Fundamentals

Sic Transit Gloria Meehan: Delusions of grandeur from a New Jersey Republican vigilante

2011-12-31T22:21:00.002-06:00

Everyone knows that it is more fun to comment on the posts of a well-regarded blogger who draws a good deal of attention. What's the point of sticking to your own site when nobody bothers to read it? Rod Dreher's pages at The American Conservative magazine is one of the more popular and highly regarded. But sometimes a discussion can spin out of control. Like a raging argument between two invited guests at a dinner party, it needs to be removed from the premises, to the corner bar, or the driveway of one of the antagonists.

An aging vigilante living on fantasies of past glory, going by the name of Thomas O. Meehan, takes perverse enjoyment in finding blogs populated by those he characterizes as "all manner of fantasists, humbugs and inadequates." Those are his own words, and by his own words, he seems to fit all three descriptions himself. It is not, otherwise, clear why he cares to waste his time engaging with fantasists, humbugs and inadequates.

Dreher posted some doubts that requiring photo ID to vote is racist. Although few offering comments directly thought is was racist, many challenged the wisdom, propriety, and necessity, of imposing such a condition on the exercise of the franchise.

Very late in a lengthy discussion, Meehan began hinting that he had been part of a glorious effort to document and curtail voter fraud, a great citizen uprising which had single-handedly paved the way for a Republican to be elected governor of New Jersey. Pressed for details, Meehan slowly and begrudgingly offered something approximating a factoid or two, of gradually increasing specificity. Hard pressed, he eventually was even gracious enough to identify the year of the election, and the candidates.

Sorting out claims of fact from a matrix of bombastic rhetoric, Meehan would have anyone who read his account believe that:

In 1982, an unelected, voluntary organization styling itself the "Ballot Security Task Force" mailed post cards to registered voters in Newark and Trenton, New Jersey. It is not clearly whether he claims that 45,000 of a much larger sample, or 100% of 45,000 cards mailed, were returned marked with some variation on "No such person at this address." This task force, Meehan boasts "brought good government to New Jersey in the person of Thomas Kean."

How did this happen? Meehan offers various versions, but the more cutting edge claim is "We forced a recount that threw out enough bogus votes to elect an honest governor." More emphatically, "We challenged them at the polls and we had more than enough legal grounds to force a recount based on State Law." Meehan further specified "The purpose of the recount was to prove that the contested votes (lists) were indeed invalid." The recount, he insists, "succeeded in challenging more than enough of those fraudulent votes to form a government."

Further pressed, Meehan offered a series of suggested Google search terms, and later, specific links to news coverage. What searches and links revealed was a very different story.

The post cards were sent to addresses from a voter list that was several years out of date, not the list actually in use for elections in 1982. Naturally, many voters registered in past years had moved, and were no longer at these addresses. Because the list used was out of date, the commissioners of registration declined to investigate the loudly trumpeted "results." It is not clear whether an out-of-date list was used BECAUSE many voters would have moved, providing the desired appearance of fraudulent registration, or whether the task force was simply careless or negligent.

The task force then paid squads of visibly armed men to congregate around voting places, intimidating voters with the unsubstantiated allegation that they were not qualified to vote, and might be arrested if they tried. In the 19th century, Democrats shot Republican poll workers for challenging the exclusion of black voters — the goon squad Meehan boasts of being part of did not actually shoot anyone, but appears to have taken up the same cause, in the name of the Republican party.

There was indeed a recount, but not one initiated by the self-styled "Ballot Security Task Force." Votes were recounted because the inital margin of victory, for the Republican candidate, Thomas Kean, was so tiny, that the Democratic incumbent, James Florio, wanted a recount. The recount did NOT result in massive numbers of ballots being discounted as fraudulent. It did NOT change the result of the initial vote tally: both in the initial count, and the recount, Kean won.

There was a court case AFTER the election: The result was that Republican defendants promised to cease and desist from intimidating likely Democratic voters, while admitting no wrongdoing. There was no court case that disqualified one or one thousand voters, nor any court case that reversed the outcome of an election.

Perhaps Meehan's real motive lies in the off-hand remark, "readers who wish to purchase the few remaining signs in my possession can contact me at my web address above. Be warned, they’re not cheap." Perhaps not now, but one is left with the impression that a buyer today, at Meehan's price, will find that his investment depreciates in value as the truth dawns upon the population of potential buyers.

It is only fair to note, for the hypothetical reader (if any) who cares to examine this matter closely, that Meehan made a few follow-up remarks in the midst of another discussion at Dreher's site, a retrospective on "The Red Dean," William Hewlett. Meehan's reputation for either accuracy or probity having fallen under the principle "Falsum in unum, falsum in omnibus," he felt impelled to defend himself, however ineffectually, one last time.

Meehan is invited to attempt to rehabilitate himself in the posting box.

Politically Libertarian, Economically Socialist, Culturally Conservative

2011-12-31T09:15:00.002-06:00

An independent voter, who prefers "None of the Above" as a descriptive label, could do a lot worse than to try to weave together the best of the libertarian, socialist and conservative principles winding their way through human thought and history.

There are implacable cynics and ideologues who claim this is impossible, that the three are mutually repulsive philosophies. This would be true, if anyone attempted to apply all three simultaneously to every aspect of life, politics, and culture. But looking for the best hope of human happiness, rather than the Correct Party Line, it seems each of these philosophies has their place and their proper use.

Most people are by nature libertarian, at least concerning their own individual choices and preferences in life. We all want to be left alone by society when it comes to how we will live our life. Conservative columnist Rod Dreher, author of the celebrated and denounced book, Crunchy Cons, provided a good example in accusing the federal government of communist tendencies for messing with raw oysters in New Orleans. (The article appears to be irretrievable).

There are of course points of tension between any principles that are, respectively, individual, communal, and judgemental. When it comes to gay rights, should a libertarian impulse to live and let live yield to conservative denunciation? The answer to that question could put a citizen on either side of the Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas.

How about Roe v. Wade? A consistent libertarian would want government to stay out of a private, intimate, personal decision. A rigid conservative would ask whether murder of a five year old is also a valid private decision. From a socialist point of view, it might be deemed either good for the community to reduce the surplus population, or a duty to the state to produce more children.

The truth is, almost everyone is inconsistent in such matters. That is why the media pundits are always having to distinguish between "social liberals" who are "fiscal conservatives" and "social conservatives" who are "economically liberal." Getting into what ornery, unique individuals REALLY think would be much more complex.

Nothing enrages a narrow-minded ideologue more than the thought that libertarian and socialist thoughts could lurk in the same mind. But any semblance of justice requires both. A handy rule of thumb might be, the larger and more powerful the enterprise, the more government regulation is required to "promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

There are limits even to that. A small local butcher shop is not entitled to sell rancid meat kept in sloppy, unsanitary conditions, inflicting salmonella and other infectious illnesses on its customers, merely because "I'm a small business, leave me alone." However, it is possible to keep the necessary inspections and licensing streamlined and inexpensive.

It is companies with supply lines extending around the world, who pay millions of dollars a year to lobbyists and high-powered law firms, who bear watching. There is almost no way that an individual citizen, consumer, or employee can exercise effective control, supervision, or "free choice" over such behemoths. We The People need OUR government to do that on our behalf, forcefully if necessary.

But, any measure of regulation, licensing, control, or direct intervention, should leave room for the hapless local craftsman carving children's toys in a small rural community by the side of a well-traveled road. Such a craftsman should not have to pay thousands of dollars for lab testing and certification, merely because chain stores have been importing toys from China decorated with lead-based paints. Those chain stores, having demonstrated their gross irresponsibility, DO need to be tightly regulated, and pay for the costs. If this raises the price of the net product, perhaps they should re-think whether extending the supply chain to China is really such a great cost saving.

The dividing line between the three spheres comes down to the old principle, your right to swing your fist stops where the next man's nose begins. Cultural conservatism, in this sense, can really be a libertarian expression. The State should, perhaps, not regulate your choice to read sexually explicit novels, but, I have a right not to have your prurient interests graphically shoved in front of my eyes. Ditto, you may not impose your tastes on innocent children in order to gratify your desires. What about THEIR liberty?

What color I paint my house, and what God or gods I believe in, affect nobody but myself. What portion of the revenue from any given commercial enterprise goes to those who labor on the floor, what portion goes to stockholders, and what portion goes to executive management, is a matter of vast concern to all of the above, and to the health of the entire economy.

Businesses may complain about the Environmental Protection Agency, in glowing libertarian language, but what they really seek is a subsidy of the cost of doing business by those who are down wind or down stream. If the full cost of particulate pollution, from the homeowners who have to repaint more often, to the medical costs (and funeral expenses, lost wages, etc.) of those who breath the particles, were fully monetized and charged to the account of the polluter, why every business would be rushing to install extensive controls, or reorganize the process of production. It would take regulation and inspection to implement even such a "free market" approach to pollution control.

So, contrary to the infatuation of the busybody nanny state conservative, individuals should be free to make individual choices about any matter than does not infringe the rights of their neighbors. (This will also offend that species of socialist who assumes that EVERY aspect of human life is a manifestation of class struggle, requiring a Party Line on each detail imaginable).

Contrary to the sordid greed of "Kerr-McGee libertarianism," decisions about economy and production which effect the lives and welfare of all require some degree of collective regulation and even policy and priority decisions through the political process. Corporations only exist by license of the state, and are properly subject to regulation for the common good. If you don't want social accountability, then you must give up the privilege of limited liability, facing the prospect that those you harm can sue you for ALL you are worth, and then some.

Contrary to the facile and flagrant exhibitionism of the "anything goes" crowd, I don't have to applaud, appreciate, celebrate, participate in, or even watch and listen to, your own exercise of your own personal choices. That is where cultural conservatism has some value. Some level of sex education is healthy, but it does not, and should not, extend to detailed advice on techniques and preferences. Leave that to each individual's own libertarian choices.

Obviously, there are points of tension on which reasonable people may differ. That is why we have public debate and political process. But in general, the power of the state should be regarded with skepticism, applied to individual citizens. It should be judiciously deployed, with regard to large institutional decisions that DO have a coercive effect on individuals, whether made by private or public sector bureaucrats. Culturally, we really don't have to "let it all hang out." That should be a sound basis for achieving a workable consensus that all but the most venal can live with.

All Faiths Carry Totalitarian Seeds, yet one may be true

2011-12-04T13:20:00.000-06:00

It is inherent in every religion which claims to be the One True Faith, or the last and final, the highest and ultimate revelation from God, that some portion of its adherents will lay claim to special privileges, or to domination over those not of the same faith.

The logic is inexorable: we are God's elect. We have higher morals, better judgement, the favor of the Almighty. The Others should conduct themselves subordinate to our laws. The Others, if suffered to live among us, should be our servants.

Furthermore, as the teachings of our faith are THE means of salvation for all humanity, we must be free to bring these teachings TO all of humanity, and none must be allowed to get in our way. Other teachings, being false, should not be allowed in the public square.

Taken to its extreme possibilities, this logic could justify simply exterminating those who refuse The Truth, resist the True Faith, those who are so ungrateful as to spurn so precious a gift.

All these strands of thought can be found, at various times and places, in the history of Christianity and Islam. They are less present in Judaism, for two reasons: Judaism is not an evangelical faith, as Christianity and Islam are, and, until the middle of the 20th century, Jews had been without effective political domination of any place on earth for over one thousand years.

Jews do not seek to bring all gentiles into their mode of worship, nor their polity. They are the Chosen People, others are free to worship their own gods, so long as they do not seduce Jews to worship pagan idols. There have been times when Jewish kingdoms have subjugated or slaughtered pagan peoples, but not lately. The conquest and forced conversion of the Idumeans was a disaster, visiting the Idumean, Herod, upon them as the Roman puppet king. There is basis in the Tanach (aka the "Old Testament") to believe that Jews subjected non-Jews to servitude from which Jews were formally exempt, when Jews were politically dominant.

Buddhism, where politically dominant, has its totalitarian strains, just as Christianity and Islam do, even without the core belief in a creator Deity. Hinduism, although not evangelical, is triumphalist, founded on the Aryan conquest of the ancestors of the Dalit. Based strictly on its literature, and traditional culture, Hinduism is the most implacably racist faith on the face of the earth.

To stop short of its totalitarian implications, a religion must either finesse its claims to superiority, OR it must abandon its claim to a uniquely correct approach to salvation.

When multiple religious faiths coexist within the same political entity, there is either a suppressed, low-level conflict, or there is a relaxed attitude that each has its own legitimate path to God. The former contains the seeds of renewed bids for domination. The latter offends the understanding that, e.g., "I am the way, the truth and the life, no-one comes to the Father but through me," or, on the other hand, "There is no God but The God, and Muhammed is his prophet."

The most sophisticated, and well-balanced, answer to any bid for political domination by any religion is, salvation belongs to God, not to the governments of this world. The state, however well-intentioned, is not competent to judge which faith is the true faith. God will act in his own way, as he sees fit, without any need for the assistance of the state.

There is no such thing as a Christian Nation, nor, for that matter, a Muslim Nation. The first Caliphate, like the Holy Roman Empire, besmirched the name of its faith by indulging in decidedly un-Islamic (or un-Christian) pursuits. The Umayyads are particularly blamed for that within the Muslim world, Sunni and well as Shia, but the Abassids committed many of the same sins, and the Arabs ended up in open revolt against the Turkish Sultans, who were in fact the direct successors to the Caliphate.

The most pious rejection of religious freedom is, in a [NAME YOUR PREFERRED FAITH] there will be no conflict between your personal life, your family life, your civic life, your spiritual life, and your political participation. All will be in harmony. (Not mentioned is that rivers of blood would have to be shed to bring that about).

There remain, within every faith in the world, advocates of carnal political dominion, and advocates of either toleration, or outright political equality. Whether the advocates of dominion are a real hazard to others (within as well as without their own faith) depends on how much political room they have to act on their rhetoric, and whether any sizeable number of their co-religionists are actually prepared to take up arms for a doctrine. The potential exists everywhere.

The reason the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America bars Establishment of Religion, is that many in the original 13 states feared efforts to use the machinery of the new federal government to do exactly that. The reason the next clause protects the Free Exercise thereof, is that many feared efforts to infringe individual choice of worship.

That a faith cannot be imposed at the point of a sword, or by means of statute book, police, and prison, says nothing about whether it is, after all the One True Faith, or a true faith, or a complete delusion. Those who really trust in God need not lay their hands on the machinery of the state, to coerce their fellow citizens. God, after all, is omnipotent, and will do what he chooses, in his own good time.

The Case for Israel... in spite of all it's done lately...

2011-09-22T13:16:00.004-05:00

It is difficult to support Israel these days. The little nation has long since lost its underdog status. It is not a valiant collection of socialist cooperatives, fending off the armies of three kingdoms and assorted feudal principalities. It is the militarily dominant power of its immediate region, swaggering with confidence that it doesn't have to offer its neighbors anything. Like any power acting with such arrogance, it will eventually come to a long fall, just as Mubarak and Qaddafi did. But there are reasons it is worth saving.

Approximately eight million people live in Israel, a majority of them Jewish. One can argue about whether they should be there in the first place. That argument doesn't have any clear-cut resolution. Anyway, there is no feasible place to ship them off to. It is a little like Argentina's historical claim to the Falkland Islands. The people living on the islands are not longing for liberation; they are British by descent and culture. The living descendants of the one-time Argentine occupants have made other lives for themselves for many generations.

The Israelis are there. They do not have family roots or estates to return to when they get tired of being in the Middle East, as French and British estate holders in the Caribbean islands did. Since there are those who would like to dominate them or push them out, even exterminate them, they have a right to self-defence.

The Jewish population of Israel is no longer dominated by European immigrants. A large portion are immigrants from North Africa, the Tigris-Euphrates valley, and other places where well established Jewish populations had lived for many centuries. An unfortunate side effect of the creation of Israel is that these Jewish communities became persona non grata to their neighbors, who were mostly, although not entirely, Muslim, and somewhat Arab, although Berbers and Chaldeans are not Arabs.

King Abdullah of Jordan, in his 1947 address to the people of the United States, asserted that the long-established Jewish communities in the Arabic-speaking countries had no interest in the project of European Jews who wished to settle in Palestine. He said these Jewish communities had an honored and respected place where they were. Perhaps so. If that place had continued to be honored, the argument for Israel might be a bit more precarious. But it was not. Those Jews were forced to flee to Israel, where their descendants now live.

Unless all their former homelands welcome them with sincere open arms and restore their property to them, this counts in favor of leaving Israel be. The claim of Arabs forced out of their homes by Israeli occupation is at least partly balanced by the fact that the land of Israel is providing a home to Jews forced out of their homes by Arabic-speaking people.

The United Nations voted in 1947 to partition the former British Mandate of Palestine. This may not have been the best solution, but it is the solution the world voted for. Perhaps the territory should not have been a British Mandate in the first place -- anyone who has watched the movie "Lawrence of Arabia" can see injustice in this decision. But by 1947, that was a moot point. It had been a Mandate, the Mandate was ending, a large Jewish population was there, and the territory was partitioned.

But that partition, which is the legal basis for Israel to exist as a nation, was a partition, not a transfer of the entire territory. Israel is the size and shape it is today, not because of the partition boundary, but because various Arab armies elected to challenge the partition militarily. They lost. Fortunes of war. The land that can reasonably be considered the territory of a Palestinian state is all the territory of the former British Mandate that was not Israel when the war was settled in 1948.

If Israel cares about its own survival, more than enjoying the next few years in a state of indifferent comfort, it should be facilitating the development of a peaceful, prosperous Palestinian state in that territory, principally, the West Bank and Gaza. There is no basis in either justice or international law to push the Jews into the sea. Neither is there any basis in justice or international law to keep the rest of the former British Mandate of Palestine in a state of limbo, semi-occupied by the Israeli Defense Forces, semi-autonomous, and incapable of long-term development or investment.

Israel remains to this day a heavily subsidized entity. It needs to learn to cut the apron strings, and live by its own means. It needs to stop relying on its history as a tail that can wag the dog of international power, no matter how irresponsible the policies of its own government. But when the dust settles, Israel should still be on the map. If Israel doesn't wise up in a hurry, perhaps it will not be. That would be a shame.

Roe v. Wade: A sound conservative ruling

2011-09-12T23:05:00.006-05:00

The Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade was a sound, conservative application of well-established law to a new set of facts, never before presented to the court.

I've said that many times, on many Catholic blogs, all of them conservative, and on a few other conservative blogs, which are not Catholic. The most coherent, thoughtful, response I've gotten is "Your description of Roe v. Wade is rejected by most liberal jurists nowadays. They think it's bad law."

The first and most obvious response I can offer is, that's what you get for asking liberal jurists. Like liberals in general, they are a spineless bunch of cretins for the most part. Perhaps that is why they are ducking the tomatoes instead of standing up with dignity and examining the law.

But it remains incumbent upon me to sustain my own argument, even if nobody has offered a significant challenge. So, after re-reading for the umpteenth time the actual content of Justice Harry Blackmun's opinion, delivered for a 7-2 majority, and therefore, the decision "of the court," here is my case that this was a sound, conservative application of well-established law.

I will not, at this time, address the issues of standing. These have not been at the heart of intellectual challenges to Justice Blackmun's reasoning.

Perhaps the first relevant point is "It is undisputed that, at common law, abortion performed before "quickening" -- the first recognizable movement of the fetus in utero, appearing usually from the 16th to the 18th week of pregnancy -- was not an indictable offense." This is sustained by a series of standard legal texts, listed in Footnote 21.

That is important, because the common law was already in effect in all thirteen British colonies at the time of independence, and is generally considered by all state and federal courts to have remained good law in the United States, except where a specific provision of federal or state constitutions said otherwise.

A review of American law found that until the mid-19th century, all but a few states followed pre-existing English common law. Connecticut was the first state to enact abortion legislation, in 1821, which applied only to a woman "quick with child." Abortion before quickening was made a crime only in 1860.

What really remains in controversy is the third reason for adopting criminal statutes examined by the court: "the State's interest -- some phrase it in terms of duty -- in protecting prenatal life. Some of the argument for this justification rests on the theory that a new human life is present from the moment of conception."

It is worth reproducing at length the legal precedent on which the court began its disposition of the case:

The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as far as Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U. S. 250, 141 U. S. 251 (1891), the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557, 394 U. S. 564 (1969); in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 392 U. S. 8-9 (1968), Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 389 U. S. 350 (1967), Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616 (1886), see Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 277 U. S. 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting); in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. at 381 U. S. 484-485; in the Ninth Amendment, id. at 381 U. S. 486 (Goldberg, J., concurring); or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, 262 U. S. 399 (1923). These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U. S. 319, 302 U. S. 325 (1937), are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. They also make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, 388 U. S. 12 (1967); procreation, Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535, 316 U. S. 541-542 (1942); contraception, Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. at 405 U. S. 453-454; id. at 405 U. S. 460, 405 U. S. 463-465 (WHITE, J., concurring in result); family relationships, Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158, 321 U. S. 166 (1944); and childrearing and education, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, 268 U. S. 535 (1925), Meyer v. Nebraska, supra.

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

However, the court rejected the argument that the woman's right is absolute, that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses.

In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court's decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11 (1905) (vaccination); Buck v. Bell, 274 U. S. 200 (1927) ( sterilization).

We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified, and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.

The court reviewed a long series of recent lower federal court and state supreme court decisions - which is almost mandatory before the court takes it upon itself to resolve a question on which lower courts are divided.

The court then carefully considered the argument "that the fetus is a 'person within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment." Justice Blackmun's opinon explicitly acknowledged that "If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment."

But "Wade" and those arguing the "Wade" side of the argument "conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment." Accordingly, although Justice Blackmun did not say this in so many words, it would have been flagrant judicial activism to have made up a new and novel holding for which there was no precedent whatsoever.

The Constitution does not define "person" in so many words, and Blackmun said so. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment uses the word three times. One defines citizens as "persons born of naturalized in the United States." In every place where the word appears, "the use of the word is such that it has application only post-natally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application."

The court meticulously reviewed the few questions in which lower courts had considered whether the word "person" as used in the constitution applies to "the unborn." Each of these few cases were in accord with the view that it did and does not.

The court further conservatively refrained from entering into speculation about matters beyond its competence:

Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.

Having explicitly rejected the argument that the state had no power to interfere for the entire nine months of pregnancy, the court adopted the medical standard of "quickening" as the point at which "the State's important and legitimate interest in potential life," becomes compelling.

While advances in medical technology and knowledge between 1973 and 2011 may have superceded the understanding of "quickening" on which the court relied, that was a boundary with well established legal standing, rooted in centuries of common law, and even in many, although not all, of the early criminal abortion statutes adopted in the 19th century.

To say that the decision is a conservative application of well established law is not to say that abortion is a good choice, a wise choice, or that it is a morally right choice to make. But, given the language of the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, given the court's own precedents, and after carefully examining the prior decisions of lower courts, and the common law, there was little or no basis to make any other decision.

The court made a ruling on the constitutional boundary between the powers of the state, and the liberty of the individual. It made no ruling on the wisdom of seeking or performing an abortion. If "liberal jurists" can't figure that out, perhaps they need to take a Continuing Education in the Bar seminar to learn how to apply mandatory and persuasive law to arrive at a reasoned decision.

How a witch strengthened the faith of an Anglo-Catholic, and how a Wycliffe-Arminian Heterodox Protestant saw it

2011-08-31T23:13:00.001-05:00

The first half of the title for this post concerns Hector, who posted How a witch strengthened my faith at the Aleksandreia site. The second half refers to my seldom-humble self, more or less a Christian who refrains from heresy by welcoming schism.

Those who are conversant in ancient Greek have observed that the term Paul used when he wrote of heresy has connotations of party or faction. Thus, I suspect that heresy is the act of seeking domination of the body of Christ for one's own party or faction. The orthodox are merely the heresy in power. The sin, if it can be called one, is the arrogance of believing that I, or my group, understand God better than any other individual or group within the faith, who has a slightly different idea of exactly what God is trying to tell us.

Hector lists a number of well-known miracles as the foundation or his faith. I have no objection. I frankly don't give much thought to whether these miracles did or did not occur. More often than not, my comment on such debates is "Don't mess with the stories." They are there for a reason. Perhaps they are there because some will recognize God through these accounts of miracles. Others may not, but may find the stories moving in some sense. Yet others may be put off by the improbability of such events - for them, no doubt, God has other ways of calling.

What ways? Well, as an avid reader of science, although not professionally competent, two of my favorites are the fact that the universe we live in began with a tremendous burst of electro-magnetic energy some thirteen billion years ago, and the fact that the foundations of evolutionary biology can be discerned in the first two chapters of Genesis. For the most part, human culture only discovered the first point in the mid-20th century, but somehow Moses knew all about it some 3500 years before the Hubble Space Telescope or the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. The second escaped human knowledge until well after Darwin; before Darwin, we didn't have the empirical knowledge to recognize what the text was talking about, so our ancestors became infatuated with much simpler interpretations.

But these little pieces show a congruence between science - the empirical knowledge of our world - and monotheistic revealed faith, not enough to uphold any given prophet or savior, but enough to suggest that there is a God who created all that is, seen and unseen, a deity who occasionally has reason to communicate to us as best we can understand.

Whether I believe in specific miracles really truly happened is, to me, rather irrelevant. They may well have, without setting aside science. There is no question that our universe runs in accordance with patterns that science can and has explored with some accuracy. But, if there is anything transcendent, it would be roughly like a larger Venn diagram enclosing our universe as a subset, represented by a smaller Venn diagram. A transcendent God could intervene whenever he chose, and obviously chooses to do so rather seldom. Indeed, if there were no consistent scientific basis to the universe, miracles would not be particularly extraordinary. They would be commonplace random events in an unpredictable chaos.

So we come to the White Witch, a devout member of a schismatic Anglican church which insists on restricting the priesthood to males, relying strictly on the King James Version of the Bible, and presumably also on denying the validity of same-sex couples or marriages. She had an out of body experience, as a child, while clinically dead, before doctors noticed a restored heart beat and breathing. The experience was two minutes of conversation with Jesus Christ.

Do I find this credible? Not in the sense that it restores my faith, but I wouldn't presume to deny that it could not have happened. The fact that this happened to her as a child, that she had no religious training from her parents, provides a veneer of credibility. Onthe other hand, the fact that she later attended a Roman Catholic School, after that practiced some version of Wicca for twenty years, and only after that became an Anglican Christian, suggests that the conversation with Jesus had not made much of an immediate impression on her. For a skeptic, there is plenty of cause to doubt.

Again, I don't much care. The vision is for her, if for anyone. There is no way to test whether it is genuine. Therefore, I doubt that it is of great significance for me.

This former Wiccan "found her thirst for a particularly feminine spirituality slaked in a newfound devotion to the person of the Ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of God." Here is another conundrum for an Arminian raised in the attenuated Calvinism of the late 20th century Presbyterian Church USA. Do I believe that Mary, the physical human mother of "the carpenter's son," was taken body and soul into heaven? No, my faith does not rest on what many denominations, including the Roman, Greek, and Anglican churches, reverence as "the Assumption."

Frankly, I find the Jewish teaching quite credible, that it is no coincidence that the first Christian church dedicated to veneration of Mary as Virgin Mother of God was built in Ephesus. Those Ephesians darn well needed a female spirituality, and if they couldn't have Diana, they were going to have Mary. Besides, it gave the silversmiths a new theme for profitable images to sell. But, I don't write it all off as idol worship.

One of the unique features of Christianity is a God who so loved the world that he became human, lived our experience, has a specific desire to reach out to us. Much as I respect the Jewish foundation for monotheism, and the piety of Islam, these offer a more austere and remote version of God. Of course, if there is only one God, there are not Jewish and Christian and Muslim godlings out in space fighting proxy wars with each other through their earthly adherents. There is only one. But we ornery humans are incapable of having one comprehensive understanding or relationship.

So if some women, and some men, need a "feminine spirituality," I'm sure God is quite happy to let them find that in his mother - albeit Muhammed made sense when he denied that a transcendent God could have had either a mother or a son. I am informed that the formal name within those orthodoxies that declare anathema on thinking like mine is "modalism." Well, so be it. I don't suggest that God, per se, is modal in nature, but that God is transcendent, and happy to let us humans venerate any mode that brings us closer to a transcendent unitary God - or even to let us worship a triune image of God.

Having had little direct sense of divine presence - the kind received with fear and trembling - I have been known to say that I sense to presence of God when I see it reflected on the face of someone in a praise team, as sunlight is reflected on the face of the moon. I seldom sense any DIRECT response to my prayers - I always have the dry spell Hector has been experiencing of late. But I don't sense that I'm getting a busy signal. I think C.S. Lewis wrote that "men's prayers today are one of the innumerable cordinates with which the Enemy [as Screwtape references God] harmonizes the weather of tomorrow."

A Roman Catholic blogging as Roland de Chanson interjects into discussion the assertion that "God speaks the Truth to whom He chooses. And His Incarnate Son established a Church to teach that Truth." The first sentence is inarguable, except by denying that there is a God (singular). The second defines the boundary between adherents of the Roman Catholic church and all other Christian denominations. In my mind, the vast bureaucracy in the Vatican City, and its subordinate institutions throughout the world, are merely one more heresy, no better and no worse than those it persecuted when it had the carnal power to do so. The significance claimed for the words "thou are Cephas" is strictly an ex post facto intepretation of convenience, which might have been presented earlier except that the ink had not yet dried.

Roland also speculates, what if this Anglo-Catholic formerly Wiccan women who had a conjectural conversation with Jesus Christ is "an agent of the Evil One intent upon your soul’s perdition?" I for one don't worry much about such things, because I don't seek for signs and wonders to sustain my faith. The Evil One, if there is such a Manischean graft onto the teachings of the Tanach (aka Old Testament) may send me any number of people relating glorious visions, but I put little stock in such things.

I believe in part because, if I don't construct edifices of detailed explanations of the unexplainable, it makes sense. Further, I can look back on my life and see connections made with a significance I could never have forseen. If someone had not very subtlely (as Albert Einstein used to say) been watching out for me, by all the statistical criteria of a cold indifferent universe and a corporate capitalist regimented economy, I should certainly have been homeless long since.

(Note: Hector, please invite John E. and Franklin, and even Roland, to comment here after you've read it). And you might want to look at this discussion with Eulogos.

Distributing the Wealth and Income

2011-08-24T11:23:00.003-05:00

The question of "redistributing" wealth and income pops up in many debates, some related to the value of a strong labor movement, some motivated by other points of concern.

When workers demand "More," which was Samuel Gompers's bottom line, there are two ways to deliver it.

One is increased productivity. However, as the high unemployment rate and depressed wages since the crash of 2008 have shown improved productivity does NOT necessarily deliver a higher standard of living to the working class. It may simply be absorbed by those who own the capital, as they continue to take advantage of the productivity of their employees by laying off a portion of them.

The other is to reset what portion of revenue goes to the employees of employers, and what portion goes to the employers of employees. Employers always balk at that, and scream about "the free market," but there is nothing "free" about the transaction between the owner of capital and a person who desperately needs a job.

It is of course true that the share allocated to labor cannot exceed 100% of revenue on a long term basis. A good part of revenue must be reinvested even in maintaining the plant so it can operate productively, much less expansion. Failure to recognize this has been a prime failing of eager young socialist governments. The oil industry in Venezuela right now is ailing because the government takes too much of the revenue for various social projects (and military purchases), without allocating enough to maintain the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Looking at what remains, anyone who invests their savings in an enterprise expects a return, to compensate them for the deferred gratification. Finally, if the business can only meet the demands of its employees, organized together in the form of a union, by going into debt, then eventually the enterprise will fold.

So, the fundamental question is not one of "redistribution" but of a fair and appropriate DISTRIBUTION of the product of labor.

In a sole proprietorship, with no employees, all increases in productivity are personally delivered by the sole owner and sole worker, who receives all the benefits. When the roles of owner of capital, and employee who has no capital (thus, the need to "find a job"), have been separated, they have partially different and opposite interests. Karl Marx called this "alienation of labor," and it is real, whether Karl Marx said it or not.

This "alienation" is even explicitly expressed by the defenders of an employer's unlimited right to do what he pleases, without reference to the best interests of the employees and their families. A sole proprietor not only reaps all the benefits, but pays all the prices. The employer can say "the benefits are mine, because I invested the capital, it is the job of the employees to pay the prices."

Suppose we were to plan that out of the average revenue over a ten year period, 47 percent should be allocated to capital maintenance and expansion. Another 47 percent would go to labor. That includes the labor performed for necessary and essential management functions. Managers would be paid somewhat more, but probably no more than ten times what the lowest paid employee earns. (New janitor trainee, $20,000 a year, top CEO, $200,000 a year).

Then the investors who put up the capital can get six percent of the revenue as dividends on their investment. This might be more or less than 6 percent RETURN on investment, depending on how wisely their capital was managed, and the ratio of business revenue to capital invested.

That is not REDISTRIBUTION, except by comparison to the present rapacious status quo. It is merely a fair distribution of the revenue generated by a complex collective enterprise. Yes, it IS a collective enterprise. Everybody contributes to its success. Everyone is ESSENTIAL to its success.

What we, as a society, need to do for the disabled, the elderly, the unlucky through no fault of their own, the children impoverished by the bad judgement of their parents, are all separate questions. They are worth looking at, but they are different from the distribution of revenue to those who put their labor into a productive enterprise.

Unfortunately, under our current laws and power relationships, its not so simple. It plays out like this, and this. So until we have better laws, and more sensible ways of doing business that "promote the common welfare" while allowing everyone a reasonable return for what they actually put in, we still have to "Roll the Union On!"

American morals in a secular republic

2011-07-06T17:20:00.004-05:00

Red Cardigan recently posted a July Fourth essay entitled Oh America at her acclaimed site, "and sometimes tea". Out of sheer preference for having a relaxed holiday with her family, rather than have to police who said what, she shut down comments the moment she posted it. Accordingly, I will post the thoughts her essay inspired in my muddled mind here, and graciously absorb whatever anyone wanted to say about it, trolls and all. (Caution, we eat trolls for breakfast here).

I have no reason to doubt that the quotes she refers to are accurate and properly attributed. Yes, John Adams believed in the essential values of morality and religion. Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address had more "profound theological content" (as Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan described it) than even the words attributed to him in Red's essay. George Washington certainly believed in security for property, for reputation, for life, and the sense of religious obligation that made oaths to tell the truth binding.

But all of these individuals had seen the horrific results of trying to impose an institutional morality by close cooperation of The State with an Established Church. Adams and Washington, and their contemporaries had had the experience of delegates from thirteen different colonies with far from homogenous cultures trying to form a federal union. They knew that, in the words of James Madison, the better part of showing respect for the sacred name of Jesus was NOT to insert it into a legislative enactment. They inaugurated a Constitution that, again turning to Madison, protected religion from the profane hand of the civil magistrate.

