liberals - Trusting God to control. Conservatives - Trusting "godly" men as God's vicegerents.
Liberals - Seeing challenges. Conservatives - Seeing threats.
Liberals - Forgiving. Conservatives - Cynical.
Liberals - Solution: just add water to ingredients. Conservatives - Dump out ingredients and drink the water.

Obviously Equality (left) and Liberty (right) as represented by this chart are not in sync. In the world of D.C. politics, unless the liberty-loving, tyranny-fearing Right replaces fear and triumphalism with New Testament love, the hope of the Left will fail to surmount Congressional obstructionism. Equality and Liberty will prosper only when loving-justice and hope join hands in expectant cooperation. Our Founding Fathers showed us how; let's not disappoint them.

How To Kill Without Murdering--Join the Army

2010-11-14T17:34:00.000-08:00

Are individual soldiers guilty of murder?

Most of us would say an emphatic, “No”! We explain that when sin broke loose in the Garden of Eden, the first couple was exiled, and the human race was sentenced to live here below in a stew of our own brew. But we have the Bible as a template for how to handle ultimate threats. The good guys have to be protected, so we organize an army. The problem is that you can not win a war without killing someone. In order for the Israelites to gain their due reward as God‘s people, the threatening Canaanites had to be wiped out. As Saint Augustine put it in his gloss on the Old Testament, when God tells us to kill, the killer is absolved of any guilt for the murder.

More recently, when savage Indians attacked our frontier settlements, with God’s supposedly tacit approval we eliminated the threat with superior troop strength. After all, America is the New Israel, the last, best hope for a peaceful, democratic world. We can’t let evil control the field of play. We send soldiers to do the necessary dirty work, and tell each one that his assignment to kill is a temporary expedient. Then we assure him he will be honored and considered a hero for his valiant deeds.

We even elect some hard fighting soldiers as President for their battlefield skills and dedication. Why then did Jesus not compliantly accept by popular acclamation the job of King of the Jews? Where was his national spirit and loyalty? Why did he tell his self-appointed body guard, Simon Peter, to sheath the sword. Did he see something wrong with the warring template? Apparently.

In the Garden of Gethsemanee, Jesus was using God’s authentic template when he tolerantly explained that the Roman soldiers did not understand what they were doing. This is a different kind of absolving of guilt--one that we, in our own wisdom, think is giving in to evil. What the new template asks of us is very difficult; it is counterintuitive. But Jesus had superior intuition; he not only said to not engage in killing, he provided a better, more commanding and effective way to defeat any devil that bothers us. His method was personally painful, but powerfully potent.

Modern theorists and theologians have tried to bridge the gap between idealism and pragmatism by outlining principles that justify some wars as necessary--all of which still kill people. (See the footnote in my blog of Nov. 11, 2008) But if there are any wars left that pass the test of the tough just war restrictions, still none could win the stamp of moral approval.

Actually the error in our thinking about justified killing stares us in the face. The flaw lies in our definition of justice. Peter (and St. Augustine) wanted judgment because humans can quickly administer this. Sloppy use of terms leads to exaggeration in ill results. Wars have no moral standing; they are only ethical determinations. Ethical game rules are a mother-may-I step short of morals.

Just as ethics and morals are of different genus, judgment and justice are not the same thing. Contrary to common use of the word, justice is not simply judgment with accompanying punishment. Nor is it satisfaction, as many victimized people term it when they cry out for “justice.” Punishment and penalty are only tangential procedures, ethical protocol at work; they do not bring justice.

Judgment and Mercy, in tandem, bring Justice. Judgment alone is not justice, nor is ”closure” justice. Conviction and punishment is not justice; they are only unmercified judgment. Justice, rather, is the restoring of balance, making things right again as they are meant to be. Judgment prevents naiveté. Mercy--judgment’s Siamese twin--disintegrates bigotry and hatred. Together they make punishment (and war) unnecessary, hence immoral. As per the dictionary, justice is fairness, an eminently pragmatic and satisfying resolution of an imbalance, pure and simple.

Wars are incapable of bringing justice to either side. If we really want to end wars, we must start with justice, which abhors killing. At the political level wars follow an ethical playbook (ethics defined as rules of conduct society agrees upon), but they cannot be moral, if Jesus had anything worth proclaiming. They only bring judgment and punishment; while we wait for the convicted to recuperate and return to the field to reverse the judgment of battle. As Jesus tried to teach Peter the correct understanding of God’s view of wars and killing, justice is judgment and mercy in lockstep, with punishment commuted. No one wins, so everyone wins. When justice is the goal, war gets in the way.

The difficulty is how to get this happy reality lodged in our numb skulls. How can justice prevail without war? It is easy. And the method has proven rousingly successful many times in secular history. Read Jonathan Schell’s, The Unconquerable World, to find out how.

Standing Fearless Before the Muslim Threat

2010-09-16T22:28:00.000-07:00

Anyone who opposes Imam Rauf's plan for a NY mosque located near the World Trade Towers ground zero with the reasoning that all Muslims are implicated in the terrorist attack of 9/11 should be barred from any serious discussion of the issue. You can know immediately that their emotions have hijacked their brains. Guilt by generalizing association is for totalitarian regimes, not democracies. This logic, if extended, would agree to killing all Jews because they are not Aryans; or to use a more recognizable Americanism--the only good Indian is a dead one. Is this what we have come to now with Muslims?

What we have here is a fine tuning of the psychology of fear. At first it was patriotic Republicans trading on the approaching anniversary of 9/11 to accuse Democrats of insensitivity for supporting the mosque, particularly Obama. But this political gambit lost its punch as a wider list of prominent individuals gave voice to plain sense, rejecting Muslim guilt by false association, and realizing the liability of appearing to be opposed to freedom of religion.

Then it was the plain and simple bigots who jumped on the wagon. But the media-chosen poster boy, Pastor Jones, mishandled the bigotry card. He was over his head in this role and backed off when the recognized leaders of most prominent religious communities in America doused him and his Qur'an burning idea with water, and General Petraeus warned of the danger to our troops from inflaming Muslim terrorist reaction.

This leaves only the more ambiguous, less observable fear mongers, who, whether they realize it or not, are pawns of the terrorists. The key strategy of terrorists is to arose fear among us, a clever way to get us to maim ourselves with "friendly fire." How easy it seems to get us to forget who we are and what America stands for. It is the radical right, posing as the defenders of Christian America, who are the most frightened, and who thereby serve as enablers for the enemies of our democratic heritage, and to boot, prove to be wayward claimants of Christianity.

I won't add to what I have already said in my most recent blog about what fear does to Christians. But having eliminated illogic, politics, and bigotry from the Muslim equation, I can easily expose "fear" as the charlatan it is. The NY mosque provided a stage for promoting the "fear" that Islam is secretly plotting to take over America and substitute Shari'a law for democracy. Don't forget that our Constitution was suckled on centuries of English development of the idea of freedom; it is rooted in the American psyche, and is fortified by sound legal scaffolding. I can imagine only three ways a Muslim revolution could be effected in America, none of which has the slightest chance of happening.

First: Our Constitution could be amended piecemeal, but on details, not on principles (details are explicit, principles are implicit). For Muslims to gradually undermine the Constitution by amendment will not happen unless a majority of the population becomes Muslim and works toward this end with conspiratorial unity. Because of the difficulty of gaining a 2/3 vote in Congress, plus affirmation of 3/4 of the individual states by separate voting, since the Bill of Rights we have passed only a hodge podge of 17 amendments in over two centuries on mainly procedural matters. To highlight the difficulty of this method of "taking over," even abortionists have not been able to stabilize the pro-choice "reading" of the law with a Constitutional amendment, and amending to assure capital punishment fails to unite all Christians, not to mention that women (with 51% of the population) could not get the ERA proposal passed. Neither Muslims nor any other special interest group is going to "take over" this way. Besides the term "Muslim" is loosely and indistinctly tossed around today as if the Muslims in the United States have the same unity of mindset as those operating in Middle Eastern Arab cultures where there is no democratic tradition.

Second: The only other procedural way to capture our national legal system is to hold another Constitutional Convention to write a new code, the way we set up our current Constitution. The Philadelphia Convention, in 1787, performed its task extra-legally, but the leaders of the movement were respected national heroes, political scholars, and experts on democratic practice. They represented our history of 168 years of local, colonial self governing experience, and had won the favor of the people.

There is a third approach--to sink democracy by military conquest. This is not going to happen either. Random Muslim terrorist attacks can not accomplish this; and which established nation is reckless enough to try?

He who is rightfully confident need not be scared so easily. The real threat is not Islam. The lurking hazard is an anemic self perception. The solution is to know who we are and to build on that. To shout out intolerance is to suck the oxygen out of our blood flow. Intolerance is a toxic rust on democracy's surface. It is fear's twin, but can easily be overcome with the sunny dynamic found in communal relationships, which provides the steady power of democracy. If we choose to remember this, we can feel the firmness of the ground on which our multifaceted citizenry stands.

Doug Good

How Christian is America?

2010-08-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

(This is lengthy, but since it is in outline form, you can skip and jump.)

At least scroll down to note the last sentence.

Please excuse the weird formatting. The website is not cooperating.

Few themes in public discussions are more guaranteed to arouse emotion than the assertion that America is a Christian nation. As non-Christian religious groups increase their percentage of the general population, as atheists, criminals, immigrants, and gays receive non-discriminatory advantages, and as immorality appears rampant, Christians become anxious about losing the dominance in American culture and politics they once enjoyed. One enticing way to respond to this challenge is to avow that any perceived drift away from the principles of our founding fathers, who were Christians, is both a betrayal of our political heritage and a falling away from God's grace. To accept that we no longer are a Christian nation is to give up our blest distinctiveness, it seems, and betray our divinely manifest destiny.

There is no want of evidence that our nation is navigating treacherous shoals today. But if we do not guard against making use of Christianity for variant political agendas, we run the risk of bastardizing the meaning of our heritage. If we really are and have been, at least until now, a Christian people, are those who sound the warnings about looming apostasy credible? Can we trust them to safely pilot us back into the strong current charted by our virtuous founders?

We are told in I John 4:18 that "perfect love casts out fear," but less recognized is the reverse, that fear can cast out love, along with good sense. Does the call to reclaim the fundamentals of our spiritual/political heritage reflect the teachings of the New Testament and the catechism of our Constitution? Let's put this call to the test.

First, let me reshape the question slightly. there is no doubt that Christianity informed our founding fathers and has inspired the best in us as a nation. If those who think we are "losing it" do personally represent what we should "return to," then let's ask not how Christian is America, but rather, how Christian are our would-be mentors today? If they pass the test, let's gather round them. If not, the Christian legacy they display is fool's gold, and they are illegitimate custodians of our heritage.

Here are some key areas on which many Christians feel our stature as a Christian nation stands or falls. I'll flip the light on so we can inspect them.

1. Social programs (Health Care)

2. Tolerance (Enemy combatants, Muslims, Gays, Immigrants)

3. Law enforcement (Enemy combatants, Illegal immigrants, Ethnic profiling)
4. Capitalist enterprise

5. War

I. Social Programs.

A. What I hear Christians saying:

1. Health Care.

Universal health care is unAmerican, because the added numbers of patients will

gum up the availability of doctors, equipment, and facilities, and make my own requests
for care more inconvenient.

2. National Debt.

Government bailouts for corporations that are "too big to fail" are alright, but paying

the cost of health insurance for millions of individuals "too poor to join" will irresponsibly

increase our national debt. The necessary rise in taxes will then unfairly cost me more.

[The message here is that, if some draw the short stick, too bad for them. I'll take

care of myself. Those who suffer want can blame themselves anyway.

The good Samaritan would not fit into this "Christian" America. And Jesus himself

would have been out of place in our country feeding, for free, 5,000 people who couldn't

think ahead to bring their own lunch.]

B. What the Bible Says:

Jesus famously disregarded the cherished social stereotypes of his day. He befriended
prostitutes, gave healing touches to lepers, counseled with inquisitive rulers and high

officials, taught in the synagogue, dined with known sinners, elevated women and children.

In his mind, neither social position, reputation, title, intelligence, talent, age, nor gender set

anyone apart. With all social, ethnic, career or financial curtains lowered, he devoted his

time and energies ministering to any and all without contracts, validation papers,

stipulations, or pre-agreements. He asked no qualifying questions and withheld his
ministrations from no one. You asked, he gave; and expected his followers to do the same.

(The stories are too familiar to need chapter and verse references; where would I

begin?)

II. Tolerance

A. What I hear Christians saying:

1. Americans first.

I am an American before I am a world citizen. Americans are something special. Our

President should not be traveling around the world kissing up to other national leaders

whose interests and policies are not in line with ours. We have fought for our position as

strongest nation and beacon of light. We have earned the right to call the shots and

define for ourselves how to protect and further our chosen interests.

2. Enemies.
Our constitutional standards and international laws do not apply to "enemy

combatants." With no legal standing in our system, we can treat these undesirables as

our understandable emotions dictate. They won't make it into heaven, so we might as

well inflict God's arbitrary judgment on them now.

3. Muslims.

After the attack on the World Trade Towers, we should have zero tolerance toward

Muslims. Certainly the plan to build a mosque near ground zero is an insult to families

and survivors of the massacre of innocent Americans, and it should be stopped. That

those who would worship there had nothing to do with the attack, and that most Muslims

do not condone such actions, does not matter. A Muslim is a Muslim as assuredly as all

humans are sinners.

4. Gays.

The same goes for this group. One gay person is as bad as another. The very fact

of being gay, makes one guilty of all the sinful perversions gays engage in. If you have not

done "it" yet, you want to and will. If our Christian founding fathers had known 10% of

their population were gays in the closet, they would have included restraints on them in

the Constitution.

5. Ethnic profiling.

This limitation of rights is a disadvantage any group unwilling to assimilate into our

Anglo-Saxon, Protestant traditions should learn to accept. Raising our children in the

American way is hard enough without enduring the presence and irritations of minority

groups. When their language and accent, skin tone, dress, odd ceremonies, or other

peculiarities make the rest of us uncomfortable, they should have the decency to stay

out of view and not make demands.

B. What the Bible says:

Love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:31). Do to others as you would have them

do to you (Luke 6:31). Don't consider yourself better than others (Matt. :5). Go into all the

world, including the gentiles, and preach the good news (Mark 16:15; Rom. 11:13-21). If

your brother eats food you don't eat, join with him to not give offense (1 Cor. 8:13). Don't

fall into the hypocrisy of ignoring the log in your own eye while pointing out the splinter in

someone else's eye (Luke 6:41). Forgive those who oppose you for they are not aware of

the full meaning of what they do (Luke 23:32; Matt. 5:38-40).

III. Law Enforcement

A. What I hear Christians say:

"Enemy combatants" should not be granted any considerations, whether it be access to a

lawyer, a day in court, the right of habeas corpus, or freedom from torture. Torture is not

torture when justified--when the captive deserves it.

Ethnic profiling applied for black skin, brown skin, or Arabic features is an inconvenience

that citizens should accept as a cost for being different. The safety of our people is too

important to allow observance of legal niceties.

Illegal immigrants should be denied all rights allotted to citizens; and any benefits or

concessions should be withheld. Upon being caught they should be deported post haste.

B. What the Bible says:

If someone steals your coat, add your shirt to his take; if he hits you, drop your dukes.

Look at law suits against you, and other inconveniences, as opportunities. (Matt. 5:38-42,

(Luke 6:27).

Considering God's people had experienced mistreatment as aliens in Egypt, the

Israelites were enjoined to not oppress or mistreat any aliens in their midst. (Ex. 25:21).

IV. Capitalist Enterprise.

A. What I hear Christians saying:

Jesus said ask and you will receive. Americans are free to ask, and it is God's will that

we receive wealth and prosperity, that is if we are willing to work for it. Our capitalist

system is the vehicle. Those who are not enterprising enough to put action to their asking

are disqualified from the benefits of the formula. If you don't work, you don't deserve to

eat.

Our country's international economic dominance is a sign of God's blessing on capitalism,

but spending billions of dollars to benefit those who do not contribute to the program of

"invest and enjoy" puts an unfair and unconscionable drag on all of us. Parasitism defeats

capitalism and hinders the fulfillment of God's blessing.

As practiced in America, the operative notion of capitalism, one can impute, is that profit

comes at someone's expense. The sellers make money from the buyers; investors make

money charging interest. Capitalist-practicing Christians are proud to point out that the

profit and loss statement is a measure of how good ones entrepreneurial skills are.

Those who work for hourly wages are chaff. Chaff is necessary to protect the seed and

preserve a good crop, but chaff is not what the value of the harvest is based on. Capitalism

puts the premium on seed sowing. Coddling the chaff turns the system upside down.

B. What the Bible says:

When the rich young ruler sought Jesus' counsel on how to be righteous, Jesus told him

to give away his money to the poor. He did not ask this gentleman to give up his civil

leadership status and pick some worthy projects for his money. He intuited that the

problem was his use of money as a crutch. To Jesus, wealth was a severe handicap for

righteous living (Luke 18:22). Remember the camel struggling to squeeze through the eye

of the needle (Mark 10:25), and the judgment that Jesus said waited the oppressors of the

poor, meaning the rich (James 2:6-8).

Money is not the root of evil in its tangible, inanimate form. But it is the lubricant of

selfish immaturity, ungodly hoarding, grasping for advantage, discourteous patronizing,

unethical practices, and other unspiritual behaviour. In contrast, Jesus expected his

followers to abandon the thrust for material accumulation. They were to live on trust that

supplies would arrive as needed (Mark 6:7-8).

God is not impressed with monuments. And the economic systems we concoct do not

build God's kingdom if they deviate from biblical principles. As Christians we are directed to

empty ourselves of all stipulations and preconditions before God. Materialism, which is

capitalism stripped down, must be discarded and replaced by unquestioning, instinctual

trust. We do not magnify God by acclaiming a system of capital gain as the Divine's modus

operandi for his/her people. [Does it bother you that I included "her" with "his' in refernce

to God? I think it is the "her" side of God that exposes the flaw in capitalistic economics.]

In the Old Testament, God ordained the economic system of the Jubilee (Lev. 25:8-10),

by which every 50 years debts were forgiven, and any capital gains made at the expense of

less fortunate people were returned to the original owners. Obviously this meant to

prevent the amassing of wealth in what today we dub, capitalistic style. Jesus said nothing

to overturn this practice. Indeed, all his comments about money were in perfect sync with

the spirit of Jubilee.

Opposition to this kind of "redistribution of wealth" as un-American is a mantra with

many conservative Christians today. The very thought of such a program is anathema, and

central to the cries of "socialism." Besides the attempt to politicize religion by purging the

word socialism of its dictionary definition, it appears that these Christians have the

religion/economics relationship exactly backwards (Deut. 15:4).

By the way, where in the Constitution does it say that our laws are supposed to promote

a (supposedly) Christian economic system under the guise of "protection of rights"? Reread

the 1st Amendment.

V. War

A. What I hear Christians saying:

Our Christian founders came to America for religious freedom and fought England for

independence. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution planted firmly what

we won in war. Until recently, God has honored us by enabling us to win all our subsequent

wars against those who would deny us the land destined for our republic, and against

Godless foreign regimes who attacked or conspired against us. In modern years Korea,

Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have smudged our record, but this is because we have lost

our resolve. God's plan for our nation depends on our willingness to defend our heritage in

accord with the vision and example of our ancestors. Today, with terrorism creating a new

menace, we must fight with traditional might against those who would attack us. The

enemy must be taught that our military power can overcome theirs.

As a nation founded on Christian principles, the United States has been a beacon of

morality, and custodian for democratic polity. With our military might, we have the

responsibility to share our traditions with other nations and counter the enemy at its own

game. If they can torture our prisoners, we can do it better. If they would bomb us, we can

clear the deck with our superior might. Since the Babylonian defeat of Israel in Old

Testament times, we are the New Israel, meant to fill the shoes of God's chosen until

prophecy is fulfilled in the Middle East. The apostle Paul told us [metaphorically] to put on

the "whole armor of God."

B. What the Bible says:

In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus rebuked Peter for drawing his sword against the

arresting officials (John 18:10-11). God's kingdom will not be consummated by worldy

methods (John 18:36). Yield to those who challenge you, as the better way to resolve

disputes (Matt. 5:38-41).

If the remarks that I have listed of what I am hearing Christians say sound o.k. to you, then send me a marker pen so I can black out the appropriate portions of my Bible.

Doug Good

Dis the Poor and Spare the Rich

2010-08-17T10:49:00.000-07:00

I have decided that as we approach the November election, I will not listen to any candidate or media pundit who engages in inane finger pointing. Watching people tie our national financial dilemma to "the other guys" bores me.

Currently the Republicans are playing the "opposition game." I just read an "information" piece detailing all the negative effects of the tax increases we can expect if the Democrats are not turned out in November. To keep the time I spend reading articles from being a waste, I like to breath life back into banality by analyzing the shortcomings of the piece. I find two problems with this standard opposition pitch about money management.

1) It presumes that tax increases are unAmerican, that our national experience has been positive only when taxes do not increase, as if today's expected tax increases are an anachronism in America.

There was a time (1800s) when our country did not need high amounts of tax revenue because we had plenty of public land yet unsold and little competition abroad for the sale of our plentiful resources; and we avoided international political involvements and responsibilities. Indeed, the income tax was judged unconstitutional during much of our national history--but it no longer is, by anybody. To suggest a constitutional amendment to end the income tax acknowledges that it is constitutional now. Those who find taxes unbearable do not deny their usefulness, they only want to avoid the pain.

2) But more to the point, the underlying premise of the "vote against taxes" entreaty is that the defining feature of American democracy is a polity guided by the principle that a citizen has the right to make and keep money with no interference.

There is nothing wrong with money. Money is not the root of evil in its tangible, inanimate form. But it is the lubricant of selfish immaturity, ungodly hoarding, and a lack of concern for our citizen-family. I don't like taxes, but I like even less the spokespersons for capitalism-run-amok, as in the Robber Barons of old, or more recently, the golden bungee jumping CEO's, and model enterprisers like Lay, Skillings, Madoff, etc. (and etc.). Politics is a complicated jungle, financial legislation is clouded by lobbyists and hopeful (wealthy) political candidates; subsidies and public assistance usually are poorly administered, if even monitored. But an attitude of narcissism about personal rights to control tax spending should not misguide us into demeaning the less moneyed members of our population who are endowed with talents and dreams that enrich our country but not themselves.

I do not find myself drawn to the competition to reach the pantry's high shelves. I don't consider it my American right to have more money than someone else. The opportunity to make money is one of the great benefits of our democratic system, but any given wealthy American draws on the bounty of our national prosperity. The rich and the poor are in this together. Democracy does not just grant "rights." It expects equal returns in response.