It didn't happen all at once. Most of the original thirteen states had state-supported churches at the time of the Revolution. In New England, all but Rhode Island were Congregational. In Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, it was Anglican. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were too polyglot to have a single official church, even though a Quaker elite dominated Pennsylvania. Maryland, established as a refuge for Roman Catholics, had long since, rather bloodily, been taken over by Puritans from Virginia.

Baptists and Methodists were running amuck in most of these places, to the scandal of the more established clergy. Together with the Presbyterians, they made sure that the new states entering the union were firmly committed to no established church. Virginia, among the original 13, let the way in providing for complete religious liberty. When the Fourteenth Amendment laid the groundwork for making religious liberty an individual right, which could be asserted against any state, most states took it as a matter of course.

It is true that some Roman Catholic immigrants to America fled persecution for their Roman Catholic beliefs... mostly the Irish, who were oppressed by the English. But Italians, Portuguese, southern Germans, Belgians, hardly fled from lands where their church was oppressed as such. The Czar didn't try to make Poles convert to Russian Orthodox either, nor did the (Catholic) emperors of Austria.

And it is equally true that the founders of the USA had, or heard from their recent ancestors of, Roman Catholic oppression of Protestants, for their faith. French Huguenots, central European Baptists, not to mention the cruel wars between England and Spain. But the framework for putting all that behind us, once and for all, extended full religious freedom to Roman Catholics as much as to any Protestant sect, or indeed any faith, including Jews, most immediately, and Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, implicitly, when immigration made any of these faiths a practical consideration.

Is the price of not killing each other in mass slaughter over competing religious doctrine that we abandon all sense of morality, or all foundation for morality in religious teaching? I don't think so.

Where our CULTURE has gone wrong, is the notion that if it is legal, it's got to be good, and if it's bad, there oughta be a law against it.

We can see that, for example, in the abortion debate. The Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade was a sound, conservative application of well-established law to a new set of facts, never before presented to the court. But the response on the streets was, in many ways, obscene.

Justice Harry Blackmun wrote a sober decision protecting the right of an individual woman to make a medical decision in consultation with her primary care physician and/or her gynecologist. What we were treated to was a loud public scream "It's legal, have one any time! Kids are a drag! Biology is not destiny!"

I'm sorry Virginia, biology IS destiny. We may tamper with it a bit, but we are what we are. I, born a male, can never carry a child in my abdominal cavity, and a woman can never impregnate anyone. If some women don't have children, all questions about how human society should be organized will soon be moot. Quite naturally, many women find child-bearing fulfilling.

But getting back to morality. The founders of our nation, and the framers of our Constitution (not identical statistical universes), relied on morality to be inculcated by voluntary insitutions and associations independent of the state, because no state can impose morality without hopelessly corrupting every vestige of moral standards.

One might argue that our culture is weak on this point right now. I agree. I am as culturally conservative in my tastes as I am libertarian in my politics and socialist in my economic views. But both the amoral and oppressively moral factions in our nation rely on the same faulted premise: that morality only exists to the extent it is established by law.

The most passionate profusions of religious faith in history have spread in direct opposition to the existing state (e.g., the early Christians vs. the Roman Empire, the Protestant Reformation vs. the feudal order in which the Pope was nominally superior to kings and emperors, the Great Awakening vs. the Congregational and Anglican establishments). All these faiths became corrupt as they acquired some sort of state power, or conventional acceptance that translated into political influence.

If the constitution is the framework of our republic, one might draw an anology to the outer walls of a biological cell. By this analogy, morality is part of the rich fluid of complex chemicals which fill the cell and make it a vital, living, organism. If the cell wall is breached, the essential chemistry is scattered, and life ceases to exist. If the fluids all dry up, then the cell also dies.

Don't aim for triumphalism, either moral or amoral. Sustain the equilibrium.

De Trinitate: A Response to Hector

2011-06-18T16:46:00.005-05:00

Hector is, as far as I understand, an Anglican Christian who embraces most Roman Catholic liturgy, and his ethnicity is Indian, as in, the Indian subcontinent, not Native American. He has recently posted at Alexandria a long piece on The Trinity and the terrible heresy of "modalism," a heresy of which he has accused me in the past. I cannot respond to him there, being at present banished from the pond by the Ruler of All He Surveys whose divine majesty I offended some months ago. So I will do so here - albeit this may be a little confusing for anyone else trying to follow the debate.

I should note, when I say that Hector "accused" me, that this was done in a friendly and mutually respectful manner. Hector takes doctrine seriously, although by some lights he is a bit unorthodox. For instance, he's not at all sure that homosexuality is a sin. Hector and I generally agree on economic issues. We both favor some sort of socialist policies which more equably divide the fruits of labor among ALL who produce it, without, I think, violating the principle that "those who work will eat," provided an opportunity to labor is indeed available to everyone.

Hector is deeply devoted to the Trinity. I am at best indifferent to it. If it brings you closer to God to think of God as a Trinity, I am not so militant a lower-case unitarian that I need to argue you out of it. Ultimately, God is a mystery, and must be taken on faith, so anyone who wants to be purely rational about it can easily argue their way to atheism.

Hector has now argued that the concept of God as Trinity "is a persistent and permanent affront with those rationalists who would do away with mystery, with miracle, and with the supernatural." I see this entire question from the opposite end of the same telescope. Insistence that the Trinity IS an accurate and essential understanding of what God IS, rests on a kind of rationalism, which is an affront to the ultimate mystery of God.

Yes, the notion that God is one divine essence in three divine persons does defy rational thought, so much so that it easily leads the unwary into tritheism, which Hector explicitly rejects. Whenever anyone tries to defend the Trinity in a rational or logical argument, they always end up invoking the explanation, "It's a mystery." My point is simply, since it IS a mystery, why pretend that we know the answer? Just leave it at that: what is the nature of God? It's a mystery. Period.

Indeed "human reason was not designed, nor is it capable, of comprehending the essence of the Trinity. We cannot understand it." But that being the case, and there being no divine revelation to guide us, why should we "acknowledge it." What does it add or detract from our sense of what God requires of us? (One verse of Micah, and three in the Gospels, suffices to tell us what God requires of us. Hmmm... one and three. If I were into numerology, I would concede the argument, but I'm not.)

I have been known to suggest that the Trinity is like three blind men feeling an elephant: some feel a trunk, some feel a leg, some feel a flank, and all believe they know the essence of what the elephant IS. They are all part right, and terribly wrong. But if they put these three perceptions together, without recognizing that these are simply appendages, if they said the elephant is a symbiosis of three different persons, they would also be wrong. Hector calls this "Modalism."

I won't repeat at length what Hector says about the error of "Modalism." It is all available at the link provided in the first paragraph. Hector sees Modalism "as a knife pointed at the heart of the Christian Faith, for if Modalism is true, then Christianity is a farce and a lie, and Christ was simply a sham, a cosmic joker."

I can't imagine why. If God really doesn't have three persons, Christianity is a farce and a lie? How so? The shock and horror have leapt far ahead of any logical progression from premise to conclusion. True, logic is a poor foundation for faith, which is why I hardly see that such doctrines matter in the slightest.

"You can see right away why this doctrine is so appealing to the modern West. It fits perfectly with the gospel of postmodernism, by which perception is reality, and by which each person’s worldview and opinion is equally valid." Hmmmm... I place little stock in postmodernism, especially since "modern" is itself a relative notion. In every generation people have announced that "modern times have arrived," and every decade or two, a new modern takes the stage. I am perfectly certain that there is an absolute Truth to the universe in which I live, and that it is what it is, regardless of what I think of it.

I have pointed out many times that the first two clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America neither establish nor imply that all worldviews and opinions are equally valid. The First Amendment proceeds from the understanding that the instruments of human governance are incompetent to declare which, if any, religion is the True Faith, and all humans must be free to pursue this truth for themselves as best they can, without interference by the blunt instrument of the law.

But what does the Trinity have to do with any of this? If God is One and not Three, then there is no absolute truth to Creation? How in the Name of God does THAT follow? The supposed horror is offered to spice up the argument, without ever establishing causality.

I would certainly agree that the "prospect of Jews, Muslims and Christians coming together and sharing a common understanding of God, is very appealing." I adhere to the statement by El-Hajj Malik el-Shabbaz, upon return from Mecca with that name (he was previously known as Malcolm X), "The God we worship is the one who created the universe. Isn't that the same God you worship?" Of course it is. And THAT is what is important. The shape of that God, the nature of that God, which are indeed unknowable to us, is of no particular importance. It could even be described as hubris to attempt to write doctrines on the subject.

Beyond that, for now, I will say only that many paragraphs of the essay I linked to above, and have responded to here, are pure tautology. IF God is a Trinity, then it is an insult to his divine majesty to deny it. The premise is the preordained conclusion, which logically proves that if A is true then A is true, without ever establishing anything else, or indeed, any foundation for the truth of A. That is the nature of all defence of the Trinity, passionate or logical.

The bottom line is, "De Trinitate" advocates belief in the doctrine that God is a Trinity, because it would make God a better god, or because it would help to undermine the appeal of secular Western culture, or for any reason except, because it is true. There being little evidence, or possibility of evidence, as to the truth or falsehood of the doctrine, it becomes a matter of conjecture and personal preference what to believe. Does it really matter to God how well we understand the details of what we are incapable of knowing?

Tax policy should reward merit: raise taxes on money nobody could earn or merit

2011-05-01T16:28:00.004-05:00

On April 24, the "liberal" Washington Post published a high profile article by economist Arthur C. Brooks, arguing that "Obama is wrong when he says it's 'fair' to tax the wealthy." Most of the so-called "liberal media" bend over backwards to showcase conservative opinion, and to highlight any political current of hostility to perceived "liberalism." The Post is no exception. Whether this is fairness or political masochism remains open to debate.

Brooks offers an erudite, eloquent, emotionally appealing argument. No doubt he has sincerely convinced himself. The only flaw in his presentation is the facts on the ground that he conveniently omits.

Brooks offers several game-playing experiments - popular in many academic fields that try to understand human behavior. In one, a person is issued $10 - unearned, as Brooks emphasizes. They are asked to make an offer to split the $10 with a second person. If they can't agree, neither gets any money. Generally, the second person will accept an offer for $4, but anything less will be rejected as "unfair."

Then Brooks turns to a survey about buying beer. It seems people tend to tell research assistants they would be willing to pay more money to buy the same beer from a fine hotel than from a run-down grocery store. Seventy-percent of people, say the latest surveys. Then Brooks jumps to his eagerly-anticipated conclusion: "The $10 game involves redistributive fairness; the beach-beer experiment reveals meritocratic fairness."

Meritocratic? There is NO difference in the "merit" of the beer. No research assistant seems to have offered the option of paying more for a luxurious room at a fine hotel, because that is worth it, but paying what the beer is worth when buying beer, rather than paying more because it is sitting on a shelf in a fine hotel.

But that is a better way of talking about fairness in our tax system. Nobody likes paying taxes, but if there are no taxes, there will be no government: no police protection (unless you can afford to hire your own private security), no traffic lights, no street cleaning, no military defense, no coast guard, nobody inspecting our food to make sure it is free of mouse droppings and salmonella...

There is no greater merit in beer bought at a fine hotel. The consumer is not paying more for a better quality product. The vendor is charging the customer more simply because they can. Brooks runs on at some length about whether a secretary who is "quicker, more efficient and more reliable" should be paid more than one who is slower, less efficient, and less reliable. Almost nobody would deny the better secretary better pay.

Unfortunately, among those who wouldn't bother to pay the more skilled and reliable secretary more, are a large proportion of those who do the hiring, firing, and setting pay levels in American businesses, particularly at the corporate level. They are too busy paying themselves huge packages. Then they cry "merit" when the president attempts to at least give the hard-working secretary a tax break.

There are stratospheric compensation packages which have nothing to do with "merit." The difference between an entry-level job paying $20,000 a year and a responsible position paying $60,000 a year may well be demonstrated ability, invaluable experience, and skill. The difference between $100,000 a year and $1,000,000 a year may indeed by the drive, acumen, and long work days over many years that build a successful business from scratch.

But what about the difference between $1,000,000 and $30,000,000 a year? Are there enough hours in the day for a corporate CEO to work thirty times harder than the self-made entrepreneur? One might argue the opposite. On pure merit, it is the woman or man who builds a business from scratch who should be making the bigger money. The corporate CEO is stepping into a business built by others before his father was born.

How much more is a top-earner worth, on merit, than the secretary in the local branch office, the janitor who cleans the building, the window-washer, the local salesman, the newest graphic artists in the advertising department? Thirty times as much? One hundred times as much?

Try this out for "fairness" and "merit." Add to the existing minimum wage laws a provision that the lowest paid employee of any enterprise shall be paid no less than one percent of the total compensation package of the highest paid executive. One percent. A penny for every dollar. Oh dear, $700,000 a year entry-level janitors!

In the long run, perhaps CEO compensation would come down to $7,000,000 a year (what a harsh penalty for being entrepreneurial). That would bring the janitor down to $70,000 a year, which, frankly, a good, hard-working, skilled janitor is worth. We all want our bathrooms clean, but none of us want to clean them ourselves.

The laborer is worthy of his hire. Where would all the revenue go that is no longer funding outsize executive packages? It might go into new investment, which might actually create some of the new jobs corporate executives pretend to create. Or, it might go into lower prices, so the rest of us could manage to live on what we earn.

In the meantime, nobody, in any income bracket, is going to be robbed of the rewards for their labor by paying a few more percentage points on their highest tax bracket. Like all of us, the wealthiest in the land can take the Standard Deducation, tax free. Usually, they file a Schedule A to take much larger deductions. They pay only 10% on the first bracket of taxable income, after all the income that is tax free. By any tax proposal on the table, they get to keep 65 percent of the income in the highest tax bracket.

Frankly, business derives a large part of the benefits of government operations, as much or more so than do those who depend on government programs such as Medicaid for their survival. There is no reason that large business incomes should not bear a higher share of the costs.

Let's try a different analogy. I'm researching a biography. It is not likely to be a best seller - few biographies are. I need to consult at least three archives at universities and historical societies. None of them charge admission.

It is good, and right, that they don't charge admission. It would be an unconscionable infringement on the free market of ideas, on diligent inquiry, to require payment for access to our common history. But, it does take money to run these archives. Someone does the work of sorting, filing, categorizing, typing up finding aids and indexes. Someone unlocks the doors and supervises and pulls the boxes.

On the rare occasions that someone who has used these archives has a best seller, they darn well ought to share a chunk of the revenue with the archives. Yes, the author put a lot of hard work into writing a best seller, and they deserve to profit by it. But, many no less deserving or hard working are not so fortunate. Without the archives, and all the work and costs to sustain them, the best-seller could never have been written.

Why shouldn't those who make a lot of money be the ones expected to give a lot back? Not everything, not even fifty percent, but a substantial sum. Those who didn't make money don't have money to give.

When it comes to taxes, we all get to keep most of what we need for basic survival, ALL of us, even the wealthiest. We pay a bit more on the income over and above our most basic survival needs. And we pay a bigger chunk, but much less than half, of the money that is way beyond what anyone "needs." That is as it should be.

This is going to stifle entrepreneurial initiative? Nonsense. Nobody ever walked away from $1 million, because they would only get to spend $720,000 of it. The highest compensation packages aren't for entrepreneurial intiative anyway. They are paid out by well established corporations to people who simply move money around in well established channels, making darn sure they really ARE "too big too fail" so that when they blow it, taxpayers HAVE to bail them out to avoid a full-blown Depression.

Anyone who is serious about eliminating the deficit, and paying down the national debt, MUST face the fact that tax revenues are what we pay these down with. It is unfortunate that George W. Bush and his minions doubled our national debt during good times, when we should have been saving for a rainy day. But they did, and they did it in our name, after promising that we could have our cake and eat it too. Now it's time to pay for the mistake of believing them.

Let those who make far more than they "need," far more than anyone's "merit" could explain, pay more. It is the least they can do for their country and their generous fellow citizens. Give the real entrepreneurs, and those whose work has real merit, a well-earned and long-overdue break.

The sole proprietor as yardstick for class struggle

2011-04-11T12:07:00.005-05:00

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.
----- Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World

History has not exactly sustained the premise that the working class and the employing class have nothing in common. The working class and the employing class are each collections of fractious individuals who, for a variety of motives, are all over the political map, and seldom agree as a whole on much of anything.

But there is antagonism built into the relationship of employer to employee. There is no better way to identify why, than to examine the very different situation of an individual sole proprietor, who owns their own business and does all the work to make the business prosper.

"My own business"

If a sole proprietor decides that growing the business requires putting in extra hours, they and their family personally suffer the costs of that decision. The same individual and family reap the benefits, in the form of increased business from increasingly loyal customers impressed with the ever-increasing quality of the product or service the business delivers.

If a sole proprietor takes time off, there is no "paid vacation." Either the business owner shuts down the business for a time, foregoing the revenue that could have been made, or, hires at her or his own expense a temporary employee to keep the business open and operating. If the owner takes no vacation, they personally pay the social and emotional price of disappointing the family, or of sending the family off on vacation while remaining at home to work.

If the business fails, the proprietor, and their family, are the ones who pay the price. The proprietor made the decisions, and lives with the consequences of their own decisions.

At the end of a long life building a business, making sacrifices in the short term to prosper in the long term, the sole proprietor can look forward to a well provided-for retirement, either selling the business for a lump sum, providing a nice nest egg, or turning it over to a successor in return for monthly payments.

The employer and employee divide up the costs and benefits in a very different way.

Wage Slavery

In the absence of labor protection laws or a union contracts, if an employer decides that an employee at will should work extra hours, the employer reaps the benefits, but the employee and the employee's family pay the costs. If an employee is ill, or their child is sick, and the employer insists they must come to work, the employer reaps the benefits of attendance, but the employee's health, or family life, suffer the pains which are the price of showing up for work.

In the absence of a pension plan, an employee receives only their weekly or bi-weekly paycheck. One of the effects of "market forces" is that this paycheck allows little for savings, being just enough to pay living expenses, paycheck to paycheck. Employers do not, unless strict laws or powerful unions require it, set aside a portion of the revenue from an enterprise to insure that EVERYONE who makes the company's prosperity possible is provided for in their old age.

If the stockholders and managers made bad decisions, not only do they lose, but a substantial work force which had no part in making disastrous choices is out of work.

It is entirely understandable human nature that a business owner would put the business first. They are not suffering the pains that their employee(s) suffer. It is equally understandable human nature that an employee would resent the high-handed behavior of the boss.

Thus, in any enterprise where the functions of owner and manager, are divorced from worker and employee, the result is class struggle. It is as natural as breathing. Costs and benefits fall differently on each class of persons. This, and this alone, all members of a given class share in common.

Failures of socialist construction

One of the failures of socialist construction to date, starting with the Soviet Union, but including India, Tanzania, and many other socialist experiments, is the fact that state administrators in practice feel the pressures of managers, but not the pressures of employees. A sole proprieter personally feels and pays all the prices, and reaps all the rewards. The manager of a socialized state enterprise does not, any more than the manager of a private capitalist enterprise.

Alternatives such as worker self-management or cooperatives are unsteady, because most of the working class, most of the time, don't really want to be bothered with devoting time and effort to administration.

The reason there is leadership in trade unions is that the number of people with ambition to lead and skill at organizing is only a minority of the total union membership. The reason there is political conflict within unions is that the number of people with ambition to lead and skill at organizing is somewhat greater than the total number of leadership positions available.

All ideologies are either utopian abstractions or blatant hypocrisy. The most rabid advocates of the "free market" party line (yes, it IS a party line) are first in line for government subsidies, loan guarantees and tax credits. Likewise, the working class hero who lives only to sacrifice for their brothers, a sterling champion of justice, is a figment of intellectual daydreaming.

Working class heroes

There are working class heroes, but like everyone, they act on motives. They may be high-minded enough to rise with the ranks, not from the ranks, but they do want to rise. Union officers who are on call 24/7, and work sixty to eighty hour weeks, sooner or later desire to be reasonably well paid for it.

Progress is seldom achieved by reasonable men and women sitting down to work out reasonable solutions. Progress more often emerges from the clash of opposing forces, each motivated to get the best deal for themselves. But a stable, lasting solution, one that isn't undone then redone every time a political balance shifts, requires some thought.

More important, it requires some real attention to the over-used slogan "People before profit." A sole proprietor absolutely needs to profit from their labor, and their investment of capital to improve the productivity of their labor. But it is all theirs. It is all done for their own person and their own family.

The purpose of economic activity is to provide for human life. The purpose of human life is not to provide a motive power for economic activity, as an abstract good in itself. If the working class as a body cannot literally take control of the means of production, then a rebalancing of the costs and benefits of production is the minimum necessary concession to the reality of class struggle.

Rewriting history: the middle east in 1947 and 1967

2011-04-10T12:49:00.002-05:00

An anonymous comment on a previous article, What Really Happened in Palestine has posed the question, what would you have done in 1947?

I'm not sure I can answer that, but let me start by working backward from 1967. I can't blame anyone for not recognizing, in the heat of the moment in 1967, what seems evident now with 20 / 20 hindsight, from a comfortable desktop in mid-America. But the last half century could have worked out so much better.

In 1967, there was no question that Israel was under attack from at least three nations, backed by the resources of at least a few more. Israel moved pre-emptively, but only when it was blatantly obvious that armies were mobilizing for all out war in Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Israel won, hands down. It was the last time in history when Israel could credibly present itself as a scrappy underdog acting in pure self-defense.

Among the territories Israel militarily occupied were the Gaza strip, illegally seized by Egypt in 1948, and the west bank of the Jordan River, illegally seized by the Hashemite monarchy of Jordan in 1948. Both territories had been part of the British Mandate of Palestine, and therefore, if not part of Israel, should have been the land of an indpendent Arab state in Palestine. That's what the UN resolution to partition the mandate had directed.

So, Israel could, at that moment in 1967, have proclaimed itself the liberator of an independent Arab Palestine, in conformance with the UN resolution, from illegal occupation by neighboring kingdoms. The national socialist Arab successors to some of those monarchies would have howled, infiltrated saboteurs, etc. of course. But, if a truly independent self-government had been rapidly developed behind the protection of the victorious Israeli army, the feudal monarchies and national socialist republics might have had to move on to some other pretext for demagoguery.

A Talmudic scholar who fought in the 1967 war, and now lives in America, has suggested that Israel should have outright annexed the entire territory. His personal experience was that Arab civilians told him they were looking forward to Israeli citizenship, after experiencing the Hashemite monarchy and its minions. That would have raised howls of protest at the UN. But, if Israel moved quickly, dissolved the stinking refugee camps, moved the population onto available land or into available industrial work, when feasible even returned traditional family homesteads (where that did not displace people who had been improving the land for themelves for over 20 years), it might have drained the abcess of "resistance" politics.

Either solution would have been better than the stalemate of the last forty-four years, keeping "Palestinians" in limbo, breeding various forms of protest and terror.

Could anything better have been done in 1947? The British had no will at all to do this, but if control had passed to a power that did, it would have been good to delay partition, keeping the entity of Palestine intact. It would also have been good to develop a highly trained military strike force to exterminate the Grand Mufti's most loyal forces, especially the Nazi-trained legions (and kill the Nazi refugee trainers), then either remove or isolate the man himself. Balance would have required taking out the Stern Gang also, and possibly the Irgun.

Then, a period of testing out what worked, slowly and painfully, might have involved dividing the territory into rather small political units of at least five varieties. In places where Jewish Kibbutzim and Arab villages led by Muktars had been getting along, combine them into regional cantons, leaving local self-government unimpaired, with cooperation only on larger projects, like water and irrigation. Were there such valleys? Leon Uris wrote about that in different ways, in Exodus and The Hajj. Absent the Grand Mufti and his allies, either one could have been worked with.

There would also have been overwhelmingly Arab areas, to be left alone and excluded from Jewish settlement, and overwhelmingly Jewish areas, to be administered as such, and open to additional Jewish settlement. There would be some area where various populations were intermixed, and happy to be so. And there would have been vacant lands, which would be designated for development by people from various adjacent areas. Some, but not all, would have been available for Jewish settlement.

Major cities and religious shrines would have had to be handled to provide general access, if that could be done while preserving public order and security. Hard work? Yes. Impossible? Maybe not. The British didn't care to even try. It would have been worth pointing out that, when the mosque on the Temple Mount was built, the rashidun caliphs went to great lengths to assemble as many pieces of the Second Temple as they could find, on the site where the Romans smashed the entire complex, and incorporated them reverently into the walls of the mosque.

In ten or twenty years time, decisions could have been made to partition the territory into two, or three, independent states, or a federation with a common national defense policy. All this assumes that British mishandling set off a racial and religious war that didn't need to happen at all.

Or, perhaps it was inevitable. If enough Arabs were willing to kill all Jews, and all Arabs who didn't join in the campaign, if enough Jews were willing to kill Arabs indiscriminately, then perhaps open bloodletting to set boundaries was unavoidable, however sad. In that case, the next opportunity would have been 1967.

What really happened in Palestine / Israel

2011-04-08T21:26:00.002-05:00

If the plain facts surrounding Jewish settlement in the Holy Land were set forth, it would dispel the most blatant self-serving claims of those who chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free." It would also dispel the convoluted claims put forth in response by American Zionists and their confused Christian cohorts.

Accordingly, a brief summary is hereby set forth. In response to coherent questions, I will fill in relevant source material as needed.

When the European Jews active in the Zionist movement first began settling in the Holy Land, they arrived by permission of the government of the Ottoman Empire. At one time, the Ottoman Turks had struck fear into the heart of Europe, conquering Constantinople (thereafter, Istanbul), ruling most of the Balkans, barely stopped at the gates of Vienna in the 17th century. But, by the late 19th century, the empire was known as the sick old man of Europe, heavily dependent on German technical and military assistance, which eventually brought it into World War I as one of the Central Powers.

Why did the Ottoman Sultans, successors (however remote) to the Caliphs who had once ruled Bagdhad, choose to permit Jewish immigration? Jews had lived in the empire for its entire history, and some had held high office, including Admiral of the Ottoman navy. The Abassid caliphate in Bagdhad had also nurtured a prosperous Jewish population.

There was a fair amount of unused land. Educated Jews from Europe brought badly needed technical expertise, and the empire could only be a little richer for it. Local feudal landowners sold them land nobody else wanted, next to impossible to work. The Jews who came were mostly some kind of socialist - the more bourgeois Jews cheerfully stayed in Europe to build their fortunes. Those who came to Ottoman lands built their little kibbutzim, and found ways to grow a good crop. A nation or a political entity they were not. But, in a land where every Arab village was ruled more by its own Muktar than by the distant Sultan, Jewish villages too found plenty of autonomy.

During World War I, an enterprising British officer named T.E. Lawrence, later glamorized as "Lawrence of Arabia," agitated a number of Arab tribal leaders and princelings to wage war, more or less under his direction, against the Ottomans. It was a cheap investment by the British Empire, and paid reasonably good dividends.

The Arabs generally hated the Turks, would just as soon be relieved of taxes to the Sultan, and had no hestitation about fighting fellow-Muslims. The Arabs who ruled Mecca and Medina, cheefully fought the empire built by those who had moved out of the Arabian peninsula, now ruled by the descendants of hired mercenaries from central Asia. This tied up some Ottoman forces and resources, and cost the Sultan most of the territory from Arabia and Egypt north to Damascus.

After the war ended, the British came in as imperial masters, rather than grateful allies, treating the Arab leaders with insulting paternalism. The Ottoman Empire was no more. Mustafa Kemal Attaturk invented a Turkish national identity on what land he could hang onto. The British invited the French to join them in sharing the spoils. Of course Britain and France couldn't simply annex the land, as both had done in Africa.

They had just snookered the USA into saving their butts from the German Wehrmacht by calling their fight "a war for democracy" so that "small nations might be free." (No Irish need apply, but they did anyway, in their own war for a small nation to be free). There was now a League of Nations, which could grant "mandates" to administer lands whose people were deemed unready for self-government.

So, the British Mandate of Palestine came to include the territory within which a number of Jewish settlements were interspersed with a number of older Arab communities, some Christian, some Muslims of various branches, including Sunni, Shia, Druze, Sufi, etc. There were even a few Jewish communities which had been there since Roman times.

For reasons related to British home politics, and the exigencies of war in Europe, a letter had been written on 2 Nov 1917 by Arthur James Lord Balfour, summarizing discussions in the British cabinet, to the effect that,

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. "

However, the British establishment generally looked down their noses at Jews, particularly those who had not become thoroughly British, and actual policy in the Mandate did not live up to that commitment for very long. It may be presumed that the Balfour Declaration was not communicated to the forces organized by Lawrence.

There was, naturally and unnaturally, some friction over the matter with the Arabic-speaking population within the boundaries of the Mandate. Naturally, introduction of a new population almost always produces some friction with long-settled inhabitants of any land. In the USA, this has occured with waves of Irish, German, Polish, Italian, east European, and Jewish immigration, to name only a few. It is rumored that the Pequot, the Passamaquody and the Powhattan confederacy had some objections to English settlement also.

Unnaturally, there was a deliberate effort by feudal lords of various ranks and claims to preserve their faithful, illiterate peasant retainers from contamination by the technical expertise, literacy, and other blessings the Jewish kibbutzim had to offer, which might distract loyal subjects from obedience to the will and whim of their masters.

The immigrant Jews, after all, were European in culture. The Jews who left in various waves of the Diaspora dressed, spoke, and ate very much as the non-Jewish Aramaic-speaking population they left behind. There is a reason that salaam and shalom sound so much alike. But the Jews who came in the 19th and 20th century had a very different culture, acquired in exile. The many Jewish communities in Arabic lands had no desire to pull up stakes and head to Palestine until after 1948.

Throughout human history, on all continents except Antarctica, the most effective way to make an oppressed underclass accomplices in their own subjugation is to inflame passions for some irrational reason against the object which threatens to offer some small degree of liberation and enlightenment. Thus, a series of organized and incited riots in 1929 were set in motion by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

Religious fanaticism is generally in the covert service of politics, even when convenient rhetoric suggests otherwise. After a series of mob actions which left 83 Jews dead, and communities in Hebron and elsewhere, which predated the Zionist movement, chased out, Jewish communities developed the rather natural idea that they needed an effective mechanism for self-defense, and a defined, defensible territory.

The British authorities, although eventually motivated to kill some Arabs, just to show who was in charge, had shown no particular concern for saving Jews. Jewish defense organizations were persecuted by British authorities, who also restricted further Jewish immigration.

This was a time when Britain and the United States imposed an international embargo on arms to combatants in the Spanish Civil War - which meant Germany and Italy armed Franco's fascists, while everyone else scrupulously honored the embargo by refusing to sell arms to the elected government of the Republic. In Palestine, the British similarly confiscated Jewish arsenals, quite aware that they were unable or unwilling to prevent the Mufti and neighboring kingdoms from acquiring much larger arsenals.

Then Adolf Hitler perpetrated his "final solution" of "the Jewish question," and those who survived it were in large numbers motivated to leave Europe for the Holy Land.

That brought in several times as many Jews, more than anyone, Jewish, Arab or British, had ever anticipated before. It raised tensions considerably. In some respects, this was not unlike many other migration in human history. One powerful tribe overwhelms another, which flees, taking what land they need from whoever happens to be in the way. The Chinese chased out the Hsiung Nu, and a hundred years later, the Huns came thundering into Europe.

But in 1945, half the world had a sense of guilt about the Jewish population of Europe, and rightly so. The Arabs did not, and with occasional exceptions, like the Grand Mufti, who spent WW II in Berlin, most Arabs had no reason to feel responsible. They had neither been military allies of Germany, nor gassing thousands of Jews a day and burning them in crematoria. It was a choice between a semi-socialist democracy with high literacy standards and extremely equal rights for women, vs. a collection of feudal despots.

The net result was a UN plan for partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories. Partition was a popular solution to ethnic friction during that decade. Britain tried it in India. The result was one or two million civilians dead, a Pakistani state that today would have Muhammed Ali Jinnah spinning in his grave, and more Muslims living in India than Pakistan, most of them better off too, although occasional pogroms by Hindu nationalists remain a hazard.

Jewish and Arab settlements were scattered in patterns that denied anyone defensible borders, but the UN hadn't considered that there might be fighting. This was supposed to be an amicable administrative solution. The British, embarrassed by the UN vote, threw a temper tantrum, said if they weren't in charge any more they didn't care what happened, but continued to confiscate Jewish arsenals.

There was fighting, and the indefensible borders were far more to the Jewish settlements' disadvantage, since there were several Arab armies preparing to march in. The Jewish forces won the 1948 war for the oldest reason in the world: they were fighting for their lives, the Arab armies were only fighting for their dinner.

Who were the Arab forces? The Grand Mufti was one, but only one. A lot of feudal lords wanted to be some kind of top dog or king of the hill. The corrupt Egyptian monarchy, under Farouk, sent in an army, as did the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, some forces from Iraq, and some freebooting mercenaries.

A word about the Hashemite monarchy. At the time of Lawrence's exploits against the Ottomans, the Hashemites were lodged in the western Arabian peninsula, the Hejaz,ruling Mecca and Medina. They were at least distantly descended from the Banu Hashim, a sub-clan of the Quraysh, who had ruled Mecca in the days of idolatry.

Muhammed died of pleurisy within a couple of years after the capitulation of Mecca to his Muslim army, and the more senior branches of the Quraysh saw that this Muslim movement was going places, so they immediately took control. The Banu Hashim did not produce any of his successors, or caliphs in Arabic. Many remained in Arabia, while the Ummayads went forth to consolidate the new Caliphate, and were eventually supplanted by the Abbasids.

After WW I, a rival monarch from further east, one Ibn Saud, chased the Hashemites out of the Hejaz, in 1922, with British acquiescence. Thus, Saudi Arabia was born. The Hashemites fled north, arriving in what are now Jordan and Iraq, to announce "We've come to be your leader."

The British facilitated both moves, with Feisal on the throne of Iraq, Abdullah in what was then called TransJordan. The last Hashemite king of Iraq, the young Feisal Jr., was killed during a coup d'etat in 1958 led by Karim Qasim, who was overthrown by the Ba'ath Party in 1963, eventually leading to the presidency of one Hussein al-Takriti, who grandiosly retitled himself "Saddam Hussein."

Meantime, in Jordan, King Abdullah apparently thought the Jews would make useful subjects, once he established military control and expanded his kingdom. The Jews had other plans, and in any case, the Grand Mufti was eager to literally drive them all into the sea. When general war breaks out, as it did in 1948, the borders established in the course of the fighting generally supercede those previously drawn by diplomacy.

When the dust cleared, the borders of Israel were markedly different than previously drawn. A UN diplomat named Ralph Bunche worked out an armistice, and everyone settled down in seething hostility to wait for the next war. There were some Arab residents remaining in Israel, but they had been transformed by partition from equals to an ethnic and religious minority in what had indeed been their own land.

There were a large number of Arabs, Christian as well as Muslim, who had been displaced. Many had been told to get out of the way by various Arab armies. When the Jews were defeated, they could go back home. The Jews were not defeated, and weren't about to accept a mass of people who would include infiltration of hostile forces back into their newly won defense perimeter. Arab countries declined to absort the displaced population, scrupulously herding them into refugee camps, where they were to remain "until Palestine is liberated."

As intended by the Arab feudal despots, the refugee camps became permanent breeding grounds for warriors against Israel. When modernizing army officers overthrew King Farouk, they might have said, that stupid old king dragged us into this pointless war with Israel. Let's focus on building Egypt. Instead, Gamal Abdal Nasser said, we officers fought honorably but the corrupt monarchy kept us from defeating the Jews, and kept his nation focused on the futile task. Jordan and Iraq sort of went along, as did Syria.

Jewish communities in North Africa and Mesopotamia, resident since Roman times or before, suddenly found themselves viewed as a fifth column, because Israel, the new Jewish State, had become The Enemy. It wasn't exactly their idea - it was a minority of European Jews who had started the Zionist movement. The position of Arabic Jews was not unlike that of North American communists, who thought they were fighting for the liberation of the working class, and had not anticipated that the Soviet Union would become the primay military rival of the United States in 1946, thus casting communists as potential spies.

Israel was built by disciplined socialists in the European tradition, but it was now inundated with conservative polygamous patriarchal North African Jews, and conservative religiously observant Orthodox eastern European Jews. It's politics changed over thirty years or so. It won wars in 1967 and 1973, again because Israel was fighting for its life, while various Arabic armies were fighting for their dinner. But it ceased to be the underdog.

Israel came to possess many of the qualifications of an oppressor. It had a large, well-equipped army, an entrenched officer corps, a semi-covert alliance with the Republic of South Africa in development of military hardware. After 1967, Jews who felt entitled to do so began settling in what had been the West Bank of the Jordan River valley, annexed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1948, although by the terms of the UN partition, it should have been the independent Arab portion of the former British mandate of Palestine.

The various nongovernmental forces that sustained themselves by making occasional terror attacks on Israel generally claimed some sort of leftist or pseudo-communist rhetoric. One, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, even aimed to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, but that hope was crushed by the military action known as Black September. With the kind of rhetorical flourish typical of this arena of conflict, the organization known as "Black September" specialized in attacks in Israel, not on the monarchy.

During the 1980s and 1990s, as the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China both lost prestige, and the U.S. committed itself to supporting Salafist Islam against the splintered communist parties of Afghanistan, the conflicts surrounding Israel took on a religious tinge, and emerged in the early 21st century appropriating the banner of Islam.

In fact, this created a wholly different confrontation, having little in common with the earlier Palestinian causes. One difference is that the enemy has much more become "the Jews" rather than "the Zionist entity." Hoary incidents from ancient history have been dredged up as symbols, like the minor skirmish in the Arabian desert around Khaybar, fought for mainly political and economic reasons.

Thus, the entire conflict has become a muddle mess. Anyone with any sense at all, Arab, European, African, or Asian, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or atheist, should be motivated to step back, take a deep breath, and ask "What in the name of God are we doing?"

Israel needs to turn loose the West Bank, let Arabic leadership develop a functional economy, while of course keeping an alert military force on its borders. If that is a success, people in Gaza will get rid of Hamas - which they only elected because the kleptocratic PLO factions were so burdensome.

Hezb-i-ul-Lah in Lebanon will wither away when it no longer has a cause to rally around. Yeah, yeah, Nasrallah, but Israel is still there, and everyone in Palestine is taking vacations by the seashore, and we have better things to do. The theocracy in Tehran can rail all it wants, it doesn't have a border with Israel. Ironically, Pakistan will probably become the world center of terror in the name of Islam. Blame that one on the British too.

When world history is rewritten one more time, Jews and Muslims and Hindus, Arabs and Israelis, should all be able to agree on this: blame it all on the British. What stupid, pig-headed, muddled colonial bunglers they were. Even when they turned loose of their empire, they managed to do it in way that killed millions of civilians in pointless wars that lasted more than half a century. Now, let's get on with living.

Providing sick days and keeping abuse down to a dull roar

2011-03-29T00:49:00.002-05:00

Millions of workers in the United States of America have no paid sick days. A large portion have no sick days at all. Get sick twice in a month, and you're fired.

Employers who don't provide sick days, and many who do, complain about the cost and the rampant abuse. Like any good thing, sick days can and will be abused. There is a sense of entitlement: this is part of my pay and benefits package, so I must use up my sick days.

That sense of entitlement is not entirely unjustified either. If an employer amortizes estimated cost of sick days when determining the total package they will agree to in collective bargaining, then the amortized cost will NOT be in your paycheck, so the way to get the benefit of it is... to take your sick days!

As a former union shop steward, I have a plan. Most traditional unions would not even consider it. Many rank and filed employees would reject it out of hand too. But, it might bring the benefits of sick days to millions who lack them now - and who can't get any sick days at all, via weak unions or no union at all, from intransigent managers and employers.

There are good reasons for paid sick days. An employee who has none will drag themselves to work if they possibly can. Managers think that is a good incentive to weed out slackers. But it also means, workers will show up woozy, inattentive, perhaps nauseous or with a wobbly sense of balance.

Safety is impaired, with implications for workers comp costs, lawsuits and settlements with clients, not to mention infections spreading to other employees, some of whom will then be unable to work. Still, it is true that if an employee has a base pay of $13 an hour, works a ten-hour four-day week, gets ten paid sick days a year, and uses them all, the cost to the employer is the same as raising wages by 62.5 cents an hour.

Doing this right requires a careful balance of incentives. Suppose every employee is given the option to select from two to ten sick days for the year. One half the cost of these sick days is amortized over the year and deducted from the employee's paycheck. If the cost is $1300 per year, and pay is biweekly, that would be $1300 / 26 /2 = $25 out of every biweekly paycheck. The other half of all sick days is paid by the employer.

At the end of the year, the employee can make the same choice again, BUT all unused sick days are rolled over. So, if only five days were used, and the employee opts to keep ten available, only $12.50 is deducted from each paycheck over the next year.

This provides a reasonable incentive not to use the sick days unless necessary. It provides the assurance that a given week's paycheck will not be short if an employee who is sick stays home (or, in the case of an ill child, stays home to provide necessary care). It shares the financial burden, without letting the employer off the hook.

In fact, the employer has some incentive to promote employee health -- and had a financial incentive to allow a sick employee to stay home, so there aren't MORE employees catching an illness, staying home, and collecting sick pay.

A really enlightened employer might also offer that employees who use less than half their sick days in a year get a day's pay as an annual bonus, or two days for not using any sick days at all.

Neither employers nor unions show much of this kind of creative thinking. None of us are angels, few of us are devils (a few employers come close), and none of us are heroes all the time. Solidarity forever is a worthy cause, but some unions figure they spend 40 percent of their money fulfilling a legal obligation to defend people who darned well ought to be fired.

Let's all open up a little. There will always be the nagging doubt that the company is making millions while denying workers enough to take proper care of their families. More often than not, this is a justified doubt, and powerful unions can help to dispel it by forcing management to loosen up.

But as Chris Hani, the late General Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa, said in a speech to that country's Chamber of Commerce, the redistribution we need should not be the kind where we kill the cow and distribute the meat. We need some long term thinking, outside the box, on what will produce, and continue to produce.

The exercise of personal choice under the compulsion of losing your job...

2011-03-29T00:19:00.002-05:00

My good friend Gary Fouse out in Orange County, California, has asked me to acknowledge the negative impact of unions. He likes to focus on thuggery, which in my opinion is a bit misplaced. But a more mundane problem is that traditional union work rules can indeed deny individual workers flexibility they really would prefer to have, and also interfere with legitimate managerial initiatives.

There is a reason for traditional union work rules. About two hundred years ago, production which had been performed by independent crafts men (they were almost all men) was taken over by the rise of large industrial enterprises. The new methods produced far more, with less labor per item, making all kinds of goods available at a lower cost. In the long run, it contributed to general prosperity. Sort of.

Both the craftsmen newly rendered into wage laborers, and the gentlemen investors inventing the role of employers of large scale wage labor teams, looked to existing law and social custom to define their roles. Craftsmen demanded autonomy, and respect for their craft. Employers, who thought of themselves as MASTERS, tried to treat their employees as dependents and inferiors, albeit sometimes with a certain paternal noblesse oblige.

When adult citizens need to "get a job" to support themselves and their families, while a smaller number of adult citizens possess the wealth to invest capital, and the power to hire and fire, equal citizenship ceases to exist. When discretion is left up to owners and managers, it can and will be abused. Even seemingly reasonable decisions will be made according to the best interests of management, ignoring the best interests, or even the necessities, of employees.

A good example: a mother whose child is sick must take them to the hospital or the doctor. But, an employer who needs employees to be at work, on time, every day, simply cannot accommodate that, or won't. The operator of a pumpkin farm entertaining tours of school children might tell the secretary to go home until her child is well, and cover the post. The manager of a transport company might callously issue a final written warning.

Standardized union work rules define a baseline of rights that an employee is entitled to. Seniority isn't a great way to promote, but if "merit" or "talent" are the basis of promotion, the boss will decide what they want to recognize at "merit." It may be the brown-noser who gets the raise, or keeps their job during a lay-off, or the female employee who is willing to put out. To this day, in most states, absent specific legislation or union contract, a wage employee can be fired "for any reason or no reason." It's called "employment at will."

But if a way could be found to limit arbitrary and capricious action by management, while also allowing flexibility to both worker and owner, it could be a big improvement. Unfortunately, anything left up to the "choice" of a woman or man who "needs a job" can be quickly turned into "voluntarily agree to this, or we will not hire / will fire you."

Eulogos and the Constitution of the United States of America

2010-11-09T16:11:00.003-06:00

A converted Roman Catholic blogger who goes by the name of Eulogos, but has openly used her legal name as well, recently posted in a discussion at Red Cardigan that "When I became a Catholic I said 'I Susan Peterson, enlightened by divine grace, and touching with my hand these Holy Gospels, profess the faith which the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church teaches. I believe that Church to be the one true Church which Jesus Christ established on earth, to which I adhere with all my heart'."

She went on to profess belief in the infallibility of the Pope, seven sacraments, the Apostles Creed, and ended her profession of faith with "And anything else which She (The Catholic Church) defines and declares I do believe, and I renounce every heresy and schism which She condemns."

I don't believe a word of it. Where I live in space and time, that confers on me no civil disability. Ms. Peterson, I assume, sincerely believes every word, which confers no civil disability on her. We can both vote, run for office, own property, we pay the same taxes and have the same access to government services. We can each live in any neighborhood each of us can afford. There the matter might rest, were it not for the evangelical impulse which animates the Christian faith, and the claim to supremacy over civil authority which is often generated by belief in the infallibility of the Pope.

One romishgraffiti adds a citation from that church's current Catechism:

2089. Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.

I cheerfully and openly embrace schism and heresy by those definitions. (From what I've heard, listening to those who have studied Greek, "heresy" originally meant party or faction, to the entire Vatican edifice is, ipso facto, heresy. Accepted doctrine is merely the heresy in power at the moment.) I cannot plead nolo contendere to apostasy, although a Roman Catholic definition of "the Christian faith" would undoubtedly condemn me of that as well. I plead not guilty to incredulity only by clinging to my own understanding of what is, and is not, revealed truth. Again, a proper Roman definition could no doubt convict me.

If the canon romishgraffiti cites applies only to those who have, like Susan Peterson, freely and voluntarily confessed the Roman Catholic faith, then that canon is none of my business, and I need think no more about it. If it is asserted that this canon applies to me, then it is my privilege to abjure, renounce, and condemn it.

There has always been a conflict between democratic governance, particularly in the absence of an Established Church, and assertions of Absolute Truth by a religious faith. This conflict is by no means limited to the Roman Catholic Church, nor is that church itself free from charges of heresy and schism.

A most amusing contribution to Rod Dreher's discussion of "Is the Protestant Reformation ending?" was an observation that "The Protestant Reformation will never end until the Roman Catholic Church returns to Holy Orthodoxy, because the Pope is the first Protestant." How so? The Bishop of Rome put his individual pronouncements above the collegial leadership of the patriarchs, who recognized his office as first among equals, but not as the ultimate or sole source of authority. Historically, theologically, and doctrinally, is is more than arguable that the Orthodox church is "the one true Church established by Christ and his Apostles," if indeed any church is, and the Roman church a late-breaking offshoot.

In more recent times, the distant offspring of the Protestant Reformation have rebelled against the separation between church and state, that was inspired by their own forefathers (and mothers), demanding immediate political manifestation of Paul's promise that "every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord."

Protestants should know better. When Alexis de Toqueville visited the United States during the 1830s, he noted the profusion of churches, and active participation they inspired by a large part of the population, compared to Europe. Unanimously, any pastor of any church he asked told him the reason was the separation of church and state. The church thrived when freed from what James Madison called "the profane hand of the civil magistrate."

Today, the broadly secular nature of European life and culture are widely bemoaned by the Pope and by evangelical American Protestants alike. The emptiness of churches in Europe can be traced directly to the long history of officially Established churches dependent upon the subsidy of whatever government might be in power. The continued vitality of churches in the United States is the direct result of having no such unholy bonds.

Roman Catholics also benefited, as the Baltimore Catechism used to sternly remind each new generation. There were a few colonists practicing the Roman Catholic faith at the time of the American Revolution, many of whom became active patriots. Although the colonies had a history of brutal persecution of Catholics, both inherited from English politics and inspired by hatred of the rampant Spanish persecution of Protestants and Jews, Catholic patriots were fully accepted into the common cause.

Those early, post-colonial, Catholics adhered to the rituals and theology of their church, but Rome was far away across the broad Atlantic Ocean. Communication took weeks if not months. The Curia seldom paid much attention to affairs in the former British colonies. Besides, there were few enough of them.

There was always an undercurrent in the Roman Church of "OK, since the place is mostly Protestant, freedom of religion is best for us, but when we get a chance, we will restore the supremacy of Our Church." There was always an undercurrent of fear among American Protestants that, indeed, Catholic immigration would lead to the destruction of our secular republic.

It cost Al Smith the presidency in 1928. It was an issue John F. Kennedy laid to rest by affirming that if the electorate offered him the honor of taking an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," with his hand on the Bible, it would be an offense against God to break that oath. Sincere Roman supremacists bitterly denounced him for that concession.

Christians who, similar to even the most Orthodox of Jews, are willing to wait patiently for God to establish His Kingdom as he sees fit, in his own good time, have no need to challenge the separation of church and state. One can join with Abraham Lincoln in asserting that "the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether," but acknowledge that "Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them."

Those who preach religious supremacy, whether Orthodox, Roman, Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist, Jewish, Muslim or Pentecostal, must honestly come to terms with what they really mean to offer their neighbors: the hand of friendship, silent contempt, or the sword. American law fully recognizes the autonomy of any church in governing its own internal affairs, in matters of faith and doctrine, even of church property. Those who claim the unwilling obedience of noncommunicants are enemies of freedom, and of their noncommunicant fellow citizens.

If the doctrine of any church is ambiguous as to the jurisdiction claimed, it is the duty of adherents to clarify exactly what they mean, and say so honestly to all the world. The world will, of course, respond in kind: by their fruits do we know them.

California Proposition 8: Not a Federal Question

2010-06-11T12:02:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure whether to call on the ghost of Hugo Black, or look to one of Antonin Scalia's better days, when I read the New York Times's pathetic editorial on the lawsuit in federal district court challenging California's Proposition 8. I use pathetic in the most clinical sense of the word: the editorial is all pathos, without a shred of rigorous constitutional analysis. It manifests the common American malady of reducing "constitutional rights" to a mere wish list.

The Times's basic premise is "The testimony made abundantly clear that excluding same-sex couples from marriage exacts a grievous toll on gay people and their families. Domestic partnerships are a woefully inadequate substitute." As far as constitutional law is concerned, the obvious question is "So what?"

Constitutional law is not about "grievous tolls" or the "adequacy" of a legislative remedy. Nor is it about "how does this make me feel?" Constitutional law is primarily about jurisdiction, delegating powers, and limiting powers. If a law is judicially found to violate the constitution, that should mean that the legislature has exceeded its duly constituted authority. "Every act of a delegated authority, contary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act therefore contrary to the constitution can be valid" - Federalist Papers, No. 78.

The federal constitution does contain some restrictions on the exercise of state authority -- all of them ratified by three fourths or more of the state legislatures at the time the constitution itself, or an amendment, was ratified.

Article I, Section 10, bars state from entering into treaties, coining money, passing any bill of attainder or ex post facto law, levying duties on imports, keep troops or ships of war, or engaging in war. It says nothing about licensing marriage.

Article VI provides that the federal constitution, and all laws and treaties made under its authority, shall be the supreme law of the land. The federal government has been delegated no authority to legislate about marriage; that was left to the states.

Amendment XIII made a substantial change in constitutional law -- it prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime. Again, nothing about the definition of marriage.

Amendment XIV restrained states from making or enforcing any law which abridges the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, depriving any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, or denying to any person the equal protection of the laws.

There is a huge difference between denying "equal protection of the laws" and "denying me what I want, when I want it, the way I want it." I would like to park my car on a city street without having to get a night permit, but since everyone in the city where I live has to get a night permit, I do also. Equal protection of the laws is something the state owes to each person - in many cases, each person similarly situated. Five year olds are denied the right to vote, but this has never been deemed to violate equal protection of the laws. ALL persons under eighteen are barred from voting.

Marriage has always been a relationship between a man and a woman. The proper constitutional question is, has any man, or any woman (who, added together, make up all persons) been denied the equal protection of the marriage laws? No. Any man, and any woman, are equally free to enter into marriage. Some men, and some women, don't wish to, but legally, they may. Further, some men, and some women, would like some other relationship, which they find more attractive, to be acknowledged by their neighbors, celebrated by their community, and licensed by their state. Well, that's possible, but its not a constitutional right. It is certainly a very different question than Virginia trying to discriminate about which men could marry which women. New York's Court of Appeals understood that better than the Supreme Courts of Massachusetts or California.

When my state voted on a "defense of marriage" amendment to the state constitution, I exercised my right to vote no. A majority of my fellow citizens voted yes. If I lived in California, I might have voted for Proposition 8, on the narrow grounds that the Supreme Court of that state had exceeded its authority under the state and federal constitutions -- there was no basis to rule as a matter of constitutional right that the state should amend its definition of marriage.

It appears that both sides of the Proposition 8 debate have degenerated into arguing potential or actual harms to gay couples, gay individuals, heterosexual marriage, public morality... none of which rise to the level of constitutional questions. Turning once again to Federalist Papers No. 78, "where the will of the legislature declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people declared in the constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter, rather than the former." On that basis, judicial review of California's Proposition 8 would result in summary judgement for the State of California; on no set of facts is there any legal foundation to rule in favor of the plaintiffs.

Science, Life and Choice: Value Judgments and Empirical Data in Political Debate

2010-03-15T13:04:00.004-05:00

Originally, the debate about abortion in the United States had two poles, reflecting two concise statements of principle, one emphasizing self-determination of women, the other protection of life from the moment of conception. Each position had a certain integrity, based on mutually exclusive premises. In the political battle that has ensued, particularly since the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), each side has indulged in blatant caricature of the other. Those who call themselves “pro-choice” denounce their opponents as “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose” while those who call themselves “pro-life” have announced a “great war” between themselves and a “culture of death.”

Both sides of this debate have sought to claim the high ground of “scientific truth” for themselves, vigorously advancing whatever empirics might lend some credibility to their own platform, while dismissively casting aspersions on any theories which seem inconvenient to their own ambitions toward political hegemony. One of the more meticulous voices on the pro-life side of the search for scientific validation has been Dr. Gerard Nadal, an accomplished microbiologist who candidly offers his writing as “science in the service of the pro-life movement.”

There is, of course, an inherent bias to any scientist offering his craft to either side of a political debate. On the other hand, any scientist with a sense of social responsibility should be concerned with how credible scientific inquiry impacts the world in which we all live. Further, the fact that a scientist has a moral point of view does not mean their conclusions are false – it is simply one factor to consider in evaluating their results. Dr. Nadal has presented very credible explanations of the biological mechanism which increases the risk of breast cancer for women who have had abortions or used oral contraceptives. He has not overtly denied that the same biological facts account for the high rate of breast cancer among women pursuing celibate religious vocations in his beloved Roman Catholic Church.

Fundamentally, the pro-life movement contends that from the moment a human zygote forms, a human being exists, which is entitled to full legal protection, the same rights that any person is legally entitled to at birth, at age five, at age twenty-five, or at age eighty-five. As a microbiologist, Dr. Nadal possesses a body of knowledge and a set of research skills which give him substantial authority to speak on this question, and put many relevant facts at his disposal. He has posted a number of excellent expositions on the human cell, in general, the process of meiosis and mitosis, in specific, and of course the formation of the zygote and the early stages of pregnancy. These are highly recommended:

Unfortunately, Dr. Nadal has been infected with a bit of hubris, which exceeds what any practitioner of science can claim with integrity or credibility. He has convinced himself that “The organismal identity of the early embryo IS A SCIENTIFIC FACT!!! Case Closed.” Accordingly, it has become impossible to have a conversation on the subject, with Dr. Nadal as a participant. In his more honest and introspective moments, he freely acknowledges that “Absent a Christian anthropology, it’s not hard to see where many of my peers do not consider the early embryo a human person. Without the eyes of faith guided by reason, all one sees is a clump of cells.” That is a genuine scientist, guided by a genuine faith, speaking to the world. But when seriously challenged, he denounces any differing viewpoint as tantamount to “a flat earth mentality,” and refuses to listen or speak to any differing insight. It amounts to scientific truth by fiat and pronouncement, rather than by consensus and proof.

His empirical claims are indeed beyond dispute:

The human zygote is a genetically unique cell with twenty-three complete chromosome pairs.
This zygote is genetically distinct from the pregnant woman whose womb it resides in.
This zygote, unlike the specialized cells of a human body, is epigenetically programmed to divide and reproduce in a manner which will, it not interrupted, result in a complete new human organism.

In his own words, “All somatic cells have 23 pairs of chromosomes, but the cell that is a human organism in its earliest stage of development is one whose epigenetic factors orient it intrinsically toward development into the mature form of the organism."

Up to that point, he is solidly grounded in scientific fact. However, it seems that Dr. Nadal has mistaken his value judgement as to the meaning of these facts, for a further undisputed scientific fact. It is nothing of the kind. There are many reasons a reasonable person, aware of the same scientific facts, might reach a different conclusion as to the scientific, moral, legal, social, status of the zygote, the blastocyst, the embryo, and at least some stages of subsequent fetal development.

The zygote's immediate physical content is no more substantial than a paramecium. It has no brain, no nervous system, no conscious awareness of its own existence. By natural process, it might well be flushed out of the womb, and die, or it might embed in the uterine wall, where for several months it will be total reliant on the bloodstream of the woman in which it resides. For those months, precisely because it is genetically distinct, it is a kind of parasite, albeit one which is often sought and warmly welcomed, which will in due course emerge as an independent life. While a human being can make its own conscious decisions, the zygote mindlessly follows a series of chemical programs. The programmed series of chemical and biological developments will RESULT IN a human being.

A human being is an organism, not a cell, or a cluster of cells. In Dr. Nadal's own words, an ORGANISM is “ the whole and complete animal, made up of all the organ systems functioning as a coordinated whole.” Until a fetus possesses all the organ systems of a human being, functioning as a coordinated whole, there is no human being present. Dr. Nadal gives an excellent Primer on the Hierarchy of the Human Body's Organizational Levels, covering cells, tissues, organs, organ systems and organism. It is perfectly good science. He knows what he is talking about. But all that science does not sustain as scientific fact the conclusion he is constantly working toward.

Finally, Dr. Nadal argues that “the organism is identifiable in terms of what kind of thing it is.” It is most certainly true that a human zygote, formed from a human sperm and a human ova in a human fallopian tube connecting a human ovary to a human uterus is a HUMAN zygote. It is not a giraffe zygote, an antelope zygote, a whale zygote, or a hamster zygote. However, just as a giraffe zygote has no neck to eat the leaves on a tall tree, just as a whale zygote cannot ingest hundreds of gallons of water to strain out the plankton, a human zygote is not yet a human organism. It is not a human being. It is not a person. It is a single cell with some unique chemical properties providing the blue print for a human being, a little bit like a self-extracting zip file.

Perhaps the saddest bit of pomposity Dr. Nadal stoops to, in an attempt to salvage as scientific fact what is in fact a perfectly legitimate value judgment, is the exclamation “I didn’t go through two master degrees and a Ph.D. to have nonscientists tell me that science gets it wrong because the nonscientist says so.” Our culture is in many respects oversaturated with “expert opinion.” That doesn't mean experts have no function; scientists do know facts the rest of us couldn't have found out on our own. Indeed, an astrophysicist has knowledge of which a field archaeologist may be totally ignorant. However, unless we are going to establish a scientific priesthood as the aristocracy of our culture and politics, a good scientist should be able to explain what he knows in sensible terms an informed nonspecialist can recognize and evaluate.

Cameron Todd Willingham was murdered by the State of Texas on the testimony of “experts” who deduced that he had deliberately set a fire that killed his three daughters. That “expertise” turned out to be a collection of fables, which were proven patently false when subjected to scientific tests. Our courts are full of “expert testimony” that befuddles juries more than it enlightens them. Dr. Nadal is much better than that. He knows a great deal of sound science in the field of microbiology. He has, on many occasions, presented sound science in a manner that a nonscientist can indeed evaluate and see merit in. But by the same token, when an informed nonspecialist in microbiology can see reason to question Dr. Nadal's conclusions, a scientist's responsibility is to either provide a better explanation, or consider carefully whether his conclusion is quite so scientifically conclusive as he had thought.

Oxford University professor J.R. Lucas, writing in 1979 on Wilberforce and Huxley, A Legendary Encounter, observed that “Science, in the first half of the nineteenth century as in previous centuries, was part of the intellectual culture of mankind, into which all might enter and from which all might profit. But from 1860 onwards it becomes more of a closed shop, with its own puritan ethic, from which amateurs are more and more excluded.” That is a retrograde development, one which Dr. Nadal has in some ways sought to reverse. Unfortunately, when a fit of pique motivates him to do so, he takes refuge in precisely this form of snobbery. For many 20th century academics, Lucas writes “it is a point of professional pride to know nothing outside their own special subject.” We should all know something outside of our own special subject. Specialists should accept that their job is to speak to us all, not only to their peers, who incidentally, seldom reach consensus on matters subject to significant controversy.

Ultimately then, the debate cannot be resolved as a matter of scientific fact. It does not matter how ardently either side wishes their own viewpoint to be accepted as unassailable. We are debating value judgments, and value judgments are not matters of scientific fact at all. Value judgments may, and should, reference what IS scientifically known and knowable. The ultimate pro-life argument, all the way back to the briefs submitted when Roe v. Wade was argued, is that a fetus is a person, within the legal meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment – in fact that such a person exists from the moment a zygote is formed. The court could find no precedent at all in American or British jurisprudence for that assertion. If one is to be found, or devised and established, it will not be found as a matter of scientific fact or expert opinion, but as a legal and cultural value judgment informed by undisputed scientific facts.

We Were Going To Pay Off The National Debt...

2010-03-07T16:43:00.004-06:00

In the abstract, it plays well to talk about the big deficits. We all agree that the budget needs to be balanced and the national debt needs to be paid down. But we live in the real world. The debt came from somewhere, it exists for a reason, balancing the budgets require some choices to be made, and there is some delicate timing to be determined.

The last time we had
(a) a balanced budget
(b) a budget surplus
(c) payments made to lower the national debt

was on the watch of one William Jefferson Clinton. I didn’t really like Clinton much, and I loved a good Clinton joke. He showed dismally poor judgement fooling around with an intern barely older than his daughter, but when it comes to fiscal discipline, he was the man.

George W. Bush could have acted like a Republican, of the old school. He could have said, wow, we’ve begun to pay down the national debt for the first time since the 1940s, let’s keep it up. Instead, he took the advice that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” Instead he said “wow, a surplus, let’s give it back to the people.” (If we asked the government to budget like a home-owning family with a mortgage, this is like saving hundreds of dollars on your monthly payment by switching to an INTEREST ONLY “Smart Choice” loan AND taking out a second mortgage to finance a vacation to Hawaii!!!

So, for seven relatively prosperous years, when we should have been saving for a rainy day, or at least paying down our debt load, GWB nearly doubled the size of the debt. He paid for those “tax cuts” by mortgaging our country to the Bank of China.

President Obama took office as the economy crashed, and everyone, including GWB, recognized that we had to do some fast spending, no matter what the impact on the debt, to save the economy. It was perfectly true — we did. IF we had continued paying down the debt during good times, we could better have absorbed the unavoidable deficit spending in bad times. But, because of the incredible immaturity and fiscal profligacy of the Republican years, now we have had to do deficit spending on top of a huge debt.

Obama will have to bring the deficit down. He doesn’t have the option to do it too quickly. That is unfortunate, but nobody has proposed a specific set of either tax increases or program cuts that would do the job. That is because Americans have become used to the illusion that we can have lots of programs AND tax cuts. Its time for a reality check. We need leaders in Washington prepared to tell people, for every “tax cut” they talk about, exactly what the people are going to have to give up in the way of program. We need leaders who are prepared to tell people, for every program, exactly what additional tax revenue will be needed to pay for it — and where it will come from.

Finally, we need voters who won’t turn people out of office if they have the nerve to tell us the truth.

Would You Like Your Baby Ravaged, Badly Damaged, or Healthy?

2010-01-08T17:40:00.004-06:00

"Would you like your baby to be ravaged by rubella, blind, with impaired cognitive capacity, and partially crippled?" Most parents, offered this choice PRIOR to conception, would of course say "No, I'll take the healthy baby." I can't quite picture anyone, in that context, responding "Oh, but that's unfair, there should be some rubella-ravaged babies in the world TOO. They have a RIGHT to be born, so some parents have to be brave and committed enough to accept them."

Likewise, if parents could select which egg to impregnate, which sperm would win the race to give its peculiar DNA to a new zygote, would prospective mother and father CHOOSE the egg and sperm which would form a zygote exhibiting Down's Syndrome? Not at all. They would carefully select for 23 healthy pairs of chromosomes. It is possible that some of the paid staff of Down's syndrome advocacy organizations might actually object. “Why this unseemly prejudice against a natural condition? These genes have a right to expression in the post-partum population.” That sounds dangerously close to the muddled mental meanderings of Richard Dawkins: selfish genes indeed.

Somehow, when the issue is a post-conception decision whether to terminate a badly damaged pregnancy, a fair number of sincere voices opine “you can't destroy that child.” Only in the most technical biological sense is it a child. There was a time when prospective parents had no way to know, prior to delivery, how healthy the child was. During the past fifty years or more, many means of testing and examining the zygote, blastocyst, embryo, and early stages of fetal development, have been discovered and devised. There are clear, objective standards for assessing whether the tissue from which a child is growing is either badly misconstructed, or severely ravaged. It is only sensible, at this stage, to remove the damaged tissue and start over.

Parents who are firmly committed to the understanding that a new human being exists, with full right to protection, from conception onward, have every legal and moral right to carry such pregnancies to term. In truth, the entire community will bear some of the unavoidable costs of that decision. But very few people would intervene in such a private individual decision, merely because the resulting child might “become a burden to society.”

Some parents sincerely believe that it would be an act of unspeakable cruelty to bring such a child into the world, if it can be prevented early enough in pregnancy. In fact, the number of babies born with Down's Syndrome has been markedly reduced, in the United States, because a tremendous number of parents make precisely that decision. It is a sensible, compassionate, and rational decision, albeit some parents make a very different choice.

Imagine a soul, awaiting attachment to a new human baby, in whatever metaphysical muster zone such souls gather in. This soul observes that the intended mother is carrying a fetus which is badly deformed. The soul cries out in agony, “No mommy, I don't want to attach to that body. I want to live life to my full potential. Take that damaged tissue out and make me a new healthy body.” Nobody knows of course if that is how attachment of the soul works. Nor do we know that it is not. It is a possibility worth considering.

The counter-argument is often framed in reference to a severely disabled child already born. The simple truth is, if the child has been born, then abortion is not an issue for that child. Further, by the time the question is posed in this manner, the child has a name, a history, an identity, a place in a family. Our culture and our laws have always protected babies delivered by live birth. Rightly so. If a person is born with disabilities, they are here, they have to make the best of it, and everyone tries to accommodate the disability to help them make the best of it. But there is nothing good about the disability. If the person concerned could get the disability taken away, most would do so. Disabilities are a pain, they hamper the person who has one, they put an extra strain on their relations with others, however accepting and loving. It is good to cope successfully, even to triumph over disability. It is even better not to have one.

Was Israel Ever In Egypt???

2009-09-13T16:46:00.003-05:00

This is a break from my usual line of topics, but it seems worth talking about. A year or two ago, I asked a Jewish rabbi (of the school called Orthodox by those who adhere to Reform or Conservative Judaism, and simply Jewish by those who consider that the latter two schools are not Judaism at all) a question about the sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus. I couldn't quite picture the conventional view that Rameses II was a likely candidate for the Pharoah who suffered ten plagues and lost his army in the Reed Sea chasing after his departing slaves. Rameses II had armies all over the middle east. If he had suffered a humiliating loss chasing after the Israelites, surely he would have caught up to them considerably less than forty years later. Yet there is no mention of any Egyptian presence in "the Promised Land" for 400 years or so.
He confirmed that this is definitely the crux of the problem with conventional timelines for Egyptian and middle eastern history. There is, however, a much more plausible point in Egyptian history for the sojourn of Jacob's descendants, and their eventual enslavement and Exodus. It is the end of the Middle Kingdom, prior to the invasion of the mw, or as modern scholarship labels them, Hyksos.

Then, I ran into a discussion on Hank Hanegraaff's blogwhich eventually touched on this very point. So, I have assembled a summary of the points offered by the rabbi, which I am posting here, as they are too lengthy to impose as a comment on anyone else's site. Anyone who wishes is free to link to them. This summary is my best understanding of a series of ten emails, but any errors in presentation are mine alone. On the off chance that this attracts any serious commentary, all comments will be considered and looked into, and changes may be made in this presentation as new data seems to warrant.

The events of the Exodus were so cataclysmic that they could never bave been concealed by the Egyptians. Their state was laid prostrate. Either the account happened, or it did not. The only possible period of Egyptian history to fit the facts is the end of the Middle Kingdom, which ended in chaos and destruction, and was immediately succeeded by the Hyksos conquerors. In fact, there is ample evidence for a catastrophic event occurring at the end of the Middle Kingdom, in which there was a mass escape of Egyptian slaves, described in terms which reflect the biblical account (of Eastern origins, eaters of abomination), and a series of events which preceded that escape, and laid the Egyptian state low. Some of this evidence may be found in two papyri and in a naos inscription of late Middle Kingdom or early New Kingdom provenance. The Exodus took place during, and in fact caused, the collapse of the Middle Kingdom.