Our founding generation was notably both democratic and christian. To cling possessively to a particular right that promotes imbalance in the citizen-family is neither democratic nor moral. That is not our heritage. As a student of American history and as a professing Christian, I will not stand mute when democracy and religion are divorced. If Jesus had thought the rich young ruler, who sought his counsel, could follow him while keeping his wealth, there would have been no need for him to give up his money. Jesus did not ask him to give up his civil leadership status. Jesus apparently intuited that narcissism was this gentleman's problem and money was his crutch.

I believe democracy and Christianity are a natural match. When the two tag-team, it is beautiful. But when the two fall out of rhythm, both become shallow, ephemeral specters of their real selves.

The Hijacking of America (Alleged)

2010-07-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

If one term could describe America, the word "democracy" would be apt. The United States was the first country to begin its nationhood with a constitution authored by men who intended to end tyranny by making the people sovereign. Sadly, many public figures of our generation have a warped idea of what our founding fathers envisioned for the infant nation--on two counts: their definition of freedom, and definiton of socialsm.

1. Freedom

If you give attention to the current pronouncements of certain politicians and hopeful candidates, you might suppose that our democratic heritage is uniquely endangered. It seems that the unwashed masses are trying to capture the fruits of our blessed land without earning the rewards, which creates a new tyranny. I hear repeatedly that only those who have enough energy and ambition to make it on their own should enjoy the prosperity of a free country. Freedom, then, is apparently not a universal right; it is only for those who have made it on their own, and thus deserve to enjoy their self-investments without disturbance. In this picture of democracy, there is no community spirit, little sense of public responsibility, and a general dissing of those in difficult circumstances. Liberty is the freedom to make waves at will. Small boats had better stay out of the water.

In contrast, our nation's founders never intended for "the people" to mean an exclusive group of worthies. Certainly, most of the leaders of that early generation were succesful men of accomplishment, but they, in deliberation and compromise, made room for tolerance and respect, and limited the terms of elective office to enable frequent, potential turnover to keep the government in touch with the common "people"--the populace of the democracy. They had much more than private freedom on their minds. George Washington set an important example of trust in the general public by retiring when he could have been elected repeatedly for life.

The recently evolved Tea Party movement is an example of a different, artless simpleness. These critics pick up nimbly on the "tyranny" part of our history. They are certain of where tyranny exists today. They discover it where individual rights are violated --pointedly, the right to make money without government regulation, the right to mine tax loopholes, the right to exclude large groups from benefiting from our national prosperity, the right to rape the environment, to buy politicians, and to increase the despair of an enlarging number of those in poverty. The revealing characteristic of these freedom lovers is whom they say should benefit from a democratic state. And anyone who objects to this understanding of tyranny's location is reminded that the ultimate right to own a gun is the true American way to quash the denial of these rights.

This past week Sharron Angle, a contender for the Nevada senate seat, referenced the Second Amendment's right to bear arms, and followed by saying we need "to take Harry Reid out." She probably did not mean it the way it sounded, but such irresponsible rhetoric clutters the airwaves. You will hear that our government has grown so big that our cherished freedoms are being choked. When the political process does not turn out the way we want, suddenly the President is a fascist and a socialist. Militia style groups are organizing and drilling, convinced they must begin preparation for defending themselves in street battles against federal troops, just as our forefathers did.

Yes, our ancestors shot at the British Redcoats and declared independence, but this was before they had the benefit of tranquility to set democracy in place. If we want to assure that our founders' hopes for the democratic experiment come to fruit, it would help to rediscover the bigger picture of what they had in mind. Our founders were not angels. Jefferson owned slaves, Franklin was a ladies man, Adams condoned the arrest of his critics, Hamilton leaned toward monarchism, and so on. But in their better moments, with the aid of Madison's scholarship and Washington's integrity, they gathered and sculpted our fundamental laws with popular sovereignty inseparable from individual rights. Unlike more recent objectors, our founders sought to assure that the most insignificant and insolvent, even irreligious, citizens could sit at the same table with the well-dressed. They defined the advantaged as those who merely had citizenship--an unmarketable commodity. We must acknowledge their hypocrisy toward slaves and Indians, but dividing the citizeny into haves and have nots was not their way of awarding "freedom."

Our Constitution was not contrived to inaugurate a membership club for the quick and the clever. The linchpin that holds democracy's wheel on its axle is the assurance, by ballot, that every citizen stands on the same footing, bearing the same responsibilities in community, each sharing alike the fruits of participatory, good government. Compassion, sharing, and tolerance are fundamental elements of democracy. When we shove these aside, we no longer have the same system that the Philadelphia 'Convention crafted.

What Jefferson considered inalienable and divinely secured was integrity of personhood, not mere personal advantage. The colonial revolutionists wanted the King off their backs, not their neighbor. The Constitution assures use of both the ballot and the bullet for protection of our individual liberties, but to assert "my" liberties to the exclusion of "yours" is not the race for happiness Jefferson had in mind. Today's bickering and bitching between elections is not where you will find enlightened exposition about our heritage. But it is a location for displaying embarrassing ignorance about the texture of genuine "democracy."

2. Socialism.

The mantra on some talk shows is that socialist liberals are hijacking America by soaking the hardworking businessman in order to give the indolent a free ride. The current socialist administration, they charge, is hacking away at the liberties our founders won in their battle against tyranny. The Obama critics support bailing out the financiers and industrialists, but vote against extending contracted unemployment benefits. They adeptly take the adage that says "my freedom ends where the next person's begins," and reverse it to say, "my freedom begins were the next person's ends." This rewrites democracy. In this sense, freedom is particularized, leaving no place for humanitarianism. Real democracy, then, is where no one gets in my way, and what I have gained shall not be taken away from me. By this line of reasoning, anyone who trys to thwart me, or puts claim on anything I have sequestered, is the enemy of our land, dressed in the costume of "socialism."

You may know the democracy ship is in shallow waters when you hear the word "socialism" sloshed around as the buzzword for complaints about government programs designed to restrain capitalist bullying. With a first-grader's command of vocabulary, those who cry "socialism" and warn that our country has lost its way, do not understand the democracy jewel our founders handed us. They do not grasp what the word socialism means in ordinary dictionary parlance or philosophical usage (see my blog about socialism, last November). What they mean is that "social consciousness" is gaining ground. But that is too cerebral a concept for use in heated discussion on the stump and before TV cameras. So with dripping patriotic pose, they warn that socialism [social consciousness] is a threat to individual freedom. In case this word does not scare us sufficiently, they often couple it to "marxism" with the help of a slash or a dash, as if the two words are synonyms, which makes as much sense as pairing, for example, Lutheran/Catholicism. Synonyms? Hardly. But any confusion over the implications of socialism can easily be cleared up --we are to know that it is whatever the Democratic party promotes, and true democracy is simply the opposite of that. Anything social is socialism. In this manner these deep thinkers modify our heritage by brush-stroking community and social consciousness out of the picture, not admitting that in the process they have turned the Constitution into a chameleon capable of taking on whatever color advances their particular group's interests.

The intellectual insolvency of critics who have to use vacuous word-tandems cluelessly to score points against "the enemy" in our midst is nothing but pitiful paranoia. The real compelling element of the founders' revolt was why they did it, not just what they did. They did not just "fight" (a visceral response), they "resisted" (a cognitive term). One fights to "win"; one resists to "take control" --a more complicated task that employs an encompassing vision. Fighting off tyranny becomes easily untracked without a polestar for guidance. Our Founders knew they wanted a democracy, and they knew what that entailed. As Lincoln phrased it, democracy is government of, by, and for the people. The absence of social consciousness is what marks the betrayal of democracy.

Pummeling the public with narcissistic claims, thin history, and empty adjectives about democracy provides a model that the unstable and slow-witted can rally around. This is the background for what happened in San Francisco, East Bay yesterday. A man loaded his car with guns, then, with intent "to start a revolution," headed to kill people at a couple of selected organizations that personally offended him. The Highway Patrol stopped him for a traffic violation, and a shootout began. Not everyone afflicted with a faded image of democracy is about to go berserk, but the reasoning is just as juvenile. When Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty, or give me death," he was talking about self sacrifice for a greater cause. He did not say, "Give me liberty, or I will go kill someone."

One might respond that there is no hijacking going on; primal screams about tyranny and playground notions about democracy represent harmless rhetoric in political party rivalry. Indeed, the Republican canards thrown at Obama were preceded by equally damning charges the Democrates made against the Bush administration. Venting and complaining can be therapeutic; our Constitution guarantees our right to do this. But let's try to match our founders' maturity and recognize that community was as important to them as personal happiness. If we can not recognize when pronouncements are historically improvised and academically challenged, then our founders' hopes for democracy may wither on the vine.

What Would George Washington Do About Health Care?

2010-03-11T21:19:00.000-08:00

America today faces unsettling and dangerous times, not unlike our ancestors under colonial rule. Our greatest concern of the moment is health care protection against the tyranny of private medical providers. Our founding generation also faced authoritary victimization as part of a colonial empire. Let us look to see if they had wisdom that we might follow. Who in America back then had the best plan for the future? George Washington is still universally respected for his good judgment. Let’s ask him what he would do in our shoes. Let’s make him President again for a moment.

First questions first, details later. Would Washington push for reform? Of course he would. He was willing to offer his neck to the axe for relief from tyrants that threatened his livelihood and his rights. Did he hesitate to accept commissioning from the politicians at the Continental Congress? No. As a delegate he wore his military uniform to the sessions on purpose. Did he trust his dream to the democratic process? Decisively. With his life and reputation at stake, he took the helm and steered the boat, bow to the wind, eventually gathered competing voices around him (Hamilton and Jefferson), and finally retired to Mount Vernon, confident that the lovers of tyranny had been pushed aside and reform minded people, in a democracy, would do just fine without him.

But wait. Now we have Barack Obama as President.

Someone reminded me recently that Obama, during his campaign for the Presidency, repeatedly promised to make the healthcare process transparent, but then turned around and made sure it was transacted behind closed doors. I could not let this stand untouched, so I jotted down my ideas. And lo, a blog sprang forth.

1. Backroom brokering.
Obama did not fail to tell us and Congress in general, but clear, terms what he wanted in healthcare. Remember the President does not write the laws. Recall Hillary’s attempt to forge a plan for her husband early in Bill Clinton’s term, without help from Congress, resulting in failure.

I expect Obama thought that if his party legislators would come up with a good program, it would look better coming from Congress without him trying to slam dunk it. By personally standing back, Obama probably made a strategic mistake. It gave the Republicans an opportunity and a stage for a cacophony of criticism, charging inept and unfair handling by the Democrat legislators. What many overlook is that the Democrats, in shaping the House and Senate bills, did the "behind closed doors" thing as standard procedure. So what is new? The Democrats complained loudly about the Republican Congresses under Bush doing exactly the same thing.

2. Railroading
The Republicans are having great fun, saying Obama is trying to ram a bad bill down the American people's throat if they go the "reconciliation" route to bypass the filibuster blockade. Note that the filibuster rule is not standard parliamentary procedure; it is a concession the Senate at one point allowed in to protect the minority's chance to publicly register strong opposition over controversial issues. What is so offensive about setting this unusual concession aside? --that is, going around it, to revert to normal parliamentary procedure where matters are decided and the majority takes the day. How can a majority vote of duly elected legislators somehow be a ramming of things down our throat? (This could open up discussion of "tyranny of the majority,' but to eliminate majority voting would be to amputate the legs of democracy).

Democrats were voted into majority position in the last congressional election when healthcare reform was a top issue. The Republican noise sounds like sour grapes to me. For the majority to try to pass a law to implement a campaign promise should be expected. If what they come up with is not what the minority of "duly elected members" wanted, the minority has a chance in the next election to turn the Democrats out. The opposition has less than one year to wait. Elections ought to mean something.

3. Public Confusion.
How does one explain why several recent polls show a majority of Americans disliking the proposed healthcare bills when only months earlier, in the summer before the 2008 election, the polls were giving an opposite reading?

The current negative polls are not unanimous. Nevertheless, the Republicans are relying on their "chosen" polls for the keystone of their opposition. Polls have a reputation for swaying in the wind. Note that historians do not treat polls as very useful primary material. Polls tend to reflect what their questions solicit. If the public is confused about what is actually in the proposed health care legislation, and the legislators, "experts," and the Congressional Office of the Budget (traditionally relied on as an objective data collection agency) contradict each other in predicting the bill's future financial impact, then the debate becomes nothing better than varied opinions. I interpret any shifting in the polls as a reflection of confusion on the issue. I attribute this confusion to three things:

First: Obama's failure to take strong-armed leadership and go "to the people" as other Presidents have done with their favorite but controversial desires. Two quick examples: Wilson touring the country to promote the League of Nations embraced in the peace treaty after WWl; and more recently, Bush, who tried the same with his desire to deep six social security.

Second: Disingenuous Republican flag waving about Socialism (there is no socialism in the plan--see my blog on this).

Third: Republican ridicule of the bills' voluminous length with the silly charge that the legislators could not possibly read that much. I ask my students to read nearly that much every semester, and they don't have any staff to help them.

4. My Advice and Predictions.
The Republicans would do well to recognize the hypocrisy of trying to play both sides of the fence--pretending they have a better plan while simultaneously saying they want the government to stay out of it. Candidates for office (both parties), jockeying for a running lane, are proving as rationally undiscerning as the electorate to whom they are pandering.

I think the Republicans are miscalculating. If they succeed in defeating the standing proposed legislation, there will be no starting over from scratch. We will do the same as we did with the immigration reform controversy. There, disagreement prevented legislation until the election was over in 2008. With election jockeying over, we moved on to other crises and forgot about immigration. But with health care continuing “as is” without reform, the election is distant enough that the people will recollect how bad the HMOs are, and it will appear to more people that the Republicans are what Democrats already think of them--whiny obstructionists (as the Republicans thought the Democrats were the whiny obstructionists over Iraq in early 2008).

As of today, Obama is stepping out finally to try to cut through this silliness and call the often fractious Democrats to rally to their electoral calling.

5. Some Historical Perspective.
Let's stuff politics. We have good historical precedent and Constitutional process for how to go about reform. The late 1800s saw commerce and industry creating egregious suffering. The people demanded reform, a (Progressive Reform) movement developed, Presidents of both parties joined the cause, Congress legislated, and the Supreme Court played its part. The same pattern was followed in the 1930s with the New Deal (except the Democrats held on to the Presidency until the glue dried).

The politicians today need to recognize what the people already know--that health care in America is broken and is not going to be fixed without intervention, economic and political philosophy aside. Health care is sick, and the infection is creating debilitating fever in the body politic and general economy. Which is a greater threat to America? -- another municipal terrorist attack, or 30 million people unprotected against life threatening disease and countless numbers of others fighting off bankruptcy while paying more for rent or a mortgage than they have available for food and education.

The Republicans have proven masters at pumping up fear of terrorists. The Democrats don't need to raise any specters of fear. There are paralyzing anxieties facing all of us every day, fears more tangible that the Democrats could tap into if they had the skills. Where are the golden-tongued William Jennings Bryans and the wordsmithing Abraham Lincolns when we need them? Are we left with only Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, and John Boehner as our prophets?

6. My Final Shots
I don’t understand the objection to requiring all to have health insurance. No one complains about other instances where insurance is required for public safety or general social benefit, i.e., automobile insurance, employers' workers’ compensation.

I consider healthcare to be a fundamental individual right as included in the first and third of the three inalienable rights listed in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (life and the pursuit of happiness). To put it plainly, I (reluctantly) trust the government more than private industry. Private industry cares nothing about my well-being. At least with the government and its bureaucratic clumsiness and inefficiency, the voters can have a say at fixing the problems which in this forum are not hidden by the sneaky, unethical, gouging, greedy capitalistic private sector, over which you and I have no control.

As for the complaint that Obama's plan will raise premiums; the HMO's will never be outdone at this skill. The idea that "the market will take care of itself" is a lousy bet. Lately the market seems to be handled by crooked accountants, inept CEO's, and profit blinded, manipulating financiers.

Both the "left" and the "right" have lost their way. Let's you and I lead a mutiny and take back the ship, and apologize to George Washington and associates for messing up the experiment they crafted for us to take care of.

The Good News Jesus Pre-visioned

2009-12-29T14:32:00.000-08:00

If God wants human creatures to know their creator, we should expect divine visitations and revelations. Is not this what the Old Testament predictions and the Christmas season is all about? But when Jesus arrived, he corrected and revisioned much of what was written. This could mean that either the Jewish tradition is somewhat myopic or Jesus was an untrustworthy witness. I prefer to believe that God’s revelation has been progressive; we can accept Jesus’ revisioning without throwing aside all the Jewish attempts to understand God. Today, two thousand years after Jesus, we have the benefit of even clearer vision as science is helping us see from the laboratory miraculous and amazing corroboration of what Jesus visioned intuitively. Science and biblical story are not incompatible. Each in its best form contributes to the full picture.

Accepting the story of Adam and Eve, we humans began living a reality-metaphor. But as Jesus proclaimed, the metaphor is only a partial perception of reality. He said “the kingdom of God is near,” meaning that separation from God caused by a “fall” hides the fundamental insight that Adam and Even lost in the Garden. By eating the matter-fruit, they bought in to a misperception. Jesus’ good news was that he and we, his siblings in God, in full reality are alive in “the kingdom” now.

Though reductionistic scientists call the “Garden story” a myth, scientists unwittingly have brought story and science closer together. Without apparent intention, they have added mortar to Jesus’ good news by expressing reality as an equation: E=mc2 (energy the same as mass-times-velocity squared). God’s kingdom is the whole equation. We are physically born into the “mc2” part. But Jesus understood that as Sons of God, all of us, eachly, are mere, yet marvelous, manifestations of God. The “=” in the equation does not divide God into compartments. The “=” is not a barrier; it is a joint. As Jesus said, we are joint heirs in the kingdom, as he too is.

The forbidden fruit analogy is a cropped picture. To say God created the universe out of nothing is another way of saying the something we think composes us was made up new by God without use of materials. We cannot comprehend exactly what nothing is, so we imagine it as matter coming from God’s snap of the fingers or bolt of lightening, or whatever. Metaphors are a figurative way of thinking, but today’s physicists are providing a provable way to understand creation.

Quantum science says the universe is abuzz in potentiality. What we humans call actuality is our choice of focus; it is the perception we adopt. Waves of energy and particles of matter are the same thing entangled. For convenience, physicist Amit Goswami calls the stuff “wavicles. “ Our brains perform a “collapse” of the wave into matter when we make an observation or a measurement. Quantum science describes it as consciousness nudging perception (see Sheldrake on morphogenetic fields). Religious people, in a sense, “collapse” particle matter back into the wavicle and call this “believing” or “having faith.” Most of us are so focused on the imaging, by way of our brain processes, that our material existence appears, for all practical purposes, to be the only, isolated, reality. Since Adam and Eve’s time, we have thought matter is all we humans are made of, and God is divided from us in a super, thereby unnatural, realm.

A better way to understand is to accept that creation was not the beginning of our existence; it was a zooming in on a particular point of consciousness. But I am more than a designated “mc2.” I am a living God-metaphor, and quantum science shows how this better analogy works. The unexciting yet profound term Goswami uses for this paradigm-changing notion is “monistic idealism.”

The notion that science and religion are plowing the same field is exemplified by the idea of “quantum leaps” which scientists describe as electrons jumping to new energy levels in an atom without traversing the space between. This provides a fine synonym for the spiritual idea of “faith,” while being felicitously believable because of laboratory reports.

Quantum physics describes human material awareness as perceptual choices strung together in a time-like sequence that matches our biological span of survival. Judeo tradition, with its metaphor of “creation,” does not belie this; it only invites a separation of divine and human compartments in the Eden story. The “good news” is that Jesus reconnected the spiritual and material realms.

To say that humans are ultimate consciousness “collapsed” into material “perception” does not steal credit from God for creating us. We are part of God’s playful creativity as we, nudged by quantum fields of consciousness (rooted in the divine mind), chart our lives by choosing, from among the potentialities, certain waves to collapse into physical actuality. God the Father is more than just a distant benevolent Creator. We are all in this together, all part of the whole consciousness. The Kingdom is spirit, mind, and matter; and it is here, has been and will continue to be. Jesus understood this without a Ph.D.

We now can understand the Good News in both scientific and spiritually intuitive form and can join Jesus in reunion-awakeness with our maker while alive here on earth. Christmas is quite merry.

Is Obama A Socialist?

2009-11-15T20:42:00.000-08:00

A commonly heard charge in the debate over Obama’s health care plan is that the President is a socialist, which we are meant to understand as a threat to what America stands for. Typically, the argument behind this charge slushes over the definition of socialism, insinuating that socialism is akin to communism, and will sap the virtuous energy of the capitalistic spirit that has made our country great. This reasoning is unabashedly planted in confusion and misinformation.

First, while socialism resonates with the Marxian rebuke of exploitative capitalism, it does not espouse violent overthrow of the government a la the Russian revolution. Socialism only suffers from guilt by association with Russian ideologues who prostituted Marxist notions and became godless dictators to boot. There is no need for paranoia here. Socialism is not the inevitable enemy of democracy any more than capitalism is the elixir of democratic practice. (I will flesh out this statement below.)

Second, socialism is more a social management system than an ideology. As the dictionaries state it, socialism puts control of production or services in the hands of the government “for the benefit of the community.” The government then controls 100 percent of the market for the benefit of the citizen body. Obama’s health care plan, the subject of current controversy, is similar only in whom it includes as beneficiaries. It differs from socialism in being a voluntary plan. The proposed insurance option does not prevent the private sector from continuing in good capitalist style. The government merely will be joining the competitive game, with the novel idea of fairness, to service those who are pushed out by the HMOs’ ruthless race for profits.

Conclusion: Socialism is not Communism, and Obama’s health care plan is not socialism. One does not bring a ship safely into harbor by mistaking the sandbar for the dock.

Helpful illumination for flailing navigators:

While communism and socialism share a common goal--the uplifting of the masses from the tyranny of the wealthy and the elite--some have not noticed that democracy makes it a threesome, by aiming for the same result. Still, there are distinctions limning the three.
- Communism is an ideology (allegedly).
- Socialism is a management program.
- Democracy is a structural system with well-designed scaffolding.