Professor Jan van Seters, in his book The Hyksos, inadvertently shows many, many parallels between the account of Yosef and the subsequent Egyptian bondage and the end of the Middle Kingdom. In addition, as the late Prof A. S. Yahuda also demonstrated, many features of the Joseph story, including certain vocabulary peculiarities, match the late Middle Kingdom period exceptionally well. Such a dating also provides for the proximate cause of the biblical famine, i.e. the devastating climatic effects of the eruption of Thera (the modern Greek island of Santorini). The sojourn in Egypt was certainly not the time of the so-called Hyksos rulers (this is not an Egyptian word, despite the common assertion that it is; these despised foreigners were called, in all hieroglyphic texts referring to them, by a word spelt ‘mw, and probably pronounced something like Amu).

So the conventional view of ancient history by the archaeologists is simply wrong, and in their error, they have created about four centuries of alleged history, most of which they term a Dark Age for the very good reason that they can’t find any documentation of it. There is a serious chronological problem which especially continues to afflict members of this school of thought, who insist on trying to assign the time of the Exodus (even when they think it didn’t happen!) to the New Kingdom. This is done in order to be able to demonstrate that there is no evidence for it. Removing these erroneous years allows history, and non-Jewish sources, to make a great deal more sense, and not uncoincidentally, largely validates and confirms the Jewish sources.

Furthermore, if you read the books of Joshua and Judges and Samuel, you will be struck by the fact that there is no mention of Egypt at all, save in a historical sense (e.g., Rachav, in Yericho, tells Joshua’s spies that they had heard of what happened at the Reed Sea to the Egyptian army); there is no mention whatsoever of Egypt as a world power, with any influence at all on events in Israel. This covers a period of some four centuries, not uncoincidentally, the very period in which the Hyksos are said to have dominated Egypt. Had the Pharaoh of the Exodus been a New Kingdom pharaoh, the empire which Egypt possessed in western Asia could not not have failed to find mention in Jewish sources. Yet, it is conspicuous by its absence.

There are, however, many references to a barbaric people called Amaleq in Hebrew (the first two consonants of which, ayin-mem, are identical with the two root consonants of ‘mw). Significantly, shortly before King Sha’ul’s final campaign against Amaleq, David is called to defend a town called Tziqlag. He arrives too late to save the town, but he does find a wounded Egyptian slave who had been abandoned by the Amaleqim, who told David at Tziqlag which way the Amaleqim had gone after their raid. How did they come to be in possession of Egyptian slaves? The Oral Torah sources, also, tell us that Amaleq had access to the archives of Egypt. How could that be? It is only after Sha’ul broke the power of Amaleq that Egypt re-emerges on the world stage. Akhenaten and Tut‘ankhamen lived considerably after the sojourn of Israel in Egypt; the political world of the al ‘Amarna tablets is, in fact, the world of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Yehuda.

Now, nearly all of the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom were constantly meddling in the affairs of Israel, which they referred to as Rtn(w) -- so such terms as "Canaan" are projections by the Egyptologists of what they expect or hope it to be, rather than what the Egyptians wrote. The Egyptologists cannot account for this 400+ year hiatus, during a period in which Egypt was clearly a powerful state with great influence on its Eastern Border. On the other hand, the history of the Kings of Yehuda (in I-II Kings) is chock full of Egyptians.

This therefore means that the period of the New Kingdom roughly corresponds to that of the Kings, both the united kingdom of Sha’ul, David and Shlomo, and the divided kingdom which followed. There are ample references to Egyptian interference in the affairs of Israel and Yehuda during this period in Kings and Chronicles, and if the el ‘Amarna letters are read (in the original Akkadian, if possible, though to my way of thinking Samuel Mercer’s edition from the 1930’s is the least bad translation of which I’m aware) in this light, many correspondences can be identified.

For example: There are numerous references to a "Canaanite" king, to some extent a client or vassal of the Egyptians, who is consistently identified by two Sumerian ideograms read Rib Addi. As it happens, Rib is a maternal brother in Sumerian, and addi is father in the same language. The name of the well-known king of Israel, Ach’av, means "brother (ach) father (av)." Take a look at the passages in Kings which refer to Ach’av.

Dangerous Lives

2009-08-05T17:41:00.002-05:00

(Boys Will Be Boys)

There is an article posted on Red Dreher’s Crunchy Cons site, called “The dangerous lives of boys.” A rather lively discussion has been shut down there, noting that “a pretty sick threat has been made, implicitly, and the police have been called.” Fair enough, we live in a dangerous world. Dreher had cited at length from a Catholic writer and scholar, named Tony Esolen who "has some wise and astonishingly un-p.c. words about sexuality, the abuse scandal, and masculinity." I am all for un-p.c. words, no matter what their political point of view. We should all learn to argue with each other in un-p.c. words. The discussion, before its untimely demise, rambled through some predictable paradigms, but fell short.

Esolen is concerned about boys. He is mortified by the institutional record of his church, because “to seduce a boy, to corrupt his manhood while it is yet in the bud, is to sin against his nature, his essential created being.” Well and good. Then, Esolen takes a leap of logic, though hardly of faith, to observe “Governments and foundations shovel money into programs to teach math and science specifically to girls, but not a penny, not for any subject, devoted specifically to boys. Why is that? Nowadays in some places a boy growing up with a father is as rare as an orphan used to be. These boys need more than ever the male discipline of sports -- so what do we do about it? We cut their rosters. Sometimes, against common sense, against plain decency and charity, we force the boys to play on the same teams with girls, even when there are girls' teams available. Why that happy cruelty?”

Several comments responded that it is unfair to take money away from girl’s programs to compensate for the Roman church subjecting boys to sexual abuse. It was hardly the fault of girls presently still in their childhood that priests now in the fifties or eighties subjected boys who are now adults to unspeakable horrors. That is an obvious and entirely valid riposte. But don’t write off Esolen. He’s not all wrong.

“Now of all times, when fatherhood itself is under siege from no-fault divorce, from feminism, from a sneeringly misandrist educational system, from popular culture, and from our chase of the almighty dollar at the cost of sanity and order at home, in short from the manifold sins of men and women, now of all times we need a St. John Bosco. ... The boys are invisible, and now that our Church has caved in ever so slightly but ever so noticeably on the issue of homosexuality, it has helped ensure that men with vocations to work with boys will not be able to fulfill them. Did it never occur to our soft-minded leaders that one of the reasons why we cordon off male homosexuality as unnatural is to give boys the breathing room to develop such friendships as Jesus Himself enjoyed?”

I said he’s not ALL wrong. Several cynical commentators wrote off that entire line of thought. Others defended it tooth and nail. I would like to suggest that what Esolen offers, stripped of its pretensions to universality, is ONE PART of what the world needs, what our culture needs, what SOME boys need. Sort of.

I particularly appreciated the repartee between one Franklin Evans and his counter-point, Rich:

“How about programs, period? How about setting aside gender discrimination and judging children on their skills, merit and potential instead of first dividing them into boys and girls?”

“Because boys and girls are fundamentally different. The differences between the genders is not just a social construct, no matter how much people wish it so. It is a difference in biology. They behave differently because their brains function differently.

Franklin, since you seem worked up over sports, let's take Title IX as an example. It compels equal sports spending between the sexes. On the face of it this sounds fair and reasonable. But what if girls are just less interested in sports than boys? What do you do then? Well we know because we have a couple of decades of experience. You eliminate sports programs for boys and devote resources to recruiting girls into athletics. You make the numbers balance or else.

You mention vocational training. Are boys and girls equally interested in pursuing careers as plumbers or welders or mechanics or carpenters? Of course not. But most such programs are a thing of the past because our schools now assume that every kid should be on a college track. Now females outnumber males in colleges almost 60/40.”

Nomilk later responded to Evans “Typical liberal flight from reality. I take it you don't have children, but guess what? Boys and girls are different and need different educations.”

Now let’s really be real here. There are fundamental differences between boys and girls. There are also fundamental differences between one boy and another, between one girl and another. Some boys are urgently in need of “the male discipline of sports.” Other boys can do fine without it, or only wish to play now and then. Some girls are motivated by role models who are professional basketball players – and as a male who only watches occasionally, I find the women’s league is more interesting, because it shows more strategy and teamwork.

Let’s try a little un-p.c. diversity. Boys who do well in, or desire, an all-boys school, should not be denied such a thing just because some boys, and some girls, do well in a co-ed school. Some boys might even end up there because their parents decide it is best for them. Some girls, likewise, will do better in an all girls school. It is entirely possible that some fields will attract more women and some fields will attract more men. Larry Summers may have been right that there just aren’t as many women who want to be engineers as there are men who want to be engineers. (Disclosures: my mother was a very good industrial engineer, and she agrees. Every woman doesn’t have to follow in her footsteps.)

Some juvenile delinquents will shape up with the discipline and role model of a he-man adult male who will challenge them to “be a man.” Devotion to feminist paradigms should not deprive them of the experience. (Incidentally, done right, the he-man adult male role model COULD include being respectful to women – if we go down this road, let’s make sure that it does.) Some perfectly well-balanced boys will retreat into themselves and become anti-social if forced to endure the he-man treatment. Let’s not try to force anyone into stereotypes, but keep lots of options available. The hard part is, can we do this without ending up giving 90% of the money to boys-only activities, 9% of the money to co-ed, and 1% of the money to girls-only, while 50% of each sex is in single-sex mode, and a full 50% of each sex is in co-ed? We don’t want to go back to the “good old days,” because as Moms Mabley said, “There wasn’t any good old days.”

Then Charles Foster Kane, who may be signing in as himself, offers this challenge to Esolen:

"Did it never occur to our soft-minded leaders that one of the reasons why we cordon off male homosexuality as unnatural is to give boys the breathing room to develop such friendships as Jesus Himself enjoyed? In poisoned air the most salutary meal will smell sour."

“I hope the fact that nobody's eviscerated that remark yet doesn't mean that gay readers are finally abandoning this blog. Memo to Rod: If you don't like being called out for homophobia, maybe think twice before endorsing remarks that label homosexuality as "poison," and that use the word "boys" to mean straight boys only. I mean, that's Bigotry 101.”

Once again, let’s try a little un-P.C. diversity. Fixation on homosexuality really does infringe on perfectly healthy friendships and mentoring between heterosexual males. If I give a young man a hug, am I being “gay”? No, it can be an important reassurance, nothing sexual about it. But concern over certain men in positions of trust who did perform unwanted sexual acts on vulnerable boys casts a pall of suspicion on perfectly appropriate non-sexual affection from a man to a boy.

Kane apparently is standing up for homosexuality being healthy, as did another commentator earlier, who challenged Dreher about “the healthy masculine instinct toward homosexuality that exists in those men or boys who are gay. Or indeed healthy instincts - masculine or feminine, gay or straight - toward sexuality in general.” I don’t buy that. Assuming that a certain percentage of young men, and young women, will develop a natural sexual affection for their own sex, rather than the opposite sex, even so, most of us do not. No matter how it makes individuals of a formerly persecuted and now pampered minority feel, their hormonal responses are NOT the norm. They never will be.

There is nothing wrong with offering boys companionship and adult role models based on the heterosexual norm, which is precisely what most need. If they seek out homosexual role models and mentors, I wouldn’t steer them away, but, I would remind everyone concerned that adult sexuality with a child is a crime, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Complicated? Sure it is. Life is complicated. Here is another complication: there is no reason a homosexually inclined male can’t teach a normal heterosexually inclined boy about math, science, woodworking, or coach him in rugby – the only thing said adult should not do is flirt with the young man. Neither should an adult woman teacher.

Dreher threw in a comment about pedophilia in the church: “Tony hits on something that to me, was one of the most astonishing mysteries about the whole foul business: why almost nobody, when learning what molester priests were doing to boys, acted like a real man, and stopped it. Not bishops, not brother priests (for the most part), and not laymen. You may hate me for saying this, but if some men of the parish had taken Father Pederast out back and beat the hell out of him, and run him out of the parish, a lot of this evil wouldn't have happened. But rightful Church authority was deployed to neuter healthy masculine instincts at every level.”

Some people objected to the “vigilantism,” or to Dreher’s reference to “healthy masculine instincts,” but several professedly gay commentators said they had the same “healthy masculine instincts.” A member of Dignity (for those who don’t know, that is an organization of gay Roman Catholics) recounted efforts by Dignity to bring priestly pedophilia to the attention of a bishop, who ignored them.

Let’s stop pretending there are simple answers, much less pretending that “what works for me is the simple answer for everyone else in the whole world – or at least everyone who shares my sex.” My way or the highway is the essence of political correctness. Human beings are extremely complex, and varied. It takes incredible hubris to say we understand exactly what any human being needs. It takes the same hubris to say either that all boys should make the football team, or that all boys should play with dolls, to say that girls are just going to spend their lives cooking and cleaning house, or to say that all girls should want to be astronauts. Some will. Some won’t. Solutions are individual. Gender differences are real. Solutions are individual.

Nuking Gay Whales for Jesus

2009-08-01T15:40:00.003-05:00

Rod Dreher, who is not quite as red a Tory as I would like him to be, has posted some interesting material on politically committed people who ask how dare you disagree with whatever the speaker is passionate about. The question happened to come up with regard to gay and transgender issues, but no political clan has a monopoly on priggish self-righteousness. Newt Gingrich, Nancy Pelosi, Karl Rove, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and a host of others have been known to puff themselves up over the audacity of anyone who offers a contrary opinion, or lives their life in a manner that disproves a cherished assumption. Generally, people do this by analogy. Everyone’s favorite analogy is the civil rights movement, or slavery, or both. These analogies are generally self-serving, misleading, and unworthy of any cause capable of standing on its own two feet.

Contrary to popular delusion, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1930s to the 1970s was not about everyone’s right to do their own thing. Nor was it about demanding that everyone notice that some of our fellow citizens were black, or colored, or Afro-American, or whatever the term du jour was. That is a basic difference between African Americans and gay Americans: we could all see at a glance who was African American. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans with a congenital melanin deficiency thought that was a significant distinction. Equally unfortunately, a lot of darker-skinned Americans came to believe them, lending skin color some added significance. Not so for gays. Gay Americans had to jump up and down and scream “look at me look at me look at me.” They wanted us to take notice of their hormonal state as a significant distinction. (Oh, are you gay? Do I care? Is there any reason I should?) OK, if they all got together at a gay bar, the NYC cops knew where to find them. But they had to congregate to even be noticed. African Americans had the opposite problem.

Nobody wrote laws saying “gay men and women may not marry.” Many states wrote laws saying “men of one color or national origin may not marry women of another color or national origin.” Is the difference clear? Someone had to go out of their way to make race a criterion. It’s called “positive law,” not meaning good, but that the law made a distinction that does not exist naturally. (Come to think of it, nobody ever required separate bathrooms for gay men and women, although that would make a lot more sense than separate bathrooms for “colored” and “white.”) Nobody writing marriage laws was even thinking about gay men and women, much less discriminating against them. There was this biological function which pre-dated human history, which involved a man and a woman, and it needed a social context. Every gay man IS a man, and every gay woman IS a woman. If it were not so, the notion of “gay,” or the more technical term “homosexual,” would have no meaning at all. How can you be a same-sex couple if you don’t have a sexual identity? Marriage was something a man entered into with a woman. Men, married or not, also did various other things in their lives, but they were not relevant to marriage. Ditto for women.

Even in the many human cultures where homosexual acts were accepted and respected, such as ancient Greece, Persia, medieval Japan, nobody thought it had anything to do with marriage. Greek men married the women who bore their legitimate heirs, played around with prostitutes for pleasure, and had satisfying liaisons with fellow warriors when away from home for several years, sacking Troy or conquering Babylon or whatever. Remember Achilles love for Patroclus? Alexander the Great was famous for the passionate kiss he gave the late Persian Shahanshah’s favorite boy. But nobody called it a marriage. Everyone knew that homosexuality, however acceptable, was statistically a deviation from the biological norm for the human species, or any other species more complex than a sponge or a hydra.

Now personally, I have nothing against the state issuing licenses to two men, or two women, who think they can have a life-long committed monogamous relationship, and want to share property, hospital visitation rights, etc. I don’t much care whether it is called a marriage or not. But it is a new innovation, it is not “equal rights” to something “everyone else has.” Rights are vested in individuals, not demographic groups. Every individual man has the right to marry any individual woman who will have him. Some men, and some women, don’t want to exercise that right.

Animal rights activists are even more ridiculous trying to draw analogies to the Civil Rights and abolitionist movements. I am just old enough to have lived, as a small child, at a time when a man with dark skin walking into a bar would be charged a dollar more than a customer classified as “white.” Why? Because when he finished drinking, the glass he used would be smashed to the bottom of the trash can, so that no “white” customer ever had to use it. I wasn’t old enough to hang out in bars then, I read about it later, described by people who were. Essentially, the bartenders were responding the same way I responded when I saw a bowl, that I might have eaten cereal out of, used to provide water for a dog. I marked that bowl carefully, and made sure never to eat out of it. What has that to do with animal rights? Simply this: when animal rights activists compare themselves to the Civil Rights movement, they are implicitly saying “The problem wasn’t that our nation used to treat Negroes like dogs, the problem is that we still treat dogs the way we used to treat Negroes.”

Now if you really love animals, you might claim that there is no difference between the rights due to a dog and the rights due to a human being. But most African Americans would strenuously object to the comparison, as would most other human beings. Homo sapiens sapiens are not canines, just as being gay is not “the new black.” IF there is a case to be made for equality of humans with other mammals, it must be made on its own merits, not by analogy to how humans treat other humans. I, for one, do not buy it. I don’t allow cute little furry animals in my house, whether domesticated or not. I wonder how devoted cat lovers would respond to a “mouse liberation movement”? Would they teach their little darlings to be vegetarian? (OK, I’m sure somewhere there IS a Vegan who has gotten their cat to embrace such dietary principles, but it is pretty darn rare.)

That is the next problem with analogies from one liberation movement to the next. There has never in human history been a newly liberated bunch of people who didn’t turn around and clobber some other oppressed people. Americans fought England, among other things, for the right to exterminate and dispossess Shawnee, Cherokee, Iroquois, Creek, Choctaw, Fox, Sauk, Ottowa, and many others. Whatever the merits of Israel’s war for independence, it has ended up a wealthy and militarily powerful force lording it over a subject population which accordingly hates it. When the Dutch threw off Spanish rule, they proceeded to take over the slave trade from Portugal and establish some of the most brutal plantation economies the world had ever seen. Etc. Etc. Etc. When people who associate with each other as “gay” get a steady run of good press, they demand that everyone else rearrange their religious principles to accommodate the new dominant cultural czars.

What are the rights and reasonable expectations of Gay men and gay women, who are offended by a church teaching that homosexual conduct is a sin? About the same right as a social drinker and wine connoisseur, on the one hand, or an alcoholic, on the other, who is offended by a church teaching that drinking alcohol is a sin. Give it up, or don’t join that church. Join a church that is prepared, socially and theologically, to accept what you are not willing to give up. Is that all right with God? I don’t know, I’m not God. There are no guarantees. You will have to work around, or reject, certain rather pointed verses in the Torah and in Paul’s epistles, to justify yourself. Don’t go crying to me, make up your own mind. As long as I am not put at risk by your behavior, I won’t try to stop you. Leviticus also prohibits eating crabs, lobster and scallops. Millions of Christians have rationalized their way around it.

Animal rights activists have the nerve to demand that I must LOVE their dirty, disease-ridden, over-pampered little parasites. I don’t. I also am not “in solidarity with” gays, lesbians, bisexuals, or transgenders. I think its all kind of disgusting. There are people who have been friends of mine who defined themselves as gay. I have never had any problem hugging them, in the same spirit I could hug a married man (or woman) after church. They knew the difference, I knew they knew. I am not really interested in what it is they do that defines them as “gay.” That is their own private business. It has nothing to do with why we were friends. It was no obstacle to being friends. As for those devoted to animals, I refrain from exterminating domestic pets, the way I feel free to exterminate other mammals, such as rats. But I don’t love the little critters.

It is in the nature of constitutional government that we ARE going to offend each other. If we all appreciated every word of each other’s speech, we wouldn’t need guarantees of free speech in the first place. If my speech offends you, be an adult about it. If your speech offends me, I will carefully parse it, analyze it, tell you why you are wrong, and not really expect you to agree with me. Grow up everyone. And let your own beliefs, ideas, goals and causes speak for themselves. Don’t borrow someone else’s cause as a cloak to wrap up your own.

The President is not the Pope

2009-05-12T21:35:00.005-05:00

The Church is not The State
Viva la difference!

Orlando syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker is one of the few common sense conservatives left, along with David Brooks; only my mother is ahead of both in that field. She recently offered a well-intentioned tribute to Mary Ann Glendon, who declined to accept a medal from Notre Dame on the same platform where President Barack Obama had been invited to speak.

Parker respectfully suggests that Obama withdraw as commencement speaker. I hope he doesn't. If he does speak, I hope he will openly and honestly take on the Roman bishops and others who have insinuated that he is not fit to be honored by a Roman Catholic university, rather than tactfully ignore the elephant on the stage).

If Barack Hussein Obama had ever had an abortion, or performed an abortion, the bishops would have an undeniably valid point. Roman teaching condemns both, as is any church's well established First Amendment right in this nation. Being neither a woman, nor a doctor, nor even a back-alley abortionist, he has done neither. If Obama had ever paid for a woman he impregnated to have an abortion, the point would still be valid. As far as we know, his procreation is limited to two beautiful daughters by his lawful married wife, who is not known to have ever had an abortion. She may have used contraception, which is also in violation of Roman teaching, generally ignored by a majority of American Roman Catholics. If he had ever used his bully pulpit as president to say "I advise any pregnant woman to seriously consider having an abortion, so I can balance the federal budget" the grounds for condemnation would be even greater.

All Barack Obama has ever done, as state senator, U.S. senator, or president, is to affirm that he will have no part of re-imposing criminal sentences on women or doctors for pre-viability abortions, or for late-term abortions where a woman's life is endangered. What the bishops really complain of is that they are making no headway with their church's real agenda: restoration of severe prison sentences (or maybe even executions) for those who seek or perform abortions. The bishops may also be frustrated that so many American Catholics are ignoring their injunctions, but if they are understandably hesitant to excommunicate such a large portion of their flock, why do they expect the secular arm of the state to step in?

The tempest in a teacup about Notre Dame inviting the president to speak at commencement is part and parcel of an ominous, but blessedly futile, campaign of blackmail waged by the church for many decades. In my home state of Wisconsin, known for its progressives and its neanderthals (LaFollette, McCarthy, Feingold, Thompson, all earning substantial support from the large Roman Catholic population) bishops have been known to threaten state legislators of the Roman faith with excommunication for failing to advance the church's legislative agenda. Frankly, that borders on treason, or at the very least, coercion of a public official in the performance of their duties, also a criminal offense.

To paraphrase Parker's own critique of the presidential debate sponsored last year by Rick Warren, America is the loser when a hierarchical church can claim that elected public servants should toe the church's party line in performing the duties of their public office. If our constitution provided that each religion and denomination was entitled to elect representatives to a legislative chamber, then of course the church would have a right to expect its representatives to vote as the church directed. But we don't. Legislators represent their district, or their state, in its entirety, not their bishops and priests.

If the bishops keep it up, a reprint of Paul Blanshard's well-documented book, American Democracy and Catholic Power, might well be in order. They are doing everything possible to justify Blanshard's critique of the church.

I have no problem with pro-life individuals, churches, and voluntary associations loudly and persistently (and hopefully graciously) proclaiming their beliefs and principles to the world in general, and to pregnant women (not to mention practicing physicians) in particular. NARAL has no claim to a monopoly on free speech. It is not misogyny to offer a sincere viewpoint that from the moment of conception, an independent human life deserving of full legal protection has been formed. I happen to disagree with that premise, but it is my job to sustain my belief, not to suppress those who differ. I do not believe that a newly fertilized zygote is a human being, nor a blastocyst, nor an embryo. Neither did Thomas Aquinas, nor St. Thomas More. At some point between embryo and delivery, a fetus deserves some protection, although no government authority has the right to require a woman to sacrifice her own life, if pregnancy does endanger it. Removing from the mother's womb, with due regard for the mother's safety, a baby which could survive on its own, is without doubt a delivery, not an abortion, and should be conducted as such.

Mary Ann Glendon is, no doubt, acting honestly and according to her own conscience. I would have viewed her invitation in a different light. Notre Dame's president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, may have been trying to say, we can honor a political leader, who is not a Roman Catholic, and not accountable to the church for fidelity to church doctrine, for inspired leadership within the scope of his public office, while also affirming church teaching by honoring a distinguished Roman Catholic whose life exemplifies those teachings.

What God has for Gary Graham...

2009-02-15T15:59:00.009-06:00

...is for Gary Graham

A Hollywood actor named Gary Graham, who I had never heard of before (I only watched the original Star Trek cast, not the later generations), has posted a detailed account of his new epiphany that abortion is murder. It is available on line and a shorter excerpt, faithful to the original, is available from gospel columnist James Watkins. It is an important, honest, moving, heartfelt presentation. Anyone who considers themselves to be pro-choice should read it. Anyone who cannot read it, carefully consider every word, and still affirm their pro-choice principles, should join the right-to-life movement.

I write as someone who has read the entire column, and remains firmly pro-choice. I also find a great deal of merit in the way Graham has transformed his life. (See also: Roe v. Wade Affirmed Again, and, What Abortion Campaign?)

Unlike Graham, I was never a long-haired hippie. I was always trying to figure out how to bring paper mill workers into the anti-war movement; I thought growing my hair long would get in the way. I was never into free love, never invited a “nice piece” to get warm in a sleeping bag with me, and certainly never had seven women on the side. I did attempt to commit adultery once, but found it very unsatisfactory. The fact that her husband was having an affair with a mutual friend (mutual to all of us) was no excuse. (What if she became pregnant? Her tubes had been tied some time previous.) Anyway, I never confused cheering up a lonely woman with changing the world. I thought that anti-war slogan should have been, make peace, not love. I’m glad Graham has grown out of the idea that drugs, sex, and rock and roll are going to save the world. He’s right, they are not.

More important, I’m glad he has recognized the value of human life, and that God had a much more significant purpose for relations between a man and a woman than a quick feel-good moment. It is obvious, although not explicitly stated, that Graham has found a woman he is really committed to, one woman, and they really, really want this baby. He paid for an ultrasound this time, not an abortion. I’m really happy for him.

Unlike Graham, I’ve never paid for an abortion. I’ve never conceived a child. I’ve always loved babies. I never bought into the “kids are a drag” nonsense that some pseudo-feminists, and not a few men, were toying with some years back. I would volunteer to take care of any friend’s baby any time. If there was a child in the room, I would be reading to that child within five minutes. If a woman in the next row in church had two young children, both appealing to be picked up at the same time, I would take the older one. If someone I knew was doing day care, I would be there any available hour helping out, just for the joy of being with the kids. I talk in complete sentences to three month olds, just so they can start to become familiar with the pattern.

So how can I be pro-choice? Let’s start with a cute bumper sticker I saw, “How Can There Be Too Many Children? That’s Like Saying There Are Too Many Flowers.” Very bad analogy. How do we treat flowers? First, we ruthlessly dig up the ones we call “weeds” and throw them away. Second, we plant lots of seeds, thin out the seedlings so the mature plants won’t be too crowded, and throw away the “excess.” We prune the plants so that we get the maximum blooms that we consider beautiful. When a plant stops blooming, we dig it up and throw it away, to make room for something more productive.

We don’t treat children like that, do we?

Unlike Graham, I am perfectly prepared to draw a line between a fetus and a child. I don’t believe that life begins at conception. I believe that life begins long before conception. Every sperm cell is alive. So is every unfertilized ovum. Do you realize how many millions of sperm cells are wasted, just so that ONE of them can fertilize an egg? For some reason, that is how God planned it. How about all the eggs wasted by menstruation? Each of them, matched with even a tiny fraction of the wasted sperm cells, could grow into a beautiful human child.

True, there is a qualitative difference when two sets of 23 chromosomes unite to form 23 pairs, a total of 46 chromosomes. A sperm could be a sperm for one hundred years, and never grow into a baby. A zygote, the union of a sperm and an egg, cannot last even nine months without growing into a baby. But a zygote is not a baby. It is the blueprint for a baby. It has to snatch an astounding array of hydrocarbons from the placenta, putting them into the correct place in its expanding biochemical framework, in order to become a baby. That pulsating ultrasound Graham was so overwhelmed by cannot eat, think, learn to read… not for several more months. It is a miracle, and Graham is already fond of the future he will have after it grows into a baby, when he can hold his daughter in his arms. Good for him.

Our bodies are the product of a biological process in which many die, so that a few may be born, live, and reach adulthood. There must be some moral compass to this biology, because this is the way God created life. God plays these numbers. There is a point at which we rise above the mere biological imperative. We are human, we are individuals, each of us is individually precious. Of all the acts of creation recounted in Genesis, only one was a direct act of creation. Instead of saying "let the waters bring forth" and "let the earth bring forth," God said "Let us make man in our own image." Only after creating man in his own image did God see that his creation was very good. Salmon spawn millions of eggs so that a few thousand may hatch, so that a few hundred may mature to swim out into the ocean, so that a few dozen may come back to the rivers where they were born, so that five or so pairs may spawn before they die. Most of the rest are eaten. Many end up in cans in our supermarkets. Mammals keep their young inside the female until birth, but we waste millions of sperm and dozens or hundreds of ova. Humans mostly bear one child at a time. Still, it was true only a century ago that half of those who entered kindergarten would die of accident or infectious disease before graduating from high school. So where do we draw the line?

Douglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, invited Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to present arguments against stem cell research to one of his classes. Melton asked Doerflinger if he considered a day-old embryo and a 6-year old to be morally the same. Then Melton asked, why is it that our society accepts the freezing of embryos, but not the freezing of 6-year olds? That question doesn’t reveal the full poignancy of Melton’s research. Melton was a microbiologist studying amphibian development, until his 6-month old son nearly died of what turned out to be Type I diabetes. Melton shifted to the field of stem cell research to find a way to introduce new insulin-producing cells into the pancreas. Where exactly does the right-to-life equation balance here?

At conception, a zygote is not a baby. At birth, a baby is a baby, not mere tissue. I fully embrace drawing the line exactly where Graham says we cannot draw it: can the fetus, if removed from the mother, by natural or caesarean delivery, survive on its own, without extensive artificial life support? Graham asks, what about a two-day old baby? It would die too if not properly cared for. There is a difference. Any adult human being could step forward and volunteer to raise the two-day old abandoned by its natural parents. Nobody but the mother could carry a fetus to term.

If abortion is murder, then every doctor who performs one should be put to death by lethal injection, and every woman who consents to abortion should be imprisoned for life. The right-to-life movement has been in the political minority for so long, they don’t have to answer for such a horrifying prospect. Nor do they have to answer for the many distraught, frightened women who have sought abortions by any means available when abortion was illegal, ending up dead (along with their unborn child) on a greasy back-alley operating table. They show pictures of cute babies on billboards, babies who are clearly not fetuses. They show blown up photos of aborted fetuses, probably the very small number aborted late in pregnancy to save a mother’s life. They don’t have to answer for the severe doctor shortage they seek to create, or for the image of thousands of women in lonely prison cells. If their own figures are correct, millions of women in lonely prison cells!!!

Graham, like more experienced advocates in the right-to-life movement, conveniently overlooks that in every state of the union, third trimester abortions are illegal, unless the mother’s life or health are in danger. (The tragic procedure referenced as “partial birth abortion” is, by its very nature, only performed at the very end of the third trimester). Banning third trimester abortions is not a violation of the federal constitution. Not at all. There is, as he briefly alludes to, some potential for abuse of the standard “health of the mother.” It should be limited to permanent physical impairment, or some similar standard, not “Are you suicidal?” (Wink-wink). There are some who believe it is a woman’s duty to sacrifice her own life for the sake of her baby. Roman Catholic priests taught that in much of Europe at one time, and rigorously enforced it if called in to referee a difficult birth. I don’t buy it. IF the mother’s life IS in danger, then the life inside her, which could otherwise be safely delivered, MUST be destroyed in order to save the mother. Tragic, yes, but not gratuitous. If the mother freely chooses to risk her own life to save her baby, it is her right to make that decision.

Abortion is not murder. But it is a very serious matter. It is the interruption of the process for creating a new life. Graham is quite correct that the cavalier manner in which he inseminated one woman after another, then terminated the process he never took seriously in the first place, was morally depraved. Abstinence is better than abortion, contraception is better than abortion. Outside of marriage, abstinence is better than contraception. But we live in an imperfect world, and the question for constitutional law is, exactly how intrusive should The State be in these very complex and intimate decisions? If abortion is murder, of course The State should be performing executions.

The law is a very blunt instrument. If we keep it simple, it will have many unintended consequences. If we try to make it fair, and take into consideration every variable in the life of any person subject to that law, it becomes too complex to manage. I am convinced that The State is totally unfit to sort out the very profound moral considerations that come into play in the matter of terminating a pregnancy. It is not a matter for police, judges, or advocates. It is a matter for the woman concerned, her doctor, and her family to the extent she has one and places confidence in them.

It is entirely appropriate that those who believe abortion to be morally wrong at all times and in all circumstances should say so, loudly and publicly, privately, intimately, individually. That is precisely the ground on which the profound moral questions concerning pregnancy and abortion should be fought out. Just don’t ask the police to intervene for you, if you are not sufficiently persuasive. If you don’t believe in abortion, don’t have one. If you want to reach out to an undecided pregnant woman, offer her whatever support she needs to carry the pregnancy to term. If some women don’t follow your advice, pray for them. If every woman were fully convinced of the moral argument against abortion, there would be none.

A friend who is deeply opposed to abortion, morally, has been expressing some second thoughts to me lately. He observes, in his community, the many young women who have five or six children before they are 25 years old, by five or eight men, and haven’t a clue how to raise any of them. He is beginning to wonder, would it have been better if these young women HAD gotten abortions? Oh, we can all say adoption is better… but are there enough people in this country who are prepared to practice pro-life convictions by actually stepping forward to adopt all these children? ALL of them? It would be even better if these young women had used contraception, or had their tubes tied, or refrained from casual sex with the absent fathers, but since we don’t have effective control of that either, should we also be restricting abortions?

The ultimate decision properly lies with the mother. Some mothers will make the wrong decision. Some will later regret it. If The State makes the decision, The State will sometimes make the wrong decision. Roe v. Wade is a ruling about who should make the decision. It says nothing about which decision is the right decision. There are circumstances in which I, personally, would choose abortion, or more accurately, when I would support my wife’s decision to abort a pregnancy. Other men may disagree, and women may also have many different perspectives. The law need not decide which of us is correct. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it is morally right.

Tremendous damage is done to human lives and families by abuse of alcohol. Many highly motivated reformers sought to ban the production, importation and sale of alcohol, and even passed a constitutional amendment for that purpose. Ultimately, we found that did more harm than good. It morally corrupted our entire justice system, and turned organized crime from a street-corner hazard into big business. There are still churches which teach that letting even one drop of an alcholic beverage pass your lips is a sin. If you belong to such a church, the fact that it is legal to drink beer, wine and whiskey doesn’t make it all right. If such churches ever succeed in persuading the entire population that this teaching is true, then we will have absolute Prohibition, without a single criminal statute.

Gary Graham’s epiphany is his very own. He has repented of many self-centered, hedonistic bad decisions he has made in his life. The fact that Gary Graham paid for some vain, thoughtless abortions after a series of frivolous sexual encounters does not mean that every woman who ever seeks an abortion should be threatened with the ultimate penalty of the law. Abortion should be much more rare than Gary Graham’s past life made it, and much more legal than his impassioned regrets would allow for. Graham admits that he doesn’t have the answers for incest, rape, or severe birth defects. I would add that perhaps if he did have answers, they might not be THE answers for everyone. So there we have the answer to, why should abortion be rare? There are rare instances where we don’t have all the answers. Therefore, The State should not impose answers. Abortion should be legal, and rare. How do we make it rare? Make a list of all the reasons women seek abortion, then make a list of how we can take away those reasons. We won’t be able to eliminate every reason, but we could, if people put their money where their mouth is, instead of where their lobbyists are, eliminate enough reasons to make abortion rare.

Of course, all of us, pro-choice, pro-life, or kind of in between and wishing the loudest mouths on the subject would go away and find something productive to do, are imperfect. We will all make mistakes. And so I join in Graham’s closing plea: May God have mercy on us all.

Tyranny: Muslim, Catholic and Anglican

2008-01-12T16:11:00.000-06:00

Cal Thomas, an old-time conservative Californian, Oakland Tribune columnist, and Fox News Watch panelist, has sounded the alarm about Muslim immigration to Great Britain. Segregation, Muslim Style In an off-hand sort of way, he implies that the same warning may apply to the USA, but his main focus is on Britain. Thomas doesn't seem to have noticed, but his warning is eerily reminiscent of the propaganda that nativist Protestants directed against Roman Catholic immigrants, particularly 1830-1850. Anyone remember the Know-Nothing Party? Also known as the American Party? Abraham Lincoln remarked:

"Our progress in degeneracy appears to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.' "

But Thomas does have a point about the way Islam is being brought into Britain. And to the same extent that Thomas has a point, the Know-Nothings had a valid point about the potential danger from Roman Catholic immigration. Thomas quotes the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester for the Church of England, that Muslims in England are segregating themselves into neighborhoods where non-Muslims "trespass" at risk of assault or harrassment. David Davis, the "shadow home secretary" accuses Muslim immigrants of shutting themselves off from the surrounding culture, and demanding immunity from criticism. (The shadow home secretary is a wanna-be, a member of the opposition Tory party who would become home secretary if his party wins a majority in the next election.)

Know-Nothings professed alarm that Roman Catholic immigrants were ignorant, illiterate peasants, kept by supersition and an authoritarian hierarchy under the strict supervision of their priests. If such people were allowed to become citizens and vote, the nativists warned, the Pope would dictate government policy and transform the cradle of liberty into a Roman despotism.

We all know that this did not happen in the United States of America. Why not? Because, over time, although most immigrants of whatever nationality and faith lived for a time in ethnic ghettoes, they all sought, absorbed, and embraced at least some of the better principles our nation has, in its brighter moments, tried to stand for. The recently deceased former governor of Wisconsin, Lee Sherman Dreyfus, told Cardinal Carol Wojtyla that the mind-set of Catholics in America was "They are good young Catholics, but they think like Protestants." How fortunate for American democracy.

The same was true for Muslim immigrants, and even the Mormons (many of them immigrants recruited by the LDS Church in Europe) accepted American citizenship, with a little prodding from the Seventh Cavalry. Most Americans whose faith is Islam are fifth or sixth generation descendants of naturalized citizens. Their mosques are generations old. Many recent Muslim immigrants follow their example. And those among the African American population, who have chosen Islam, were established here for many generations before converting.

Perhaps Muslims in Great Britain are not following the same path. It was not always certain that Roman Catholics in America would do so. In the powerful but mostly forgotten book American Freedom and Catholic Power, Paul Blanshard warned as recently as 1951 of genuine efforts by the church hierarchy to mobilize their parishioners for the transformation of church doctrine into government policy. In 1984, Michael Schwartz offered The Persistent Prejudice: Anti-Catholicism in America, which openly declared that it is the role of his church to "convert" America, and that any criticism of this mission is "anti-Catholic bias." (Shades of British immigrant Muslims demanding immunity from criticism).

Let us be clear: the segregation or self-segregation of any ethnic or religious community, by outside hostility and prejudice or by internal self-righteousness, is unacceptable in a pluralistic democratic republic. Religious association is one of the many freedoms we all enjoy, but it is unacceptable for residential, commercial, and political life to be segregated by religion, any more than by ethnicity.

We associate for worship with people who share our faith, we act out our respective faiths in our daily lives, as we encounter neighbors, customers, co-workers, political comrades, of many different faiths, who all share a common citizenship. We all have inherited recipes and family traditions, and generally, we all like going to restaurants offering cuisine from other traditions. Perhaps nothing unites Americans so much as the fact that we all like Chinese food.

The answer to what may be happening in Britain is not to affirm that nation's or any nation's "Christian identity." It is to affirm that no person and no group of persons may inflict their own faith upon another by physical, secular, coercive means. There are nations where religious doctrine is enforced by the police. Anyone who believes that is right should remove themselves to such a nation, only, be careful to find out which branch of what doctrine the police enforce before buying a plane ticket!

We should also keep in mind that immigration is seldom motivated by a desire to "take over" the land people move to. The last time that happened was when John Smith arrived in the Chesapeake Bay region, and the Separatists (Pilgrims) and Puritans landed in Massachusetts. Nobody has a better right to complain about ungrateful immigrants taking over from their hosts than the Powhattan, Pequot, the Narragansett, and the Mohegan.

Every wave of immigration to the independent United States of America was inspired by the fact that American industry was looking for cheap labor to fill up their factories, mines and slaughterhouses. Captains of industry didn't really care what this might do to the religious character of a righteously Protestant nation, nor what kind of citizens and voters their new employees might make. There way money to be made. Great Britain's immigrants are a kind of reverse flow. Britain made itself a wealthy and powerful nation by going out and building a colonial empire. Now, some portion of the population of that empire is, quite naturally, gravitating to the center of all that wealth. How they are received has everything to do with what sort of "citizens" their children will become.

Thomas insinuates that multiculturalism is faithless, "because in this view, truth does not exist." Hmmm... I thought that is what he was criticizing Muslims for, insisting that truth exists, and they know what it is! I can see Thomas and a couple of mullah's trading accusations of "Infidel" until the end of time. Many who practice multiculturalism understand that there is an absolute truth, which does not depend on the vagaries of popular opinion or human will. We just have enough humility to recognize that God will judge, we are not called to impose our limited understanding of The Truth upon our neighbors.

I am a Christian, and a Protestant. I have found Roman Catholic mass a moving worship service, learned from the teachings of Orthodox rabbis, and understood God a little better by reading from the Qu'ran. (The opening verse is one of the most moving prayers ever written in any language). I am not moved to give obedience to the Bishop of Rome, to renounce Christianity, or to pray five times a day facing Mecca.

Thomas also throws up the tired lie that paganism, hedonism and greed undermined past empires, presumably the Roman and Greek empires. Nobody denounces hedonism more rigorously than al-Qaeda. The Roman Empire was quite intact and powerful when Constantine made his deal with the Christian bishops of the day. If anything, the fall of the Roman Empire would suggest that Christianity is what brought the empire to its doom. (No, not really, but empirically it is a more accurate statement.) And western civilization was built upon pure, unadulterated greed.

Right Reverend Nazir-Ali mixes apples and oranges when he writes, with Thomas's evident approval, "None of this will be of any avail if Britain does not recover that vision of its destiny which made it great. That has to do with the Bible's teaching that we have equal dignity and freedom because we are all made in God's image." No it doesn't.

Those are beautiful principles, well worth teaching. One could even make them the foundation of a rapprochement between Christianity and Islam, to the extent that the foundation for them can be found in the Torah, the first five books of what Christians call the Old Testament, which are also sacred to Muslims. However, they have little to do with what made Britain "great."

Nazir-Ali is the bishop of an Established Church. Less than 200 years ago, membership in this church was required in order to vote, hold public office, or serve in many professions. Noncomformists were explicitly denied "equal dignity and freedom." England didn't fully embrace such principles until well after World War II. The aristocracy which built the British Empire begrudgingly gave in, kicking and screaming, when they needed their former colonies' aid to recover from the devastation of the last war.

Perhaps Britain's problem is that Muslim immigrants still feel that they are NOT welcome to participate in the larger culture, with equal dignity and freedom. Perhaps they feel that retreating into their own little ghettoes is a natural survival reflex. Maybe what the British need to do is "take a Muslim to lunch." (And accept a return invitation, even if the food is new and different.) Welcome wagons are more effective than mandatory indoctrination. There is no need to glorify old tyrannies in order to reject new ones.

Halloween

2007-10-20T12:45:00.000-05:00

Don't Take The Devil Seriously

Among the many tracts urging Christians to boycott Halloween is one being passed around this year by one D.A. Waite, Th.D, Ph.D, (no information available what school awarded either degree). Waite is Pastor at Bible for Today Baptist Church, in Collingswood, NJ.

I appreciate the Baptist faith. Baptists added many dimensions to the Protestant Reformation lacking in the work of Martin Luther or John Calvin. Roger Williams, the apostle of religious freedom and the separation of church and state, was a Baptist. But today, there are so many doctrines presented to the world as Baptist that it is hard to know what the name means. (I highly recommend the Wittenburg Door's 2006 interview with Will D. Campbell, a native of Kentucky who understands the historic legacy of the Baptist faith better than most, although the interview unfortunately is NOT among the on-line archives.)

Waite begins by referring to October 31 as The Devil's Birthday, which is odd, since by any Christian theology concerning Satan, or The Devil, it would appear his creation came before there were such things as years, months, and dates, and dubious that he had any "birth" at all. Wasn't he created an angel? Who was his mother? Did Anton LaVey ever pick a day to serve birthday cake to his "god"?

Waite then headlines the occasion as "A Satanic Druid Holiday." Stranger still, because Satan and Druids have nothing to do with each other. Druids were pagan, heathen, practiced the abomination of human sacrifice, may not exactly have been idol-worshippers in the sense that the Babylonians, Greeks and Romans worshipped elaborate statues of their pantheon of gods and goddesses... but Druids certainly worshipped at sacred rocks, wells, and trees. However, Satanic worship is different.

Devotion to Satan is impossible without Christianity. Satanic worship is a mockery, a parody, a perversion, of the Christian faith. Satan, as Christians know him, has no precedent prior to the teachings of the Christian church. Certainly the Jewish understanding of Satan, which applies to the entire Old Testament, is not that of God's enemy, but God's tester, a role exemplified in the book of Job, and even in the Temptation of Jesus. The Druids had no notion of Satan's existence, any more than King Nebuchadnezzar did. They didn't read the Bible.

Unreal Mockery, Hence!

Then, Waite gives The Devil far more credibility than such a malicious creature deserves. "There are real witches, real spells, real rituals." REAL? Unreal mockery, hence! What power do spells have, except in the mind of those who cast them, and those who tremble at them? Does anyone believe that a modern self-styled witch, or more likely, a practitioner of Wicca, has any REAL power over anything in God's creation? Oh ye of little faith!

Remember that the most potent argument against the Salem witchcraft trials was simply that such superstitious beliefs had no real power at all. When fearful villagers blamed unknown witches for an epidemic of debilitating illness, it was in reality typhoid, or malaria, or dysentery, which have causes modern medicine has swept away, not by spells, but by hygiene and vaccination.

Wicca is not worship of Satan, any more than Druidic rituals were. But Wicca is also not a continuation of some ancient rituals or lore. Wicca was more or less invented from whole cloth by bored 19th century intellectuals, and magnified by alienated 20th century intellectuals, who wanted a romantic, nature-centered alternative to the stuffiness of post-revival established churches. Most Wiccans would cringe at the notion of human sacrifice, which is pathetic for people who think of themselves as a Druid revival.

The formal existence of the laughable nonsense that passes as "Satanic worship" is also a 20th century invention. It has no centuries of history behind it. Worship Satan? Pagans had their own gods, so they had no need to borrow devils from their Christian neighbors. Odin perhaps, but not Satan. An entirely different evil.

As to the possibility that Satanists sacrifice cats, dogs and other animals, or even their own children, let us remember that Christians were once thought to drink the blood of ritually sacrificed babies in the catacombs of Rome. No doubt there have been people who deluded themselves that they were witches or worshippers of Satan. A few have even indulged in human sacrifice. Some are serving life sentences in prison as a result. But their own delusion was a hollow one. There is no reason we should give it any credit. They were not serving a real god. Remember how Elijah mocked the priests of Baal? "You'll have to shout louder, for surely he is a god." He was no god at all. Baal did not exist.

Co-opted Christian Festivals

It is true, as Waite says, that the Celtic festival of Samhuinn (pronounced Sam-Hayne) was co-opted by the Christian church and changed to All Saints Day. (In Celtic tradition, as in Jewish tradition, a "day" begins at sunset and ends the following sunset. So the daytime of Samhuinn became All Saints Day, and the previous night became All Hallows Eve, or Halloween.) Most Christian holidays are co-opted pagan festivals.

We have no knowledge, by history or by revelation, that baby Jesus was born December 25. This was however a popular holiday season for Christian converts from various pagan cultures. For the Romans, it was Saturnalia; for the Celts, the season of the Yule celebration. The Christian Church co-opted nearly all its holidays from pagan celebrations, and that includes Easter. Some modern Christians refuse to celebrate any of them. Halloween is no better and no worse.

If we really want to throw out all traditions tainted by pagan origins, the theme of the Divine Son of the Virgin Mother is an ancient pagan icon, known to the Egyptians, the Sumerians, and the Celts (Mabon ab Modron). Perhaps the worship of Jesus as the Son of God is "a very serious Satanic practice"? As a matter of fact, Orthodox Jewish scholars have long criticized Christian worship as a pagan syncretism precisely because it conforms to a pagan image. OK, we are not about to take the baby Jesus and the ultimate sacrifice reconciling humanity to our Creator, and throw them out with the pagan bathwater. And Halloween isn't nearly so precious. But let's lighten up a little.

Waite quotes from the World Book Encyclopedia. If he quotes accurately, the source is a very unreliable one. "The custom of using leaves, pumpkins, and cornstalks as Halloween decorations comes from the Druids." Huh? Pumpkins were unknown in Europe until well after Columbus tripped over America trying to find his was to India. Same with what we now call corn (maize) with its distinctive leaves and stalks. There were jack-o-lanterns of a sort in medieval Europe, carved out of turnips, but the Druids were entirely unfamiliar with pumpkins.

The cited article also informs Waite that "Samhain, lord of death, called together the wicked spirits..." Sorry, there was no Druid tradition of a "Lord of Death" called "Samhain." Traditions concerning the dead were more akin to modern customs in Mexico, the Dia de los Muertes. The dead might be restless, might need to be propitiated, but they were not looking around for animal bodies to inhabit, they were, on the contrary, seeking to return to their living relatives. They were fearsome, because they were dead, but not wicked. They were grandmas and uncles and aunties.

Laughing at Superstition

Christian faith is in essence the enemy of superstition. Various superstitions have been tagged onto Christianity by Greek philosophers, German tribal kings, Roman emperors and Celtic peasants. Taking these superstitions seriously has always resulted in shame for the Church. There is only one God. The others, pagan or satanic, worshipped by whole peoples or by a handful of misfits, are "silver and gold, the work of men's hands." Our God is The God, there is no other.

Martin Luther wrote "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." Thomas More said in the same spirit that the devil "the proud spirit... cannot endure to be mocked." That was the original meaning of Halloween. For a more detailed historical background, check out Biblical Horizons: Concerning Halloween. All the dressing up as ghosts and witches and goblins and devils was to mock, jeer, laugh at, the powers of evil conjured up by the human mind, not to celebrate them or give credence to them. That is the spirit of Halloween we must recapture.

Hollywood horror films, and tracts denouncing Halloween as "the devil's birthday" are flip sides of the same coin: both take the powers of evil seriously. Certainly fall festivals of corn shocks, pumpkin faces, cider, donuts, apple bobbing and trick-or-treat pose no evil. Fall is a beautiful season, October is a beautiful month. Before it gives way to cold, grey November, it is an innocent past-time to enjoy the bounty of the harvest and the beauty of empty fields. Dressing up children as ghosts, witches, goblins, devils, is just fine also, as long as they understand, we are scorning these images with our laughter, playing with their hollow identies because we are not afraid of them. We are free to make them the butt of our jests, because they have no power over us.

Chris Redford left the comment below. Blogger doesn't seem to be set up for me to post a direct response to her comment, but she has an interesting article at Secular Evangelism, and I posted a brief reply there. It is good that we can all think, and all talk to each other.

The Genetic Self

2007-08-30T17:05:00.000-05:00

Observations on Richard Dawkins's Speculative Fantasy

Richard Dawkins's published and quoted public statements have never impressed me. They certainly don't inspire me to buy his books. He comes across in print like a juvenile who makes provocative statements just to enjoy the anger of those who find him disagreeable. He is probably nothing like that in person. In any case, it is less than credible to make critical remarks about a published author, without actually reading any of his books. So when I saw a copy of The Selfish Gene on sale for 50 cents, about the value of a used-up rapper, I snapped it up.

His Introduction actually suggested some common ground for dialog with Christians, or with Jews or Muslims or any other monotheists. He does not, of course, opine that "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Nor does he say that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, or that there is no God but The God, and Mohammed is his prophet. But he does say "Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly toward a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something which no other species has ever aspired to." Not exactly Original Sin, but a bit of convergence among different philosophies toward the same limited physical truth.

The weakness of his book is that it is entirely speculative, and not very well informed speculation either. The book's Preface announces that this is "not science fiction," and that is true, because good science fiction, unlike fantasy novels set on another planet, contains some sound application of scientific fact and method to create the story line. Then he announces that his book "is science," and this is pompous nonsense. Science is generally absent from the main theme of the book, although there is some sound science in various sideshows offered as examples or analogies.

The entire story rests on Chapter 2, "The Replicators." Dawkins begins with a fairly well established line of research, that if electricity is sparked through a mix of chemicals likely to have been present in the early eons of our planet, complex amino acids will result. Water, carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia are all compounds used in such experiments, and all are present on some of the other planets in our solar system. From this beginning, Dawkins jumps to the idea that free-floating amino acids learned to copy themselves, and filled up the oceans with a soup of mindless strings of complex compounds. New varieties developed due to errors in replication. Then they started eating each other, because there were no more free atoms in the ocean to build copies from.

What led to cells and and complex plant and animal bodies? Oh, these mindless strings of replicating amino acids somehow surrounded themselves with cell walls to protect themselves from each other. They didn't plan to mind you. They had and have no minds. They just did it, blindly and spontaneously. There is, of course, no evidence at all for this vicious amino acid soup, or the spontaneous replication of amino acids floating freely in the ocean. Nor is there any attempt at explanation of how these complex proteins assembled themselves into the much more complex DNA molecule.

Even for nontheistic theories of the origins of matter and of life, this is a very long stretch. Genes do not exist as the code for reproducing life, life exists for the purpose of providing security to our genes... There is a test for this kind of speculation, called Occam's Razor. The test is, the more simply a theory explains the known facts, the more likely it is to be true. Dawkins's speculation on the origin of life fails Occam's Razor miserably.

As it happens, there are other, better supported theories, and not coincidentally, these pose no conflict to the notion that "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," or that "God said, let the waters bring forth the living thing that hath life." No theory proves or depends upon the existence of God. Those who "live by faith and not by sight" would be profoundly disturbed if sight could provide proof positive of an omnipresent, omnipotent God. What experiment could test for whether God is a reasonable hypothesis? That is why "Intelligent Design" borders on blasphemy, and certainly lacks intelligence. Actually, there is no particular reason that God could not have done things the way Dawkins says they happened, but there is no good reason to think he did. "Let the waters bring forth the self-replicating amino acid" is a long way around when a simpler, better understood, more subtle, but more direct sequence of more likely events is clearly available.

A good alternative scenario was presented in American Scientist, Volume 94, page 32, by Michael Russell, a research fellow at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Center, and at the time of publication, a visiting scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. No doubt this article only scratches the surface of available research and publication. But for the general reader, trying to keep up with what science has to offer, while lacking time to become an expert, it's a good article to check out.

The author may be personally acquainted with Dawkins, or not, may be his close personal friend, or caustic rival. Russell may be a devout Christian, like Cambridge University biologist Simon Conway Morris, or a convinced atheist, like astronomer Fred Hoyle. That really doesn't matter. Science is not a competition between political orthodoxies, although, unfortunately, scientists do engage in political competition. Russell builds his analysis on the previous work of many others, who each have their own beliefs and disbeliefs. Whatever these are, the truth is the truth, however dimly understood. What matters is that "First Life" offers a simpler and more plausible speculation, a more factually-grounded speculation, about the origin of life, than Dawkins's Selfish Gene.

"First Life" begins with the basic chemistry of respiration, not complex genes seeking a fortress to dwell within. At the bottom of every food chain, hydrogen and carbon dioxide are used to synthesize organic compounds. All more complex life depends on it. Organic molecules require other materials: nitrogen, sulfides, phosphates, metals such as iron, nicket, manganese, cobalt and zinc. Where were these found on the newly formed earth? Around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Deep in the sea was the only place fragile potential for life could have survived in those early times: the oceans were a sterile desert, vaporized frequently by the impact of meteorites, the moon was much closer, causing frequent tides and storms. Dawkins's replicators would have been smashed, physically and chemically, faster than they could form. A warm spring, on the deep ocean floor, protected from raw ultraviolet radiation, never dry, never too hot or too cold, never too acid or too alkaline, was the place for life to survive.

Before life was truly life at all, iron sulfide precipitate naturally formed a gel with pores and bubbles, providing enclosed sites for chemical reactions. This may have been the beginning of the membranes that today surround all living cells. But the first chemical reactions needed a catalyst, and the availability of a mineral called greigite, an iron-nickel sulfide, provided one. There is even a plausible explanation for the emergence of the proteins that contain the genetic codes of all life today, RNA and DNA. The raw materials were freely available in this nurturing environment, but how did molecules so complicated happen to form? What came first? Perhaps adenosine triphosphate, still the engine of every living cell today. It would have played a role in respiration before genetic codes even existed.

For all the details, the article is highly recommended. The plausible scenario of raw materials, sources of energy, increasingly complex chemical reactions started by conveniently available catalysts, could be wrong in one or many details. It probably comes closer to how life began than a soup of selfish genes with no will to be selfish which just happened to surround themselves with living bodies. Either scenario is statistically improbable, but the hydrothermal vent theory corresponds to actual chemistry and real conditions that probably existed. It offers a precise series of chemical reactions. And if a reader happens to have faith that there was a divine purpose, intent, and initative behind it all... it calls to mind the recent worship song "Where would I be, you only know... an empty space, a hopeless place, if not for grace."

Grace is not a necessary hypothesis for this theory to be plausible, but it may be a necessary precondition for all the right materials to be in just the right place, and move through just the right set of opportunities in the face of so many hazards. Perhaps there was a certain grace which provided that a sterile desert of ocean, irradiated by ultraviolet, could bring forth the living thing that has life, from which a God who, as Einstein said, is "subtle, but malicious he is not" could make great fish and every living creature that moves.. .But whether there is a God or no, this is sound science, and Dawkins's fantasy is wishful thinking, conforming a vision of the past to his own didactic polemics in the present.

The Beast of the Mark

2007-05-21T12:38:00.000-05:00

Michael Schwartz and the Prejudice of Persistence

Among the books on my shelves are Paul Blanshard's American Democracy and Catholic Power, and Michael Schwartz's The Persistent Prejudice. The subject of the former book is obvious. The prejudice which the latter book denounces is anti-Catholicism, or more accurately, anti-Romanism. (Catholic means universal, which the Roman church is not, and has never been. Many Protestant churches still use the words "holy catholic church," small c, to mean the church universal.) The books are old; I found both at used book sales for bargain prices. The controversy is still very much alive, and worth taking a look at.

I was raised Protestant with a Jewish name in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic neighborhood, believing for many years that the population of the United States was one half Catholic, one third Lutheran, and the rest minor sects such as Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Unitarian. Obviously, I grew up in Wisconsin. In between such embarassments as Joseph McCarthy and Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin has been one of the more progressive states in the nation, with a good number of Catholic working class voters helping send socialists to Congress, and electing socialist mayors in Milwaukee, not to mention the LaFollettes.

Almost all my childhood playmates attended Roman Catholic services with their parents. I heard them from time to time chatting seriously about the Seven Sacraments and the nuns. Some went to public schools, as I did, others went to Roman parochial schools. (Only the elite from the parochial schools got into Xavier High School; in 9th grade, the rest rejoined the public schools. The kids from Xavier tended to be the ones to start anti-Vietnam War protests.) All of the disparaging jokes I have heard about the Roman Catholic faith have come out of the mouths of parochial school students and graduates. Who else knows the church and its rituals well enough to lampoon them? Who else has a motive for doing so? I have attended Roman mass a few times, in California, with elderly Hispanic friends, finding it to be an inspiring and moving worship service. Naturally I did not take communion, since I respect the right of any church to set its own rules.

I must admit that I find Blanshard's book more objective. It concerns the official statements and acts of the church, not a dissection of its dogma. Schwarz describes Blanshard's book as "the greatest anti-Catholic polemical tract in U.S. history." Certainly it is one of the most effective criticisms of Roman influence in American politics. Blanshard does not resort to lurid tales about priests raping nuns, or murdered babies and bloody rituals – the sort of tales pagan Romans told about Christians, medieval Roman Christians about Jews, and paranoid Protestants about Roman Catholics. Nor does he indulge in theological speculation that the Roman church is built on a foundation of idolatry. Blanshard quotes extensively from the public pronouncements of bishops, and the honest, uncompromising assertions of such undoubted Catholics as Hillaire Belloc. He cites Monsignor Matthew Smith openly expounding that "where Catholics are in overwhelming majority, it is theoretically better to have an official union of Church and State, with the state participating from time to time in public worship and using the machinery of government, when needed, to help the church." Blanshard, not surprisingly, finds such assertions to be a violation of American constitutional law and sovereignty, because they are.

Schwarz's more passionate protest is obscured by a subjective distaste for any criticism of his beloved church. To be a Roman Catholic, Schwarz admits, is to claim supremacy. It is not enough for prejudice that bars equal participation by members of his church in public life to be swept away. Schwarz will settle for nothing less than the freedom to seek supremacy, because, he maintains, that is the essence of faithful adherence to the Roman faith. He has a right to say that. It is called freedom of speech and of the press, rights firmly established by Protestants and by the traditions of the Enlightenment, with the enthusiastic participation of the small number of Roman Catholics then resident in the United States.

He displays an awfully thin skin when he denounces as "prejudice" the natural doubts of others about the Roman hierarchy's claim to supremacy. Schwarz has a right to submit to the hierarchy of his choice in spiritual matters. The laws of our nation will not interfere, being restrained by the first two clauses of the First Amendment. When he asserts the right of that hierarchy to dominate others, it ill becomes him or anyone to cry "bigotry" because the rest of us raise significant objections. Millions of us adhere to Wycliffe's assertion that man has no earthly spiritual overlord but Jesus, that spiritual Truth is a matter between me and God. Like Lutherans, we believe our own reading of the Bible is not subject to the direction of any hierarchy.

At its best, if such a comparitive term may be applied, American nativist anti-Roman prejudice arises from fear that the Roman Catholic hierarchy desires to subject and subordinate the civil government of every land (including the United States of America) to its own temporal power. Certainly such power has been openly claimed and sought throughout many centuries of the Roman church's existence. The words and deeds of successive bishops of Rome, their cardinals and administrators, have never justified absolute confidence that this goal has been unequivocally abandoned.

John F. Kennedy satisfied American voters that he himself would have no part of advancing such a purpose. For this, he was sharply criticized by conservative Roman Catholics who fully expected that any Roman Catholic elected as president darn well should advance the Vatican's agenda. Even Schwartz, in the midst of a book denouncing prejudice against Roman Catholics, is critical that Kennedy "laid the fears of anti-Catholics to rest by the simple expedient of not taking the Catholic side on sensitive issues." Schwarz, among others, misses the point: IF there is a "Catholic side" to a public issue, and IF any Catholic holding office is expected to take "the Catholic side" on that issue, then the nativist prejudice against Roman Catholics in public office is fully justified!

That would be equally applicable to other faiths if there were a "Baptist side" or a "Methodist side" or a "Pentecostal side" to any given issue. Despite efforts by pollsters, editors, reporters, and campaign managers to stereotype voters and dump us into "niches", despite the strident demands for obedience from the hierarchies of various churches, the truth is that there are members of any religion in America who vote Republican and Democratic, liberal and conservative, this way and that way on any given issue. The USA is far less threatened than are many European nations by the existence of a growing Islamic population within our borders, precisely because our politics and culture do assimilate immigrants into the mainstream of our nation. No immigrant has been asked to give up their faith in order to assimilate, but most who remain and become citizens do embrace our own national traditions. Anti-Roman prejudice is likewise misplaced, because Americans of the Roman Catholic faith do not act monolithically as a voting bloc, however much their more fanatical co-religionists might call upon them to do so. There are as many pro-choice Catholics as there are Catholics with bumper stickers saying you can't be Catholic and pro-choice. Thank God.

Still, Schwarz repeatedly sabotages his own case. Schwarz takes a position of uncompromising principle with regard to abortion, a position firmly in line with that of his faith. So far, so good. But if the Catholic community seeks an accommodation with the prevailing culture on that issue, Schwarz insists, "U.S. Catholicism will have been defeated and denatured by the anti-Catholic host culture." Defeated? Denatured? Host culture? What choice of words could better justify anti-Roman prejudice? Is this a Freudian slip, admitting that the Roman Catholic Church is an invading virus, trying to take over a biological host? Shooting himself in the foot yet again, Schwarz openly calls for Catholics to "take on the task of helping to shape American life from a Catholic perspective."

Religious bigotry tends to run around in circles, taking on a variety of political and economic overtones. When the Bishop of Rome could truly exercise authority across many national borders, having heretics slaughtered, tortured, or burned at the stake, there was no question who was engaged in tyranny. Martin Luther, for one, had to denounce the church as the "Whore of Babylon," not only for its corrupt practices at that time, but because it sought to militarily suppress the Reformation. When England withstood the Spanish Armada, its Protestant faith was the banner of freedom. When English capitalism conquered its first colony in neighboring Ireland, the Roman Catholic church became the faith of the oppressed. On the other hand, many Irish were profoundly anti-clerical, while the priests and bishops often collaborated with British rule.

When a tiny Roman Catholic minority gave substantial support to the American Revolution, an overwhelming Protestant majority gratefully extended full political participation. It wasn't even a question subject to debate, it was simply a done deal. When massive numbers of immigrants, many illiterate, began arriving from predominantly Catholic nations in Europe, to work in the factories of nativist Protestant capitalists, a whole host of different prejudices were unleashed. (It must be noted that the Protestant factory owners were no more interested in stopping the immigration of cheap labor, Roman Catholic or not, than today's industrial employers are interested in "immigration reform.") When Roman Catholic bishops felt sufficiently entrenched to demand the reshaping of American political life to their own satisfaction, the specter of the Inquisition naturally reappeared on the horizon.

To the extent that "Catholic thought" rejects the separation of the authority of church and state into distinct spheres, "Catholic thought" is indeed in direct contradiction to the constitution which brought the United States of America into being. Those Catholics who participated in the American Revolution had no problem with this separation – they helped to enshrine it as fundamental law, and benefitted enormously from it. It is fundamental to our republic both that true religion not be tainted by the corrupting influence of the state (as advocated by both Roger Williams and James Madison), AND that contention between rival denominations for preferment would damage the unity and peace of civil society (as advocated by Thomas Jefferson). Every immigrant of whatever nationality or faith, who became a naturalized American citizen, took a solemn oath to support, among other things, these fundamental principles.

It is of course the right of any citizen to accept the authority of any church with regard to their own spirituality. It is the right of any church to determine what writings properly represent its own dogma. Schwarz therefore not only has the moral right to submit himself to the authority of the Holy See, he has the legal right to do so without government interference. He has a valid point that if the church merely informs a teacher at a Catholic university that their writings are not approved by the church, it has acted within its proper sphere of authority. But the Inquisition was a very real institution, and the behavior of the Roman bureaucracy has never extinguished the thought that, if it had the temporal power and opportunity, the church might resort to such measures again.

Enduring skepticism of Roman intentions derives from the church's historical exercise of power, not from any sense that to be Catholic is to be intellectually or morally inferior. As long as the Roman hierarchy claims the unique and exclusive right to universal spiritual domination, the right to judge worldly affairs from a unique position of spiritual authority, so long as the Roman church claims to be something more than one among many denominations, there will remain a justifiable distrust of the Roman Catholic Church among all who decline to grant that church the authority it claims. While it is true that citizens professing the Roman Catholic faith have demonstrated their willingness to accept the responsibilities of democratic citizenship, the church as an institution has never totally accepted their right to do so.

Roe v. Wade Affirmed Again

2007-04-27T21:23:00.000-05:00

The real math in the Supreme Court is still 7-2

I make it a rule never to comment on a Supreme Court decision until I have actually read the court's opinions, or at least the syllabus (that's a sort of final rough draft released before publication). They are easily accessible at www.supremecourtus.gov, by clicking on OPINIONS and then the name of the case.

Now I have read Gonzalez v. Carhart, the decision which upheld the constitutionality of the federal law banning the so-called "partial birth abortion" procedure, better known among physicians as Intact Dilation and Evacuation, or Dilation and Extraction. While the media rushes to extract a sound byte and a quick headline, while advocacy groups rush to celebrate or bewail the decision, it turns out the Supreme Court acted with the deliberation of a court. What has changed? Darn little.

The court has no jurisdiction to determine whether abortion is a morally good thing, a morally bad thing, or a morally ambiguous thing. With the possible exception of a catatonic note from Justice Thomas, the court stayed within its proper jurisdiction as a court. It examined whether this particular challenge to this particular law was legally sound. Federal courts have a guiding principal that if there is any reasonable interpretation of a law that would make it constitutionally acceptable, courts will adopt that interpretation. The court did so, and in doing so it has ruled out most of the dangers feared by the original plaintiffs who asked for injunctions against the law's enforcement.

The court didn't even say that Congress used good judgment in passing the law, only that, good law or bad law, it was within the discretion of Congress to adopt it. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison both wrote in The Federalist Papers that if the legislature exceeds the powers granted to it by a constitution, it is the duty of the judiciary to declare such law null and void. The Supreme Court carefully considered whether this was such a law. By prudently trimming the possible applications of the law, a majority of five justices found that it was not.