Note that communes, as distinguished from cults, normally are no threat to their neighbors and have existed in the United States without notable harassment, e.g. the Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites, Brook Farm and others. Socialism has also been part of our history to good effect--the post office, public schools, social security, medicare, Amtrak, to name a few. Democracy is the master plan with built-in periodic inspections. Those who would scare us with unrelated references to Russian style communes and confused use of the term socialism disqualify themselves from legitimate participation in the debate.

Both socialism and communism are ideas without structural form. Marx imagined the state withering away after the revolution for lack of usefulness. Confusion is compounded by the fact that when the masses revolted in Russia and overthrew the Czar, the revolutionists had no answer for the resulting anarchy and turned to dictatorship to run the state machinery, thereby prostituting their ideology. Because Marxist ideology was anti-capitalistic and Russia’s political leaders fell into godless tyranny, the Communistic state became our antithesis. But this has nothing to do with “communes” which have a place in our national history.

Unfortunately, socialism by association with the ideological delinquency of Soviet communism became a foil. In definitional reality, socialism, lacking definite political configuration, is no more an agent undermining democracy than the communal practices of the early Christian church were a threat to Christ’s followers. A good case may even be made that socialism is a closer cousin to Christianity than is capitalism, if all communicants or citizens are respected on an equal level. Any genuinely people-oriented democratic system will work well as long as the leadership retains integrity and the system wells from established traditions--two things with which the United States has been blessed.

Democracy as practiced in America enfolds all citizens with a political structure that can protect against ineffective programs, scoundrels, and misguided idealists. Our colonial ancestors were not strangers to tyranny and its counterpart--government intervention. But we had long colonial experience in political management, democratic sympathies, individual freedoms, and scholarly leaders that enabled us to set up a path- breaking structure for democracy that eliminated dictators and established a system for popular rule. We clicked the structure into place without the need to spend emotional prejudice against social style management, such as mail delivery, passenger travel, public education, compulsory pension funding. These “social” programs are examples that recognize the need to plug management discrepancies so as to benefit the “people.”

Obama’s health care plan with its public option is a social program, not a socialist government; it only has the similarity of the same goal, that is, giving support to those disadvantaged members of our common body of citizens who are unable to otherwise share in what the more fortunate folk have elbowed into place for themselves to enjoy.

Both social management (socialism unconverted into an explicit political configuration) and capitalism have contributed to our democratic nation. For sure, each can also be detrimental. Government welfare can sap the individual’s desire to be productive and can weaken character development and one’s sense of personal responsibility. And capitalism can become greed-run-amuck, as we saw in our pre-Progressive era, and more recently with corporate CEOs given “golden parachutes” as reward for mismanagement. On the positive side, capitalism has a track record of fueling the growth of our country with hard driving energy. And government-run programs have stepped in to provide protection and aid for those who are victimized by the privileged, and are isolated from the gifts of democracy. Unintimidated by aggressive capitalistic scrooges, and watch dogging for potential inefficiency and waste of government run programs, our democratic political structure has the ability to draw the good from each (capitalism and socialism) without surrendering any of our democratic heritage. Let us not pretend that corporate greed and unethical practices represent true America, and let us not display our confusion about basic political terms and use the socialism tag as a scare word to regain political advantage lost in the last national election.

When the structure of democracy is sound, there is no need for fear-mongering. James Madison talked about the “tyranny of the majority,” but he had confidence that the losing side would balance the ship in ongoing election cycles. Perfectionist communities or communes still exist in our midst, peacefully on sidetracks. Capitalism still provides adrenalin for the expansion of our country’s wealth and influence, but it is an economic style that is not a rail in democracy’s scaffold. When capitalism went too far in the “robber baron” period and the industrial victimization of laborers, our democratic leaders in both major parties, under Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, joined in the progressive reforms of trust busting, and regulatory legislation to protect workers. When the corporate giants in the last decade or so milked the system for egregious profits and led our economy over the cliff into our current economic recession on a skiff of unregulated mismanagement, the voters lifted the party of change into dominance. Obama’s health care plan in all its complexity may, when put into practice, flash some “check engine soon” lights, but it represents a long needed rebalancing “for the benefit of the community.”

American history may be thought of as a NASCAR event with both driver association rules and frequent pit stops. But our democratic “event” will enjoy resounding success only if everyone gets to finish the race, not just the well-financed crews.

Doug Good

God and Quantum Science

2009-09-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

For a number of centuries science and religion have competed over how to explain truth and reality. The debate often degenerates into a sparring between the two extremes--the fundamentalists on the religious side and the reductionists on the science side. The conservative right insists that the bibical creation story in mythical expression carries the imprimatur of God's authorship; the reductionistic scientists reject any truth claims that cannot be replicated in the laboratory.

This standoff is really unnecessary because it results from vulnerabe theology in the form of dualism and misguided science in the form of materialism. May I suggest it need not be this way. Mysticism has a long history in the West as well as the East. And today quantum science is constructing a new, more inclusive paradigm without the unresolved paradoxes of Newtonian and Darwinian science.

I have observed some movement toward a reconciling of differences between religion and science, and would like to submit a couple of theological/scientific definitions that I have found helpful, followed by a summarizing comment.

1. Dualist theology and materialist science both say that humans exist as beings who are not-God.
2. Mystics assert, and recent quantum scientists give place to, the idea that I am God-existing. As a manifestation of the non-physical, I am God showing up in my spot as one sample.

Comment:
Materialistic science handles the God issue by simply denying there is any reality other than what can be proven by its materialistic method of investigation. Dualistic theology explains God by splitting reality into two mutually exclusive parts. This, however, is a self-contradiction becausd reality by definition is all embracing. There cannot be two 50% realities (or any other ratio of 100). For me to say my existence is outside of God's own experience would be gratuitous solipsism. So what I am aware of in my physicality is but a limited or cramped perspective.

If we are God's creatures, the appropriate goal of all would be to glorify God. But dualism assumes the way to exalt God is to diminish man. The process of lopping off my self from the Original Essence actually reduces God; it sets loose a maverick, challenging essence. Dualism removes God from experiecing this world first hand, and presents God's incarnation as an unordinary way to reduce the divine into material form on earth, to find out what it is really like here through a proxy, of all things.

If dualism is right, God was hamstrung. If materialism is right, God is eliminated. Dualists say that it is presumptive for a wretch like me to stand intimately close to God. They concede that God forgives, which is more than we should expect considering our ugly sins. Of course God our creator forgives! But from the dualist perspective that comes across as patronizing, which implictly demeans God's creatures. From the monist perspective, on the other hand, forgiveness is a moot issue, a foregone conclusion, because God is the whole of consciousness. The hierarchy of quantum awareness is entangled, all the way down. I am God experiencing him/herself.

Quantum science opens a window to a landscape that elicits a less crippling hope than dualism provides and materialism precludes. There is healing for the distortion of dualism and denials of materialism. By correlating humans and God, the mystics and monists humbly elevate man and glorify God together. The Divine shines more brightly in the synchronistic connection of man/woman and God.

By comparison, dualism does not sound to me like a very soul satisfying option, and even investigative science is coming round, providing a sound, unparadoxical paradigm for enlightend self-knowledge. The passions of heart, soul, and mind sit comfortably in the laboratories of today's front-edge scientists. That we have the potential to see how this works, by connecting our God-given brains with our spiritually intuitive consciousness is the amazing part.

May God have mercy on us in our desperate grip on separation.

Doug Good

P. S. Some of my conservative friends will find my terminology eccentric, but I feel that, rather than undermining sound evangelical theology, I am stengthening some of its spongy spots. I first wrote a piece that was more specfic than these remarks, but was advised that it is too esoteric for public airing. If you are interested, let me know (I won't hold my breath.)

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What's On Your Mind: The Psychic Phenomena

2009-07-20T21:53:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me recently what my interests are. I answered that one of them is consciousness studies. He drew blank and said, "What is that?"
I should have told him about two books, The Sense of Being Stared At, and Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. Do these books sound erudite? A respected scientist, Rupert Sheldrake, wrote them. They helped lead me into a fascination with consciousness studies, which I discovered is a fresh, exploding field of study.
When I heard that Sheldrake was giving a workshop locally, I had to attend. At the session, I found a seat in the back row near a rear entrance. At one point, the person next to me got up to unlock the door when someone knocked. He then helped the late arrivee locate an empty seat. I thought this unassuming gentleman was a lowly staff person, maybe the janitor. I found out later he was the senior researcher at the institute and a groundbreaking author in the consciousness field--Dean Radin. I had no idea.
So now I am reading his books. Just out in paperback is his The Conscious Universe, in which he makes the case for how science itself supports the validity of psychic phenomena. He gives an exhaustive history of what scientific studies have occurred that support "psi," studies that rigorously follow the best methodologies sanctioned by the most skeptical of scientists. Because modern science has well-earned respect, while distrust of superstition and mystical fakes abounds, Radin says most scientists are not even aware of how many carefully conducted experiments investigating psychic phenomena have occurred at major universities, and even by the CIA, at taxpayer expense. "The fact is," says Radin, "all scientists who have studied the evidence, including the hard-nosed skeptics, now agree that something interesting is going on that merits serious scientific attention. My antennae are up.
Discrete events and bits of matter, localized and observable as we know them, are not the true and whole story. We can study and measure material items, but what gives us their meaning? The brain is a remarkable instrument that gives order to the messages introduced by our senses. But is there something out there before our brain records it? The old, standard opinion was that what we see is what is there, and it was there before we saw it, just as it is, now that we see it. The new perception is that energy freezes into form at our behest. When we take a look, we see something. What is it? It is what our brain cooked up from the ingredients supplied. We are not gods, but because of our connection to the universe, we take part in the creation of the world we know. Our consciousness partakes of the quantum energy realm in a way that is freer than the machinations of our brain. Consciousness is the mediation of the spiritual to the material realm. Our brain is the facilitator. Consciousness contains the idea, the brain gives it an assigned seat. Without the brain, consciousness is ephemeral, ghostly; and without consciousness, the brain presents gibberish. The two work as a team. Reality spans both the spiritual and material realms. And we can know this is true by scientific proof or by experience, whichever method we are good at. Giving credence to both methods will bring us to truth most securely, because both kinds of perception are entangled.
If you listen to physicist Evan Walker, you would not find this surprising. He tells in his book, The Physics of Consciousness, about how to measure or quantify our mental operations. If you think of consciousness in time units, a thought takes less than a second--probably less than a tenth of a second. But if you break it down too small, like a quadrillionth of a second, you would not distinctly experience anything at all, for hundreds of cycles would pass before any of our brain synapses would fire up. Our experience level would be too fine for our brains to notice the bigger patterns. We would experience "infinite sameness as the mark of our existence." But this is not our experience. The experience of time, he figures, as a separate element of consciousness," is about 1/25 of a second.
What he is getting at, I think, is that consciousness and the brain are two different entities, but they work so closely together that we do not think of them separately. Yet each without the other is meaningless. Consciousness without a sense of time units, to give the brain a chance to register, would be "infinite sameness" (seemingly nothing would happen), but a brain registering neural sensations would present no meaningful picture without consciousness' interpretations. Each depends on the other and each contributes to, or tones, part of the whole picture.
The following sentence in Walker's book reached out and grabbed me. "We do not see the outside world, but instead we see the 'inside' of our brain! . . . What we see is ourselves, our consciousness." When I read that sentence, I looked outside at a tree near me, and I had the sensation that the tree was there only because I interpreted it as being there. My observation created its form. Without my observation--my consciousness working in partnership with my brain--the tree might be there in the quantum world, but is only there for me to walk up to and touch because of my brain-consciousness teamwork. What my personal "team" tells me is there, is me experiencing my consciousness in the world where I physically operate.
Then Walker nailed the point for me when he said that "when you drive down the highway at 60 miles per hour, you are really about 11 feet in front of where you think you are just because of the delay in the nervous system." So what I experience as reality is not quite the real thing. It does not quite square up, because of the limitations of my physical brain, but it is a pretty close approximation, because my consciousness works through my brain to give me a good idea of what is there. So one could say the tree is not really there "as I see it," but what I see is as good a way of describing what is there as any of us humans could come up with --and we all happen to agree because, having similar brains, we all see the same thing.
If you wanted to experience my tree, to picture it and know it, there is a better than even chance that I could send its image to you telepathically, thinks Radin. The tree not only is real, even if no one ever looks to see it, but its reality is in my brain, in that I created it by the way I ordered my sensory input, and I could inform you of it without help from material senses.
Good luck trying to keep your thoughts to yourself. Any person that knows you intimately may very well know what you are thinking before you realize you are thinking, if they tune in to "psi." If you think I am crazy, so was Abraham, Jesus, Galileo, Einstein, not to mention Sheldrake and Radin, and a host of others dead and not yet born, who aspired to tap other realms of insight. Think of that!

Doug Good

Michael Jackson--a hallowed vessel: The Enthrallment Phenomenon

2009-07-16T17:38:00.000-07:00

Michael Jackson has provided the masses with an opportunity to embrace entrallment. Who knows who Michael Jackson really was? Even his closest friends found him enigmatic. What we have in the memorials and kudos since his passing is the "use" of Jackson as a national, even international, moment for emotional catharsis. The human, Michael Jackson, is irrelevant. And considering his personal pains and failings, we conveniently and graciously seem to be granting him his due as a talented entertainer, as a way of putting aside his idiosyncrasies in order to embrace entrallment.

We--the media, his fans, his famous friends and fellow performers at least--are erasing, even denying, his weirdness. And those with any decency allow this moment of eulogy at the person's demise. We are casting his symbolism and filling it with accounts of his genius, sensitivity, and talent.

There is authenticity to these testimonies as far as they go. But in the process, his faults become only frailties. The waves of adulation become the phenomenon. Michael Jackson turns into what we need him to be. He had enough obvious star quality to fill the bill. But what we witness is the turning of a human into a man (or child) for the ages. We are doing it for the cathartic effect. We are, for the moment, entralled. The actual Michael Jackson becomes the illusion. And that is fine, as long as we admit what we are doing.

Doug Good

"I Am Not A World Citizen!" N. Gingrich: The Arrogance Principle

2009-06-12T22:35:00.000-07:00

Republicans are casting about, looking for a spokesperson who can unite and enliven their party. As the key speaker at a party rally this week, Newt Gingrich rose to the challenge and offered a new phrase in hopes of catching the spirit of America in troubled times. He asserted firmly, “I am not a world citizen!” Some may think such a retort is the shining hallmark of true American pride. But transparently it was a partisan response to President Obama’s efforts to set a new direction for our international relationships.

President Obama’s travels to Arab countries have stirred up the indignation of the conservative right by announcing a new direction for our relations abroad. People like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney, who are super sensitive about image and respect, think the new President is groveling. They announce that this approach invites the terrorists to trick us into crippling concessions. They feel the President‘s pandering makes our great nation appear naïve. Shame on this Muslim lover who spites our glorious history of might and power and goes around apologizing for our former alleged mistakes. As Rodney Dangerfield, the comedian who “never got no respect,” might say it, “I’m an American, and don’t you forget it!” Gingrich said it more soberly with his “not a world citizen” remark, but I think our founding ancestors would have hoped for better than haughty self-pride from their descendants to whom they passed the torch of democracy.

Defiant narcissism is not what our early leaders were about. Yes, they stood up to an overbearing Parliament and fought against the king’s troops, but their pride welled from the buzz that comes from the power felt in cooperative action and the thrill of new responsibilities as they signed on to an innovative democratic experiment.

One smug commentator I read insisted that America has won the right to be arrogant. With our causes always honorable, we have earned the right to swagger. After all, he might have said, we did not “win the West” by apologizing to the Indians. A leader, he intoned, does not apologize without losing the advantage necessary for success. The way to put terrorist wanna-be’s in their place is to show them who is in charge.

I have a different take on this. Arrogance is not a positive quality, and certainly not enviable. By promoting arrogance, Republicans, of course, are rejecting diplomacy. In contrast, our founding father, George Washington, handled our first international crisis by arranging, in 1796, a treaty with Muslim terrorists (pirates off the Barbary Coast). John Adams then followed suit, settling the XYZ affair by sending a peace commission to France, thereby quieting his nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, who was clamoring for war. Those who choose diplomacy ahead of war recognize that arrogance has no place at the diplomatic table. An arrogant diplomat is an oxymoron.

But putting aside arguments over strategy, arrogance is not something to be proud of anyway. A person displaying arrogance should be brought down before he drags the rest of us into the lonely drink with him.

If Americans are arrogant, of course we should apologize. Three reasons:

1. First, arrogance is self-defeating; it isolates the bearer, shutting off avenues of cooperation that could make the difference between success or failure of one’s endeavors.

2. Second, arrogance fuels antagonism unnecessarily; it creates enemies and encourages ill will, which puts everyone in a fighting mode, which is a juvenile response to problems.

3. Third, arrogance is not a Christian attitude. Jesus would have none of it. And as the apostle Paul said, if eating meat offends his brother, he will refrain from eating meat.

Obama will be judged by how well he maneuvers us in the stormy waters of international conflicts, not on how intimidating he is as a wild western cowboy. Actually, apologies clear the table for the exercise of more mature strategies. Apologies that work can be a sign of strength. They put the enemy off-guard, and confuse him.

The better image from our frontier days is “circled wagons,” which on the international stage means “surrounding” or “encasing” the enemy. By temperament, terrorists have no answer for this attractive, friends-winning attitude.

The King Is Not Dead! Long Live the King!

2009-04-08T12:51:00.000-07:00

Despite our most basic notions, history does not develop linearly. Rather, it is just there (past, present and future--or simultaneously). No, it is not static--it is creatively vibrating --but it doesn’t press into an unknown future leaving a trail of exhaust behind.

History masquerades as linear simply because that is just how each of us experiences it. When George Washington died, the history in which he was involved continued on unabated. The fact that Washington died only meant he was no longer participating. George Washington’s acts aren’t finished, only he is. There is no separation, division or barrier between what he did and what we are doing. And if there is no wall between the past and the present, neither is there any actual distinction between now and the future. Now is only what we make it to be. I separate (my) now from other time-moments because now is the limit of my focused consciousness.

From this perspective--that history is not just a completed record of the past but an unfolding course in which I find myself participating--I have found a heightened interest and connection with the past. I feel a new fraternity with those dead people I used to just read about. History can be likened to an ocean. As a wave moves toward shore, every molecule (historical event) in the wave is part of the same wave that every other molecule occupies (in that wave). I am a part of the past because the past is not passed. When the wave waves, the molecule doesn’t move forward (in time or space) it just fluctuates up then down as the trough rises to a crest and back. The molecule moves no closer to the shore but is in the same water as the molecules that are crashing onto the beach.

I mistakenly think my memories are in the past and my idea of writing a best-selling book is only hope or fantasy that keeps me entertained. Actually my high school graduation is as much a part of my present as is the writing of this note. And the thought that I may have a best-seller in me is not lunacy. It is all a matter of focus. I have to focus to function. My memory of my wedding day has lost some clarity in my mind, and I’m unable to imagine my writing fame. But when I die, I’ll be freed from my restricted vision. If I die suddenly tomorrow before I get my book written, then the book wasn’t in my future. But as long as I am still living, it may be that I have the future publication already present in my 3-phased time. If I am going to write a book, the book is already written because my future is not separate from my now. My birth and death mark only the brackets of my material life. Where I find myself within these borders by the briefest of moments called “now” does not alter my relationship to either the past or the future. My life encompasses all three phases at once. My past and my future are not distant from me because the light of my awareness of now is but a pinpoint of a moment.

And it is the same with my relationship to other people, both dead and not yet born. We are all in each other’s past and future. Thomas Jefferson is my contemporary in this broad sense of time. I just can’t rub elbows with him because when the Declaration of Independence needed penned he was on hand biologically, and I wasn’t. But when I read about his assignment by the Continental Congress to do this authoring, I sense that I am there looking over his shoulder. I feel like I know Tom. And the writing of the Declaration, like all events, is still happening. The way we raised our kids, the way I relate to my wife, the way she will handle my funeral arrangements, the way I teach my classes, the way I will vote in the next election are all my portion of the playing out of the Declaration. Jefferson did his part; I was involved then too. So was (not yet born) Abraham Lincoln, who ended slavery, the demise of which Jefferson tried to include in the Declaration. If it is true, as I am informed, that some of the exact same atomic particles in the wood of Noah’s ark, for instance, likely are in my very living body in its current seven-year interchanging cellular cycle, then why wouldn’t all events (past, present and future) be present together.

You might respond that this is merely an imaginative (theoretical) way of scrunching everything together and is not the way we actually live things out. But who is to say that the imaginative is not reality. I think imagination comes to us as hints of the hard-to-see actuality. The genius and the visionary get it righter and the rest of us catch on later, and the miraculous becomes astoundingly, happily the way it is. Then science comes in to verify it all. The miraculous is only surprising while we wait for the physicists to get the explanation down for us. I notice the physicists and theologians today are starting to sound like mimics. They just aren’t reading each other’s books.

The Christian Gospels tell the life story of a man whose birth can be characterized as an event in the 3-phases of time, pulled together in the consciousness of a Bethleham embryo named Jesus. He lived a biological life just as we each do, but tried to persuade his closest friends to see time as a tense-conflated run of experiences highlighted by now-awareness moments.. He talked about himself as prophesy-in-motion, and the future as the present (the Kingdom is come). Similarly, but without the charisma and inspiration, today’s physicists tell us the same thing--that the laws of physics work the same whether going forward or backward. In a scientific (as opposed to experiential) sense, time is reversible.

If Jesus and Nobel prize winning scientists are right, the history books should be written differently. New paths into the knowledge of life stories can be an exciting tour. Rooting around in otherwise dull facts can be turned into a realization that the present leads to the past, and the other way around too. Knowing the past can be facilitated by knowing the present and looking for the present in the past. Hey--it’s all one thing. The past is alive, and it is now. And the future has a hand in how today plays out. This is not scary; it is comforting. At the time of my own father’s death, I realized that I do not follow in my father’s footsteps--I am my father stepping.

Doug Good

The Christ Child: Re-view of a central doctrine

2008-12-31T08:40:00.000-08:00

WAS JESUS BORN OF A VIRGIN?

The longstanding answer is yes. Pregnant Mary was a virgin in the human sense. A virgin birth is not only one of the listed fundamental doctrines, but the key upon which sound Christian faith can stand or fall. Had Christ been born of Joseph’s seed, it is explained, the infant would not only be merely human as the rest of us are, but would thus be tainted with sin. But if Mary’s moment of conception was “immaculate,” Christ at birth would be the Son of God; his physical body could house God incarnate in this material realm on earth. If Jesus had been born from human semen, God could not inhabit his body literally, and Jesus would not have the power to resist the sin that brings damnation to contaminated humans. But God, incarnate in Jesus, conceived immaculately, could save us from the sin that humans cannot escape in our sinful nature. As a man living among us, Jesus had all the physical temptations and feelings that plague the rest of us, but immaculately conceived, he lived with divine power undiminished.