There can be little doubt that the authors of this law hoped to open the door to a series of chilling prosecutions of doctors who perform abortion, stretching the law to leave physicians in genuine doubt about what they would or would not be arrested for. There is no doubt that there are a certain number of U.S. attorneys and state prosecutors who were slobbering to do exactly that. In order to find the law constitutional, the court had to slam that door shut. They did. Any doctor who is prosecuted for anything but an overt and deliberate violation of very specific rules has only to cite the court's ruling and majority opinion to get the charges dismissed.

It is important to keep in mind that by the explicit terms of Roe v. Wade, any state may prohibit abortions during the third trimester, unless the life or health of the pregnant woman concerned are in danger. I can't think of any state that has not done so. As the court majority noted, between 85 and 90% of abortions performed each year in the United States occur during the first trimester, and most of the rest during the second trimester. Abortions in the third trimester are almost always performed precisely because the mother's life is in danger. In effect, her baby is killing her. Orthodox Jewish law, for one, absolutely mandates abortion in this circumstance. (There have been times and places where Roman Catholic priests have openly demanded that the mother must die in order to save her baby.) It comes down to a choice between the mother's life or the baby's. To save the mother the baby will be destroyed.

Whether it is called partial birth abortion or dilation and extraction, if the mother's life is in danger, the law explicitly allows this procedure to be used. As narrowly interpreted by the court majority, as long as the head of the fetus is not actually outside of the birth canal, the procedure is perfectly legal to protect the mother's health also. Just don't let the head get out of the mother's body. The difference between a Nebraska law overturned in Stenberg v. Carhart and the current federal law is that the current law provides very specific benchmarks. The Nebraska law referred only to whether "a substantial part" of the fetus was delivered out of the uterus, not even out of the mother's body.

The real math on this ruling is unchanged since Roe v. Wade. Two justices favor overturning Roe, the perennial Thomas and Scalia. Seven justices rely on Roe and the cases that rest on Roe as decided law. They just disagreed on the details. Congress said that in passing the law, it was attempting to "draw a bright line that clearly distinguishes between abortion and infanticide." Those who call themselves "pro-life" have claimed that there is NO line that distinguishes between abortion and infanticide, but Congress said with a straight face that it was drawing one, and the Supreme Court took them at their word.

In that light, Justice Ginsburg's dissent waxes a bit hysterical at times. There is nothing particularly alarming about the net impact of the majority ruling. The full and independent legal status of women under the constitution is not threatened. But she makes some good points. The factual findings on which Congress based the law indeed "do not withstand inspection" and "many of the Act's recitations are incorrect." That is a polite way of saying that the congressional authors either lied to the American people, or were ignorant to the point of gross incompetence. Or perhaps they were just "factually challenged." In specific, there is no medical consensus that the procedure is never necessary, and there are in fact many medical schools which provide training in how to perform it.

It is probably true that if Justice O'Connor were still on the court, instead of Justice Alito, the 5-4 decision would have tipped the other way. But in practical terms, it wouldn't have made much difference. Otto von Bismarck once remarked that no one should see how laws or sausages are made. Here we have a good example of how laws are made. Everyone is tip-toeing around what they really want to accomplish. Everyone is using bland language and logic that may be quite different than what each justice would really like to say or to accomplish. But the result is not at all bad. A court can't make law, it can only interpret law. Five justices wanted to save this law from being overturned, and they did so in a proper legal manner. By the time they were done, there wasn't much impact left to the law they upheld. They even, quite properly, left the door open that a woman with a specific set of facts could go to court and seek an injunction against the law as it applied to her individual situation.

It was a good conservative decision, by justices determined not to be judicial activists. There are only two judicial activists on the court right now, Scalia and Thomas. But the most they could get was to go along with this ruling. It was a good day for the majesty of the law.

Are Those Jesus's Bones?

2007-03-13T14:40:00.000-05:00

No, but they may be

Yehoshua ben Yosef's

There has been another spiritual tempest in the secular tea-cup brewing over the anouncment that a set of ossuaries dug up some years ago in the middle east may (or may not) contain the bones and ashes of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother Mary, his brother James, his wife Mary of Magdala, and their son.

For Protestants, the possibility that Jesus had a brother is no big deal. It is well known that the author of the Epistle of James was referred to as the brother of Jesus. For at least some Roman Catholics, and possibly for Greek and Coptic Orthodox Christians, it could be a problem. Official teaching of the Roman church is that Joseph lived a chaste life with Mary, so that her womb would never be devoted to a lesser purpose than it had already served. There are of course references in the gospels to "my mother and my brothers." One explanation, by no means a certain one, is that in many middle eastern cultures, to this day, various degrees of cousins are commonly referred to as brothers and sisters.

The possibility that Jesus married and had a son is not critical either, although most Christians would find it unsettling. In the most orthodox Christian doctrine, Jesus became "fully human." It is by no means closed that he might have had a wife or son. If he did, they were of no significance to the writers of the gospels. The early Christian community did not have questions of succession which plagued the early Muslim community, leading to splits between Shia and Sunni. There was never a claim that blood relatives, let alone descendants, of Jesus had a special right to lead. Also, Christianity did not spread by establishing a new empire, such as the Caliphate, but among the lower classes of a well-established empire.

But the suggestion that Jesus's bones remain on earth certainly pose a question about the Resurrection. And Christianity is nothing if not a ressurection faith. The Nativity pales by comparison.

It appears that nobody is asking what may be the most pertinent question:

Suppose there were detailed, exact, comprehensive, irrefutable scientific PROOF that these bones are indeed the bones of Jesus, Mary, Mary, Jesus's son by Mary, etc. etc. etc.

(At present, there is no such proof. There is only interesting speculation about the possible reading of some inscriptions, and what they may or may not mean. Remember the similar case of the ossuary alleged to contain the bones of Jesus's brother James? The inscription turned out to be a very clever and well-done forgery by a modern antiquities dealer, who hoped to increase the sale price of the item.)

But if there were proof:

Would you leave the church you currently belong to?
Would praise and worship cease to inspire you as they do now?
Would you feel cut off from God, lost and abandoned in an indifferent, morally neutral universe?
Would your prayer life wither and die, because after all, it had no point?

I would bet that for 99.99999999999% of current believers, the answer would be "No." After all, the current outcry comes, not from those who have detailed scientific evidence for a contrary position, but from people who are quite certain they know better regardless of the current state of the scientific evidence.

Few Christians of any variety, and fewer who have had a born-again experience, gave their lives to Jesus because they came to an intellectual understanding that "By golly, all the weight of scientific evidence shows that this man did indeed rise from the dead, approximately three diurnal cycles after his lifeless corpse was placed in a tomb with a big heavy rock rolled over the entrance. I guess that makes him worthy to be praised."

Christians become and remain Christians because "there's something about that name," because they have experienced that Jesus IS "the lover of my soul," because in their heart and soul, maybe even in their bones, they feel "holy is the Lord God Almighty," because the heart feels "strangely warm," because the weight of known sins falls away at the altar. Is anybody going to give that up because some bones in an urn have been conclusively identified as those of Jesus? Very unlikely.

C.S. Lewis wrote, in the introduction to The Screwtape Letters, that belief in the existence of devils, and of Satan as a fallen archangel, "is one of my opinions." If it were proven to be false, his Christian faith would not be shattered. It would be much more difficult, logically, to say that the Resurrection is "one of my opinions" and that if certain bones still on earth were proven to be those of Jesus Christ, my Christian faith would remain intact. But the truth is, most Christians would continue to believe, even if the proof that those are Jesus's bones were beyond any possible doubt. Those who do not believe might raise the level of mockery several notches, but believers would continue to believe.

At most, we might have to rethink what Jesus meant by the words he used, how well the words he really said have been conveyed to us through translations and interpretations and incomplete transcriptions and faded memories of the apostles. Most of all, we would have to ask ourselves, how much has our human reasoning, and human unreasoning, distorted the pure essence of the message and the salvation that Jesus brought into the world?

We all know that perverse and bloody crimes have been committed in the last 2000 years, in the name of Christianity, even in the name of Jesus. During World War I, the Wobblies sane a parody of "Onward Christian Soldiers" that included unfortunately accurate phrases like "let the gentle Jesus, bless your dynamite" and "slay your Christian neighbors, or by them be slain." Do we even understand, truly, what Jesus really meant to tell us? What we have is better than nothing, but how well do we really know Jesus? Are we so wrapped up in doctrines, and in our own certainty about physical events as we understand events in human experience, that we have missed the essential Truth?

Maybe not. This tempest in a teapot about some old bones may blow over like all those that came before it. But if we are unwilling to abandon our faith in the face of proven facts, or deny the possibility of physical evidence because we will not abandon our faith, only one truly honest course remains: we must examine how well we understand the foundations of our faith. Jesus said that his Kingdom is "not of this world." Why are we looking to events in the world, as the world knows them, to validate that Kingdom?

What Abortion Campaign?

2007-03-04T14:37:00.000-06:00

Crisis Pregnancy Centers are Roe v. Wade in action

(Also see Roe v. Wade Affirmed Again)

The February 26 (2007) issue of TIME magazine features a front-page introduction to The Abortion Campaign You Never Hear About: Crisis pregnancy centers are working to win over one woman at a time. But are they playing fair?

There is something missing from the premises of this article. What abortion "campaign" is TIME talking about?

"Crisis pregnancy centers" is a catch-all term for citizens who believe abortion is the wrong choice, reaching out to pregnant women, offering various levels of assistance and/or propaganda. The goal, obviously, is to influence the individual choice whether to carry the pregnancy to term, or seek an abortion. (Propaganda simply means to present information, selectively, with the intention of winning others over to a distinct viewpoint).

In First Amendment terms, crisis pregnancy centers are engaged in freedom of speech and freedom of association, not unlike Planned Parenthood. They just have a different viewpoint. Nothing better demonstrates the enduring wisdom of Roe v. Wade.

No decision by the United States Supreme Court has ever said, or even implied, that abortion is a good choice, the right choice, or a socially desirable choice. All that Roe v. Wade ever said is, the decision to carry or terminate a pregancy, particularly in the first trimester, is so initimate, involves so many medical and personal variables, that in the finest traditions of American constitutional law, the police powers of the state have no legitimate role.

If not one woman in American chose to have an abortion, it would take nothing from the validity of that ruling.

Most Americans fervently believe that we have a right to privacy, to be left alone by our government in personal decisions that are nobody's business but our own. We disagree about what is private and what is a matter of public concern, but we darn well want the government to stay out of anything we personally believe we can handle without bureaucratic meddling. Applying constitutional analysis developed by Justices Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the Supreme Court has in may cases agreed, and restrained the legislative branches of government from intruding too deeply into our private lives. Roe v. Wade was one result of this vigilant defense of our cherished liberties.

It is well established that the choice legally belongs to the pregnant woman. There are many organizations dedicated to assisting women in exercising that choice. Some make medically proper abortions, in sterile surroundings, performed by qualified medical teams, available to woman who could not afford the procedure, or could not find any other doctor to perform it. There are also organizations dedicated to offering assistance with the economic and emotional costs of carrying a pregnancy to term, and raising a baby after delivery. Some organizations, offering various viewpoints, offer more rhetoric than substance. Some organizations distort the truth, offering dated or doubtful information.

That is what free speech and public advocacy are all about. Everyone gets a voice. Everyone gets to choose what voices each of us will listen to. Nobody has the right to coerce another person's choice. If someone is so zealous in their advocacy that they cross the line into criminal fraud, that can be prosecuted. If someone provides detailed, and false, medical information, that may reach the point of practicing medicine without a license. Short of that, it is not generally a criminal offense to lie to another person. The remedy is for competing viewpoints to vigorously provide more complete and accurate information.

The fruitless and destructive debate over legislative action, to restore criminal penalties for abortion, is fought on very different principles than freely offering information, advice and aid to women who have the undoubted right to choose. To assist a woman in delivering a healthy baby is a far cry from threatening her with several years in prison. The important different is that crisis pregnancy centers have to say "Please" rather than saying "We will place you under arrest and prosecute you."

It remains true that there are indeed two lives concerned with every pregnancy. The two are not equal at all points during pregnancy. The Supreme Court wisely left open that states may prohibit abortion in the third trimester, when the fetus is an almost fully developed baby who could survive outside the womb if necessary. The only thing the state may not do at that stage is mandate that a woman facing serious complications sacrifice or risk her own life to save her baby. (A woman may of course CHOOSE to do so.)But in the first trimester, medical technology does not yet exist which would allow a determined right-to-life advocate to tell a pregnant woman "If you won't carry that baby for the next seven months, if you won't endure the morning sickness, if you won't go through delivery, transplant that precious life into my womb and I will take it from here." And it is not yet a baby. It is a new life growing within the womb of another, not yet capable of independent existence.

Crisis pregnancy centers may offer and advocate. So may Planned Parenthood. The CHOICE belongs to the pregnant woman. No matter what viewpoint is offered, that is all Roe v. Wade in action.

Christmas Presence

2006-11-29T08:13:00.000-06:00

"No holiday season is complete, at least for the courts,
without one or more First Amendment challenges to public holiday displays."

This was the wry observation in December 2004 by the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, called upon to decide a case pitting Andrea Skoros, a mother of two public school students, against the New York City Department of Education. Only three out of 127 pages of the decision are available on-line; a pdf error message prevents further reading, and the error has never been corrected. The Second Circuit web site seems to be particularly vulnerable to such errors. But the details hardly matter.

There is a reason that Christians have, for many decades, been uttering the slogan "Put Christ back in Christmas." Jesus Christ did not have a particularly prominent role in early American observance of the Christmas holiday. Our earliest models of piety in government, the Pilgrims and Puritans, forbade observance of a Christmas holiday. From 1659 to 1681, the law in Massachusetts Bay colony imposed a fine for observance of Christmas "by abstinence from labor, feasting, or any other way."

The Anglican church observed an Anglican mass for Christmas. Many Anglicans ONLY went to church for this special occasion, or perhaps also for Easter. Roman Catholics celebrated Christ Mass; that is where the name Christmas comes from. Accordingly, Baptists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians remained hostile to observance of the holiday, until well into the 19th century, long after the American Revolution. Methodists were all over the map, coming out of the Anglican church, but in America often converted directly from unbelief in emotional mass revivals during the Great Awakening. For strict Methodists, celebrating the Christ Mass was as sinful as playing cards or dancing the Virginia Reel.

Whatever Christmas is, it does not fall on any likely birth date for Jesus. Mary's baby boy may have been born in April or August (more likely times of year for shepherds to be watching their flocks by night in Palestine). The date of Christ Mass was timed by the fathers of the church, after becoming the official state church of the Roman Empire, to pre-empt the pagan Saturnalia. As missionaries moved north to convert the pale-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed barbarians of northern Europe, it also scooped up the midwinter festivals and co-opted the Yule logs.

Dutch families of the Reformed Church, and German Lutheran immigrants, brought to America their own traditional celebrations of Christmas, supplying America with "Sinter Klaas" and the Christmas tree. But no state recognized a Christmas holiday until 1836, roughly the 60th anniversary of American independence. Congress made no act recognizing the holiday until 1870. Sometime in the 1840s, a committee of New York businessmen got behind making the holiday a major annual event. Why? To boost sales of course. Our current orgy of gift giving, not to mention returns and exchanges, was not a thoughtless byproduct. It was the original motivation for the holiday as we know it.

Eventually, most churches caught the spirit of the great national civic celebration. If the stores rendered themselves profitable off of Christmas, the churches certainly found it appropriate to get in a word or two about Christ. Special services for the holy day, which were once explicitly rejected, became commonplace. In recent years, church choirs have even been known to come downtown singing spiritual carols in the midst of the secular holiday sponsored by the chamber of commerce. (They have a constitutional right to do that, as long as the celebration is held in the public square).

Many of our modern Christmas customs came from devout religious observance in one century or another. (Jesus was not born "amid the winter snows," but the English carol is a beautiful icon). As far as American observance is concerned, celebration that the Messiah is born, and God reconciled to a sinful world, is a late-breaking add-on to feasting, buying, and extended vacations. For that matter, Hannukkah was not such a big deal in traditional Jewish communities, until American Jewish immigrants sought for a way to join the American civic holiday season. These religious observances do add a certain significance to the whole exercise.

Why Did We Vote on This?

2006-11-08T13:40:00.000-06:00

Wednesday Morning Quarterbacking about Marriage

I've got to hand it to Arizona. They had the common sense to say no. Wisconsin may be the first state to adopt a constitutional amendment concerning the definition of marriage, with less than 60% voting in favor. That distinction pales by comparison. We are seeing the first hopeful signs that sanity may yet return to this hysterical debate. Two older women passengers on the Milwaukee paratransit system gave the best spontaneous insights into the insidious amendment proposal:

"If God said it, we don't get to vote on it. So why are we voting on it?"

"This is too confusing. There has to be some purpose they're not telling us about."

One transparent purpose they didn't openly mention in Wisconsin failed to come true. The amendment was not the wedge for a Republican sweep of the elections. Voters split their tickets in all kinds of ways, with great sophistication. One congressional district even tipped to the Democrats. A fair number of people who voted "Yes" seem to have voted AS IF the referendum were a simple question: "Is marriage the union of one man and one woman?" That would have gotten about a 70% yes vote. It is not what the legislature presented to the people for ratification.

Still, it is odd that those who claim to know what God ordained wanted us to vote on it!. One might have expected those who claim marriage can mean anything we want it to mean to push for a vote. It is strange that so many pastors and churches thought it worthy of their attention. There has never been a time when any political body was so anxious to pass a constitutional amendment to provide that things are going to stay the way they are now. Nor has there been a time when opposition was so aroused on the ground that if the amendment is voted down, nothing will change. For its stated purpose, it would have been hard to write a more twisted and uncertain set of sentences. There would have been no harm in sending the whole thing back to the drawing board until the authors could get it right.

But the most dangerous thing about the rash of state constitutional amendments on this subject is that it takes the courts off the hook. Paranoia about "activist judges" inspires many to nail the absurd debate about marriage into an airtight coffin, without bothering to drive a stake through the heart of the controversy. Yes, the famous ruling by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts was ridiculous. But no court, no state attorney general, nobody from Liberty Counsel or American Center for Law and Justice, has come close to dissecting what the court's error really was. Instead of doing the hard work of clearing the air, everyone is looking for airtight compartments to seal off the real questions that remain unresolved.

It is a general and accepted practice in drafting legislation, and in legal reasoning, to begin by defining the terms of the controversy. There is no case on record where any judicial opinion began by defining the term "marriage." Advocates of expanding the definition have cleverly made the definition the end result of their argument, rather than addressing it at the beginning.

If any judge began by looking the word up in a standard Webster's dictionary, or in Black's Law Dictionary, every available definition would focus on male and female. On that basis, a court could examine with some clarity whether any individual man or woman has been denied equal protection of the laws. The answer would be, no. No male, and no female, has been denied equal access to the status of marriage. The fatuous claim that homosexuals are a "class" of persons who are "excluded" from a deliberately undefined status, vaguely referenced as "marriage," would fall flat on its face. Homosexuals are not a class at all. Marriage laws take no notice of such a condition – unlike skin color, race, nationality, religion, etc. Throughout history, thousands of "homosexuals" have been married in the traditional sense – to individuals of the opposite gender.

Some individuals simply do not desire to enter into the historically constituted partnership known as marriage. They desire to enter into other partnerships. So be it. Those partnerships are what they are. However loving, they are not marriage. And, as anyone looking at it from a Judeo-Christian tradition would recognize, they do not reunite the Adam. They do not bring together the two parts into which the image of God was divided. (Courts in the United States cannot make rulings about the image of God. It is outside their jurisdiction. Spiritual matters are protected by the First Amendment from the profane hand of the civil magistrate.)

This needs to be presented to the courts, stripped of the obfuscation wrapped around most arguments submitted so far. The courts need to clean up the controversy. It needs to be settled, not walled off behind hasty constitutional amendments. Good arguments and bad arguments need to be laid out, examined, publicly displayed, and thoroughly recognized for what they are. No short cuts. So far, the best arguments have not even been submitted to a court of competent jurisdiction.

Once we settle that marriage is marriage, and nothing else, there is no reason we cannot provide by law for individuals to make and register their own choices for hospital visitation rights, joint ownership of property, shared obligations for children. There is no reason for the government to take any notice of the motives. There is no reason the community as a whole must formally acknowledge or celebrate individual choices that deviate from the norm for the human race, any more than we need to persecute such deviations. It simply isn't a marriage.If the Metropolitan Baptist Church wants to celebrate such partnerships as a marriage, they have a right to do so. The Southern Baptist Convention is under no obligation to do likewise. That is called free exercise of religion.

Overcoming Disabilities With Discrimination

2006-10-17T10:15:00.000-05:00

This is Part II of We Must Discriminate, dealing specifically with how we do a tremendous disservice to our fellow citizens with disabilities when we blindly refuse to discriminate, or rather, to design services with appropriate discrimination for those who have disabilities .

There has been something of a scandal in Wisconsin lately concerning extremely unsanitary and unwholesome housing conditions for people with cognitive disabilities. The title "Mental Health" is still somewhat used with regard to social services for this group of people, although the term "mental retardation" is out of fashion. This sort of scandal pops up now and then, here and there, throughout the country. After some horrified and horrifying headlines, everything goes back to normal (horrible) until the next round of publicity. That is what we get for turning over this vulnerable population to the tender mercies of the social work profession. (Social work has been an abomination ever since it became "gummint work.")

The root of the immediate expose in Wisconsin lies in a lawsuit filed many years ago, which established the legal and civil right of people with mental disabilities NOT to live in institutions. Its practical effect was to empty out the "asylums" which existed at the time. The lawsuit was filed by, and on behalf of, residents of large, centralized institutions who had most of their mental faculties, plenty of individual initiative, and were tired of living a tightly supervised existence that some social worker thought would be good for them. Of course other residents of those some institutions were totally unprepared for any kind of real world responsibility. They very badly needed an "asylum" in the best sense of the word. The lawsuit failed to discriminate between different types and degrees of cognitive disability, as did the the institutions which inspired the lawsuit. So do the collection of group homes and other "facilities" in which the supposed beneficiaries of the lawsuit now reside.

The truth is, some people have cognitive disabilities so severe that they don't have the initiative to take one step out of the door of their residence unless someone gives a gentle shove between the shoulders, and then would stand just outside the door until they starved or froze to death if someone didn't take them by the hand and lead them somewhere else. They are now scattered in relatively unsupervised little private facilities, where poorly paid individuals may or may not be taking good care of them.

Other people have such mild cognitive disabilities that they could cook and clean for themselves, decorate their own home, keep a garden, mow the lawn, but shouldn't be allowed to sign legal or financial contracts because some unscrupulous wheeler-dealer would take them for all they own. There are many shades in between. (Unfortunately, "concerned" relatives, social workers, and professional conservators are prone to take such vulnerable individuals for all they own anyway. If nothing else, the conservators' fees eat up most of the estate.)

The social work profession is awfully keen on the "rights" of people with no discernible brain function to "live normal lives." On the other hand, these eager busy-bodies are just as enthusiastic about bursting into the private homes of elderly people who are doing very well, living the way they want, making their own choices. Social workers are all too ready to make arrogant, peremptory judgments that such elderly couples, or individuals, need "protection" and must have a "conservator" who will sell off their homes and stuff them in an assisted living unit somewhere. (For their own good, of course.)

The truth is, we need to approach the whole subject of cognitive disability with a great deal of discrimination.

Our laws need to be tweaked a little more strongly toward leaving people alone, who have lived independently all their lives. If a legal adult remains capable of saying "this is my home, I'm doing just fine, get lost," that wish should be honored. There should be a very high burden of proof on anyone (blood relative or not, possessing an advanced social science degree or not, police officer or not) who wants to step in and "help." Help is something to be offered when it is ASKED for. Likewise, IF a court action is initiated at all, the presumption should be that anyone who can get up in court and say "I'm doing just fine on my own, get these nosy busybodies off my back" is capable of exercising independent judgment, until proven otherwise.

At the other end of the spectrum, individuals who cannot select food for themselves, cannot go to the bathroom by themselves, cannot read or write, and demonstrate a marked preference for sitting on the floor all day doing nothing, need to be in a stable environment where someone is being paid for an 8-hour shift to take care of them. They do not need to be living "in the community, just like the rest of us" because they are NOT just like the rest of us. They do not need to be in poorly supervised "group homes" where they can most easily be taken advantage of. They do not need to be stuffed onto buses every day to ride to day programs so they can share the joys of the daily commute experienced by suburban business executives. They need to be in bright, cheerful institutions where they don't have to deal with a lot of confusing changes in their routine, and where there can be frequent, efficient supervision of their care.

What about those in between? That is where we REALLY need to DISCRIMINATE. What one individual needs is very different from what another individual needs. Putting two individuals in the same program is doing a slight disservice to each. There may well be at least ten different categorical levels of disability needed to even come close to giving each person their due. But if we really care about people, as opposed to being enamoured of pet theories, we need all those different varieties and levels of programs, offering the many different options that are each appropriate for some of the individuals who have cognitive disabilities. There is no such thing as one size fits all. Therefore we must discriminate.

WE MUST DISCRIMINATE

2006-09-25T11:15:00.000-05:00

dis•crim•i•nate
Etymology: Latin discriminatus, past participle of discriminare, from discrimin-, discrimen distinction, from discernere to distinguish between
1 a : to mark or perceive the distinguishing or peculiar features of b : discriminate hundreds of colors
2 : to distinguish by discerning or exposing differences; especially : to distinguish from another like object
intransitive verb
1 a : to make a distinction discriminate among historical sources> b : to use good judgment
2 : to make a difference in treatment or favor on a basis other than individual merit

dis•crim•i•na•tion
Function: noun
1 a : the act of discriminating b : the process by which two stimuli differing in some aspect are responded to differently
2 : the quality or power of finely distinguishing
3 a : the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually

The first and second definitions are not only good, but absolutely essential. We all do these things every day. We discriminate between food and poison. We discriminate between cars that run and lemons. We discriminate between what makes sense and what makes no sense at all.

Discrimination has a bad rap in North American English, because the word has been linked for so long to the word "racial." The problem with racial discrimination is NOT that discrimination is bad. The problem is, that race never has been and never can be a valid, rational, morally sound, basis for the exercise of discrimination. Many generations of sincere would-be scientists and philosophers, from Thomas Jefferson to Adolf Hitler, have tried to find differences of intelligence, morality, sociability, between human beings of different racial categories. They have all failed, because race is a distinction without a difference.

Jefferson speculated that Africans "excrete more through the pores and less through the kidneys," giving them a foul odor. Yes, Jefferson really wrote that. He was honest enough to say it was only speculation. But he was crude and ignorant enough to consider it. IF it had been TRUE, it would have been a perfectly reasonable basis to discriminate in access to bathroom and shower facilities, and hotel rooms. Not on the basis of race – different rooms and different bathtubs for those who excrete through the pores, and those who excrete through the kidneys, whatever their complexion.

We now know with absolute certainty that this quaint notion is FALSE! The falsehood of the premise is the reason it is unacceptable to discriminate by race in housing, public accommodations, and bathrooms. Jefferson himself must have known better. He found his late wife Martha's part-African half-sister (Sally Hemmings) a perfectly attractive surrogate, and mother for a majority of his children.

We know now that if a man or woman of any racial or ethnic background, or skin color, is worked all day in muddy fields under a hot semi-tropical sun, deprived of running water, bathtubs, soap and perfumes, they will most certainly develop a foul odor. But, there are times when we all discriminate between people who, having access to running water, soap, and bathtubs, choose to make use of them, and those who for some reason do not.

Early on in the Civil Rights movement, National Review wrote that it supported "the South," because at that time the magazine's editors affirmed that the "white race was the superior race. National Review is always the last to catch on to any new development in God's creation, perhaps because it is run by people who have some difficulty discriminating between themselves and the Almighty. At least the editors had the humility to modify the term "superior" with the phrase "at this time." On the other hand, they had the infernal arrogance to exclude from the category "the South" some 40% or more of the people who lived there.

Skin color expresses only one difference: variations in one or more of five different genes result in different sensitivities to sunlight. Some people start developing a very deep tan as soon as they pop out of their mother, while others have to pay $29.95 to strip in a little booth and expose themselves to ultraviolet light, to get a fraction of the same effect. Genetic studies show that there have been three different northward migrations which independently resulted in descendants of dark-skinned equatorial populations evolving somewhat lighter complexions. (The gene combination that makes Nigerians dark is not the same as the gene combination that makes the original Australians dark.) It is a complex balance of the relative dangers of sunstroke vs. vitamin D deficiency. It is not a basis to discriminate in any other matter whatsoever.

We do continue to discriminate in public bathroom facilities: not by race, but between men and women. Why? Because there genuinely IS a marked and obvious difference between the sexes. Even some of the facilities are different. Both men and women appreciate the privacy. We discriminate against those whose personal preference is to violate that privacy, sometimes even locking them up in jail. Possibly we need to discriminate further, in order to achieve completely equal opportunity. (Some women advocate the women's restrooms should have more toilets than men's, and, they may be right. At least, perhaps as many more toilets as men have urinals?

IF dark skin color were genetically associated with a variation of Tourette's Syndrome, then it would be entirely appropriate todiscriminate in hiring people with this gene combination for certain jobs and positions of responsibility. Most rap artists exude a belief that indeed to be black IS to lace one's speech with endless repetition of profanity. However, there are men with darker skin than most rap artists serving as extremely erudite and very conservative Anglican bishops, not to mention the authors of some of our best-loved hymns and gospel songs . So we must find some other basis than race to discriminate. (Let's be honest: the first men and women from Africa who learned the more profane words of the English language heard it first from overseers or fellow-servants born in England.)

It is perfectly legal to discriminate in hiring for retail sales jobs, by excluding people who cannot control the constant stream of profanity that is a symptom of, among other things, Tourette's Syndrome. It doesn't matter what color the applicant is. A federal appeals court ruled long since that a retail business is not obligated to "accommodate" this "disability" by subjecting its customers to such language, regardless of the fact that the applicant cannot control what they are saying.

Our laws also discriminate between adults and children in allocation of legal rights and responsibilities. Why? Because children ARE less developed, less capable, less able to make decisions for themselves. They are still LEARNING the basic minimums required to function as adults. Not all adults have learned these minimums, but at least they have some years of experience, and have grown physically about as far as they are going to. Adults are also legally responsible for their actions, and can be imprisoned if they do not refrain from actions that harm others. (We discriminate between people who have committed violent offenses, and people who have not, in the degree of liberty each is entitled to.)

In some areas of national life, we need to discriminate MORE than we do now. For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and all the laws that go with it, must discriminate between (not against, but between) people with physical disabilities and people with cognitive disabilities. Why? Because these are qualitatively different categories of disability. Most particularly, each has a markedly different impact on the INDEPENDENCE of those who suffer from them. A person who is quadraplegic may have a perfectly intact mind, capable of making ALL decisions about an individual's life – provided the individual is hooked up to necessary equipment so that it can make those decisions known, and act upon them. On the other hand, laws and regulations concerning care of individuals with cognitive disabilities concern all the things they must NOT be allowed to decide for themselves. Caretakers could be fired, or even prosecuted, for allowing them to run free.

In short, while our constitution properly guarantees equal protection of the laws, our laws do discriminate on the basis of real and genuine differences. We must re-learn to embrace REAL differences as an appropriate basis for discrimination, while avoiding the terribly destructive error of discriminating over irrelevant nonsense.

Mr. Lincoln's Party

2006-08-02T18:04:00.000-05:00

Dubya Augustus, the GOP and the NAACP

As part of his recent speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), President Bush remarked that he was sad his party has lost the support of African American voters. What he doesn't seem to have thought about is WHY it happened.

Nobody who ran into me would call me a "colored" man. I have a congenital melanin deficiency. I grew up in a small city way up north where there were literally no permanent residents within 100 miles who could be called "colored" or "black" or "Afro-American" or "Negro" or anything else along that line. I wasn't raised with any of the disadvantages American culture imposes upon people with dark skin.

My great-great-grandfather's family has been voting Republican ever since he came home to east Tennessee from the Civil War, with his discharge papers signed by Abraham Lincoln. (The Ku Klux Klan was constantly threatening to burn down his house for that. In those days, all the boys in the Klan were Democrats.)

For 70 years after the Civil War, if an African American managed to vote at all, they generally voted Republican for more or less the same reasons as my great-great-grandfather.

That began to change with the New Deal. President Roosevelt showed no great courage when it came to civil rights. The army remained segregated all the way through World War II. He wouldn't take a chance on supporting anti-lynching legislation. But, like a majority of "white" citizens, only more so, African Americans were hungy, unemployed and homeless, and the New Deal looked better than anything the Republican Party was offering.

Since rolling back the New Deal as far as possible was the dream of all those who gathered around Ronald Reagan, and later around George W. Bush, none of this offers great hope for bringing African American voters back to the GOP.

But there is more. Until at least 1960, a substantial minority of African Americans still voted for Republicans.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr., pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, originally planned to vote in 1960 for Richard M. Nixon. He said as much to anyone who valued his opinion or sought his advice, which was quite a lot of people. All that changed when his son, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was locked up in a jail in Georgia. John F. Kennedy made a phone call to the King family, Richard M. Nixon did not.

That was a calculated decision by both campaigns. Kennedy, like Nixon, was closeted with his advisors, assessing how many votes to we gain if I do this, how many votes do we lose? Kennedy decided it was a better deal to call. Nixon did not. King, Sr. came out for Kennedy.

Kennedy was s-s-s-l-l-l-l-o-o-o-o-o-wwwwwww when it came to civil rights. He hobbled along behind the direct nonviolent action in the streets. He was less decisive than Eisenhower, who sent federal troops to Little Rock once it became clear that the city and state were defying the Supreme Court of the United States. (Let's keep this in perspective: Eisenhower personally expressed shock that "white" college students should have to sit in the same classroom with "colored" students, without at least a barrier of chicken wire between them. But he would not let the authority of the federal government be challenged).

Kennedy did eventually propose major civil rights laws. After he was assassinated, these laws were passed by congress. They were not the product of a Democratic majority outvoting a Republican majority. The strongest opposition came from a powerful minority of Democrats. A good deal of support came from Republicans. Without those Republican votes, the civil rights laws would not have passed. But here is where the Republican Party forfeited the allegiance of its remaining African American voters.

Republican strategists, Nixon foremost among them, saw a chance to grab the Democrats who opposed the civil rights laws. They didn't feel at home in the Democratic Party any more. They were welcomed into the Republican Party. It worked very well for the GOP. They got lots of votes. The Democratic "Solid South" became the Republican South. Southern veterans of the Union army, Republican voters all, like my great-great-grandfather, turned over in their graves. It would have been enough to make a union veteran vote for Democrats.

George W. Bush regrets that his party has lost the support of African American voters. As in many other things, George doesn't seem to have a clue why or how it happened. Perhaps he needs a history lesson. He won't get that from the entourage who invented him as a political candidate.

Common Sense in NY

2006-07-12T12:40:00.000-05:00

No matter how much you love your car, you can't get a license to marry her

The Court of Appeals of New York has provided a small victory for common sense. In a modest ruling, the court found that "the New York Constitution does not compel recognition of marriages between members of the same sex. Whether such marriages should be recognized is a question to be addressed by the Legislature." This case reveals the important distinction between "what I want" and "what my community owes me." Our constitutional system of government is long overdue for a similar distinction, between "my desires" and "my constitutional rights." There are differences.

The usual media headlines have trumpeted how this case works for or against various interested parties. There have been the predictable sound-bytes from the predictable collection of advocacy groups. But why should informed citizens allow our own thoughts to be molded by such interpretations? The entire decision of the court, including all concurring and dissenting opinons, is available on the web, New York Case No. 86 . If you care about the subject at all, read the decision for yourself.

In a very sensible concurring opinion, Judge Graffeo dismisses Equal Protection arguments. Among other reasons, "individuals who seek marriage licenses are not queried concerning their sexual orientation and are not precluded from marrying if they are not heterosexual. Regardless of sexual orientation, any person can marry a person of the opposite sex."

Some might respond "isn't that like Henry Ford saying you can have any color you want, as long as your preference is black?" In a way, it is. But the point is, the legislature has not set out to discriminate against homosexuals, it has merely defined the nature of an institution that the state will recognize and regulate. Some people would prefer to enter into some other relations, for reasons of their own. This does not mean that the state has discriminated against them. These individuals would like to call what they share "marriage." This desire does not entitle them to a license from the state.

The plurality opinion (that one half of the justices could agree on) is a little disappointing. It relies heavily on procreation to provide a "rational basis" for the state to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. By the nature of constitutional law, there must be some "rational basis" for a any law to discriminate between different classifications of people. For example, Equal Protection of the Laws does not require that three year olds have the same voting rights as 45 year olds. There is a "rational basis" to require that a citizen be 18 years old before they can vote.

The Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships. Heterosexual intercourse has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not. Despite the advances of science, it remains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and the Legislature could find that this will continue to be true.

True enough as far as it goes. However, many marriages do not result in children. Many men and women marry after their most likely child-bearing years are long past. This isn't exactly a resounding end to the debate. A second "rational basis" accepted by the court also relies on the aspect of marriage that provides a framework for child-rearing:

The Legislature could rationally believe that it is better, other things being equal, for children to grow up with both a mother and a father. Intuition and experience suggest that a child benefits from having before his or her eyes, every day, living models of what both a man and a woman are like.

The court did not have to list every possible rational basis, in order to uphold the law. If there is any rational basis for the distinction made in a law, the law can be upheld. But these two are subject to challenge. Chief Judge Judith Kaye pointed out in her dissent

In holding that prison inmates have a fundamental right to marry – even though they cannot procreate – the Supreme Court has made it clear that procreation is not the sine qua non of marriage. "Many important attributes of marriage remain . . . after taking into account the limitations imposed by prison life . . . . [I]nmate marriages, like others, are expressions of emotional support and public commitment. These elements are an important and significant aspect of the marital relationship."

Marriage is indeed about much more than producing children. People of many faiths who recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman have also recognized that marriage is a very complex relationship, which cannot be reduced solely to a framework for procreation. James Watkins is very eloquent on this point.

In future cases, that observation will have to be addressed. No court seems to have considered a rather obvious and comprehensive fact: the distinction between men and women pre-dates every constitution in the United States of America, and indeed, every form of human goverment. Every person who has ever lived, married or unmarried, has been either a man, or a woman. There are unmistakable physical differences and identifying characteristics. When a baby is newborn, there is no doubt as to its sex.

On the other hand, there is no clear way of identifying who is "a homosexual." Every "homosexual" who has ever lived has also been either a man, or a woman, before they are anything else. In fact, homosexuality has no meaning in the absence of the identities "man" and "woman." Being "gay" is a matter of intangible feelings and preferences, which may or may not change in the course of a lifetime, for various reasons, also poorly understood. In fact, why should the state make a distinction between "heterosexuals" and "homosexuals" by offering marriage licenses to "homosexuals" – (whatever that may be)?

Further, the distinction between male and female is inextricably bound up, in its origins, with a specific process of mating. The most obvious physical differences have no other purpose. This process is more or less consistent for all life more complex than a sponge. The question is not, has the state discriminated against homosexuals? The question is, must the state even recognize the condition known as homosexuality in writing its marriage laws? NO. The state need not recognize the existence of homosexuality at all. Homosexuality is, in an objective mathematical and biological sense, a mere deviation from the norm for human life, one of considerably less interest to the state. In an understated way, the court's opinions acknowledged this:

The binary nature of marriage – its inclusion of one woman and one man – reflects the biological fact that human procreation cannot be accomplished without the genetic contribution of both a male and a female. Marriage creates a supportive environment for procreation to occur and the resulting offspring to be nurtured. Although plaintiffs suggest that the connection between procreation and marriage has become anachronistic because of scientific advances in assisted reproduction technology, the fact remains that the vast majority of children are conceived naturally through sexual contact between a woman and a man.

To put it more crudely, for a woman to have a child by turkey baster requires a male donor. A lesbian partner cannot provide the necessary package of chromosomes to form a fertile zygote. A humane observer cannot refrain from some empathy with Chief Judge Kaye's dissent. Essentially, she is simply presenting legal argument, a badly contrived one, for giving some very concerned human beings what they seek, in order to lead more fulfilling lives. As she wrote:

Plaintiffs (including petitioners) are 44 same-sex couples who wish to marry. They include a doctor, a police officer, a public school teacher, a nurse, an artist and a State legislator. Ranging in age from under 30 to 68, plaintiffs reflect a diversity of races, religions and ethnicities. They come from upstate and down, from rural, urban and suburban settings. Many have been together in committed relationships for decades, and many are raising children–from toddlers to teenagers. Many are active in their communities, serving on their local school board, for example, or their cooperative apartment building board. In short, plaintiffs represent a cross-section of New Yorkers who want only to live full lives, raise their children, better their communities and be good neighbors.

Compassion calls for a ruling in their favor. Equal protection of the laws, however, does not. Judge Kaye insists that plaintiffs have been "deprived of a fundamental right," which is simply not true. They do not wish to exercise the right of "marriage" as that is licensed by the state. They want to expand the definition of marriage to include their own preferences. The legislature could do that. The courts have no constitutional basis to mandate it.

In fact, Judge Kaye tripped over her own argument, when she cited Lawrence v Texas 539 US 558 (2003). As she says, the Supreme Court in Lawrence rejected its own prior ruling in Bowers v Hardwick 478 US 186 (1986). The earlier decision erred by examining whether the constitution confers a "fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy." Of course it doesn't. In Lawrence, the court ruled that the proper question is whether the constitution confers "the right to engage in private consensual sexual conduct." At least seven Supreme Court justices affirmed in deciding Lawrence that this question has no implication for gay marriage. The right to be left alone in one's private life does not equal the right to official recognition from the state for one's private choices. To ask whether the constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to receive a marriage license is as erroneous as the question posed in Bowers.

Kaye's best citation that the definition of marriage cannot be the union of one man and one woman is from a case against the Attorney General of Canada, under a totally different framework of laws. She also cites the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision mandating marriage licenses for same-sex couples in that state. Thereby, Judge Kaye works a tautology to disprove a tautology: to show that marriage is not the union of a man and a woman "because it just is", she cites the only decision by any state Supreme Court which says that marriage is not the union of one man and one woman (because it just isn't, in Massachusetts).

The plurality decision could have been more comprehensive and more coherent, but the court was properly restrained as to its role:

The cases before us present no occasion for this Court to debate whether the State Legislature should, as a matter of social welfare or sound public policy, extend marriage to same-sex couples. Our role is limited to assessing whether the current statutory scheme offends the Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses of the New York Constitution. Because it does not, we must affirm. Absent a constitutional violation, we may not disturb duly enacted statutes to, in effect, substitute another policy preference for that of the Legislature.

This decision offers hope for voters in states where constitutional amendments to define marriage are on the ballot. In states such as Wisconsin, we can well afford to vote no. There is every reason to expect that the Supreme Court of Wisconsin would show as much common sense as the Court of Appeals of New York. We don't need a constitutional amendment to affirm that the sky is blue, that the sun rises in the east, or that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

Loving v. Virginia

2006-07-12T12:22:00.000-05:00

"The spouse of one's choice"

What a name for a Supreme Court case. And it was all about marriage too. Advocates of "gay marriage" presented many losing arguments to New York's highest court this year. Several of them were rooted in the Supreme Court's 1967 decision of Loving v. Virgina, 388 U.S. 1 (1967). The state of Virginia may have coined the phrase "Virginia is for Lovers" in an attempt to live down the infamy of that case.

It began when a sheriff kicked in the door of Mr. and Mrs. Loving's home, found them in bed with a framed marriage license on the wall, and arrested them for being of two different skin colors. A concurring opinion from the New York Court of Appeals got one thing wrong: it said the case involved a "white" woman married to a "black" man. In fact, Mr. Loving was classified by the laws of Virginia as "white" and Mrs. Loving was classified as "colored." Either way, they were both subject to arrest for being married to each other.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Virginia's law against inter-racial marriage null and void because it violated a fundamental "right to marry the spouse of one's choice." At the time, everyone understood that was the right of any man to marry any woman he chose, if she agreed, and the right of any woman to marry any man she chose, if he agreed. That language is now being used to suggest that the right to "marry the spouse of one's choice" includes the right to marry a "spouse" of one's own gender. Dubious. As the New York court found:

While many U.S. Supreme Court decisions recognize marriage as a fundamental right protected under the Due Process Clause, all of these cases understood the marriage right as involving a union of one woman and one man (see e.g.Turner v Safley, 482 US 78 [1987]; Zablocki v Redhail, 434 US 374 [1978]; Griswold v Connecticut, 381 US 479 [1965]; Skinner v Oklahoma, 316 US 535 [1942]).

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed an amicus curiae brief to the New York Court of Appeals, accepting that "[a]lthough the historical experiences in this country of African Americans, on the one hand, and gay men and lesbians, on the other, are in many important ways quite different, the legal questions raised here and in Loving are analogous. The state law at issue here, like the law struck down in Loving, restricts an individual's right to marry the person of his or her choice. We respectfully submit that the decisions below must be reversed if this Court follows the reasoning of the United States Supreme Court's decision in Loving."

That was a shallow analysis. No doubt the NAACP has caught the one big happy family feeling, that every form of liberation from every restriction is one big cause. In truth, every form of discrimination is different, and must be analyzed on its own merits.

In the case of racial discrimination, there are no merits. The distinction is an empty one, which exists only in the human imagination. It has been specifically and explicitly rejected by multiple constitutional amendments. After 100 years or so, courts even began to enforce those amendments with some consistency. Congress even got around to passing laws to put some teeth into the enforcement. Racial discrimination is subject to what courts call "strict scrutiny." That, as the Supreme Court wrote in Loving, means that if racially discriminatory laws "are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate." Justice Stewart went further, stating his entire analysis of Loving in one sentence. "It is simply not possible for a state law to be valid under our Constitution which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor."

In the case of discrimination by sex, most of us prefer separate bathrooms, and in certain respects we don't even want them to be equal. It is arguable that women have less inclination toward some occupations than men, and more inclination toward others. This has been argued from both a feminist and anti-feminist perspective. All these arguments are far from proven. In any case, it is irrelevant to whether each individual, without regard to sex, should have equal access to prove themselves in any form of education or profession. Still, there are some women who prefer going to all-women schools, and some men who prefer to get their education without the presence of women. Separate sometimes is equal, or simply recognizes genuine differences.

Laws against inter-racial marriage are not legally equivalent to laws which define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Mr. Loving was a man, whatever his skin color, and Mrs. Loving was a woman, whatever her skin color. The law struck down in Loving was rejected by the Supreme Court due to "the very heavy burden of justification which the Fourteenth Amendment has traditionally required of state statutes drawn according to race." The court was very explicit that other forms of discrimination do not automatically get the same strict scrutiny.

Now here is where it gets sticky. The State of Virginia argued in 1967 that its law did not discriminate against any race, because both those designated by the state as "white" and those designated by the state as "colored" were equally prohibited from marrying anyone designated by the state as of a different race. Both individuals who entered into an interracial marriage were punished by the same prison sentence. The Supreme Court rejected that argument. Therefore, a certain logic suggests that if state's restrictions on marriage equally prohibit a woman from marrying another woman, or a man from marrying another man, then the Equal Protection Clause can still be violated by a law limiting marriage to heterosexuals.

In fact, no state marriage law discriminates against homosexuals. No state law even considers the existence of homosexuals as a class or an individual characteristic. The language of Virginia's invalid law defined in detail what is a "white" person, what is a "colored" person, what is an "Indian" – and made various exceptions for percentages of "white" and "Indian" blood. (Why? The state wanted to "honor" the descendants of John Rolfe and Pocahontas as "white.") The law in Virginia imposed criminal penalties for being married to a person of a different race. There is no counterpart in any marriage law defining what is a "heterosexual" and what is a "homosexual." There are no criminal penalties for being a homosexual married to a heterosexual, or being married to a person of the same sex. The only classes recognized by state marriage laws are "men" and "women." That is without question a rational distinction when it comes to marriage.

No state has banned homosexuals from the benefits of marriage, for such purposes as preventing "the corruption of blood," "a mongrel breed of citizens," and "the obliteration of racial pride," which were Virginia's stated defenses of its marriage law. It would be foolish to bar homosexuals from marriage for the purpose of preventing the birth of more homosexuals. Homosexual unions do not produce children of any preference. Same-sex couples who wish to adopt children have made a consistent point that the orientation of the parent does not influence the orientation of the child.

All that current marriage laws in most states do is to accept and adopt the definition of what marriage is, a definition which has been in effect for many centuries in Europe and North America, and in some parts of the world for thousands of years. Definition of terms is generally required in any law before anything else can be said. What same-sex couples object to is not that they have been discriminated against, but that marriage has been defined as something they don't want, and does not include something they do want. That is not unequal protection of the laws. If the right to marry "the spouse of one's choice" is understood to mean whatever one chooses, why stop at a person of any gender? Why not one's dog, or a sheep, or one's car? A lot of men have love affairs with their cars, why not issue marriage licenses? That is if they are not already married to a woman, or a man. Marriage to both a man and a car would be bigamy, wouldn't it?

Once the state chooses to license something called "marriage," and defines what the licensed activity is, the state may not discriminate among people who wish to enter into the covenant defined by law as a "marriage." If marriage IS the union of one man and one woman, then the state may not discriminate as to which man can marry which woman. Not based on race, not based on sexual orientation, not based on hair color, not based on nationality. The state has no constitutional obligation to license as a "marriage" anything that any given individual wants to call a "marriage." You can call it a marriage if you want to. You just can't get a license for it from the state.

Virtuous Battlefields

2006-07-05T11:46:00.000-05:00

Who shall we send to Darfur?
To the inner city? To anywhere?

Mallard Fillmore has been flapping his duck bill about the "United Nations Sex for Food Program." This is a sarcastic reference to a real problem. Repeated reports suggest that soldiers detailed to United Nations peacekeeping operations either indulge in rape themselves, or condition receipt of food aid to starving refugees on young women providing sexual favors. Ditto for African Union forces detailed to Darfur.

Mallard Fillmore has some funny one liners, and plenty of boring monologues, but never really digs into, what shall we do about this? There is a growing list of things that most humane people agree or demand that "we" should do, or our nation should do, or our government should do, to alleviate obvious suffering in the world. Nobody who comes up with these admirable ideas seems to examine this vital question: Where will the people come from to carry out these noble purposes?

For example, the United Nations has no soldiers of its own. It has to borrow troops from member nations. It is doubtful that the United Nations, even if it had its own forces, could recruit and retain a force of gentle giants, capable of overcoming hardened military outfits with ease, while subsisting on a vegetarian diet, daily prayers, total abstinence from sex, and a rigorously virtuous attitude toward suffering civilians. Where are whole battalions of such people to be found in the world?

I'm not sure we would choose to send Taliban soldiers, or Islamic militants from Somalia – but these are military forces known for stamping out rampant rape and looting, maintaining strict discipline among their own soldiers. If we find the right people, will they volunteer for service in the Sahara Desert? So military operations in Darfur, or Congo, or anywhere, have to rely on the real soldiers and real armies that are available to be deployed.

In most armies in the world, soldiers tend to be young, single, male, and more or less profane in both language and off-duty habits. This statement cannot characterize every soldier, or any given individual soldier. Many soldiers throughout history have displayed a genuine concern for children, and respect for civilians. But when a large number of soldiers are sent into action, every commander and politican who sends them can, or should, count on a good deal of promiscuity to occur in some manner. During World War II, military police had to be detailed to maintain order in the long lines of soldiers waiting for service from available prostitutes. On the other hand, rape of civilians was one of the more common reasons for execution of American soldiers in Europe.

Soldiers, by the nature of their training, are violent. They are trained to kill, maim, destroy -- sometimes with the most virtuous and patriotic of motives, but that is what war is about. Many will come home to lead productive, virtuous lives, loved and honored by their families, friends, neighbors and coworkers. Others will come home to a lifetime of flashbacks and mental demons. The janjaweed militia is not being suppressed by an army recruited from veterans of the annual sales of UNICEF greeting cards. There is a disconnect between the people who formulate the idea, and the people called upon to implement it on the ground.

This same disconnect exists in civilian life and government. It can be found in child protective services (and many other areas of social welfare) and in endless disputes about police brutality. It is a natural human reflex to say that a child should be removed from a dangerous and destructive family environment. We seldom stop to ask: are child welfare bureaucracies able to provide a consistently better life for the children they take charge of? Often, the only places they have available to put children are much worse. Social workers do not take their entire caseload home with them, giving each their own room in the social worker's own spacious house. And, how many card carrying members of the ACLU have applied for careers as police officers? Most of us stand on the sidelines, leaving the hard work to others. Which others? Whoever is motivated to seek the job.

Why would anyone choose to go into police work? Like most occupations, there are no doubt a wide range of motives. Some are dedicated to an ideal of public service. Some want to keep their own neighborhood safe, and by extension all the neighborhoods of their city. Some find detective work intellectually interesting. Some decide its as good a job as they are likely to get, and the pension will be helpful. Some like to wear a uniform, carry a gun, and tell other people what to do. In some times and places, the opportunity for graft has been a significant attraction: Chicago in the 1950s for example.

When we, the people, through "our" government, give anyone legal sanction to carry a gun and "enforce the law," we should impose strict controls on their use of that authority. It is delegated authority. It is not theirs to use however they wish, and to employ whatever prejudices they may carry. They are physical representatives of the majesty of The Law. But, they are flesh and blood representatives. They are putting their own lives on the line to keep the rest of us safe. We are not each taking our own turn to protect our own communities. We are paying them to do it for us. A professional, trained, police force is necessary in a complex modern urban society. But when we complain about how our hired guns do their job, we have to ask: who else is available to do the job? Would I step forward to do the job better? Why not?

Similar criticisms could be raised concerning a host of programs, motivated by the highest ideals, and implemented with large amounts of government money. Paratransit for example. When advocates for the disabled secured passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a door to door transit service for those who cannot use the local mass transit system was included. Very nice. Nobody thought about where the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, of drivers were going to come from. Mostly, of course, they are people who need the job and can't find a better one. (Better, defined as, offering more money, better benefits, and less demanding or more stimulating work.)

It's actually not a bad job. It is not paid very well, but it pays well over the legal minimum wage. Drivers get to know their passengers, and vice versa, and develop a good deal of empathy, in the highest sense of the word. There are also those who do as little as possible, refrain from doing parts of the job that seem personally inconvenient at the moment, endangering themselves and/or their passengers. There is high turnover, both from employees voluntarily leaving and being fired. One thing for sure: massive numbers of dedicated advocates for the cause of Americans with Disabilities did not rush to apply for paratransit driving jobs! They all had more comfortable situations to remain in. The prevailing sentiment seems to have been "offer money, someone will do the job." When that is the attitude, you get who you get.

Schools are another good example. We can talk forever about "the schools should do this" or "the schools should do that." We can even talk about how much money we are going to give to "the schools." Schools don't do anything for students. Teachers do. If people with the qualities to be good teachers don't enter the profession of teaching, "the schools" aren't going to do jack. It is also true that if highly qualified teachers don't have a reasonably secure environment to teach in, and equipment to give their students hands-on experience, not much will be accomplished. But it starts with the teacher(s).

There are times and places in the world where people step out to do a job in massive numbers because they fervently believe in what they are doing, or because their backs are against the wall and they have no choice but to fight for survival. The Israeli armed forces in 1948 and 1967 provide examples of both motivations. To some extent, American service men and women in World War II do also. It did require a draft to secure the numbers of troops needed. But millions literally stepped out of civilian life to serve their country, and their world, providing a whole different experience than the "professional soldier" can ever find. The experience shaped an entire generation's subsequent civilian life as well.

From that perspective, perhaps what the UN should be doing is arming and training those in the refugee camps to go out and kill the janjaweed, and to prevail against them by force of arms. After all, who else in the world is truly motivated to take any real risks for that purpose? But, then we would be taking sides in a civil war. Experience teaches that there is no other way to intervene in a civil war. The standard wisdom on intevening in a civil war is (1) Don't. (2) If you do, pick a side. (3) Make sure your side wins.

Anyone motivated to reach out to the brutalized refugees of Darfur should first ask, "Am I ready to go?" Most comfortable western voices are ready to send "them" or "someone" or "our troops" or to provide logistical back-up to some unspecified regional forces. If you are not prepared to respond "Here am I," then the job will be done, if it is done at all, by whoever can be scraped up to do it. We should also recognize that the only way to end a civil war is to overwhelm and smother every combatant force in the area. It cannot be done be putting a "thin blue line" of UN helmets on the ground between opposing armed forces.

The Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan began when they started hanging a few rapists. The recent success of Islamic militias in Mogadishu, Somalia, drew a good deal of support from Somali women, who were tired of being harrassed by what American government officials like to call "secular" forces. (They are "secular" in the same sense that American street gangs are "secular." Profane might have been a more accurate term. They are the same forces that brought down the marine helicopter immortalized in the movie "Black Hawk Down.") So it is true that if "we" leave a vacuum, others may step in to do the job – their own way. It is also true that if "we" step in, we may only make matters worse.

Maybe we should send Mallard Fillmore to do the job right. In the spirit of the "Kentucky colonels" and the old-style milita, Mallard could recruit, train, equip, pay for, and offer for service, a regiment to suppress the bad guys wherever in the world the UN has failed to do so. If they succeed, Mallard and the entire regiment will be heroes. If they fail, Doonesbury will never let them hear the end of it.

Polling for Faith

2006-06-13T16:03:00.000-05:00

God doesn't have to run for election

According to a recent Gallup Poll, cited in Time magazine:
28% of Americans believe that the Bible is literally true, down from 38% in 1976.
19% of Americans view the Bible as an ancient book of fables, up from 13% in 1976.

Now, before this becomes a trend, "come let us reason together" on what it really means to be a Christian (or to believe in one God, or to trust the authority of the Torah, the Bible, the Qu'ran) in the United States of America.

I know, that sounds like "human reasoning." But God said it to Isaiah, so perhaps it is good enough for us too.

The questions in that poll were, of course, weighted. Most polling questions are. Most questions that superficial Christian political activists ask are equally weighted.

What does it mean "the Bible is literally true"? Let's try to break that down into some more meaningful questions.

Were the first five books of the Bible really revealed to Moses by Adonai Elohim, JHWH, the creator of all that is, seen and unseen?

I would answer yes.

Did that one and only God literally take a rib out of a man's body and use it as the foundation to create a woman?

I would answer no.

How can I answer the first question yes, and the second no?

I have plagued an Orthodox Jewish rabbi with questions about the original Hebrew meanings – the language in which Moses first wrote down what God told him. I could spend a thousand lifetimes asking such questions, and still not understand it all. I am informed that the word commonly translated "rib" is tzela, which means "side." According to the Talmud, the original adam was androgynous, being made in the image of God, and when the woman (isha) was removed from one side of the adam, the man (ish) is what was left, the other side. (She shall be called Isha, because she came from Ish). Thus, marriage reunites the complete image of God, if it is done right by both the man and woman entering wisely into a solemn covenant.

Just one example. I believe, as Galileo Galilei said, that the Holy Bible cannot err, when its proper meaning is understood. Ah, but understanding its proper meaning... a mere mortal human being should be very cautious about proclaiming that "I know what the proper meaning is." I pray that the Holy Spirit (for Jewish readers, think of it as a malach, or a sar, responsible to give some measure of enlightenment and understanding to Christians) will guide me to some understanding of the true meaning... but I do not proclaim to my brother or sister that I have achieved a perfect state of grace to know it all. We all fall short of the glory of God, do we not?

Is the Bible an ancient book of fables? Hmmm... nobody is at all certain that a man named Job actually lived, or experienced the horrible trials described in the book named after him. But, can there by any doubt that the book is in the Bible for good reason, intended by God? Whole chapters of that book are erroneous. How do I know? God said so (Job 42:7). Even very conservative ordained Christian ministers note that the story of the woman Jesus saved from stoning, when she was taken in adultery, may not have actually occured... but I am quite reassured that my pastor keeps a stone behind his desk inscribed "Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone."

So let us not fall into the silly trap of measuring our faith, or the strength of religious faith in our society, our nation, our culture, according to the adjectives selected by polling companies. What "literally true" means for one person may mean something very different to another. The word "fables" also could have a very different weight to different listeners. A slight change of wording could produce very different percentages, without the slightest change in belief or unbelief.

I have no doubt that every word in the Bible is there for a divine purpose, or, if some scribe stuck in a few extra words here and there, that they are incidental. I would never write the book off as a mere collection of fables. But remember, fables is not a synonym for lies. Fables are stories which convey moral instruction. In this sense, there are many fables in the Bible.

The value, or the success, of Christian faith cannot be weighed either on the scales of polling organizations, or on the scales of polling done by secret ballot. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America was written by Christians. They were perfectly confident that the truth of their own beliefs could light up the world, without depending on endorsement by a mere human government. That is why the Constitution makes no mention of God. James Madison calmly asserted that the better part of respect for the holy name of Jesus would be NOT to insert it into a legislative enactment. In fact, they knew from bitter experience that endorsement by the profane hand of the civil magistrate degraded religion.

Fewer Americans answer "yes" to the question "Do you believe that the Bible is literally true?" More Americans answer "yes" to "Do you believe the Bible is an ancient book of fables?" Those are questions shaped by decades of shallow propaganda out of the mouths of televangelist anti-Christs. Pious propaganda has led us astray. Let us throw away those questions. While we are at it, let us throw the money-lenders out of the Temple – along with the pollsters. Let the question be, "Do the truths found only in the Bible speak to you, your spirituality, your life, and your hope for salvation?" I would guess that the answer from 85% of those asked would be a resounding "Yes." Of course not all those who say yes would be sincere. How do I know that? I accept the authority of Matthew 25:41-45.

Focus on Papilloma

2006-06-05T12:49:00.000-05:00

Dr. Dobson has a good take on new vaccine

I'm never quite sure what to think about Dr. James Dobson. Every Focus on the Family Bulletin, that I find inserted in the church bulletin once a month or so, is full of compassion, wisdom and common sense. What's not to like about this guy? When it comes to raising children, there is no better companion to Dr. Benjamin Spock's Baby and Child Care than Dr. Dobson. But every time he opens his mouth on a national political issue, a candidate for president, a nominee for the Supreme Court, he comes across as neurotic, ruthless, obsessed, thoughtless, paranoid.

I doubt if direct quotes in the press are outright lies. They may be lacking some context. There is no doubt that Dobson endorsed George W. Bush for president, a classic anti-Christ if there ever was one. It seems that in matters of constitutional law, Dobson's specific ends justify any means. He seems willing to destroy broad liberties that ten generations have died for. Dr. Dobson has not recognized St. Thomas More's warning: when you have knocked down every law in the land chasing after the devil, and the devil turns on you, there will be no law standing to protect you from the devil you were chasing. He is much better at giving advice to parents than to politicians.

But Dobson often gets an undeserved bad rap. Take the recent spate of publicity on vaccines for the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). From many press reports and a random selection of blogs, one gets the idea that Dr. Dobson wants millions of women to die of cervical cancer, so that fundamentalist Christian families can frighten their daughters into remaining virgin until marriage. The truth is, Focus on the Family has specifically endorsed the universal availability of these vaccines.

It is always best to read up on original sources before jumping to conclusions. The sticking point, over which reasonable citizens may disagree, as may reasonable faithful Christians, is routine or mandatory vaccination of 9 to 12 year old girls in school public health programs. Focus on the Family wants this decision made individually by parents, not en masse by public health authorities. Whatever the wisdom of that position, they have openly advised parents to tell their children "The shot is given to children at your age because it is most effective if it’s given at a young age and it will, most likely, protect you all of your adult life." Posted materials freely acknowledge that there are many good reasons to take early precautions, including the possibility of date rape, sexual assault, or of marrying someone already infected.

All of Focus on the Family's materials begin with a strong emphasis on abstinence from sexual activity until marriage. That is a good thing to emphasize. The existence of multiple sexually transmitted diseases is only one, relatively minor reason, why abstinence is a good idea. Has anyone stopped to think, lately, that if there were NO sexual activity outside of monogamous marriage, it would be literally impossible for any sexually transmitted disease to exist?

There is of course a flip side to that. As there have been sexually transmitted diseases throughout human history, obviously monogamous faithful marriage has never been a consistent practice of even a substantial majority of people in any century. More than half perhaps, but not most. There never were any "good old days." It is a good thing to be able to vaccinate against sexually transmitted diseases. Whether a vaccination is available or not, makes no difference in whether abstinence until marriage is the right way to live. Nor does it have much impact on how many people live up to that ideal.

Reading A Midwife's Diary brings home that around 1800, half of the women in deeply religious New England rural villages became pregnant before marriage. On the other hand, most of the pregnant couples (no woman becomes pregnant by herself) were married by the time of birth, or soon afterward. That happens far less often now. It is truly unfair to a child to conceive when there is no covenant in place to take full responsibility for raising him or her. Of course contraception might allow for unrestricted sexual experience, and not inflict life deprived of a stable family on any child. But contraception is not perfect.

Dr. Dobson insists it is God's plan that sex be experienced only within a monogamous marriage. If this is simply an arbitrary test of faith, then it doesn't mean much. If fear of painful disease is the only reason to obey, then vaccination against all STD's would render abstinence irrelevant. But there are positive reasons to keep sex within marriage. They are subtle, they are more difficult to explain to post-pubescent teens than "you're going to shrivel up and die, and then you'll burn in hell." But they are real.

C.S. Lewis explains, through the backhanded commentary of Screwtape, that "wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured." Man-child or woman-child, are you sure you want a piece of THIS infatuation to be part of you for the rest of your life, and a piece of you part of them? That is worth pondering, with or without STDs, with or without pregnancy. It is even worth pondering, whether or not there is a God who cares about the two individuals involved.

Finally, when God created man in his own image, "male and female created he them." It is one of the great mysteries how the image of an omnipotent deity, who by definition has no wife, nor husband, could be male and female. Putting a male and a female together is serious business, precisely because, done right, it puts the complete image of God back together. With or without vaccinations, it is not something to take lightly. We have animal instincts, we also have souls. Teach what is right, understand that none of us are perfect, vaccinate when we are able to develop a vaccine, let God judge the results. And don't be too hard on Dr. Dobson. He has some good things to say.

Cowards and Fools

2006-05-30T17:51:00.000-05:00

Opposing the "Marriage Amendment" by stealth

Someone opposed to Wisconsin's proposed constitutional amendment to "define marriage" – someone with money to spend on billboards and other advertising – is displaying extreme cowardice and stupidity. Billboards and bus kiosks are being spread with signs saying "Don't mess with the constitution" and "Vote no on amendment." Which amendment is not specified. No ballot number, no subject. But the obvious reference is to an amendment proposed by the legislature, which would insert a definition of "marriage" into the state constitution.

I am in fact going to vote NO. There is nothing so stupid and arrogant as amending the constitution to declare that the sky is blue, or that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, or that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. What is ordained of God cannot be added to, or subtracted from, by human constitutions. But this billboard reeks of manipulation. It proclaims to all the world that whoever paid for the advertising believes a majority of voters would vote for this amendment, if they knew what it is about. Therefore, an attempt is being made to defeat the amendment, by attacking the concept of amending the constitution.

Every now and then, a constitution needs to be amended. It was a great day when the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were added to the federal constitution. The 16th amendment (income tax), was a good idea compared to the alternatives. Most of us now accept the wisdom of the 19th amendment, extending voting rights to the female half of the population. The 18th amendment (prohibition of alcohol) was a disaster. Fortunately, we were not stuck with it forever. Another amendment (the 21st) repealed it.

Amending a constitution is more difficult than passing a law. Rightly so. The constitution is the foundation of all civil law, and limits the powers of government to those expressly granted by the people. But "don't mess with the constitution" is not a reason to refuse an amendment. There should be a very good reason to amend any constitution. Urging citizens to vote NO requires a halfway decent, openly presented objection. There is no good reason to ratify this amendment. It should be voted down, openly and honestly, without stealth or deception.

Let's be honest. If voters are presented with the question "Is marriage the union of one man and one woman?" the overwhelming majority of us are going to vote YES. Even most Mormons would do so, and in the United States, probably most Muslims. The real question is "Do we want this particular language about marriage, thrown together by some legislators who apparently found nothing better to do, enshrined in our state constitution?"

NO. It is unnecessary. There is no significant chance that anyone will pass a law in this state to define marriage as anything but the union of one man and one woman. That is what the law says now, and always has. If a majority of voters someday comes to support some other definition, let that majority worry about it. Such a majority could easily reamend the constitution. Meantime, we can rest assured that no law, no judicial decision, in fact no amendment to the state constitution, could ever dictate to a church what sort of wedding can be performed in its sanctuary. That is removed from state OR federal power by the First Amendment to the federal constitution.

There is no reason to prohibit laws that would broadly allow individuals who are NOT married to own property in common, share joint checking accounts, and visit each other in the hospital. Whether that is an aging brother and sister moving into their late parents' home, or three families sharing an old mansion, or a couple of individuals of the same gender, is of no legitimate concern to the state. The specific language of this amendment would incidentally cut off all of the above. These are things that married couples share with each other. There are many other reasons individuals who do not share a marriage might want to share property or visitation rights. None of these other reasons constitute a marriage. Voting NO is the right thing to do, but let's have an open and honest debate about WHY.

No on this "marriage amendment"

2006-05-02T11:24:00.000-05:00

We don't need our constitution to tell us that the sky is blue.