This doctrinal explanation embraces certain assumptions and corollaries to which some might take exception. I will attempt to answer these issues and suggest how the doctrine can still stand scrutiny.

Assumption 1. Because Jesus (in his humanity) felt temptation as we do, he could empathize (in his divinity) with our dilemma.
Unaddressed Issue: Empathy is not the same as actual experience.

Assumption 2. Jesus understood his “difference.” He felt comfortable and natural with it. Unaddressed Issue: He obviously felt sure of his status with God, but is not on record claiming his own virgin conception.

Assumption 3. Jesus displayed no ungodly air of superiority; he was unusually humble. Unaddressed Issue: If this carpenter were actually “superior,” his humility would be no achievement.

Assumption 4. His believing followers knew he was fundamentally different; but they did not question the paradox of divinity and humanity combined. Not being theologians, they came to accept it. Unaddressed Issue: How did they live that close to a man who had frustrating habits, probably had body odor, and needed sleep like the rest of us--typical human short comings-- yet they thought he was perfectly holy?

Assumption 5. Mary kept the “method” of conception a secret, with Joseph‘s complicity. Unaddressed Issue: There are no contemporary reports of a virgin birth. The idea was introduced later in the memoirs, named the Gospels. It is understandable that Mary would not speak to others about such unbelievable information, but she seems not to have accepted, or at least not understood, the implications of it for explaining Jesus’ “difference.”

Assumption 6. The Council of Chalcedon later determined that Jesus was one substance, 100% human and 100% divine. Unaddressed Issue: Unless we, too, are equally human/divine, such a unique combination makes Jesus abnormal, which is to say he wasn’t a limited human as we are. This throws a wrench in the doctrinal mechanism of substitutionary atonement, i.e., Christ vicariously carrying for us other guilty humans the judgment for our sin.

To be sound doctrine the Virgin Birth needs to clear up these assumptional issues. But do not despair. With some re-viewing, the notion can be seen as a remarkable display of God’s power and glory, securing all that Christians hold dearly. Why wear poorly fitting clothes when a guaranteed, tailored suit is on the rack?

Here is how Jesus’ divinity can be straightforwardly understood. The following view addresses the questions raised about “virgin birth” assumptions by showing how the doctrine can simply carry the highly profound meaning of Christ’s divinity. Instead of trying to explain how Jesus was so different from us yet was just like us humans, consider how similar we are to Jesus who was just like us in his divinity. In other words, Jesus so thoroughly identified with us because he learned, as God’s creature, that he did not have to deny his humanity to be aware of his divinity. He repeatedly explained that all of us are children of God, capable of the same divine awareness to which he was alert. Humanity and divinity are unitary not dualistic qualities. It is quantum physics, not Newtonian materialism.

It boils down to this. If Jesus was in any way different from each of us, his “atonement” for our sins would be ineffectual; it would be paternalism--good enough for slaves and pets. But if Jesus was just like us, then we have the same divine spark he had. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth as traditionally propounded risks leaving us with only the promise of adoption, when we actually are family.

The usual explanation of virgin birth leaves us with Dualism--the idea that we are alienated from God, and by grace receive no more than undeserved entrance to heaven, where we will be eternally joyous but always stepchildren.

I suggest that a re-viewing of the phrase, “virgin birth” makes Jesus’ message and teaching consistent, plain, and exciting. There is still room for virginal conception if we rid ourselves of images of a sex act and think of conception as the moment when the physical kindling is brought to heat (life) by the inbreathing of God’s spirit--when the divine/human union is manifested in the physical universe as a “new born” baby.

The “second birth” Jesus told Nicodemus about was an awakening to what it means to be an “image” of God. Jesus was “born of a virgin” in the sense that conception begins with God’s Spirit bringing to “life” the divine/human connection in a particular human body. It does not matter where the semen originates. The miracle is the life-giving. Creator and creatures are and ever have been conjoined. The “life” given to Jesus (of Nazareth) was and is the same as the life given to each of us. God is especially illuminated in Jesus, but we are all “begotten” of God.

What about the Gospel’s announcement that Jesus was God’s “only beloved” son?

This statement does not set him apart as an only child. It means he was unique in the degree to which he understood and appropriated the benefits and powers of the divine/human conjoining. God chose “only” Jesus for a key role in his revelational manifestation, but each of us is a chosen manifestation of God also. We are all virginally born. Jesus saw his mission as encouraging us to join with him in heaven as “joint heirs.”

I see no hint in the New Testament of Jesus acting as if he were special, displaying an attitude of paternalism toward us.. Jesus did not have to be born without a human biological father to be part of the God concept, to be divine. The traditional method of explaining a virgin birth presumes that somehow Jesus was affixed to God in a way we cannot be, despite his explicit prayer (John 17) that his disciples be one with God as he was. If we take Jesus at his word (he said his disciples would do greater miracles than he) we are no more irreparably separated from God’s nature than Jesus was. To think so is to touch hands with Docetism, the heresy that diminishes Jesus’ humanity. Such anemic thinking cheats us from access to our true selves as the image of God. If we cannot ingest this more glorious heritage for ourselves, we will ever be dependent on Jesus’ difference from us, and will always be guests in heaven rather than family. Our salvation will be good luck rather than the fruit of true grace.

Actually, “virgin birth” as commonly articulated, and “grace,” are competing concepts. God did not “send” Jesus to earth. God was already here, in all of us. The spiritual umbilical cord was never cut; Adam and Eve only stopped breast feeding. Our understanding (as the human race) has been clouded by materialistic fixation.. Jesus, our fellow human, simply participated more easily in God’s effervescent grace; he understood more clearly our (his and our) divine relationship. Grace is not given in response to our renouncing sin. Grace is something to experience as we turn our attention toward God, leaving sin to fade away. We don’t earn forgiveness, nor even need we beg for it. We open ourselves to God within us. Jesus does not stand outside our door knocking to come in. He is inside us already, as God, knocking to wake us up to who we are.

Please understand I am not saying we each are God in God’s fullness, just that I am simply a connected “image” of divinity. The less I am captured by materialism, the more heavenly I become. Jesus shook off the shackles and invited us to do the same. God created neither robots, nor retards, which is all dualistic theology claims for us.

I realize this sounds heretical; it is not the perspective in which I was raised in conservative circles. But conservatives insist that dualistic theology is what Jesus taught; that it is what the New Testament is about; and one must believe the Bible. Well, I take the Gospels seriously. I see dualism hanging around like a heavy fog, but I also see Jesus shining a different light, constantly preaching and guiding his followers into a “new” perspective. Dualism is an understandable notion for humans immersed in a material world; and it is a convenient tool for religious leaders to use to manipulate followers. But Jesus spurned any advantage he might have claimed as one specially positioned (by virgin birth) for mediation. I and God are not antagonists. God does not need to be persuaded to befriend me. Jesus’ role as mediator is as a bridge, not as a defense attorney. He told his friends to follow him not as imitators but as claimants. Sanctification is an experience, not a gift. Holiness is not a second birth reward; it is the cleaning up of the original, material afterbirth effects. God did not create unsanctified images of divinity. That would make us oxymorons. Jesus preached it differently. And I believe the Bible. I am a true child of God. It has taken me awhile, with the help of Jesus’ preaching, to realize this.

But I am wary of the temptation is to become cocky. A professor at Cascade College once told me that he had not sinned in decades because he was sanctified. I did not believe his sanctimoniousness, for he sinned against me once in class, if unfairness is a sin. Holiness is a goal. When we “arrive,” we more than likely will be physically dead; that is, of no earthly good, at least in the minds of the unarrived. For most of us, physical death arrives before we figure things out. Jesus was not so slow to understand..

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When Killing is Not a Sin: Babies and Iraqi civilians

2008-11-11T11:17:00.000-08:00

I recently engaged in a little back-and-forth emailing regarding last week's Presidential election. My correspondent had indicated to me that the election gave us a choice of voting for either a Christian (McCain being implied) or a non-Christian (Obama of course). I responded that judging a candidate's prospects for reaching heaven is presumptuous, but in my mind Obama's policies had a more Christian foundation than McCain's, and that Obama conducted himself with more Christian grace than McCain; though I expected that neither candidate posed a threat to our nation's Christian or democratic principles.

The reply came back that I had to be wrong because Obama was a long time friend of the profane Rev. Wright, and as a pro-choice candidate supported the killing of babies. Indeed, Obama voted in the Illinois state legislature against a ban on partial birth abortion. This appears to indicate conclusively that a vote for Obama would be a vote against God.

However, look a bit closer. I'll brush away some cobwebs.

First, the infamous quote of Wright saying "God damn America" was not what I would call normal swearing. He was expressing his opinion that God should do what God does at times--damn people. After all, it is not far-fetched to say that God did damn America once for our beastly condoning of slavery by allowing us to suffer a civil war. (Lincoln used the more euphemistic term, "judgment.") If you look at the context of Rev. Wright's sermon, he, himself, was not "damning" anyone, which is how the word is used in regular cursing; he was inviting God to do it. I can understand how black people might feel as Wright does, given the shameful history of racism in our country.

Note further that the offensive phrase is not Obama's. Obama did not say it, and I doubt he would say it. He is not a fiery person with a loose tongue. On the other hand, John McCain has been known to curse in a public setting with swear words commonly used by sailors. It is not the vocabulary that is telling, it is the attitude--which leads to my second point.

Second, with the profanity issue moot, Obama does not think about America and whites as Wright does. Note his disavowal of Wright's racial retort, and read Obama's historic speech "A More Perfect Union," which is around the corner and way down the block from any "damning" sentiment. Why did Obama attend Wright's church? I have attended churches for the fellowship and the programs where I found the pastor lacking and "human" in certain respects. I'm 65 years old and am still looking for the "perfect church." (I would refer you to my blog on black churches, if you didn't read it when I posted it a few months ago.)

Regarding abortion and baby killing.

First, abortion is not an "up and down" issue. I too think that abortion kills unborn babies. But there are other matters mixed in that can not be ignored. Pro-lifers do not agree on the issues of incest and rape. And if the mother's health is at stake, it is reasonable to think that her life is as important as the unborn baby's. Then there is the question of when the fetus is more than a biological presence but becomes inhabited by a soul. Neither theologians nor doctors find consensus on this. And would you consider the mother a murderer if she had two young children threatened by death where she could only save one, and by choosing one the other dies? As a society we also must decide who controls the decision; is it the federal government, the state government, the doctor, the mother, the biological father? How much interference in this private decision is appropriate, and how much advice and council, and what kind, is needed? The Supreme Court became the pivot point with the Roe v. Wade decision. But many are unaware how that ruling forbade abortion under certain conditions. Are those conditions fixed in medical cement? The Court has since refined its judgment on several points. And medical developments have changed the arguments.

By the way, the reason Obama voted against the partial birth abortion ban was because it did not include a provision protecting the health of the mother. In his mind it was a flawed bill. If it had included the provision which he, as a supporter of women's rights, considered equally important, he would have voted for the ban. He was looking for a better bill. Because the bill would likely be ruled unconstitutional, it's promoters engaged in cynicism by blocking Obama‘s preferred amendment. It is notable to see a politician voting on principle when he knows his vote will be misinterpreted and can potentially damage his career. (Reference JFK's Profiles in Courage)

What is happening is that as a society, we are seeking a consensus that answers all the questions, reservations, moral concerns, and practical problems. Even pro-choice people do not want to kill babies. To throw the blunt weapon of castigation at a complex problem without considering the complexity of the issue is like dropping a bomb on a crowded hospital where a terrorist has taken refuge.

Legislators seldom have clear "up and down" decisions to make. Some call effective governing an exercise in "compromise"; others call it finding "consensus." That is what democracy is all about--not judging others for failing to see things as clearly as you do. I suggest that when God created humans, the Creator profoundly implemented the democracy principle. God did not decree that all moral matters were covered on the actual stones Moses carried down the mountain. The Israelites recognized that Moses could not scamper back up the mountain for more tablets every time a new issue arose in everyday life. So they took over and amplified the rules until the compendium tottered on its base. Jesus corrected this scaffolding by saying if we love God, our hearts will guide us. This sounds to me like democracy, not theocracy.

Democracy is cooperative searching for a common heart understanding of complex issues. (Reference James Madison’s Federalist essay #10) The only way to solve the abortion problem is to recognize the complexities and legitimate concerns of both pro-lifers and pro-choicers. Both can agree that killing babies is a very bad idea. Before "judging" a legislator for not approving a bill that gives ground to the pro-life element, we need to know his heart. Sometimes a legislator has to hold his nose in order to implement a move toward reform. Maybe God engaged in nose-holding in giving humans free choice. If we as a people can come to a consensus on this compacted problem by joining hearts, I am convinced that God will smile knowingly.

Regarding killing as sin. In the recent Presidential election we only had two viable candidates from which to choose. If one feels our choice was between Obama who would kill babies, and McCain who wouldn't, we need to recognize that the abortion question sits in the same basket with other killings, and we need to do some sorting and moral comparisons. I had much more trouble with McCain's moral sensibilities than Obama's, if you want to talk about killing. I felt the election presented a choice between McCain who would kill innocent Iraqi civilians and Obama who wants to stop it. On abortion, the matter is one on one; it is a largely private choice. Many people choose it, but each choice affects a small circle of directly involved people. On the question of war, the decision of one person (and those who find him persuasive) affects scores of thousands with an indefinite end to the count. One individual making the choice to abort a fetus irresponsibly or immorally may face divine judgment. I feel that abortion is a very wrong choice in most cases. But as I said above, it is not an "up and down" matter, and society needs to find a way to uphold morality without diminishing it in the process. Moral issues often are too personal and too contingent to "legislate." Should we make suicide illegal, obesity punishable, or narcicissm a crime? Maybe school truancy can be corrected by jail time. Selfishness is a blight on our land; shouldn’t we stamp it out? We need clarity on each issue, a consensus, before we "bring people to judgment" for their offensive personal failings.

While we as a society have not reached a consensus that resolves abortion and its related issues, on the question of war there is international and philosophical consensus. The homework has been done. No agency has authority to enforce moral opinion on the subject, but scholars and theologians have provided a detailed agreement about what a "just war" is. An unjust war is thereby declared "wrong." In religious terms "wrong" means sinful. While God is "just," injustice is immoral. It is a contradiction in terms to say it is "right" to fight an "unjust" war. Such a statement is definitional nonsense. Therefore, anyone who (willingly) supports an unjust war is under judgment.

If the Iraq war is an unjust war, to support the killing of innocent Iraqis in the process has no justification. Sin cannot so easily be pushed aside as necessary "collateral damage." Below I will add a footnote giving a list of standard criteria for classifying a war as just. Check it out later. I don't know how anyone can judge the Iraq war as justified after looking at these criteria. Then assuming that the case is convincing, I must painfully say that John McCain believes in killing innocent Iraqis in an unjust war, in multiple thousands.

Morally sensitive people, including Protestants and Catholics have found philosophical and theological consensus on this troubling issue. When I apply the test to Iraq, our invasion and continued fighting in that country fails on almost every item on the list. How to fight a just war is not at issue here. Christians should oppose any unjust war, and those who support one should face moral condemnation by definition. I see no difference in supporting the killing involved in an unjust war, and the killing of unborn babies. Not only is the Iraq war "unjust," it has been totally unnecessary. Obama is right about turning attention away from Iraq and refocusing on the real enemy-- Osama bin Laden. Going after the al Qaeda leader could meet the "just" standards.

In any case, Obama is the President (elect) of all of us now, and we can judge him on what he does, not on what people "think" of what he might be like. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I expect he will model Christian principles as notably as any President we have had, including Lincoln and Carter. If you doubt that he acts like a "Christian gentleman," just run a replay of the Presidential debates and watch how he responded when McCain attacked him with untrue charges and personal slurs, and note that Obama, while criticizing McCain's "positions," did not attack him on personal issues, even though McCain had enticing vulnerabilities The election is over now and we no longer have to decide which man is a Christian and which isn't. McCain will finish out his outstanding political career in the Senate, where, if we believe his concession speech, he will support the new President. For now I will pretend that his moral judgment about unjust killings is a case of arrested moral development. Maybe the new administration will mentor him onto higher ground. The electorate (by majority vote) seems to be "hoping" so.

Footnote on Just Wars: Principles of the Just War (Note: these principles apply to a decision to go to war as much as to how to prosecute it.)

- A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.

- A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate.

- A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause (although the justice of the cause is not sufficient--see next point). Further, a just war can only be fought with “right’ intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury.

- A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.

- The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.

- The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered.

- The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.

The Dark Side of Heroism: Is John McCain "the Man"?

2008-10-27T22:47:00.000-07:00

In my second to most recent blog I held forth the idea of two parallel but distinct elements to consider in deciding how to vote--"issues" and "impressions about the person." What follows are reasons for why I will not vote for John McCain based on my impressions of him, not on the issues.

I have noticed four specific personal traits that trouble me: 1) goose-step patronizing, 2) deficient thinking processes, 3) maverick leadership, and, 4) playing dumb.

Trait number one: Goose-step patronizing (emphasis on the goose-stepping)

Barack Obama does not fail to make sharp attacks on McCain's positions on issues and his voting record, but he also makes a point of recognizing McCain’s personal integrity and his heroic military service. McCain on the other hand tops off his criticisms of Obama's stands with repeated personal attacks, questioning his integrity and his patriotism, even his intelligence. And he gave Sarah Palin the sic ‘em signal.

As we have seen with the Bush/Rumsfeld "torture" issue, the man at the top sets the spawning environment or culture for his followers. Recently the crowds McCain and Palin were drawing turned to ugly taunts. McCain's followers were aping their leader, though in a more uncouth and scary way. McCain quickly tried to tone them down, apparently sensing that a "negative approach" that shows its underwear can backfire. We'll see if he can shut off the tap that he opened.

I think what turned the taunters loose was McCain’s patronizing demeanor toward Obama. Recognizing the potential damage of disdain-turned-spiteful, McCain made the remarkable statement that Obama is a decent man, and he would not be scared of him as President. But over the past weeks McCain has orally and visibly cultivated the message that he does not respect the man, his recent corrective notwithstanding. The conventional wisdom of campaigns holds that negative attacks close to election night are a very effective approach for the one trailing.

I think the reason the conventional wisdom is not working this time is that McCain’s “attitude” toward Obama has sounded a call to the fringe element in the party to come out of the woodwork and reveal their vengeful spirit. People are recognizing that this is the dark side of the “feistiness” in McCain and Palin, and are uncomfortable with it. I think McCain’s plea to his rowdy followers to cool it will prove abortive, because on Monday he was right back at it. His speech was a fight song. A journalist counted 18 times that McCain used the word “fight,” or “fighter.” Now that Iraq has dropped to second place behind the economy as top concern to the American people, he takes the theme that defines his personhood and transfers it to the new crisis. The way out of the economic crisis, he says, is to "fight"; and, as we are to know from his “record,” he knows how to fight and will lead us in the fight, while Obama is a dangerous neophyte. McCain is a one dimensional man who interprets those who extend outside his dimension (Obama) as "just not getting it." Obama's sunny disposition seems to torment those in the shadows.. (You may see the obvious contrast in Obama's memoirs.)

Then take notice of the "McCain approved" robo-phone calls his campaign is sending out that equates Obama with terrorists (the same technique that Bush used to find Saddam Hussein responsible for the 9/11 attack.) Republican party leaders are not very good at connecting dots. McCain claims Obama has not "come clean" on his relationship to Bill Ayers. Obama has come clean, more than once. There is nothing there. If there were more to it, McCain would come up with it, for sure. That he hasn't is the clue. He ignores Obama's response and repeats the charge as if Obama's explanation automatically is of no consequence.

John McCain is known for his distemper, and we saw in the first debate that he is not good at disguising his feelings when upset. I was jarred by the effrontery McCain showed toward Obama in the first presidential debate. His demeanor and his words combined for particular ill effect when he, as son and grandson of two Admirals, himself an Annapolis graduate and prisoner-of-war in Hanoi, with lifted chin, lectured Obama about military terminology. Obama, the naive young man, he said, does not understand the difference between strategy and tactics--which leads to my second point.

Trait number two : Deficient thinking processes.

When McCain jumps on a bull that begins to buck, he refuses to let go. Is this that “fighting spirit” that separates heroes from quitters, or is it the "state of denial" mechanism that clicks in when thinking processes are weak? The first answer is attractive because McCain's combativeness can be admirable in a way; but I am settling into the second version. Either way--impulse or mental dyslexia--affects the quality of ones judgments. Both stubbornness and/or confusion lead to bad decisions. I’m not being flippant; I’m serious.

I’ll give two prominent examples. McCain said the surge strategy is winning the war in Iraq (the bucking bull), and in his own administration he will continue this Bush strategy to win in Afghanistan and beat terrorism. He said Obama’s opposition to the surge indicates that Obama considers the surge to have been only an incident, a tactic in the bigger war. Actually, McCain is the one who has it backward. Tactics are adjustments in the field as the battles progress. Strategy, on the other hand, oversees the complexity of factors and sets out the principles guiding toward victory in the long run. McCain thinks Bush‘s war plan only needed adjusting in the field. He seems determined to carry this error in thinking into his own administration, as the basis of his war policy as President.

General George Washington, in another war, knew better. A number of times Washington implemented the tactic of retreat in order to succeed at the greater strategy of keeping his undermanned army from being captured. Running does not mean the end of fighting, nor does standing ground at the end of the day mean the war is won. McCain will gain no succor for his Iraq position from Washington’s wisdom and “experience.” And I tremble at the thought of our next commander-in-chief not knowing the difference between strategy and tactics. One may not expect G.W. Bush to have learned this lesson in the national guard, but McCain should not be given a pass on it. I find it hard to believe that a graduate of Annapolis and a student of war operations after returning from Vietnam would want to “muddle on” (a phrase McCain used earlier to characterize Bush) in Iraq in confusion about so critical a military principle. Even our generals, at least those who kept quiet about their misgivings until they retired or were relieved of command, don’t gloss over the problems with the Bush strategy. I’ve noticed that both General Petreus and Secretary Gates are careful to stay out of politics and steer clear of Bushspeak.

Fight is McCain‘s game, geopolitics is not. I would want McCain beside me in battle and I would want him as my cell mate in a war prison, but he is like a fighter who has been too long in the ring . I admire a fighter, but there is more at stake than heroic determination can handle. That is why boxers need handlers. McCain is a boxer.

Trait number three: Maverick leadership

Another example of his quality of thinking is his fixation about being a “maverick.” This is a major tactical mistake if you think about it. Do we really want a maverick as President? By definition a maverick is “an unbranded calf . . . separated from its mother.”-- “a lone dissenter. . . who stands apart from his or her associates.” A maverick does not turn to the other cows to bring them along. A maverick doesn’t attend to the common needs; that is what makes him stand out. A maverick has all the appearances of liking it that way. And in the true spirit of a maverick, McCain revels in this. Now I think mavericks serve a good purpose, as a check on the herd mentality. A maverick may prove to be an important, beneficial pivot point. But when the maverick adopts this quality as a hallmark of leadership he becomes a sticking point. I admire McCain’s stands against some of his fellow politicians’ follies, but in the bigger game of team leadership, he needs to drop the term, with its clearly negative connotations.

But again his muddleheadedness about ideas leads him into not only confused articulation but also bad judgment. Namely, I can’t believe the disjunction he adopts by pointing to how his maverick reputation is evidence of how he will “reach across the aisle” as President and bring the country together. This is an oxymoron. Secondly, he is so proud of the idea of maverick that he chose a poster child maverick for his running mate, not realizing the danger to both his party and his campaign. As Palin has shown, a maverick untethered becomes a loose cannon. For one example, did you hear her answer when asked about what she planned to do in the Vice Presidency? Someone needs to loan her a copy of the Constitution. She is scarier than Cheney. As we have seen, other mavericks are coming out of the woodwork at McCain and Palin appearances, and as I mentioned, McCain yesterday had to backflip to reject their stylistic suggestions. So much for that “strategy.”

Trait number four: Playing dumb

My fourth sample of muddled thinking goes more directly to the question of intention. This gets dicey, because I hesitate to call anyone a liar. Language is slippery, and it is easy to judge without considering circumstantial pressures. I have thought Bush walks blithely in the arena of dishonesty simply because he convinces himself that his untruths actually are true. I think McCain speaks dishonestly at times for a different reason. I avoid calling him a liar by assuming he just doesn’t understand what he has said and thinks he has a point when it just doesn’t add up. (At times I have a lot of trouble holding onto my generous concession.)

To be specific, McCain repeatedly says Obama will raise taxes. Boom. This is a half-truth. But half-truths, when wrapped in whole-truth packaging, are whole-truth claims--half-truths rounded up to untruths when trotted out. That is like saying Doug drives an old 1986 pickup truck, so watch out for him--as if that is all I drive. Wham. And, as Palin would say, he pals around with that redneck pickup driver that lives near him. Double whammy. To wit, Obama has said his tax plan will raise taxes on those who make over $250,000 a year. So we all had better watch out because “Obama will raise taxes.” Parading as 100% true this statement is a ¼ truth, or less. What portion of the population make that much or more? I'm told it is 5%.

Is McCain confused or is he deceptive? My theory that he is confused requires a constantly running sump pump because this is not an isolated sample of McCainspeak. One litmus test for determining where McCain is prone to deception is to look directly at what he chooses to repeat as mantra in his campaign speeches. Where he is most assertive seems to be where he is most incorrect and muddled. The newest melody is "Joe the Plumber." It turns out that Joe is not a "licensed" plumber and has not personally filed for work permits in the county where he works; and if he intends to make $250,000 a year as a business owner now, he will be able to afford a tax increase. I'd welcome the chance to be able to afford a tax increase along with Joe, but this comports with Obama's plan.

If McCain thought he was showing how concerned he is about the common, blue collar American by championing Joe who will make that kind of money, he needs to take off his dark glasses. Even if Joe were licensed, it is Obama's plan, not McCain's that would have helped him back when he was a lowly working stiff like you and I. McCain needs to fire his staff members who (don't) vet his choices for poster children. But apparently it would not matter, because McCain seems to gravitate toward things that make little sense because they "don't make sense"--that is what maverick, muddled thinking does to a person who looks down his nose at the 95% who have not "made it" following the rules.

McCain shows the same kind of odd glee in playing up Joe the Plumber that he oozed in elevating Sarah the Governor. It is as if he thought he had come up with the ultimate irrefutable answer for all the unpatriotic nuancers who don't put "country first," those who pal around with socialists. Sarah is not ready, and Joe is not "just" a plumber (as McCain classifies Joe’s salary). If they were, McCain, the maverick, would not have chosen to highlight them. When he thinks he makes the most sense, his mental dyslexia shines brightest. He has to play dumb when he should know better, in order to convince those who don't know better to think he is clever. I don’t think he is sinister (a tag he tries to pin on Obama), I just think he has "personal" processing weaknesses. Colin Powell struck the right tone last weekend in his endorsement of Obama. McCain's campaign, he said, has been all about personal attack when we should be focusing on the critical issues we face as a nation. This military man well above McCain in rank, and statesman with more significant executive experience, judges that as for leadership, Obama has displayed more steadiness and sound judgment.

With my above catalog of McCain's defective thought processes, I’m not saying he is unintelligent. I just think the way he puts things together leads him into statements and decisions that are unsound.

The Anatomy of Un-Charisma

2008-10-27T22:33:00.000-07:00

The following highlights weaknesses in John McCain's personality: 1) his habit of insinuation, 2) his incivility, 3) his fighting instinct. Closing with an overall assessment of the man.

Issue Number One: The habit of insinuation

Insinuations are like dandelion seeds launched into the wind. McCain’s campaign train is freighted with implications that Barack Obama is an unpatriotic black man who, if not out to destroy us, is at least over his head. And should you run out of insinuations, you can elevate to innuendo. Recently McCain launched into a litany of questions about "what we don't know" about the inexperienced upstart. But if the potent combination of insinuation and patronizing don't carry the day, there are always half-truths in reserve. Half-truths rounded up to the nearest truth become lies when asserted firmly.

At this level Cindy McCain stepped forth to turn up the heat. Last week she accused Obama of opposing the funding of the troops. And, with a catch in her voice, she referred to her son who, with Obama's vote, would be abandoned under fire to die a fiery death in Iraq. Actually Obama did vote for the funding. Then Bush vetoed the bill. Who is abandoning whom? (Bush has been widely castigated for trying to fight the war "on the cheap," and if McCain wants an example of someone who doesn't "put his country first," many would say Bush is a case in point.) At this level Cindy McCain stepped forth to turn up the heat. Last week she accused Obama of opposing the funding of the troops. And, with a catch in her voice, she referred to her son who, with Obama's vote, would be abandoned under fire to die a fiery death in Iraq. Actually Obama did vote for the funding. Then Bush vetoed the bill. Who is abandoning whom? (Bush has been widely castigated for trying to fight the war "on the cheap," and if McCain wants an example of someone who doesn't "put his country first," many would say Bush is a case in point.)

Key to understanding this funding drama is distinguishing strategy from tactics. Funding is tactical support; withdrawal is a strategic decision. Bush demanded that Congress yield strategy to him. On the funding, Congress (and Obama) said fine, but proclaimed its superior authority on strategy formulation. Bush’s veto, based on holding onto strategy determination, was an attempt at blackmail. This was not just a “political” fight; it was high drama over fundamental constitutional matters.

The facts tell the story. The bill would have funded the troops along with a stipulation for a withdrawal schedule. By vetoing the bill, Bush (and McCain Republicans) struck a blow at the Constitution which puts ultimate strategy in the hands of Congress. The President's constitutionally assigned duty is to "administer" policy, and in military matters he is given "chief" command in order to carry out the administering. His role in wartime strategy rests on the strength of his persuasion--he has to “ask“ Congress for a declaration of war or support for emergency measures. Congress, as the people's voice (most recently measured by the vote in 2006), holds the trump card. In vetoing the funding bill, Bush played his ace. Congress then softened its wording (caved in) about withdrawal and kept its trump card in pocket.

The issues of constitutional authority and strategy versus tactics take a little sophisticated awareness, but do not tax ones brain. The events were played out before us in plain sight, and the Constitution is an easy read. Echoing John, Cindy’s remark that Obama does not support the troops is not even a half-truth. I can’t expect an heiress to understand the Constitution or military terminology (strategy/tactics), but she should pay more attention to the sequence of events played out before us in the news every night. (But she sleeps with the man who is confused and probably listens in on the 3:00.am. phone conversations.)

In both the first and second funding bill, Obama's position supported the troops because both bills provided the necessary funding. To continue to say Obama does not support the troops is to throw two birds at one stone (I intentionally inverted the metaphor)--thwarting the Commander-in-Chief, and lacking patriotism--both of them missing the mark.

I won’t judge whether Cindy intentionally muddied the water, but she knows how to insinuate masterfully too, echoing John's assertion that Obama wants to "wave the flag of surrender" to those who want to kill us. She employed the ultimate put-down (accusing Obama of wanting to betray his country) by emotionally politicizing her son’s Iraq assignment. She certainly did her son no favor by putting him in this position (a soldier who is the son of a prominent leader). John should know something about this from his experience in Hanoi.

Not to be outdone by Cindy's imputational skills, John insists that Obama has not "come clean" on the Bill Ayers relationship, even though Obama has laid out the thin particulars openly. Here is another sample of the malice of insinuation. Suggesting there is life in a dead story amounts to obfuscation; and obfuscation works well as the shabby coat for slander. Insinuation is the tailor for a handsome cloak of deception.

Issue Number Two: Incivility

If Cindy McCain is a good mirror reflecting her husband's message and persona, Michelle Obama is equally representative of her spouse. On “Larry King Live” last week, Larry asked Michelle about Hillary Clinton (the Democrat's version of the "witch from the North"). Michelle was nothing but a model of regard and respect for her husband's former insulting nemesis.

And when Larry asked her about John's alleged "put down" in last week's debate where he attacked Obama on an issue. Without looking at his opponent McCain pointed and said, "that one." Some took this as a racial code word for "slave boy," but Michelle dismissively said she did not take it that way at all. She brushed aside McCain's alleged personal antipathy, and said that kind of thing does not upset her nor her husband. Barack, she said, is not an angry black man. He does not take such slurs as either racial or as personal.

Even if Michelle was just trying to come across as congenial, it sends a message of maturity. McCain either isn't able to don a cover of congeniality or intentionally declines to, which also sends a clear message. Issue

Number Three: The “Fighter”

I think McCain's problem is that he is locked into an outdated Cold War global vision, one where the contest is between "us" and "them"--them being a powerful nation state (Russia) in contest with us on the same international plane. To win, we fight it out on the battlefield where soldiers prove their mettle and become heroes by sacrificing their lives for their country. Times have changed, but one thing is constant. The President needs to be more than a military man. McCain has his feet planted firmly with eyes focused on the enemy before him. Obama has a wider stance and better field intelligence.

Obama is a phenomenon and a marking point in American history. To him, a black man, race is no longer an issue. He is an American running for President, as is his opponent. In my judgment he is the more mature personality of the two and as a leader he has a more wiry grip along with his wider stance. I secure my point with an historical parallel—the Cuban Missile Crisis. All "issues" aside, consider the leadership style and effectiveness of John Kennedy during this Crisis. I am glad that John Kennedy, whose leadership brand Obama emulates, was in charge rather than Teddy Roosevelt, McCain's acknowledged hero. Roosevelt (as Bush and McCain interpret him) would have been a disaster in facing down Kruschev.

Interestingly, I penned the above paragraph a couple days ago. As I type now I am listening to McCain using the Cuban Missile Crisis as an example of his own "tested" leadership. Again, I am staggered at his profound reasoning. Responding to Joe Biden's remark that the new President will likely be "tested" early in the new administration, McCain said he has already been tested. During the Cuban Missile Crisis he was sitting in his fighter jet "ready" to fly. What? Readiness to fly on command is tested leadership? What kind of parallel is this?

Overall Assessment of McCain's Persona

What I see in watching the debates and reading Obama's book is a man who is well informed even where one might disagree with his conclusions, a man who is congenial and engaging, in contrast to his opponent who displays his personal dislike, and articulates his disrespect on stage and to the cameras.

Noteworthy is the testimony of Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell in last week's Newsweek magazine. Caldwell is the pastor of the black megachurch in Houston who was the "introducer" of George W. Bush to the Republican Convention of 2000, and who gave the invocation at both Bush Inaugurations, but who now is an active and energetic promoter of Obama for President. I would not be surprised if Caldwell agrees with me that McCain’s personality is a leadership handicap and a potential problem for the nation.

McCain deserves the highest praise for enduring the torture, the accusations and ridicule imposed on him in the Hanoi prison, and he merits great honor for supporting his cellmates and sacrificing 5-1/2 years of his life for his country. But he is still fighting those old demons. He felt the pain from the military's failure to "win" in Vietnam, and he understandably does not want any soldiers in Iraq to be impaled as he was in a losing fight. His perception of today's new kind of war, though, is limited by his personal, searing experiences and colored by the military traditionalism of his father and grandfather, whose careers worked out better for them than for him. McCain's "experience" is hemmed in by psychological and personal issues. He wins my empathy but not my confidence.

Obama is not without experience. What he is without is McCain's military orientation. In his memoirs Obama, displays a balanced wisdom and a geopolitical grasp of international affairs, including the threat of terrorism in broader terms, and, yes, a winning strategy, recognizing that "armies" are necessary, but serve specialized purposes. No one who is naive could have written these pages. I have not heard McCain describe foreign policy with anything near Obama's impressive grasp of history, his cutting-edge sense of direction of the future, and an optimism about what is realistically possible to accomplish.

One last comment. On watching the three debates, I have no doubt that McCain has an IQ fully sufficient for the job of President. But Obama, I suggest, has a much higher EQ. If you are familiar with Daniel Goleman's books on emotional intelligence, you know what I am saying. I know of another study that looked at CEO'S of big companies. It concluded that most successful CEO's are high in EQ rather than IQ. People with a high IQ tend to be misfits.

The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Key to Understanding John McCain

2008-10-27T22:09:00.000-07:00

After his well noted remark about being "tested" in the Cuban Missile Crisis, McCain is back at it today. I guess no one pulled him aside and pointed out the nonsensicalness of his attempt to “use” this international incident to win votes. Today he reiterated how his role in that crisis demonstrates why he should be President.

His role was to sit in his fighter jet on the deck of the USS Enterprise, waiting for the command to roll. That was quite a “test” of leadership. Does he not know the difference between a “leader” and a “follower”?

As you may see from my lengthy criticisms of McCain, I waver back and forth trying to decide if he is intentionally deceptive or if he is often confused. I decline to say he is unintelligent, and I don’t want to think he is purposefully misleading us. This leaves me only with his confusion. But I have come up with another, maybe better option.

I had two “insights” this week that seem to synchronize. A comment in a book I’m reading leaped off the page (Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy). The author, Susan Griffin, makes a distinction between information and knowledge. She said: " [There is a] difference between information and knowledge. . . . Lacking stories, frames, concepts, histories, discussions, a background through which significance can be felt, information descends easily into a free fall of nonsensical associations. . . . [For example] it is possible to use the word freedom like a rallying call for a football team, without any irony, as a rationale for depriving other citizens of their rights. In this usage, freedom loses its meaning entirely." (p. 149).

McCain and Palin are full of these rally calls of "nonsensical associations." When Obama "nuances" his explanations, he is, as Griffin would say it, turning information into meaningful "understanding carefully woven from knowledge."

How does this apply to my problem in understanding John McCain? I think he lacks an inclination to supplement information with knowledge. I’m sure McCain is intelligent enough to know that his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis was not a “test of leadership.” So by trumpeting it, was he being loose with the facts (a common form of dishonesty), or was he confused? I expect Griffin would say his assertion is an example of “information” presented without the supportive context of “knowledge.”

I don’t think McCain was trying to "deceive" prospective voters, unless he practices self-deception--after all, who could be deceived by such an obviously senseless comparison. I think that he was simply practicing “words without meaning” because the voters he is trying to reach are those who are most comfortable with this type of argumentation.

And here is where my other “insight” steps forward. I can excuse dishonesty as self-deception. I can also let McCain off the hook of being “confused” by applying a remark someone made to me, namely “when it comes right down to it, voters act on emotion.”

McCain, uses “information” to serve his maverick impulses. With a conscience untroubled by the disconnect between information and knowledge, and a personality that views leadership as “loyalty,” he taps into an emotion. The emotion is “pride” and “fear”--two sides of the same coin.

His message to the voters is, “I personify loyalty, determination, and heroism." But without appropriate context such supporting words as “hero,” “country first,” “testing,” “maverick” become meaningless servants of prideful emotion.

And from the “fear” side of the emotion coin McCain adds “socialism,” “terrorism,” “Rev. Wright,” “surrender,” “inexperience.” Like a good speaker, McCain knows his audience.

McCain is not deceptive; that is just another word without “meaning.“ And he is not just childishly confused. He simply speaks a different language--the language of emotion. When you compare emotion to nuance, you should recognize the real enemy of our country.

In a few days we will find out whether McCainspeak is the dominant American language, or whether we are tired of meaningless verbiage emitted by our Presidents. Some would say I should stop trying to be so kind and just call it as it is. Bush, McCain, Rove, Palin, et. al. are lying s.o.b.’s. Sometimes I feel that way. But I don’t want to risk sinking into cranky cynicism. Let’s just say I have strong nuanced reasons to think McCain is problematic, and the “information” spit out by the McCain machine concerning Obama is meaningless emotion without knowledge, in the Susan Griffin sense. The hopeful sign is that many Republicans are recognizing this. If McCain loses, it will be because of a combination of Obama’s more steady and “hopeful” vision and the recognition by many Republicans (like Colin Powell, Scott McClellan, etc.) that our nation deserves better than nasty, country-dividing leadership that insults our intelligence with senseless rhetoric in these critical times.

Barack Obama's historical significance (even if he loses the election)

2008-10-27T21:58:00.000-07:00

In the current Presidential campaign the McCain Republicans have accused Barack Obama of being naive, unpatriotic, confused, and out-of-touch with the crises our nation faces. A reading of his memoir, The Audacity of Hope, should easily dispel such characterizations as unfounded. Here is my "read" on Obama's book.

What I see is an African-American journaling about his growing self-awareness and telling the story of his search for his roots. No black person in America can poke around in the records of black and white relations, or reflect on the history of racial discrimination without concluding that something went wrong. I find no judgmentalism in Obama. What I find is an American coming to terms with his color, telling the story of his developing self-awareness, searching for knowledge of his ethnic roots, not unlike the delight of John Kennedy returning to Ireland to see where his ancestors came from, or a friend of mine who returned from Italy exulting in finding some folk who remembered his grandfather, or the comfort the Hutterites enjoy living in thriving isolation in a commune near Cutbank, Montana.

Then as the story moves into adulthood and Obama becomes involved in community action and state and national politics, as far as the reader can tell, his "color" fades into a non-issue. Obama is a striking example of something good, though long delayed, happening in America. Our history has been a struggle of trying to eradicate the malignant cancer--slavery--that threatened to bespoil the sincerity of our religious convictions and democratic principles, and put at risk the very life of our republican experiment. Lincoln's stand against the Confederates was based on the principle that if state secessions were allowed to occur with impunity, the future of the Union would be fatally damaged. The Civil War was major surgery on the problem, but the road back to health has been long and uncertain. We know the story of civil war, lynchings, hate crimes, and assassinations of prominent black leaders. But with all the setbacks, in our lifetime we have seen, the Supreme Court rule (post-Dred Scott) for peaceful assimilation of blacks (Brown vs. Board of Education), a Muslim preacher (Malcolm X) begin to reconcile with the Martin Luther King, Jr. non-violent approach, King himself honored for his "dream" of whites and blacks living together, a President from a southern state (Lyndon Johnson) leading the push for the landmark civil rights act. And now, Obama.

I do not champion Obama just because he is running for President. I see him as the high point on a learning curve--a lesson America has been studying for two centuries. Take a look at the man. In his "A More Perfect Union" speech he showed blacks how to come to terms with their blackness without harboring unforgiveness toward unChristian whites, and without pandering to those (like Rev. Wright) who are still fighting the white victimizers. Obama is not only significant for the maturity that allows him to move on; he is remarkable for his Christian spirit and his vision of America and what we can make of our promising start 200-some short years ago.

Choosing Nuance or Crisp Bluntness (Obama or McCain)

2008-09-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

I recently heard a distinction made between Obama and McCain as that between nuance and crisp bluntness. McCain, who revels in uncomplicated bluntness, posits this as the most effective way to lead, and asserts that Obama’s nuances exhibit indecision and confusion. In defense, the other person in the conversation said nuance shows comprehension and discernment, qualities without which leadership becomes hollow and misguided .

Nuance and bluntness are opposites; both are good in the right place. Neither is all wise for all times. In recent years we’ve had an abundance of decisiveness from the White House with nuance ridiculed . The threat of terrorism (though real) has distracted us from troubles of more serious, more comprehensive implications. The future of democracy, the morality of our culture, the health and economic future of each of us arguably is more at risk than our physical “safety.” I suggest we need to do more work and less “fight.” You “wield” fight as a weapon, but you “do” work as a solution. Fighting makes you a hero, working makes you a savior (often unsung).

In my mind, if we pick only one of these traits to embrace and avoid the other as bad, we have a ship in trouble--all lean and no ballast. I don’t know yet whether McCain or Obama will be the man to lead us to calm waters, but I hope the one we choose proves to have both decisive lean and well-measured ballast. In their own imbalance, both crispness and nuance can be dangerously inadequate in a President when awakened alone at 3:00 a.m. (without a wife beside him in bed “gaining experience” by listening). I may consider jumping ship if we get only one (determined lean) and not the other (steady ballast) in November. In their own imbalance, crispness and nuance can each be crippling.

Postscript: A humorous one-liner is going around: “Jesus was a community organizer; Pontius Pilate was a governor.” Some won’t find this funny, but it does capture the difference in approach between Obama and Palin (McCain by implication), and puts a key difference between the two Presidential candidates in sharp perspective.

The Risk In Voting Your Impressions: A Sponge for Prejudice

2008-09-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

I recently said to someone that I was impressed with Barack Obama’s autobiographical book, The Audacity of Hope. The person to whom I spoke replied that he found it hard to “be impressed” with someone with whom he disagreed so strongly on issues. I countered by suggesting that we pause for perspective. In my mind the differences of opinion on issues should not pre-determine judgment about a person’s personal qualities. All admirable people never will be found congregated on one side of any issue. When I said I was impressed by Obama, I meant “issues aside.”

Though I would not vote for McCain for “issues” reasons, still I am duly impressed with him as a man. I admire McCain’s gritty determination, his soldierly loyalty, and his independent spirit. I am able to appreciate these qualities because he has been a public figure for quite awhile and I am informed about his impressive characteristics. I would submit that even though Obama is younger and has had less exposure as a public figure, he fails to “impress” only where information about him is lacking--I mean information, not misinformation. It happens that, regarding both Presidential candidates, deleting electioneering mis-information, should enable us to realize how “impressive,” and I would say “admirable” both of these men are--again I say issues aside.

As a historian, I have a natural bent for keeping issues and personalities as mutually uncontaminating categories. I would cite Robert E. Lee as an example--a man who committed treason against our country; but because he was a Christian gentleman of tremendous leadership talent and professional skill, who knew how to be in public what he was in private, he is honored now, with the shouting stopped, as a fine American. I think both Obama and McCain are eligible to join Lee’s club. I think Lee was tragically wrong and I won’t vote for McCain, but having read Obama’s book, I was “impressed.” McCain and Obama are impressive individuals, each in his own way. Both easily will be noted by evenhanded historians as “impressive” individuals to be admired by later generations who by then have no partisan connections to defend.

I suggest we ignore the slurs and slanders sent flying in both directions at election time and vote according to how we feel on the “issues” and on informed opinion about impressive “persons,” giving both person and issues equal consideration. If it is not a tough call to make, I suspect one of the categories is being disregarded and our vote will only be a reflection of our uncouth prejudices.
Doug Good

McCain and Obama: Two Models From the Same American Car Company

2008-07-23T13:34:00.000-07:00

I will start by stating my conclusion: The supposed split in our country is not so much a political one as it is a national personality division. One way of distinguishing who we Americans are is to see some folk as visionary and some as realistic. The discussions become contentious at election time, when each type exaggerates his or her pique with the other side to show how far off kilter the other is. At those moments when the news panelists are shouting at each other, it almost appears that our choice is between the undefined or the ill-defined. But it is not the choices that are irreconcilable; it is the choosers.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a highly acclaimed and acute analyst of American character and style saw this complexity in us well over a hundred years ago. Recently reading in his Democracy in America, I was struck by how the reports of this visitor from France still resonate on pitch.
He noted that when Americans write and speak to each other, they employ bombast and pomposity. Because we are busy with the banalities of making a living and getting ahead, we do not have time to develop our ideas and appreciate fine points. We are left with vague understanding of important matters, and we swallow the claims of those who pronounce on the issues of the day as if they were circus barkers.

Turn on the television and listen to the talk show hosts proclaiming their opinions, from either the right or the left. Tocqueville's needle still hits a nerve. This observer of democracy's habits said that the thinly informed citizen, which is most of us, lacks "a sure enough taste" to recognize "disproportion."

Actually, we revel in disproportion. To improve ratings, even the more serious news programs parade before us best-selling authors and entertaining party strategists to pronounce on the day's events. As Tocqueville put it, the "crowd" looks to poets [communicators of the biggger truths] only for vast subjects, because they do not have the time for their own "precise measure." "Author and public," he intoned, "mutually corrupt each other."

Do not discount Tocqueville just because he was French. His ringing indictment is on court TV in our current Presidential campaign. Listen to and watch our two presumptive nominees. Barack Obama is our poet. He has charisma and stage presence. He may wrap his ideas in vague, inflated images; but do we not go to county fairs to sample the intriguing pitches made at the various booths? Obama's eloquent speeches are stirring, even if we judge him naive. And John McCain? Well, he is a genuine hero--what we all would be in our fantasies. He may stumble over fine distinctions, but that is part of the "charm" of Americans, as Tocqueville calls it.

To Obama, if we come together we can be "great"--shades of Tocqueville, who famously touted the unmatched energy of an aroused democracy.

To McCain, our greatness is manifest; we only need to impose it on our enemies. Again, Tocqueville was on the mark; Americans are unimpressed with fine distinctions that tend to sap our restless, aggressive energies.

I wish we could be informed and aroused at the same time without suffering from the split personality, but at least we have both cars in our garage. Snobby Tocqueville would probably predict that, as true Americans, in November we will blur it all and vote for perceived gas mileage.

Doug Good

Lift Your Feet and Swim the Dream River

2008-06-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

The universe, the material realm, is like a huge mansion. At birth, I emerged into my own room. I soon realized that my room was part of a family suite or apartment, and I learned to walk around in it and share some of the rooms with my family members, like the kitchen or living room. I gained friends and was invited at times to their houses. I even came to travel around on vacations or business trips where I entered other people’s structures and accompanying spaces.

But I never gave up my own room, or at least I made sure I had one in varied form. If at any time, or to any degree I felt cut off from my room, I experienced disorientation and loss of equilibrium. I always solve this difficulty by expanding the room to incorporate more area within my outer walls, or by assimilating my challenging experiences by making them added decoration on my existing walls. Everyone else does the same. The universe thus remains a multi-roomed mansion with each person posting a mailing box. The only time this way of life has not worked for me is when, exhausted, I fall asleep and drift around, out of control, in my dreams. Conveniently, I always wake up in my room.

According to mind-bending writer, Lynne McTaggart, “The dreamer is the vessel for a borrowed thought, a collective notion, present in the microscopic vibrations in between the dreamers. The dream state is more authentic for it shows the connection in bold relief. [The] waking state of isolation, each in their separate room, is. . . the impostor.” (The Field, p. 123) We are all dreamers, but unfortunately we spend most of our time awake in our rooms.

African Americans and "the Right Stuff"

2008-05-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

In this season of election campaign tomfoolery, we see a lot of drivel. We can expect this. But, for the purpose of accenting a more enriching discussion of the issues before us, it does not hurt to undress some of the palaver that finds its way into the media.

I recently read an editorial posted on the website of Investor’s Business Daily which was manifestly racist. It referred to Barack Obama’s black church, to relatives of his in Africa who had questionable associations, to phone calls and trips made by Obama’s pastor. The connections of all this “African nativism” to Obama himself were quite oblique and insubstantial, but the editorialist did not mean for the reader to notice that. The article stressed that blacks are loyal to Africa first; and because Obama is black, he cannot be trusted.

To display the fault in this editorialist’s reasoning, one could in like manner blackball me because my graduate school reading included Marxist historians, or denounce me because I taught at a fundamentalist college in Michigan. (What did you just learn about the real me by mention of this information? Maybe I am a covert communist fundamentalist.) In fact the writer is so bent on guilt by associative speculation, I wouldn’t be surprised if he harbors thoughts of conspiracy on the part of Barack’s Kenyan father, marrying a white woman so as to foster a mulatto child who would grow up to more easily infiltrate white American government and insinuate foreign African causes into the highest levels.

Let me lift the topic up for some fresh airing in a less despoiling manner. I assert that black people are as genuinely “American” as I, a white man, am. I assume that any black person born and raised in the United States is as American as any fat person, or anyone shorter than George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and myself. If Barack Obama is a threat to America, it is not because of anything in his inherited background, nor is he a clone of those whom he encounters, whatever their color or opinions on nationally debated issues.

Abraham Lincoln married into a southern family of rebel soldiers and Confederate supporters; Dick Cheney sired a lesbian child; John Kennedy was raised a Catholic; Barack Obama’s black father was a Muslim--do you follow the logic?

If African-Americans as naturally born citizens should happen, in time, to become 55% of the United States population, it would not, by that fact, alter the political structure, the constitutional principles, or the heritage of democracy in our country. Democracy is government by the people; American citizens are its people. Whoever its people are, we are enriched. Whoever its people are, the life and spirit and shared experiences are affirmed and voiced by the structure of democracy. Democracy as a political ideal has no preconceived cultural, ethnic, or creedal doctrines to enshrine. We may honor and emulate our luminous predecessors, but to enshrine and encase them is to cut off the potential of the democratic way. Our democracy is a dynamic that calls forth the best from those who are uplifted by the freedom to vie for attention, to hone the truths they discover, and to lead the inattentive and ungrateful to a better way.

To argue monotonously that tradition sanctions only the incumbents, the present generation, the current brokers of influence, is to prostitute the very idea of democracy. (Such notables as James Madison and Alexis deTocqueville have recognized the hazard of “tyranny of the majority.”) Democracy is a clamorous experiment, but it is not threatened by those who are not like “us.” A democracy that yields to fear, racism, slapdash pronouncements and narcissistic ethnocentrism as a means to retain power is a scam on what our founding fathers (in their best moments, and on their best behavior) had in mind.

Black Churches and the First Amendment

2008-04-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

The current controversy over Barack Obama’s relationship to Rev. Jeremiah Wright offers an interesting twist on the Church and State issue. We are familiar with the “conventional wisdom” that would bar politicians from bringing their personal theology into government. But, in reverse, do we then want to penalize politicians for the church they attend? You may send the IRS to check out Trinity Church’s programs, but the 1st amendment doesn’t condone applying a “political test” to the religious sensibilities of parishioners. Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech was a dazzling model of how to apply the “original intention” of the 1st Amendment--how to be un-judgmentally religious without being religiously political. He declined to pillory his pastor, yet refused to sanction the political implications of the Reverend’s words. This isn’t fence sitting; it is how to practice the spirit of the Constitution. Preaching in the parish; politics on the stump.

Many who comment about Obama‘s membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ speak from a political perspective with little understanding of what a “church” is. It is as if they think people go to church to find political allies, as ambitious entrepreneurs attend to network with business associates. A scrutinizing look into the annotative fog reveals two blindspots in the remarks of Obama critics. First, white people can’t see why a black man, ambitious for public office, would not distance himself from a black preacher who shouts out his pain over the black experience. The common remark made to African Americans today is “get over it.”

That is precisely what Obama is trying to help us do, without turning the 1st Amendment inside out. Notice I said “us.” It is not a one-sided problem. The healthy way to move on is to “face up,” not “cover up.” White America tends to want a white/black man who will show the blacks how to forget their heritage. Obama is a candidate for the position, but he declines to “forget” the black part. Many white folk don’t acknowledge that black American citizens are as American as white citizens. For us to come together we must acknowledge our shared history, face up to its odious elements, not erase the inconvenient part of it. Rev. Wright was not running for political office when he made his remarks. He was speaking his pain to his people. How does it help to focus the camera on a background object (Wright) when it puts the foreground (Obama) out of frame? Obama is not a minister, and Wright is not running for President.

An honest reading of the history of slavery, Jim Crowism and continuing discrimination against African Americans holds the key for why Obama--though he firmly disavowed the publicized statements of Rev. Wright--did not reject his pastor as a person. An objective view of our national history would brand white Americans as terrorists. Black truth in these matters is no less true than white truth. Black and white Americans share the same, intertwined, historical experience. The difference is not in correct or incorrect facts; it is in different perspective, in how each has “felt” the shared experiences. Blacks and whites in America know our history differently, but what each “knows” is what actually happened. Both sides shared and participated in the same events of slavery and egregious discrimination--perpetrators and victims. White Americans may read the “lite” version of the history of terrorism imposed by Americans of European stock, but don’t identify with it. Because we whites are not willing to “face up” to the story of our involvement in slavery (and yes, refusing to act or speak out against it implicated even non-slaveowners) does not mean blacks should be faulted for not cutting their identifying connection with the story of their victimization. The cultural divide has made it hard for each to understand the other as the incidents stacked up, and virtually impossible for us of later generations to be able to evenhandedly validate opposing truths. As Obama displayed in his “A More Perfect Union” speech, he has taken a stand in the middle ground between the two partners in the story of black/white race relations, and has said let’s talk about it, but don’t cover our ears while speaking. The rules should be the same for both sides. It is not a contest in how to out-indignate the other.

The second thing critics of Obama’s speech fail to understand is that churches are more than their pastor. Pastors come and go, even Rev. Wright has now retired. The church is a community of people that worship together, pray together, serve together and share their lives. But more than that, black churches have a special quality. African Americans (naturally, given their forced isolation in the American stream) cling together culturally. I have attended black church services; for me they were inspiring, eye opening experiences. They make Pentecostals look mechanical. Historically the black church has been the one place in white society where black folk could express themselves openly, could be themselves safely, could find respect, and could receive appreciation for their talents. White people don’t know how to interpret black people speaking, singing, sorrowing together and venting before God. I do not wonder why Obama worshiped in a typically black church; a volatile minister is part of black culture.

Rev. Wright does not rise to where Obama is, as this Presidential candidate beautifully displayed in his recent speech. I don‘t know if Obama would make a good President, but he has the right idea about how to bring African Americans into the great stream of democracy‘s promise. He is a man with a genuine foot in both camps without the common animus. Now if only the rest of us whites could forget our patronizing disgust. If we can’t hear what Wright has to say, how can we expect Black people to hear what whites have to say. And if all whites have to say is “forget about our sordid past behavior toward you,” we are giving Rev. Wright more fodder. Obama has it correctly--acknowledge the past, learn from it, and move on into the promise our Founders had in mind. Our Founders, despite their political acumen, harbored the cancer of slavery and racial discrimination, unable to remove it when they had the chance. Now it is our turn. We ought to know by now that military conquest (Civil War) or other means of domination, can’t solve relationship problems.

By the way, Hillary Clinton‘s remark last week--“We can‘t choose our family, but we can choose our church,”--shows she doesn‘t understand churches (especially black churches), or she is hypocritical. By her rule of thumb, she should have long ago resigned from the Senate, refusing to be a part of a government led by a President with whom she, now, conveniently disagrees. Anything she might say in defense of her staying in the Senate would be an argument Obama could use regarding his church. I won’t fault her if she won’t fault Obama.

Doug Good

Obama's Speech: Race on the High Road ("A More Perfect Union")

2008-03-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks, but no thanks, to Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who pushed the race issue to the front of the campaign stage by his remarks critical of white America. Obama now had to define himself clearly on this question. Political operatives all had advice, but typically were only counting votes in the usual statistical sense. It seemed that Obama had three choices of how to respond. 1) He could put his numerous white supporters at ease by castigating Rev. Wright’s ill-considered remarks, but to the dismay of the black community (a smaller number). 2) He could emphasize that the quotes were presented out of context and could recast the words in softer tones while affirming the discontents of the African-American community--an approach that would likely be unconvincing to either side. Or 3) he could dance around the issue, calling the sermon quotes unfortunate, and hope the flap dissipates on its own. This last option would be the safest, not winning many, but losing the fewest.

Rejecting standard political wisdom, though, Obama stepped out of the rut of usual argumentation on the race question to follow “another path.” He disavowed the apparently white racist words of his pastor, but he declined to disassociate himself from the black community. He expressed continued respect for his friend and spiritual mentor --a politically “unwise” thing to do. But he embraced the cause of his fellow African-Americans in their longing for equal and fair treatment. He voiced his understanding of how blacks could be angry about being the brunt of white racist actions, but at the same time rejected any semblance of reaction-in-kind. He modeled an even keel not often found in race contentions. Maybe it takes a man with a black father and a white mother, as is Obama’s heritage, to be able to put the race question in balance and to serve as a nurse for both the sick and the threatened.

The marvel is that a politician would have the fortitude to decline to follow the expedient route of pandering to the group who has the most votes. Instead, he took a risky, more courageous stance. He acknowledged the sordid history of racism in America without apologizing for the indignation of a black preacher, yet refused to approve of the apparently racists response-in-kind of Rev. Wright’s words. He risked losing everybody’s vote by this tactic. But it was the right thing to do. When was the last time we have seen a politician act this way? As David Gergen (CNN analyst) put it, it is refreshing to hear a candidate speak to us voters as if we are adults.

With both white and black parentage, but as only a small child during the black activist movements of the 1960’s, Obama is genetically disposed, and historically positioned, to show the way to an end of racial division, of whatever color, that has hobbled the American democratic promise from its first planting in the New World. If he himself does not remove the roadblock for black Americans, by being elected President, he at least will be a traffic sign pointing to the freeway onramp.

Whatever the voters decide in the remaining primaries and November election, Obama’s sense of democracy’s promise will assure his speech a place in American history. Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream about racial unity. Reverend Wright’s words were a lingering echo of the more embattled 1960’s. Obama’s speech is a calm invitation to merge the streams of traffic in our national life. His message of hope is for all Americans, a new concept the older Rev. Wright couldn’t own.

Obama’s oration received rave reviews from all sides, but, interestingly, I had to go to the internet to hear it. Unlike the looped replays of Wright’s excerpts, constantly run on the TV network shows, Obama’s speech took intentionality to get to. If the public responds to this new kind of “political wisdom,” it will have to be without the help of the news media.

The path the Illinois Senator outlined needed certain oratorical skills and charismatic vision to chart, qualities rarely found among politicians. The path he chose was the high road, a road most political operatives thought would lead him to a train wreck, but which if negotiated skillfully can leave an audience gasping in wonder.

If you were able to listen to the whole speech, you may have noticed an eerie silence from the audience, until Obama lifted his finger for a moment off the damp race wound and spoke of other pressing national problems. At this point applause, for the first time, interrupted him, as if the audience was responding with palpable emotional release. It reminds me of the odd momentary dead quiet reported at the end of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It has been awhile since we have seen a political animal who had the instinct and the pluck to travel a visionary route through a confusion of voices. He traded anger for healing passion--a blend of Patrick Henry and Martin Luther King ,Jr. The 1770’s have arrived at the 21st century.

(Just a side note, don’t mistake this quality of courage and oratorical skill with the ostrich stubbornness that our otherwise Chief Articulator has styled as leadership.)

Now if Hillary Clinton will give us a “high road” speech showing a woman’s understanding of how to nurture international relationships, live practically within our means, and cooperate with our environment, and if John McCain could give us a “high road” speech on how to “win” without “killing” our enemies (along with ourselves), then I will have a heaven of a problem choosing for whom to vote ! !

Doug Good

Swimming For Shore (or For Sure): How to assemble your convictions

2008-03-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

Americans have fun during election campaigns hyperventilating about their candidates. Recently I read a rant by a fellow who was alarmed at the risk of electing someone with an Arab sounding name (obviously Barack Obama). He extrapolated that no Muslim could be a safe choice for national office because his loyalties would always conflict with true American values and convictions. He proposed a list of test questions that would identify all those disqualified to be true Americans. But running through his test, it appears that anyone alive on the continent would be disqualified on one or several grounds. You could not be irreligious, wrongly religious, born elsewhere, have ancestors born elsewhere, or even be a native American for various reasons. This writer suggested that anyone with any mark of suspicion should be exported. He thought his own personal convictions were the perfect match for American values. This man had strong convictions, but his certainties had lost touch with the original values of those with whom he wanted to identify--namely, true Americans.

When I responded to the person who had shared this screed with me, I referred to what I called my own “emerging convictions.” He wondered what I meant, so I came up with a blog. Here are my thoughts on certifying ones convictions.

When I was a youngster, I thought convictions were what adults had and wanted me to drink. Upon reaching the "age of accountability," I would have the responsibility to choose to "own" these convictions for myself, as my parents articulated and exemplified them, or if I proved rebellious, I might pick them up somewhere else in altered form. I thought of convictions as items on a shelf that you walk up to and select, or items offered as certified and judged to be safe--things one accepts, or concepts you take title to, as in "buying into." It would be something like loading up a backpack and carrying the contents through life. And if I really believe in my load, I will not worry if backpacks go out of fashion. Knowing that my convictions are secure on my back, I can be confident and relaxed. When needed, I can reach in and pull out a conviction to enlighten a scoffer, or settle an argument, or use as a pointer for my children.

From this perspective, convictions are something we "have."

But when I speak of "emerging convictions," I have something else in mind. Rather, I "am" my convictions, and always have been. Even children have budding convictions. Accountability kicks in at an appropriate age, when reason starts to function. But reason ultimately plays only a consulting role. Experience, rather, is the deep flowing determiner of personal conviction. When we try to order our adult world with a “set” of convictions we have adopted or posted as our "rules," they lose the suppleness so helpful in weathering life's strong winds. Convictions emerge.

How does one determine where one is in the emerging process? The first thing to do is ask where you "got" your convictions. Avoid scales or score cards. Somebody else makes those up. If your convictions do not "emerge" from your own experiences, they won't hold up. I try to engage in candid introspection and work from where I "am." Candid is a key word, for it clears the trail for the emerging to make progress. I know better than anyone (when I'm candid) whether my convictions are sound. And if I am alert, I will notice my convictions ripening.

Don't worry about this sounding as if I choose to float downstream, following unpredictable swirls of current that might leave me stranded in an eddy. I notice that after every heavy rain, our mountain creek is slightly, yet in some places noticeably, reconfigured. I have found that as my convictions season; the only core change from earlier formulations is increased vitality as I sense that the river inexorably leads to the great sea.

If I were to express to you some of my most deeply felt spiritual convictions, they might sound at odds with the formulations mapped out for me by my parents and Sunday School teachers. Meanwhile my personal spiritual vocabulary has taken its own roots. I'm not saying I am more spiritually advanced than my parents. I'm only saying that my expression of basic convictions reflects, and arises from, my own gnarly life trail.

Experience gives conviction its persuasiveness. This is where reading inspired writings can be serendipitous. There I can compare what I am experiencing with what others have discovered. If the connection welds, my convictions gain assurance. But they won't weld by simply downloading, printing, and filing for easy retrieval. If what I "have” does not amalgamate, it sits inert. What we "are" emerges, as a sapling's root that soon heaves aside the paved sidewalk. It only remains for us to notice.

The difference between having and being your convictions, is the difference between asserting and exuding. When we encounter advice, we check the academic credentials, or the organization the advisor represents. But when wise persons offer counsel, we just sense they know whereof they speak, or they would not have a reputation for wisdom. A held conviction stands to be sold. A living conviction sells itself. A true conviction cannot be passed on; the action is in the receiver who gets it by self-initiated connecting.

I know it is a lot easier to chart a composite and well-approved set of convictions to live by. But catechetical answers leave me unconvinced. I scrutinize things until I can explain them the way I experience them, not how someone else describes them. I may sound unorthodox at times, but if you go the whole circle with me, you may just see me back at the starting point with a wardrobe well suited to keep me spiritually outfitted. But I'm not there yet, I'm still emerging.

Does my concept of “emerging convictions” have any theological basis?

My explanation may sound unconventional, but only because the usual way of talking about convictions is backwards. In order to impart a concept, teachers symbolize. For example, to commemorate the Christian salvation experiential moment, we “baptize” converts, which implies “immersion.” But to me the word “emerse” seems to say it better (the prefix “i” or “e” determines the direction of the “merge”-- either “into” or “out from”). When you immerse, you dunk. The dipper forces the action, and the dippee sputters his consent. Emersion turns the action away from the catechizer to the catechete.

To be “born again” is something you experience, not something someone does to you. To symbolize the event and confirm its importance, John the Baptist, stressed ceremony. But let’s go behind the baptismal ceremony and revision the conviction. Jesus did not baptize people. John did it because he wasn’t Jesus. When Jesus used the birth metaphor, he did not say we are re-fetalized. He was describing the experience of emersion. We get “born right”; we consummate our birth; in the salvation moment we “emerse,” validating it by experiencing it. Expanding this example to apply to our journey through life, rather than being transported, we continue our trip from the birth canal eventually to "arrive" at the great sea. Our backpack of convictions becomes our skin and we “emerge,” as a swimmer lifting his head above water.

Doug Good

A Queer Reading of the Constitution: Church, State, and Gay Rights

2008-01-22T14:23:00.001-08:00

Mike Huckabee has stirred national attention by speaking in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages. The campaign trail is not where we will find this issue calmly analyzed. But I offer some historical perspective that may show the potato handed to us isn’t too hot to handle.

Those engaged on both sides of the current debate over the issue of separation of church and state in America like to quote the Constitution or refer to the Founding Generation to support their opposite positions. In taking opposite stances on interpreting the Constitution, both sides cannot be right. This should be the first clue to the possibility that some twisting of history to suit politics is occurring. Good history can easily straighten this out, but we can get ourselves turned in the right direction by a little common sense analysis first.

The proponents of “separation” go to the First Amendment as their mantra. But they have to take a statement of restraint (Congress shall not establish religion nor impede its free exercise) and pump it up to sound like a proclamation of principle. If anything, this clause simply proclaims a middle ground. It is a statement of protocol. If the authors of the amendment meant elimination of religion from the public square they would likely have actually used the word “separation.” The burden of proof for reading the amendment as imposing a wall of separation lies with those who argue this interpretation. The clause itself does not make the point. We need to call on history to help out here. But first, a look at the other side.

The opponents of “separation” say we began as a Christian nation, and our founding documents ring with the sentiments of our predominantly religious leaders. There is usually some confusion on this side as to where these ringing statements occur in the documents and which of our Fathers were examples of evangelical teachings. Unquestionably, our heritage is infused with religion, and of the Christian brand, but our early lawmakers were intent on making a framework for government that would meet civil needs and pass the test of time. If they were as good as we think they were at their task, we should not expect them to have periodized the Constitution or to have indoctrinized it. Again history can help us out here.

Actually the stand of our Founding Generation on the separation question is different than either side of the current debate imagines. For our Founders, separation of church and state did not mean bending backwards to eliminate religion from the public square. What they meant was that church and state each has its separate realm, but each needs the other--in other words church and state are on separate missions, but function in the same arena. This would explain why the First Amendment is phrased as mediation rather than elimination.

We don’t need to line up the folk of that time and count the number who spoke for or against religion. Unlike now, even most of the non-religious of that time acknowledged a God (of some kind), so a quote count proves little. The population in the colonies was not divided about the importance of religion. There was a consensus that religion is important. Indeed they felt that the prosperity and health of the state depends on religion’s active presence. But because piety is personal, the national leaders were determined that the state not define it. They felt that church and state have the same goals in America and should cooperate in achieving them. The success of one is critical to the success of the other. This theme was repeated over and over by the leading figures of our new nation. That generation felt strongly, and expressed widely, that the new democratic experiment would not succeed unless founded upon a virtuous citizenry. By virtuous they meant religious, but without specifying what kind of “religious.” And they were insistent (hence the First Amendment) that the kind of religion be unspecified by government.

The problem lies in how to work this out. Our task today is to approach this responsibly in dealing with our generation’s particular social and moral concerns. Making the Constitution a tool for moral reform is as appropriate and effective as throwing a textbook at a child as a way to teach him how to behave. Rules do not induce morality.

Today we are embroiled in questions of how to treat homosexuality in the public arena. Even if a ban on gay marriages were made a law of the land, it would not end homosexuality nor stop gay partnerships. But it would violate individual citizen rights, which is what the Constitution and Bill of Rights is all about. If homosexuality is immoral, it should be dealt with by the church community, which is the only instrument that could do anything about it anyway.

Historically, anytime the state gets involved in supporting church positions, the church is hurt. The Gospel has never been strengthened by any government, nor does it need state help. State help should be considered repugnant by the church. Look at what happened to Christianity after the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the state religion. A closer example is Massachusetts. When this state got around to disestablishing the Congregational church within its borders, which meant that taxes would no longer be used to support minister’s salaries, Lyman Beecher, the most prominent preacher of the time, protested loudly. What happened to the church when this connection was severed? It gained life.

The church and its people benefit from a sane and orderly society run by officials with integrity, but integrity is not promoted by government--it is promoted by family and church values. Government and legislation are rules and formulas, which are inanimate until implemented by officials. The kind of people in office determine the kind of rule that reigns. As our Founders knew, it is the church’s role to promote the moral character of the people, and if it can’t do this without the help of the state, we all are in trouble. When the church looks to the state to do the job for it, by parsing the rules, it is leaning on a rubber crutch. In leaving the task to periodized legislation, there is too much risk that unwise or unspiritual “Christians” will jeopardize American principles in the name of their personal prejudices.

Let the Constitution deal with the sound democratic principles for which our ancestors fought, without making it a compendium of detailed instructions. And simultaneously let the church rally to do its job with the power in which it specializes. For the church to ask the government to resolve the gay marriage problem will guarantee that it will clumsily step on the “principle” of individual rights. Let’s not damage the “rights” question by putting the wrong institution in charge of morality. To not pass a gay rights amendment will both assure that democracy prevails, and will force the church to step forward and clarify an issue that is in its domain to handle. For the church to support a gay rights amendment to the Constitution is a cop-out.

Let’s consider the suggested solution that aligns with this. Take “marriage” out of state hands. We need “licensing” of social behavior in a lot of areas for non-religious reasons (liquor licenses, drivers’ licenses, gun licenses). Let’s stamp lifestyle partnerships with the official title of “civil unions.” This would guarantee civil rights and equal benefits under law, and give the churches the exclusive role of sanctifying partnerships (or not) by granting the imprimatur of “marriage.” This should make it clear to everyone where “rights” and “morality” stem from, and the two domains would not have to fight each other.

I think Ben Franklin would approve. He holds a position in history as a Founding Father who, by strict standards, was “amoral” in his private life, while publicly promoting religious sentiments. He embraced a way to promote enlightened governing principles that protected individual rights while simultaneously assuring that religion would be free to work on heart matters. Why can’t we do the same? It is not surprising that those who pretend that Franklin was a special friend of evangelical Christianity, are often the same ones who would tamper with the Constitution that he was so crucial in getting implemented.

A better reading of the First Amendment is to see it as an attempt to honor all religions, allowing each variation an equal place in society to give its unique salve and substance to our democratic experiment. The Founding generation understood the difference between separation of church and state and cooperative separation. We could learn from them.

Doug Good

Labels Don't Help: Liberal or Conservative

2008-01-22T11:37:00.000-08:00

In American politics the labels liberal and conservative carry the load of identifying a person. We are in the midst of a Presidential election campaign, in which the conventional stereotype of Democrats as liberals and Republicans as conservatives is paraded before us. No Democratic candidate dares recommend conservatism, nor will you find any Republican pronounce himself a liberal. Campaigns do not welcome fine distinctions and differentiations. In the primary voting season, candidates of each party try to out-orthodox their competitors for label correctness, for fear of frightening the voters. They are not running for President; they are running for party leadership and its label carrying privileges.

In the heat of the contest, the liberal will call the conservative naïve, and the conservative will paint the liberal as unpatriotic. Ones on the outside ends of the spectrum think those in the center don’t have a real position on the issues. But to be on either end of the scale means you are extreme in the eyes of the majority, which includes both the middle and the other end. So, after the summer party conventions, the nominees, to be electable must move to the center, which translates into gray or mushy. What we really need is someone immune to labels, who knows how to counterbalance the weaknesses of both extremes, one who is comfortable in the center without appearing wishy-washy, but knows how to challenge tired ideas.

The labels, liberal and conservative, describe perspectival reflexes, not definitional categories. The difference between a liberal and conservative is not that they disagree about the perils of our times. It is that they flinch differently. They see the danger in different locations, or rather coming from different directions. The conservative sees the danger immediately in front of us; the liberal sees it over our shoulder. Each thinks the other is blind. The conservative thinks he is the realist, the practical one, who knows how to not only take care of the obvious problem quickly and hence, effectively, before it gets out of hand and preferably before it gets up any steam (that is, preemptively). The liberal thinks the conservative is too shortsighted to recognize the real problem. He feels we need to reject the quick fixes because they create more problems, and would rather we turn and recognize the full danger--deal with the root, not just the branches. Both sides have a point, but the best approach is to look both in front and behind (from the center) and not think one approach is more patriotic than the other.

The center is not where there is a windless, gutless softness; it is where there is a firm, undistorted, energy-filled wisdom. But it takes a special articulateness to stand there and not look as if you lack vigor and emotional energy.

Conventional wisdom on how to get elected eviscerates charisma and blurs integrity. Candidates are preened, adjusted and managed, until there is nothing left to admire. What we need is someone who cannot be labeled, who doesn’t care about labels, who is just himself or herself, who knows the attractiveness of energized composure.

Let us citizens look around and draft a person who already is what we are looking for. If a candidate would step forward and not kowtow to political correctness and labeling, he or she would quickly find the pulse of the people. At bottom, we all know what the country needs. The candidates should identify themselves as who they are, not who’s t-shirt they wear. They should brashly bare their wisdom. They will either flop or soar, labels be damned.

Doug Good

2008, A Year of Hope, Despite Appearances

2007-12-23T23:15:00.000-08:00

I had trouble this year when it came time to compose the usual Christmas letter for 2007. I could not get into the spirit of recounting our family’s fortunes and misfortunes. When Gloria looked at what I came up with, she said, “this is a blog; let me write the letter.” So I took her advice. Here is the blog that was rejected by my personal editor. As it turned out, my comments are reflections about where all of us are at the end of this year‘s run.

Despite many international troubles and intrigues, not to mention wars and rumors of wars, there is reason to be hopeful at this holiday season 2007. Watching the evening television version of the news and the sound bytes from celebrities, will not give this impression. But I have been looking around and noticing movement in the bushes and a stirring of the leaves above.

If you read the less titillating reports in section C of the newspaper, or subscribe to some of the niche magazines, or tune in to the more cerebral authors, you will notice a sub-current of some force, flowing in peaceful and spiritual directions. Don’t fret over institutional heads and leaders of enthusiasm, who have ordination and followings, but whose integrity can’t handle temptation and flattery. There, nevertheless, are many outside the religious scaffolding who are moving toward deeper understanding. Scientists on the front edge of research are finding meaning in life and fresh perspective on our creatureliness. Writers who have not been “indoctrinated” in human-led, career-path schools are discovering how the “spirit” leads. Regular people are beginning to understand our role in our planet-wide community. Get out and about and notice that, if we can keep a few from destroying us all meanwhile, the rest of us are waking up, maybe just in time.

It is not hard to notice, if you are looking, that times are speeding up. There are more scientists leaning over their lab tables and manipulating their computers at this very moment, than have existed, cumulatively, since the beginning of recorded history. What would you expect? Instant global communication is changing human relationships, in our young peoples’ generation, in such a way that the greater portion of human beings are not so easily fooled by the power grabbing, ill motivated CEO’s and political leaders. I’m told that the advance of human potential, genetically and mentally, has not reached its peak but is on a sharp upturn.

My upbringing taught me to expect the long awaited return of Christ to be fulfilled soon. I believe this. But I think the biblical metaphors, while genuine, yet are unrefined attempts to describe what likely is happening already. Jesus’ birth was a heralding event for those who knew, or subsequently learned about him. God’s kingdom--the universe and God’s pervading presence--is not distant. It’s approach, in our awareness, if not already, is going to astound us. It is a joyous time and exciting to watch. I’m not predicting, for time is a crude, illusory tool of measure. I’m merely tuning in.

Have a happy and surprising New Year. Look for new things.

Doug

INDEX: Archived in Year 2007

2007-12-23T22:34:00.000-08:00

Articles: (Title, alphabetically, and month posted)

1. Burning Truth at the Stake (January)
2. Bully Pulpit (November)
3. Dead Voices Still Speak (January)
4. The “Democracy Attitude” (November)
5. Did You Know? America, A Christian Nation (April)
6. Functional Disjunction: Do You Believe What You
Know About Iraq (November)
7. Giving Truth a Good Back Massage (September)
8. God and the President: A Theology of Criticism (January)
9. How To Lose By Winning (January)
10.How To Think About Iraq (March)
11.How To Parse Bush-Speak (April)
12. Insult-proof Your Intelligence (April )
13. Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire (October)
14. Lincolns are Made By Ford (January)
15. The Magic of Talking Points: A case study (July)
16. Pardon Me, But Didn’t the Constitutional Writers
Make a Mistake? (August)
17. A Play on Words (February)
18. Spinning Dogs: On Understanding Freedom (February)
19. Square blocks in round holes (February)
20. Three Buckets of Air (March)
21. War is Hell (January)
22. What Has Nancy Pelosi Been Smoking? (May)
23. What's the Matter With Energy? (February)
24. 2008, A Year of Hope (December)

Topics: (With first word of article title where found)

9/11 (Democracy; Liar)
Adams, John (God)
Adam and Eve (God)
African Americans (Bully)
Ali, Muhammad (Bully; Democracy)
America (Democracy)
Bible (Burning)
Bin Laden, Osama (Liar)
Brown, John (Bully; Democracy)
Bullies (Bully;)
Bush, George W. (Bully; Democracy; Functional; Liar; Magic;
Did; How to Parse; Play; Square; How to Lose; Dead)
Christian Nation (Did; God)
CIA (How to Parse)
Clinton, Bill (Liar; Magic)
Clinton, Hillary (Magic)
Colonization (What has)
Consciousness (What’s the)
Constitution, U.S. (Pardon)
Darwinism (Giving)
Democracy (Bully; Democracy)
DeTocqueville (Democracy)
Douglass, Frederick (Bully; Democracy)
Dualism (What’s the; Spinning)
Dyson, Freeman (Giving)
Ego (What’s the)
Eckhart, Meister (Spinning)
Energy (What’s the)
Evangelicalism (Did)
Fear (Democracy)
Federalist Party (God)
Ford, Gerald (Lincolns)
Foreign Prisons (How to Parse)
Founding Fathers (Bully; Did; Founding)
Freedom (Spinning)
Garden of Eden (God)
Genetic Drift (Giving)
Gingrich, Newt (God)
God (What’s the; God; Burning)
Gonzales, Alberto (How to Parse)
Good Samaritan (What has)
Gore, Al (Bully)
Grant, Ulysses (God )
Hobbes, Thomas (Dean)
Honesty (How to Parse; Liar)
Hussein, Saddam (Liar; How to Parse)
Illegal Immigrants (What has)
Iraq War (Bully; Functional; Liar; Insult; Three; How to Think;
Play; How to Lose; War; Democracy)
Jefferson, Thomas (Did; God)
Jesus Christ (Bully; Giving; God)
Johnson, Lyndon (Liar)
Jubilee Year (What has)
Justice (What has)
Libby, Lewis Scooter (Magic)
Lies (Liar)
Lincoln, Abraham (God, Lincolns)
Literalism (Burning)
Matter (What’s the)
Mysticism (Spinning)
Napoleon (God and)
Native Americans (What has)
Nixon, Richard (Liar)
Oval Office (God)
Pardons (Magic, Lincolns, Pardon)
Pelosi, Nancy (What has)
Peter, Apostle (Bully)
Physics (What’s the)
Plame, Valerie (How to Parse)
Pig Latin (How to Parse)
President, U.S. (God)
Presidential Pardons (Pardon; Magic; Lincolns)
Radical Right (God and)
Reincarnation (Giving)
Religion (Did)
Rich vs. Poor gap (What has)
Separation of Church & State (Did)
Soul (What’s the)
Spirit (What’s the)
Spiritual Politics (What’s the)
State of the Union (Democracy; A Play; Square)
Surge Plan (Liar; Insult; Three; How to Think)
Terrorism (Bully; Democracy; Play; How to Lose)
Theology (What’s the)
Torture (How to Parse)
Trail of Tears (What has)
Tree of Knowledge (God)
Troop Withdrawal (Insult)
Truman, Harry (Liar)
Truth (Giving; Burning)
Washington, George (God )
Weapons of Mass Destruction (How to Parse)
War on Terror (Democracy; Liar)
Zukov, Gary (Giving)

Bully Pulpit: A sequel to “The Democracy Attitude” blog.

2007-11-25T22:42:00.000-08:00

A reader of my earlier blog on “The Democracy Attitude,” took exception to something I wrote. I decided merely logging in a “comment” at the foot of that blog would be too terse to handle my added thoughts. So here is a sequel.

To introduce this addendum, I reiterate my thesis: Participatory government--government by the people--makes accessible a deep reservoir of wisdom and resources. As colonialists, we found that rule by a distant Parliament in which we had no voice, and a king insensitive to our interests did not suit us. Our “democratic attitude” inspired our Rebellion and set the foundation stone of our new government. The energy and vitality that this concept induces, explains our rise to prosperity and international influence. I then took this thesis and related it to the current terrorist crisis we are now facing. My conclusion was that we are selling our strengths short by succumbing to fear and desperate military action as our means of response to the terrorist bullies.

At this point, my interested reader reacted forcefully by labeling my point about how to handle “bullies” as idealistic. If we don’t rise to the fight, he said, we will take a pounding before help arrives. Any efforts to talk the bully out of slugging us won’t work, so we have only the choice of cowardly running away, or fighting. Fighting is the “better” solution, because running is a failure of courage.

The problem with this answer is that it assumes the test of “better” is “courage.” I say courage is for the action phase, after what is “better“ has been decided. Planning and making choices is not courage‘s thing. Courage cannot guarantee to make things “work” or turn out well. So depending upon courage to make up for bad decisions is irresponsible leadership, to say it politely. But we can argue courage in another blog. My point was that a “democracy attitude” is more powerful than a “meet me in the alley” attitude--and ultimately more realistic. I am not idealistic at all. Here is why.

The commenter referenced the survival-on-the-playground experience to which we all can relate. My playground experience taught me the importance of keeping an eye on the troublemaker so as not to be blindsided. But I also learned that alertness combined with agility can easily make the muscle-bound hulk irrelevant. Sidestepping is always an available, even honorable, strategy at the moment of challenge. In fact, a slippery, evasive runner on the football field, or the basketball player who is good in traffic, is admired for this superior physical skill.

Then, too, I have also observed that the bully is normally surrounded by the weak, the blind, and assorted sycophants. The more fight-prone the bully is, the fewer quality friends he has. He is always on a bankrupt course, because he inevitably isolates himself from the playground population by his abrasive personality and careening techniques. He will have his moments of sway, but only to the extent that the rest of us, the majority, are caught off-guard or live in a stupor. There is no greater failure a tormentor can endure than the failure to scare up anyone who will fight him. He creates a scene because it gives him apparent standing when otherwise he is irrelevant. Bullies need to be contained because they are ticking explosive devices, but a little cleverness, off-stage, is startlingly successful against them. The best way to hamstring a bully is to fight him in ways he knows nothing about.

Allow me to diverge with personal testimony about how I have applied my playground diploma on different terrain. I have had three experiences on the highway with road-rage over fender-bender incidents. In one I was physically handled; in another my antagonist pounded my car because I wouldn’t roll down my window; in the third the other guy invited me to step behind his truck to settle the argument decisively. I defused each incident without as much as raising my hand, yet without backing off. I simply used a weapon my opponents were not counting on and knew nothing about. I rendered them helpless before me. I ignored them. Their fuse fizzled out for lack of oxygen. This real account displays only one method, but it highlights the basic poverty of the standard bully’s repertoire.

Bullies depend on their personal power of intimidation. Intimidation is an attitude. Each of us has the power, from birth, to choose our attitudes. Because of unfortunate parentage, dysfunctional upbringing, physical or mental handicaps, or wrenching bad luck, millions of us know little else than powerlessness and chronic defeat. We need the help of those who have attained position and wisdom. Our bullies need to be handled for us. But that is what leaders are for. If we have not learned yet how to direct the energy of our attitudes, we can always gravitate intentionally toward (and vote for) those who understand this advanced power. Attitude costs nothing; it is free. It only needs to be adopted (or befriended). We choose it, and it goes to work. Once we commit ourselves to an attitude, it operates automatically and effortlessly. You just tune it in and it melts the opposition, for good or bad. (I‘m not talking here about name-it-and-claim-it materialism.)

Here is how it works. Because a good attitude is sunny and open, it recognizes synchronicities that bad attitudes miss. A good attitude “lets the game come to it.” This confidence frees it to be counter intuitive when this is useful--an approach Muhammad Ali used to good effect with his rope-a-dope tactic--yielding to a disadvantage while waiting for opportunity to show itself. Democracy and “good attitude” are natural confederates. Both are high-minded, relaxed yet energized, interactive, and confident (of assets and potentialities).

A bad attitude can be very intimidating, but only where there is no challenge from competing (stronger) attitudes. With a bad attitude, one can easily create destruction and damage. But a good attitude has greater attractive power and ultimately greater resources. We all know this; we just forget it at the moment of an emotional hit.

One historical example will nail the point--an example of poignant victimization. In his autobiography Frederick Douglass, an enslaved African American in our pre-Civil War South, tells of his experience of loss of identity and brutal treatment at the hands of a cruel master. After one particularly severe beating, he had an epiphany, a moment of clarity. He saw he had a choice of acquiescence or rebellion. He knew he could not win by physical confrontation. But he could choose the “attitude” of rebellion and edge his way toward other methods, methods supported by crowds of people (once educated to the idea). As a run-away, he attached himself to like-minded rebels, the anti-slavery group, and became a sensational, national speaker. Eventually his legal freedom was bought for him by friends, and he was looked to for singular attitude leadership.

John Brown, a white rebel against slavery with an “attitude” problem, solicited Douglass’ assistance in a planned armed uprising. Douglass recognized the folly of this approach and refused to give aid in this way. (Brown had courage; Douglass had wisdom.)

The fight against slavery, though, escalated into civil war, as other immature national leaders allowed us to slip into armed combat. Abraham Lincoln found himself President with a nation torn apart, his hands tied by the responsibilities of his job as commander-in-chief. But he clearly was a leader with an “attitude” closer to that of the real victim--Frederick Douglass--than the bully John Brown. Yes, Brown was a classic bully (check on his Kansas murders), even though he claimed a good cause. He ended where all bullies end, in ignominy. Lincoln, on the other hand, was elevated to international admiration by his “attitude” of malice toward none.

Meanwhile, the Union government ended legal slavery after conquest in battle, but it did not defeat it. The real issue, discrimination and victimization, still is alive and stirring. The “democracy attitude” has means for dealing with this problem, just as it has means for dealing with today’s international “terrorist” problem. It remains to be seen whether America has gained enough maturity to recognize the power of civic saintliness in contrast to the bankruptcy of belligerence, and whether today we know a Lincoln (who hated war and knew how to publicly model commiseration) when we see one.

At least the grantors of the Nobel Peace Prize knew the difference between a Martin Luther King, Jr., and a John Brown, and the contrast between an Al Gore and a George W. Bush.

Al Gore would be well advised not to run for President again; he could end up as agonized over the constraints of his job definition as Lincoln did. He clearly has the “democracy attitude,” as is evident in his recent book, The Assault On Reason.

Victory over bullies calls for visionaries, not heroes. Our leaders are chosen by election, so our future depends on enlightened, savvy, mature citizens whose “attitudes” are bedded in democracy, not in a culture of cowboy gun-slinging. Bullies only have “power” by our permission. When bullies threaten, even the President cannot save us by a fighting attitude. As a people, we may prevail by applying “attitude” resources that are not wired to threats. But we must first be virtuous and able to recognize the power of our virtue when the President and an uncommitted Congress fail us. An early step would be to vote for a “democracy attitude” President, one who does not make decisions in his drawing room, but turns to the people where the strength of our system lies. Lincoln provided the template. He was not merely a war President, nor a mere idealist. He did not just save us from slaveholding bullies. He consciously embroidered his crisis leadership, start to finish, with an “attitude” that struck a resounding blow against pessimism, cynicism, and moral anemia. He knew these were more serious threats to democracy than slaveholding bullies. He was not overcome by the desperations of the moment. Were he alive today, I believe he would have the same opinion about our terrorist bullies.

Knowledgeable Christians might remember that fight-happy Peter was not in charge of the trump card at the Garden of Gethsemane attitude-moment. To draw a parallel, the Bush Administration Iraq policy, rather than being a reflection of crucifixion Christianity, might be accurately tagged as “Petrianity at work.” It seems to be working as well as Peter’s playground strategy. Christ exercised no bully pulpit attitude. Which approach do you think was realistic, and more effective?

(P.S. Please note that in none of the above am I arguing for inaction; I stand for aggressive, but responsible, mature, hence practical, action.)

Doug Good

The “Democracy Attitude”: What America Is All About

2007-11-21T15:22:00.000-08:00

If one word captures the essence of the American experience and the heritage of our past, it is democracy. All of us know from our grade school lessons that a quick definition of this word is: government by the people, rather than rule by a king.

But the wonder of the word, as Alexis deTocqueville once noted, lies in its effectiveness, or lack thereof. Laws in America, he said, “are almost always defective or unseasonable.” But, “the great privilege of the Americans is to be able to make retrievable mistakes.” This French admirer/critic, judged our system as frustratingly inefficient; yet as a free people, he witnessed, we are energetically resolute. We typically are entrepreneurs chasing the next opportunity, optimistic about enjoying the fortunes of our land and the genius of our people. But with less interest in pausing to catch our breath, we count on the details taking care of themselves. When our lives get too complicated, we move and start over. Or if there is a threat from outside, our military leaders (Washington, Grant, Eisenhower) and our technology (the atomic bomb), along with the aroused spirit of the people have prevailed (until recently).

Actually, more than we might admit, luck has carried us through much of our 231 independent years. We have had space, abundant natural resources, virtuous ancestors, geographical isolation. Until mid-20th century we have not had to take stock of the inefficient and immature part of our democratic practices. We have long enjoyed freedom of action for our vaunted individualism, and in times of crisis charismatic leaders have stepped forward to channel the energies and will of the people. Meanwhile we have prospered and preached our principles abroad.

We have lived in the family of humanity as the charmed “golden boy” among nations. But have reached the age of accountability. With Vietnam, and now Iraq, our antics are no longer “cute.” My intent is not to thrash our record, but to call attention to what America is really about, so that we might identify the power within our heritage to fight our foes more effectively and honorably than with the self-destructive forces of primal intimidation.

Today the threat of terrorism is serious. The attack on the World Trade Towers in 2001 was of crisis magnitude. But with Tocqueville’s characterization of us in mind, as a people we aroused ourselves and urged the President to respond to the threat, by going after the known perpetrator harbored by the Afghanistan regime. We quelled (temporarily) the Afghanistan intransigence, and the Al Qaeda organization has held back from a repeat attack on our cities.

Our Executive leader, announced that his response to the 9/11 attack would define his administration, but in his restricted understanding of what America is about, he envisioned himself as the man of the hour who would play the role of our past wartime Presidents. Mr. Bush thinks our strength as a country rests on military heroism. He is unaware that our expanse of power rests on a broader base of qualities enwrapped in our democratic republic. Militarism is a hangover from the ancient Greek heritage that held the highest virtue to be courage, displayed most magnificently by a warrior in combat. We should know by now that militarism unleashed is destructive of culture, morality and ultimately, with today’s technological force, humanity itself.

What is enduring and constructive from the Greek record is the “democracy attitude.” In the 3000-year run-up to the United States’ embodiment of democracy in our Constitution and its “idea,” the concept of democracy has blossomed on the stem. It is more than a political form; it is an attitude of respect and relationship. Behind the matinee of politics, Americans have been busy hustling, striving, risking, cooperating, as we dared much, prayed much, suffered, and played together, enjoying the vigor of accomplishment and mutual encouragement. Democracy has given us the true courage and confidence that translates into an indomitable power that leads by honoring each other’s gifts and creativity, spun together into the bright fabric of triumph over the gray, tragic and pitiable manipulations of warring contenders.

Listening to the current President’s tiresome talk about fear (the theme of more than ½ of his latest State of the Union Address) is an example of someone who “doesn’t get it,” despite being born and raised in America. To Mr. Bush, strong means forceful--the visceral and empty talk of adolescence. Democracy in its mature form means unparalleled power resident in citizen numbers far larger than any army will ever muster, power capable of exerting a rush of influence in every aspect of political, economic, moral, and cultural activities of living together, once recognized and aroused. Bush has no idea of how much power is available to him if only he were better tutored.

If the existence of our nation is at stake, let us reach for our weapons of true strength, the overwhelming weapons of genuine virtue, and the positive character traits that have given us our national prosperity. Terrorism is a demanding problem masquerading as a threat. But if we want to talk about the endurance of our democratic experiment and the existence of the American civilization, the real threat is much more complicated than profiling, stereotyping, lists of most-wanteds, secrecy, and torturing, . Why let the terrorists choose our weapons for us? If they knew anything about real power, they wouldn’t need to be terrorists.

Those who counsel war are supreme pessimists. They pronounce their superiority; they bluster; their confidence is practiced. The truly confident do not need to pronounce and cheerlead. The confident don’t need war victories in order to be dominant. Those who know the source of power simply hold true to their greatness and let it work for them. This is not inaction, it is wisdom applied to the base, not the surface of the problem. Real optimism, the optimism potent in democracy, doesn’t worry; it studies, plans and draws on collective wisdom and unity of spirit.
Pessimism, by contrast, is always under threat, and tends to act on impulse and out of desperation--which is what one does when there is only one arrow in the quiver.

Terrorists are a real concern, but they are wanna-be’s. They have no program, they have no morality, they have no integrity, no nation. We ought to be wisely wary, but there is no need to get the shakes and desperately shoot ourselves in the foot.

The real threat is not from the terrorists. The real threat is that we will forget who we are --the enlightened progeny of those birthed in democracy. Why put our heritage at risk, just to play cops and robbers as children holding real guns. Why chip away at our inheritance. Why use Constitutional planks for kindling a fire when the only chill is from ignorance of our own robust heritage. It is time to put the games and mistakes of our immature past aside, and become the real leaders of the democracy attitude on the international stage. The real heroes are those who have the courage to grow up. There are other pressing “threats” than terrorism to be dealing with.

At this Thanksgiving season, let us bask in the serendipity of the “democracy attitude” and be thankful that we have more promising options than war.

Doug Good

Functional Disjunction: Do You “Believe” What You “Know” About Iraq?

2007-11-21T15:01:00.000-08:00

Recently I conducted an interesting exercise in my classes. I passed out a self-check quiz regarding the war in Iraq. I had compiled an imposing list of statements commonly made by President Bush or his spokespersons about the war, defending the Administration’s policies there. I asked the students to mark as “true” those statements with which they agreed and to leave the rest blank.

Then on a separate check sheet I listed a number of statements about the details of the situation in Iraq, and asked them to mark the ones that they considered valid or “true.” I requested they fill in the two sheets separately, and did not tell them that the statements on the second sheet had to be true in order to validate Bush’s policies. In other words, the second sheet listed, in matching numerical order, the assumptions underlying the Administration’s proclaimed positions.

After they finished marking their sheets, I told them to put the two sheets side by side, with the item numbers lining up. To be consistent, their marks on the two sheets should match--the Administration statements and the underlying assumptions should agree. If they marked the Administration statements as true, they should have marked the matching assumption as true. If they felt the Administration’s position was wrong, they should have recognized the assumption as invalid. If their statement and their assumption marks did not match, it would be a sign of confused thinking, or maybe the absence of thought. This was not a test of whether the President’s policies are “right,” but only if one’s opinions about Iraq follow from the assumptions that one considers valid. Without mental consistency, you will be hard pressed to back up what you believe.

The results:
In reality, a strong case could be made that all of the “assumptions” are wrong, or at the very least, questionable. If a Bush critic marked any of the assumptions as valid, his or her rational processes needed examining. And by the same token, any instance where a Bush supporter recognized an assumption to be wrong, a mismatch popped up on his sheet, revealing the confused thinking. For both sides, a mismatch exposed a disjunction between belief and knowledge.

About 1/3 of my students evidenced confusion--some supporters and some critics. Most of the Administration critics turned in blank sheets, which meant their positions and assumptions matched. But the inconsistent thinkers were predominantly Bush supporters. It looks as if our CAO (Chief Articulating Officer) has more explaining to do.

In case you want to glance over the “statement/assumption” list, it follows here in paired form. If you are a logical thinker, the statements with their assumptions should in most cases either make total sense, or total nonsense. How does it look to you? There might be room for discussion between the extremes, but the degree to which the matching is optimal is possibly a measure of the clarity of your thought processes, regardless of which side of the controversy you have chosen to champion. Check yourself.

Bush Administration’s Military Policy In Iraq

1. Our war machine (troops, fire power, technology) can win the war.
Assumption: All we need is more soldiers, more money, and more time.

2. Pulling out our troops will send Iraq into political chaos and precipitate civil war.
Assumption: There is neither chaos nor civil war now present in Iraq

3. While our troops have been present in Iraq, progress toward a stable, democratic self-government has been made
Assumption: The Iraqi leaders have shown both the skill and willingness to resolve their
disagreements.

4. Stabilization of the Iraqi government depends on the presence of our troops.
Assumption: The only obstacle to a smooth and stable government is terrorist violence.

5. Pulling our troops out prematurely will cancel all we have accomplished.
Assumprion: We have accomplished a lot in weakening Al Qaeda, training Iraqi soldiers

to take our place, and persuading the Iraqi politicians to cooperate.
Assumption: Important strides have been made in repairing the Iraqi infrastructure.

6. We did Iraq a huge favor by toppling Saddam Hussein..
Assumption: The Iraqi people appreciate the improved situation they now experience and

want us to stay and continue our good work.

7. Things over-all will get worse if we leave.
Assumption: Things aren’t so bad now.

8. Our withdrawal will increase Iran’s involvement and enhance its influence in the
Middle East.
Assumption: Our presence in Iraq has effectively restrained Iran’s involvement.
Assumption: Our military success in Iraq is the only way to keep Iran under wraps.

9. Someone has to do something, so we should be the one.
Assumption: Other countries are backing us in our role as “intervener.”
Assumption: A country always furthers its best interests by going it alone.
Assumption: We are respected internationally for our principled stands.

10. The threat to America is primarily and strategically in Iraq; we have to respond.
Assumption: Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attack on New York.

11. If we don’t fight Al Quaeda in Iraq, we will fight them here.
Assumption: It is easier, safer, less expensive and more effective to fight them on

someone’s else’s terrain.
Assumption: We lose fewer lives when we take the fight to them.

12. If we pull out the insurgents will take over.
Assumption: Insurgency has yet to gain an upper-hand. Civil violence is waning.

13. By our efforts freedom has taken root in Iraq.
Assumption: Enduring freedom comes to a nation as a gift.

14. Leaving will make us look weak and uncertain.
Assumption: Our 4 & 1/2 years of war in Iraq has established our superior power and

impressed the world with our effective leadership.

15 Leaving would destabilize the government of Iraq.
Assumption: The Iraq government is not already in trouble.

16. Stick with the plan--US military engagement. We don’t have another.
Assumption: Nobody but the President has offered other ideas--not any Army generals,

not any members of Congress, not any presidential candidates, not any journalists, authors

or commentators.

Doug Good

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

2007-10-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

One of the hot subjects in discussions swirling around the current President is whether he has lied to the American public about Iraq. Just entertaining this question is guaranteed to arouse emotion. No one wants to be called a liar, and anyone lied to hates it.

We don’t often bring the President of the United States into such discussions, but the question of honesty is evidenced as a low grade fever in all of us in everyday matters. Ever since I was caught as a youngster with stolen goods in my possession, I have tried, with mixed success, to stay clean. (I took money from my dad’s loose change box in his dresser drawer. I was caught when all those dimes and nickels spilled out of my shirt pocket onto the kitchen floor as I was playing with a toy. I explained that a lady on the street gave it to me. I haven’t gotten better at explaining away my sins, but I have studied the art.) It would be hypocritical of me to be too rough on George W. Bush, but because of the heightened location of his perch, I don’t consider it inappropriate to consider the wide impact of his pronouncements. Here are some thoughts that might help put the current political storm over Bush’s handling of terrorism in a less emotional, thus more enlightening, context.

Not long ago an incident caused me to think more directly about how one can tell when another person is lying. I had been cited for running a red light. At my court appearance, I was stunned to hear the police officer blatantly lie to the judge about the details of the moment. (You may not believe my story after my confession of youthful theft, but the light was green when I passed the sitting police car. The officer was confused about the timing of the light-change when the car in front of her at the intersection did not move immediately after the light turned green.) I happened to be teaching an ethics class at the time (yes I, of all people), and after being ruled guilty I wrote a letter to the judge, tongue in check, inviting him to come to my class as a guest speaker on how a judge discerns which witnesses are telling the truth. (Amazingly he accepted the invitation, but proved to have no words of wisdom--which I might have expected.)

I did learn one lesson from that traffic court event. People tend to believe lies because the person lying represents things the listener values and identifies with. I have been told by lawyers that police officers lie in court often (and I have been told by law officials that lawyers are notable for incompetence). In the face of contrasting testimony, and because a choice has to be made on the spot, the judge--in traffic court at least--will always rule in favor of the person wearing the law enforcement uniform.

As a human being myself with average experience at “face saving,” and high credentials at manipulative dissembling, I offer the following comments.

It may seem that one either tells lies or does not tell lies. But if George Bush is as human as the rest of us, I suppose sometimes he tells lies and sometimes he doesn't. Or he may lie and just not know it, though not knowing it doesn’t transform a lie into the truth. In the end it is a question of how we define a "lie." Lies can range widely from courteous white ones (e.g., “your new baby is so cute”) to malicious black ones. What it comes down to is where one wants to place Mr. Bush on the spectrum--where a particular statement of his shows on the chart or where his prevarications cluster. His admirers will see him closer to the white end and his critics find him near the black. The President is not so perfect as to be outside the force-field of deception. If lies send one to hell, Bush is in danger--or not. For the rest of us, we need only be concerned about the heaven or hell Bush creates for us by his pronouncements.

George W. Bush is not the first President to be given a pass because his believers want uncomplicated answers, and “he is the President.” The moment when the average citizen, diehard supporters of Richard Nixon abandoned him, was when they read the transcripts of the famous oval office tape recordings and discovered the President was a nasty swearer in personal conversations. Many Americans were willing to believe whatever Nixon told us until he showed that his statements were cynical and self-serving. Until, and if, we reach that point with George Bush, the debate over Iraq will not be enhanced by calling him a liar. He may be one, but there are more serious reasons for questioning his leadership and more effective ways to scrutinize his integrity.

After 9/11 the President said the World Trade Towers terrorist attack, and our response, "will define my Administration." Embracing military action, Bush eagerly donned the cloak of War President, expecting to win in battle. Prudence dictates that before we enter any kind of combative engagement we need to understand our opponent and what our purpose is for fighting. It is the President's job to define and articulate this. This is where the question of Bush's honesty comes into the picture. What did the President mean by the word “win”?

Mr. Bush has struggled to express his understanding of the definition of “winning.” But he has only given us synonyms. When we couldn't find Osama bin Laden, he widened the arena to include another "terrorist"--Saddam Hussein. So winning became conquering Iraq, as if Hussein was "synonymous" to bin Laden. When the mission proved not to be accomplished, the synonym became regime change--capturing and killing Hussein. When his death seemed to have little effect on our "war on terror," winning was redefined to mean the establishment of democracy in Iraq, which unfortunately meant assuring a stable self-government there first. When this became demonstrably difficult, Bush reluctantly (refer to his 2007 State of the Union Address and my blog, “A Play On Words”) tried substituting the synonym, success. With the recent mid-surge report, the concept of "success" took center stage--though backstage, in press conferences and interviews, the President still trots out the word "win." We must win; we will win; we are winning; hang in there.

The President is modelling for us the moral principle that if you want something, just claim it. The truth of your claim rests on how important it is for it to be true. If the claim doesn't hold up, reword it.

None of this synonymizing passes as "definition" of the word, win, nor does it reveal what is behind the haze of these dissembling remarks. And this is the problem. Fights are won by the use of the best weapons available. As a weapon, slushy (possibly suspicious) purposes and careening definitions are no match for the challenges on the ground in Iraq.

In his oral autobiography Harry Truman once said that those familiar with Nixon knew long before he was President that he was a habitual liar. One of Lyndon Johnson’s biographers called him a pathological liar. Lying is a character trait. But like the alcohol problem, some people are able to function despite the decrepitude. Lying is a cover for lack of other more sophisticated talents. Alleging that Bush lies certainly heats up the Iraq dispute. But we can not impeach a President for lying--it is not a “high” enough crime. We need to go beyond the question of whether Bush lies. I suggest we suspend judgment and ask tougher questions.

The question comes into better focus when we ask directly, can he do his job even if he may be harboring a character deficiency? If he doesn’t have the tools to lead without lying, specifically where has he failed? Question his deeds instead of his words. Go deeper. Don’t waste time on “he said, she said’s.” Dealing with liars is frustrating, but they flame out eventually on their own. The more effective approach is to go around them and render them irrelevant. We all knew Bill Clinton lied, but the Senate acquitted him of impeachment charges because they accepted his level of competence on the job. If Bush’s stance on Iraq is incompetent, Congress should be indicted for not taking charge of policy. The Constitution gives them the tools! At the level of warmaking the Commander-in-Chief only implements strategy. Policy is above strategy, and is in the Congressional domain (where the people speak). Congress has taken the lead before in our history when the President proved ineffective. Character assassination meanwhile is underkill.

The President, to me, holds no privileged position of believability. His "office" does not convince me. My judgment of him, whether I think he lies or not and by what definition, in the end will depend on the transparency of his statements and his ability to convince, taken in conjunction with knowledge of the facts from independent sources. The best practice is to weigh the words of all who have information along with their record of credibility.

So what do you think? Is George W. Bush a liar? I have my opinion. But even if I doubt his honesty, a liar can always plead good intentions or even ignorance. But if you get my point, what counts is whether he is rational and sensible. Personal slurs will fade with time. Bush may be a nice guy and may believe his own insincerities, but he will be well advised to get help with his memoirs, because I sense the historians are circling over his accumulating record like hungry vultures.

Doug Good

Giving Truth A Good Back-Massage

2007-09-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

I’ve been massaging an idea. It’s time to try to express it . . . here comes.

I recently read a book, The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav. Most of what he says is compatible with New Testament concepts. But it comes across fresh to me, and thus stimulating, because he is by no means an evangelical and uses very few of the buzzwords, which by their overuse tend to become insipid. Zukav is connected to no religious group as far as I know, and is neutral among theological orientations, so I won’t offend anyone, except those who equate neutrality with bankruptcy, when I say this author presents spiritual truths that are echoes of Christ’s teachings.

But my point is more about Zukav’s method than his message. He has cast his message in a particular framework. Reincarnation provides part of the skeletal form for his structure. But isn’t this just what everyone does who espouses a theology or ideology, whether it is Calvinism, Wesleyanism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, Christian Science, Darwinism, Marxism? Each theorist takes what he perceives and structures it so as to make some sense. I haven’t met a Protestant denomination yet, or any other religion, that makes 100% sense. And as I read more widely, I see the basic truths of the New Testament cropping up in all kinds of other frameworks--Zukav’s being one. I don’t have to swear allegiance to his framework any more than I have to fall on the sword of forward-dunking for baptism.

What jolted me into reaching for a ladle (pen) and lifting this thought out of the soup was a statement in another book, Freeman Dyson's, Infinite In All Directions. (I had seen another book by Zukav at a used book store, so I went looking for it, and Dyson’s was right there staring at me, for only $4--I couldn’t resist. One book leads to 2 more. I think God fashioned eternity knowing this trend would get geometrically out of hand for some of us slow readers.) Dyson refers to a Japanese geneticist, M. Kimura, who by mathematical calculations has theorized that “random statistical fluctuations have been more important than Darwinian selection in causing species to evolve.” He calls this genetic drift. Dyson thinks Kimura overstates his case, but the sentence that grabbed my eyes was, “I find [Kimura’s] theory helpful even though I do not accept it as dogma . . . Even if [it] is not true in general, it may be a useful approximation to make [better] models...” .

Every individual’s insights are going to be toned by his or her experiences, training, personality, and each expression of insight that all may feel in common is going to be slightly off and slightly appealing, depending on who is listening. In other words, to not give attention to variations on a theme locks one into a less than perfect understanding and blocks any advance toward a closer understanding of truth. I am not saying truth is relative, though a solipsist might charge me with this. Better to say we relate to truth as we watch others relate their truths.

Of course, if you want your followers to open their wallets to you, you will need them to buy into your whole theological package. No one gives money to a salesman full of qualfications. But I don’t want a salesman giving me my “last rites” either.

Doug Good