My home state, Wisconsin, has joined this year's round of referendums on amending state constitutions, to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

I believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. I know that there have been many human cultures which allow a man to marry more than one wife, and a few that allowed a woman to marry more than one husband. So what? From the inception of the United States of America, our culture, politics, laws, and predominant religions have firmly held to one husband and one wife. Even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints abandoned polygamy, when faced with the United States Seventh Cavalry entering Utah Territory.

As far as two individuals of the same gender seeking to marry, I can find holes in the reasoning of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts big enough to drive a Mack truck through. Seriously. I don't know why the attorney general of Massachusetts couldn't find them. There is no basis for the twisted logic that "equal protection of the laws" entitles an individual to marry whoever or whatever s/he chooses to marry.

To start with, equal protection of the laws, a very important principle enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment, applies to individuals, not to demographic groups. It protects individuals from being treated differently because of what social or ethnic category they may be consigned to. No man has ever been denied a license to marry a woman, or vice versa, on the ground that "you are a homosexual."

That is why I will vote against the marriage amendment to my state's constitution.

Come on now, let's be serious. Do we really need a constitutional amendment to declare that the sky is blue???

Let's have a little faith in ourselves, in our communities, in our fellow-citizens. True, sometimes a constitution serves to restrain our legislators. As Mark Twain observed, "nobody's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session." But this amendment is being eagerly proposed by our legislators. What are they trying to do , tie their own hands?

Oh, maybe they are trying to restrain our state courts. We wouldn't want another decision so utterly unsound and frivolous as the nonsense that four justices on the Massachusetts Supreme Court came up with, would we? Three out of seven justices in Massachusetts dissented from that decision – hey, has anybody actually read that ruling? It is easily available on the internet.Look it up. Now in Massachusetts, they may need to amend their constitution to set the judges straight.

There is not one justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court who has indicated the slightest intention of making such a decision. There is no sign at all that anything close to a majority of the court would even consider such a ruling. Last time anyone offered opinions, seven out of nine justices on the United States Supreme Court said that the federal constitution does NOT provide a guarantee for same-sex couples to marry.

One of the two justices who might possibly be considered to have maybe said something that might lead to such a conclusion, Sandra Day O'Connor, has since retired. Is anyone afraid that Justice Samuel Alito will be an advocate of a constitutional right for same-gender couples to marry?

So whatever is on the legislators' minds, it is not protecting the institution of marriage. What designs do they have on our life, liberty and property? I have no idea. I know that what they have asked the people to approve makes no sense.

We don't need a constitutional amendment to tell us that the sky is blue, nor to tell us that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. We also don't need a constitutional amendment to establish that, in this state, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

Marriage isn't a right, it is an institution. Some people choose to enter into it, some do not. Every person who chooses to enter into a marriage has a constitutional right to be treated, by the law and the state, in exactly the same manner as every other person who chooses to enter into a marriage. The definition of marriage can't be one thing for some people, and another thing for other people.

Nobody in our nation may be forced into a marriage (although many were in other human cultures in various centuries). Nobody has a constitutional right to redefine what marriage IS either. If "equal protection of the laws" means that I have a right to "marry" whatever I want to, that might start with a person of my own gender, but why not a right to marry my dog, my horse, a sheep, my sports car, or my computer?

We don't need a constitutional amendment. We need to have confidence that marriage, the union of one man and one woman, can be upheld with common sense and simple, rational insight – much less that it is established of God and can weather the storm of nonsense running through our court system.

The wording of this particular amendment would rule out simple, compassionate, common sense legal measures that, incidentally, would provide some consolation to people who do choose to enter into same-gender couples. They have no claim to demand that the rest of us honor or license their choices. But there is no reason they should not, by law, grant each other rights of hospital visitation, hold property in common, etc. James Watkins, a Holiness minister and gospel columnist residing in Indiana, has written eloquently on this subject.

The state doesn't have to take notice of why two or more individuals would want to make such provisions. Maybe an aging brother and sister are moving into their late parents' home together. Let individuals make their own personal arrangements. Leave marriage alone: it is what it is.

That is why I am going to vote NO on amending the Wisconsin constitution.

Genesis of Fishapods

2006-04-15T15:51:00.000-05:00

Two discoveries of new links in the evolution of life have been announced recently. One is a fish whose fins have become somewhat more like the feet of most land animals. The other is a 4.2 million year old hominid that falls in between Ardipithecus and Australopithecus.

News coverage of both finds has unfortunately come with headlines like "Darwin would have loved it," and commentary on the "long-running debate with creationists." No doubt Darwin would have loved it. So what? The truth is the truth, whether Darwin would have loved it or not. Darwin was right about some things, wrong about others. Aren't we all?

If the "fishapod" has been accurately identified, and accurately dated, it represents a key link between animal life in the oceans and animal life that walks on land. It does not have legs, or feet. Where other fish have fins, it has something like a wrist and five digits encased in fin-like webbing. These are the beginnings of a "tetrapod hand" – the hand or paw that every four-legged land reptile or mammal walks on. The interlocking rib cage suggests that it had lungs. It was the kind of fish that could do well in warm, shallow, marshy waters. Unlike fish, it had a flexible neck, and eyes on the top of its head.

Notably, the discovery of this aquatic non-fish has demonstrated how biological theories change with new evidence. That silly "Darwin fish" that grew legs and walked onto the land is out. Seriously, everyone who thought it was good fun to put one on your car, just to get Christians riled up, can take it off now. That didn't happen. By the time anything walked on land, it wasn't a fish. It took a few million years of fishapods living in shallow seas before some oddball descendant actually had legs to walk on land with.

When it comes to science, nothing we think we know remains firmly entrenched. This fishapod has indeed filled in one of the missing transitional links in the chain of living organisms. And it has vindicated the plain language of Genesis, for those who have eyes to see, and a mind to understand what we read.

Genesis? Yes, take another look at Genesis 1: 20-21. First God said "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life." Then it says "God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly." That word "great whales" is something of a mystery. The King James translation into English says "great whales." Some translations say sea serpents. Orthodox Jewish understanding is that it was a "great fish" of a type unknown at the present day. Maybe it was a fishapod.

The key point is, first God called upon the waters to bring forth life, then God "made" everything the waters brought forth.Whatever is turning up in the fossil record is simply giving us some details on the results. The "long-running debate" is a lot of hot air. Evolution is a hypothesis that can be tested. God is not. There is no experiment ever devised that can test for the presence or absence of God. The real question on the subject of divine creation is: How did Moses get such a sophisticated overview, more than 3000 years before a University of Chicago paleontologist dug the fishapod fossil out of a rock formation on Ellesmere Island?

By the way, don't forget that while this animal with five primitive digits did swim around in the primeval swamps some 375 million years ago, there were still plenty of fish in the oceans, lakes and rivers. There still are. The fish didn't all evolve into something else, some fish took off in a new direction. We're still not sure how. Genesis says "God made" the life that "the waters brought forth." When something new appears, it has a tendency to "be fruitful and multiply."

The new hominid found in Africa isn't even close to human. The difference in the timelines for humanity of "instant creationists" compared to the timelines of "evolutionary creationists" is only the difference between 6000 years or so and 200,000 years, or maybe as little as 50,000 years. Out of a possible 4 billion years, that is next to nothing.

Tne new find does close a sequence of 12 hominids over a period of 6 million years, through three phases of hominid development. Note that "hominid" does not mean the same thing as "human." Nor is it accurate to say, as many news reports do, that "Ardipithecus evolved into Australopithecus." Whatever may have happened, most Ardipithecus went right on having Ardipithecus babies, until all the Ardipithecus died out. Maybe a few of the Ardipithecus had oddball children who were the ancestors of the newly discovered fossil. Maybe a few of their descendants had oddball children who were the ancestors of Australopithecus.

All the hominids except for homo sapiens sapiens, aka Adam, are long since extinct. We might have some descent from a few of them. Our genes suggest a "genetic bottleneck" only 50,000 years ago. That means a very small number of individuals was isolated from all others of their kind, and became something new and different. That is how "evolution" generally works. Either a very few individuals are physically isolated, or almost all life is destroyed in a great catastrophe. The whole process follows a very Biblical pattern.

The last of the other hominids were no more than very distant cousins to our ten-thousand-greats-grandparents. It was only 50,000 years ago that actual humans appeared on the earth, with powers of speech, with minds to create art, with ability to develop new technologies... It seems that something new and different was breathed into their nostrils. But it is interesting that all the hominids developed in one small area of Africa. Somewhere east of Eden perhaps?

The physcial evidence is real, and it means what it says. Whatever God has been doing, it took a lot more time, as we experience time, than our pious ancestors could conceive of. Well, we can't expect humans to think on the grand scale of an omnipotent God. Our minds can only handle as much as we can handle. Let the facts speak for themselves. And let Genesis tell us what it all means.

Common Sense in South Dakota

2006-04-11T10:17:00.000-05:00

The People Challenge the Politicians on Abortion

It appears that many South Dakota citizens disagree with the legislature's decision to impose criminal penalties for nearly all abortions in the state. Some are going to petition for a popular referendum to repeal the law. A most interesting approach. State Representative Elaine Roberts observed "The vast majority of South Dakotans are somewhere in the middle. They have mixed feelings about this issue and I personally don't believe that their views are represented in HB-1215."

The act of the South Dakota legislature is of course, null and void from its inception. Every legislator who voted for it knows that. A very routine judgement from a federal district court would suffice to confirm the obvious. The 7-2 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in Roe v. Wade remains the supreme law of the land. That ruling is binding on every federal court of appeal, and every federal district court judge, no matter what their personal sentiments. It is also binding on the legislature and laws, and the courts, of the state of South Dakota. The new state law is, accordingly, utterly unenforceable.

But a referendum will accomplish something that no dry court ruling could do. Perhaps it is true that a majority of people in the state are neither "pro-abortion," nor supportive of the "pro-life" lobbyists – who want to restore draconian criminal penalties. In that case, the referendum will make this a battle of "the people vs. the lobbyists and politicians" rather than "activist judges vs. the popular will."

It is possible, even probable, that the legislators who passed this unenforceable law HOPE that it will make its way to the Supreme Court, where a new majority may overturn Roe. That is rather unlikely, but nothing will drown this remote possibility so well as a vote of the people to reject the new law. The legislature and governor of the State of South Dakota would then have nothing to appeal.

In the event of a legal challenge, judgment from a federal district court would be a foregone conclusion. A federal appeals court might well decline to even consider an appeal from the district court, since current constitutional law is so obvious and well defined. There is no controversy. There really is nothing to consider on appeal. That would serve as an extremely poor basis for the Supreme Court to take a direct appeal. Unless four or five justices are firmly committed to overturning the court's existing precedent, there would be no reason to grant a writ of certiorari.

Every measure of public opinion indicates that a majority of Americans take a sound, sensible, common-sense, conservative position on this whole endless controversy. The heavy hand of government, of criminal penalties and public prosecution, has no role in the intimate decisions of a pregnant woman during the first trimester. The state has only a very limited place in the second trimester. Abortion is not a desirable course of action, and few of us would recommend it unless there is a good reason. We differ on what might constitute a good reason. Many believe it to be a sin under any circumstances. But a firm majority of us would ultimately let each pregnant woman make her own decision.

Public opinion is not, of course, the measure of constitutional law. As Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out, in his eloquent concurring opinion in Apprendi v. New Jersey, the constitution means what it says, not what we think it ought to mean. Justice Scalia has also noted, correctly, that supreme court justices are appointed for life, precisely so they can follow the law, rather than bending to whatever happens to be the popular will at the moment. A constitutional limit on the powers of government does not appear when a popular majority approves, then disappear when a popular majority shifts the other way.

It may be that the constitution does not protect individual privacy from government intrusion. Most Americans have come to passionately expect that it does protect our personal lives from state interference, in many different ways. Justice Scalia has been firm in holding that the 4th amendment secures the home against government intrusion. Other justices, notably Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Louis Brandeis, have argued for an expansive right to be left alone. As long as such a right exists, legislators or popular majorities, in South Dakota or anywhere else, are powerless to intervene in the private decisions of individual citizens.

If the Supreme Court finds that there is no such constitutional protection after all, then states would be free to go anywhere they choose. The legislature of South Dakota would be free to adopt criminal penalties for abortion, and to have them enforced. The people of South Dakota would be free to overturn the legislature by referendum. There is a place for both constitutional protection and the popular will in our system of government. Right now it is an open question, who truly speaks for the people of South Dakota?

Unfortunately, a majority of the South Dakota legislature views abortion through the dark glass of a "war" that has to be "won." So, on a national level, do NARAL and Planned Parenthood. These two fanatical viewpoints, each more concerned with "winning the war" than with allowing women to make healthy choices, have fed on each other for at least 20 years. Both fail to recognize that our culture is moving toward greater reverence for life precisely because of Roe v. Wade.

It would be a very good thing if Americans who stand for the right to life of every unborn child would put all their money where their mouth is. Instead of endless and futile demand for criminal penalties, think what they could accomplish by reaching out to pregnant women who are not sure they can handle bearing and raising a child! Let every person who believes abortion is always wrong offer to take complete responsibility for any fetus brought to term by a mother who does not want, or feel able, to keep and raise the child.

Also, could the "pro choice" advocates please lower their profile a little? Roe v. Wade rested on the respecting the intimate private decisions of individual women and families, consulting their own choice of physician, not on a "right to abortion." Justice Harry Blackmun's private papers reveal that he specifically rejected the concept that there is a constitutional right to abortion. Highly publicized clinics dedicated to providing abortions offer an obvious lightning rod. Could we please let this whole issue fade back into a private decision, and respect whatever decision an individual woman may choose to make?

Cartoons of the Prophet

2006-04-03T14:11:00.000-05:00

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

In the winter of 1874, some young Lakota boys living in a camp around Ft. Robinson, Nebraska, thought it was great fun to climb a flagpole, chop the tip off, incidentally bringing the United States flag flying from it down into the dust. Trigger happy soldiers were about to gun down every Lakota in sight, male or female, child or adult. Chief Red Cloud, who had fought the U.S. army to a standstill in 1868, then accepted reservation life while Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were still fighting to remain free, addressed the soldiers eloquently. He said that the boys must of course be punished, but grown men do not gun down entire communities over the pranks of children. He asked the soldiers if they had ever done foolish things when they were boys.

The Danish publisher who commissioned cartoon depictions of the Prophet Mohammed was not a boy, nor were the cartoonists who responded. The assignment, and the cartoons themselves, are indeed childish. There is no legal authority to punish them, nor should there be any. The entire episode evidences a failure to communicate.

Many of those protesting the cartoons live in nations where publications are closely regulated by the government. In some nations, there may be only one television network, and that one is an organ of the state. Newspapers are subject by law to prior censorship, or to criminal penalties for printing material the government deems inappropriate. (The popularity of Al-Jazeera satellite broadcasts is not so much that they attack the west, as that they are independent of government control in the Middle East.) In most of these nations, blasphemy, at least against the dominant religion, is a well-know criminal offense. Generally, violent protests have occured in nations where Islam is the dominant religion.

That should not be such a foreign concept to Europeans, or even to Americans. Every nation in Europe at one time had a tightly controlled press, and most British colonies in North America had one also. Most European nations had, and still have, an established church. It is a pale shadow of its former self, but tax money is still paid to support the mostly empty churches of Europe's state-favored religious sects.

It is no more than a century since most European nations had laws punishing blasphemy against some or all Christian doctrines. (Cartoons lampooning the Pope were acceptable in Protestant nations, but not in Catholic nations). Most of the original 13 colonies also imposed criminal penalties for at least some forms of blasphemy. The Roman Catholic Church sometimes seems intent on restoring that kind of influence over the secular law if it possibly can. But John Calvin and Martin Luther were equally guilty in their own times. So was Cotton Mather.

Why are these cartoons deemed to be blasphemous by Muslims?

Has anyone noticed recently that the Ten Commandments (which are part of the Qu'ran as well as the Torah and the Bible) prohibit making "any graven image of anything that is in the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters under the earth"? Islam takes that very, very literally. Muslim art features beautiful and intricate abstract designs, because it simply does not allow for any images at all.

Most Christians understand this prohibition in light of the following phrase "you shall not bow down to them or serve them." As long as we do not worship the graven image, we don't see a problem with realistic painting and sculpture. But it is not a foreign concept to Christians that a passage from Scripture "means what it says and it says what it means." Some Christians refuse to pledge allegiance to a flag, because we will not bow down to a graven image.

Islam particularly prohibits any image of the Prophet, unlike Christianity, which freely produces a variety of images portraying Jesus. Usually these images have nothing in common with what the human body of Jesus actually looked like when he walked on earth. Most paintings of Jesus (there are no photographs) simply try to make the man culturally relevant to whatever population is currently being evangelized. That is how bronze-skinned missionaries from the Mediterranean came to portray Jesus with pink skin and blonde hair, to the pale barbarians of northern Europe.

We all know the song "I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus, riding on the dashboard of my car..." There are no Plastic Prophets for the faithful of Islam. Muslims simply don't allow the making of any image at all. It is considered a special mark of disrespect to depict God's final prophet, who was taken up by God directly to heaven, somewhat like Enoch in Genesis 5:24. But originally, the prohibition recognized that Mohammed is not God, that no graven image is to be made of him.

So devout followers of Islam, living in nations with a tightly controlled press, where blasphemy is a criminal offense, may be making some natural assumptions about the meaning of these contemptible cartoons. It would be natural to assume that such cartoons had to be approved by the Danish government in order to be printed. It would be natural to assume that the Danish government is maliciously refraining from prosecution of this blasphemy. It would be natural to take that as a deliberate insult to Islam.

The cartoons are an insult to Islam. But insulting a religion (any religion) is not a crime in the United States, nor at this time in Denmark. It is not a crime any more in most of Europe. Saddam Hussein could decree any law he wanted, any time he wanted, including an ex post facto, law making a crime of something already done. The president of Denmark has no such power. Nor is it lawful to assassinate the author of such blasphemies, merely because someone's beliefs have been insulted.

Blasphemy against Christians is also legal here

Christian have to put up with this all the time in the United States. A good example is Terrence McNally's blasphemous play, Corpus Christi, which depicts Jesus Christ and the 12 Apostles as gay men engaged in group sex. There was a lawsuit about that in federal court a few years ago. Linnemeir v. Board of Trustees of Purdue University The result: the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals found that the play "is indeed blasphemous," but there is no legal basis to prohibit a theater major producing it, even at a state-funded university. Christians have a right to denounce the play, to picket the play, to boycott the play, and encourage others to do so. But there is no legal basis to suppress the play, nor to punish the author, producer, or actors who participate in presenting it.

That is difficult for many Muslims, in nations with a controlled press, to understand. If the government does not authorize the cartoons, if the government lacks authority to suppress the cartoons, then the government is not responsible for the content of the cartoons. Nor are the individual or corporate citizens of the nation in which the cartoons are published. Only the individuals who wrote them, and choose to publish them, are responsible for the content.

In some nations, blasphemy may be subject to a penalty of death, lawfully adopted and published in the legal codes. Danish cartoonists should be aware of these laws before travelling to such nations. Denmark has no such laws, nor does the United States. It is unacceptable that anyone should take the law into their own hands in a nation where no such legal penalty exists. But before we get too high up on our liberal horses, we should again remember our own history. There was no law against publishing abolitionist newspapers in Illinois before the Civil War either. That did not stop a pro-slavery mob from burning down the print-shop of Elijah Lovejoy, dumping his press in the river, and, when he attempted to defend his property, shooting him dead.

In parts of the world where Islam is the dominant faith, it is well known that after the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001, mobs in the United States attempted to deface or destroy a few mosques. (There were also Christian and Jewish neighbors who came to the defense of such mosques – just as Muslim neighbors volunteered to defend Christian churches in Indonesia during the 2005 Christmas season). The members of at least some of those American mosques were fifth-generation Americans, whose ancestors came to these shores before the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. There was also one incident where some thugs who mistook a Sikh gas station owner in Arizona for a Muslim, murdered him as an act of "revenge" for the World Trade Center.

Essential principles to work our way out of this mess:

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are non-negotiable. Al-Jazeera would no doubt be the first to agree.
Juvenile cretins, who take pleasure in casual blasphemies to get a rise out of believers, are not worthy of support or respect, albeit they have the legal right to make public idiots of themselves.
Individuals are responsible for their own actions, and to some extent for the actions of organizations to which they freely commit themselves and which they freely consent to or support. There can be no guilt by association of all Americans for the act of one or 100 Americans, all Muslims for the act of one or 100 Muslims, all Danes for the act of one or 100 Danes.
None of us can claim a history of perfectly clean hands, but it is worth fighting to hold onto the hard-won progress we have made.
Those who seek God through the path of Islam would do well to break the habit of relying on the state to enforce religious laws, a habit that most Christians reluctantly abandoned in the last 200 years or so.
Christians trying to restore the habit of relying on the state to enforce religious laws should be careful what they wish for.

and God (Yaweh, Adonai, al-Lah – The God) help us every one.

Burke Was Wrong

2006-03-18T15:15:00.000-06:00

Birkenstocks – on the left foot or the right foot – can't save America

There are many mansions in the American conservative house, and some of them are old and funky and smell like a pot of organic mustard greens cooking down on the stove.

So says Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons, a book about counter-cultural conservatives. Dreher's book has been promoted in the New York Times Book Review – which must not be such an exclusively liberal forum as many have come to believe. The reviewer, David D. Kilpatrick, is a Washington correspondent for The Times. At first glance, I thought he was listed as a correspondent for The Washington Times, which would be conservatism cubed. (Does Sun Myung Moon still own that paper, or did his "church" merely finance the start-up and spin off the "alternative" paper on its merry way?

It is always good to see stereotypes topple like overturned idols. It is too bad when another collection of disconnected beliefs is raised on the same pedestal, for all to admire as a contender to be the New Dominant Paradigm.

I can find some points of agreement with Dreher. There are other points where we are poles apart. This gives Dreher something in common with almost every other person I have ever met or heard of. Are there any two Americans who can be grouped under one label, and agree on everything?

I have no problem with the concept of "right-wing hippies." I always thought a lot of the hippies were self-centered exhibitionists who would grow up to be ruthless tycoons. The individual self-preoccupation of the early Reagan era was driven by the spending power of hippies over 30. Outbreaks of whooping cough have appeared wherever a pocker of hippie mamas were too anti-social to get their babies vaccinated. (And where was the right-to-life movement, when these born children were facing painful deaths by parental neglect?)

But I digress. I go along with Dreher on preserving the environment, resisting television, refusing to buy some gadget that big business and the dominant culture says I must have. I'm all for sustainable development. I even like being able to rely on some traditional mores. I really don't admire bed-hopping, pornography, or seeing near-pornography on billboards.

Abortion rights? That doesn't get me excited. I'm an old-fashioned conservative who believes that one of the most important rights in our Constitution is the right to be left alone. (See the eloquent dissents of Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes in Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438. I'm happy to see nosy state authorities ordered to leave women alone in their first trimester of pregnancy, and to some extent even in the second. I'm happy to see committed right-to-life organizations reach out to pregnant women, offering moral perspective and material support.

Same-sex mariage... that's an oxymoron. The Massachusetts Supreme Court made an obvious error, then adhered to it with very consistent logic. "Equal protection of the laws" has not been infringed by any state's definition of marriage. Every man has an equal right to a license to marry a woman, and vice versa. The possibility that either the man, or the woman, entering into a marriage, may be a homosexual, has never been raised as an impediment. But constitutional amendments are not necessary to substantiate the obvious. Do we need constitutional amendments to affirm that the sky is blue?

I'm firmly committed to public schools. I'm not on Dreher's page at all there. One of the great strengths of our nation has been that sooner or later, most of our children have to meet and mix with each other. They don't have to abandon their own morals, they just have to learn that people with different beliefs exist, and are not aliens. Men used to experience that in the armed forces, when we had a draft, and definitely during World War II. It was one of our nation's hidden strengths in the post-war years.

Nobody has ever been able to tell me what a "secular liberal" is, so I won't take a position on them. It would be like criticizing the yeti, or the bogeyman. Most liberals I know go to church. Most really secular people I know are navel-contemplating egotists, who probably vote Republican a good part of the time.

I guess I'm a little too libertarian for Rod Dreher. But if he doesn't like Wal-Mart, or McMansions, or agribusiness, here is a neolibertarian position he might want to consider:

There is no more appropriate use of government authority than breaking up private concentrations of power that infringe on the liberties of individual citizens. By citizens, I mean live flesh and blood people, not soul-less corporations. I am all for massive regulation of big business, restrained oversight of medium size business... and leave the small proprietors alone, as long as they don't dump their garbage on their neighbors, sell meat contaminated with salmonella, or cheat their employees, if any.

What really keeps the United States of America strong is that there is no single majority which defines how we as a people feel about all issues of concern. Pick any political controversy: how a majority and minority line up on that question will be different than who is in what majority or minority on ANY other subject. Most majorities can't even agree among themselves about WHY they favor whatever it is they believe in. That is why we have avoided civil wars for over 150 years.

Do Republicans Eat Oreos?

2006-02-22T11:37:00.000-06:00

Color Blind Does Not Mean Clueless

One of the results of the civil rights movement is that Americans of African descent are now much more free to be conservative if they wish to. Fifty years ago, all the best clubs, best neighborhoods, highest circles of business and commerce, made a point of excluding people with darker complexions. Therefore, people born with a high epidermal melanin concentration had little choice but to associate with whatever liberal, radical, socialist or communist circles would accept them and fight for them – sometimes with ulterior motives, sometimes not.

Before 1932, most African Americans who could vote at all voted Republican, the party that proposed and ratified the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the federal constitution. Since 1932, most vote Democratic, the party of the New Deal. After 1948, democrats belatedly made civil rights an important plank of their platform.

The Republican Party cheerfully abandoned its last ties to significant African American support in the 1970s, welcoming with open arms the overt and covert racists of all regions, who no longer felt at home in the Democratic Party. The party of Kennedy, Johnson and Carter had come a long way from its 1868 campaign slogan "This is a White Man's country, let White Men rule."

One can understand why the "yellow dog" Democrats felt betrayed, so betrayed they were willing to become Republicans. For their part, Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes have shown no sign of returning to their own party's 1868 platform. That was pretty well abandoned in 1876, when the "Liberal Republicans" took over the party from the "Radical Republicans"!

At the dawn of the 21st century, republican strategists decided they wanted the White Conservative Vote and the Black Vote. The clever ploy to achieve this objective, of course, is to run conservative black republican candidates for office. Pity the Conservative Black Republican! Their party is counting on them to swing The Black Vote from the democrats, but liberal-minded African Americans pelt them with oreos. Despite the strenuous rhetoric of many African American pastors, even the God-fearing, church-going brothers and sisters continue to regard Republicans the way their great-great-grandparents regarded southern Democrats. It was the father of a Republican congressman from Oklahoma who remarked "black folks voting for Republicans is like chickens voting for Col. Sanders."

"Just pretending racism doesn't exist doesn't mean it isn't there." With this clumsy but obvious statement, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Salena Zito launched a moderately impassioned advocacy for Lynn Swann, a conservative republican retired football star with a dark complexion, who is running to be the next governor of Pennsylvania. Of course it is ridiculous for anyone to suggest that skin color requires any person to have any set of political beliefs or allegiances. Not only is Oprah free to become an influential TV personality and a millionaire, but Condoleeza Rice is free to be a close associate of George W. Bush.

This does not make Rice any more "black" or less "black" than she was born with. Her skin color is irrelevant. She is, however, entitled to no breaks for being "black." She is an adherent of the most juvenile, clueless, incompetent president we have ever had, a man who will rank with Millard Fillmore and James Polk in the history books. With the departure of Colin Powell, she is unquestionably the most intelligent person in the cabinet. That is a function of her brain, education, life experiences, and self-discipline, not her color. One can only speculate why she chooses to serve a president raised by the Peter Principle (and Karl Rove) to such a high level of incompetence.

Conservative Republicans complain that THEIR "black" candidates are being subjected to abuse for not following some "politically correct" racial stereotype. That is a valid point, but they invite, sometimes even deserve, this kind of misguided abuse. Republicans, continuing to identify themselves with the archaic labels "black" and "white," are in their own way playing their own race card. The Republican Party wants to have its racist cake, and eat the Democratic cake too, while calling critics of its African American candidates racist.

Michael Steele's candidacy for senator from Maryland was greeted by a crowd throwing oreo cookies? Well, maybe. A fact checker called RegretTheError suggests not. It is unfortunate that many people, who identify with the label African American, make an implied demand for conformity from "anyone who looks like us." But Steele courted that kind of rejection by running as a BLACK Republican.

Steele is lieutenant governor of Maryland today, because Gov. Bob Ehrlich thought a black face on the ticket would enhance Ehrlich's chances of getting elected in the first place. If Steele said, yes, I am a republican, I am a conservative, my skin color has nothing to do with it, I have no stereotype to conform to, take me as I am, vote for me if you believe what I believe, that would be fine.

But Steele's candidacy IS an attempt to "pull the black vote" – perpetuating the myth that "black voters" are a bloc that goes for "one of our own." Do republicans with dark skin colors have such a low opinion of the intelligence of African American voters? How about the mostly "white" Republican campaign strategists?

What is wrong with Steele is not that he is "black on the outside, white on the inside." There is NO "black" way of thinking, acting, or choosing. The whole point of the civil rights movement was that each individual should be free to make their own choices for their own lives, exert their own efforts, and advance according to their own merit. Steele's problem is that he thinks his skin color will make "conservatives" of people who don't really support his philosophy. So, some of them respond to the insult by passing oreos around at his campaign rallies. (Not, apparently, by pelting him with anything).

A Pennsylvania republican named Otto Banks complains that "An African-American Republican running for office can expect to be pictured incessantly with President Bush, linked with the NRA and gun proliferation ... labeled a sellout and compared to Strom Thurman." Well, why not? Those are the associates any republican has chosen. Why would an African American join the party where Strom Thurmond found a refuge after his Dixiecrat campaign for the white house?

The overwhelming majority of African American voters hold the current federal leadership in contempt, as do somewhere around half to two-thirds of the total population of the United States. ANY Republican who does not unambiguously repudiate the Bush administration should expect to be held accountable for the company they keep. Their race is no reason to give them any breaks on that account. As my Republican mother says, George W. Bush has done a great deal of damage to this country.

Most of us human beings are pretty complex in our actual principles and viewpoints. We defy sorting out into neat little categories. We are all conservative about some things, liberal about others. We all have some values that are very important to us, others less so. There are conservative republican homosexuals and there are liberal democrats who have been faithful to their wives/husbands all their life. Some African Americans are very hostile to homosexuality, but the same percentage of African Americans are attracted to their own gender as any other demographic category. There have always been a handful of conservative black republicans. Sammy Davis Jr. and Jackie Robinson were both known for endorsing Richard M. Nixon.

Everybody adores the civil rights movement with 20/20 hindsight, but it was far from adored when it represented a sharp break in American habits and culture. There were a fair number of "black" people who PREFERRED segregated schools, where they could in a limited way run their own show and be sure their own students would be on the football team and be valedictorian. There were, obviously, millions of "white" people who resisted the movement with extreme hatred and violence. They had to be suppressed, pushed aside, put down... they had to be overcome, in various ways.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. definitely would not have countenanced the kind of stereotypes that the aging generation of post-civil-rights leaders continue to push. But he was not the fuzzy soft apostle of love that those in public office today like to recall. He took unpopular stands because he saw it was the right thing to do. He demanded that America pay attention to pulling those left in poverty out of it – not with endless welfare, not with the delusions of "empowerment" while denying access to real capital, but with genuine access and opportunity. There were plenty of "black conservatives" in his own day, and they were among his harshest critics. He led a walkout from the National Baptist Convention for that very reason. Martin Luther King defied the law several times, openly and honestly, went to jail for it proudly. Black conservatives said that was where he belonged.

Zito concludes on a fine note: "If you have problems with candidates, attack their principles or their ideas, not the color of their skin." I would only add, if you think you have something to offer as a candidate, rest your case on your principles and your ideas, not on parading the color of your skin and hoping a good number of voters will go your way because of it, no matter what your principles.

God and Abraham (Lincoln)

2006-02-01T10:18:00.000-06:00

The Theological Content of the Second Inaugural Address

February 12 used to be celebrated as Abraham Lincoln's birthday, before the American thirst for three-day week-ends overcame our one-time sense of patriotic celebration. Now remembrance and study of what our nation really stands for – the high principles and immoral pursuits that have brought us to where we are – is set aside. A vacation is a vacation, it is not a day of remembrance. Even those with a strong sense of patriotism have little sense of history.

Among the things we have lost, is a sense of how a public official could freely speak their faith in God, without compromising the religious liberty of every fellow citizen. No president before or since has ever matched the profound theological content of Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. Americans who seek to reclaim and highlight the undoubted role of religious faith in our history need look no further.

There are those who quote Christopher Columbus's professed devotion to God. Columbus would have been horrified by the notions of liberty and democracy. He was a faithful servant of Their Most Catholic Majesties, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. So too, the Mayflower Compact not only gives reverence to God, but to "our Dread Lord King James I" – not exactly in the spirit of the American Revolution.

Abraham Lincoln, however, is an undeniable martyr to liberty, a democratically elected president with a firm commitment to constitutional government. Lincoln had a sound vision of what "the people" would and would not accept. He knew how to lead, and how fast to lead. When he took the oath of office for the second time, he led a nation that was clearly approaching victory over a prolonged rebellion. He had secured passage in congress of a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, unthinkable anywhere in the union when the war began. Lincoln reached out to reunite his country by noting that those in the northern and southern states:

"Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes."

These words did draw criticism, mostly from Democratic newspapers, precisely for its religious content. (Don't confuse this with "the liberal media" – Democrats were the conservative party, the party that sought peace at almost any price, including the perpetuation of slavery, the party of states' rights, the party that voters of African descent would not support for the next eighty years, but which retained the loyalty of the "solid South" (after Deconstruction) for over 100 years.

The New York World criticized Lincoln's "substitution of religion for statesmanship." The Tribune of the same city said that the speech's stern Biblical overtones would impede any chance for peace. Lincoln himself told New York Republican organizer Thurlow Weed that his speech would not be "immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them."

What the purposes of the Almighty might be, Lincoln deferentially addressed:

"Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether'."

In short, Lincoln in the same words demonstrated that it is perfectly possible for a public figure in a pluralistic democratic republic to speak reverently of God, and why it is essential that the government neither establish a religion nor wrap the name of God around its own policies. Lincoln never said God is with his administration, or supports this or that policy. Lincoln said, we can see God moving through the awful events we are experiencing, and He has His own purposes, which none of us have fully grasped or shared.

Amen.

Ghana Is Not "Home"

2006-01-14T16:00:00.000-06:00

Ghana, a nation in west Africa, wants to be the homeland for people of African descent living in the Americas. The nation's minister of tourism, J. Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, told reporters that "We want Africans everywhere, no matter where they live or how they got there, to see Ghana as their gateway home." Ghana's Uneasy Embrace of Slavery's Diaspora This is no doubt good business, but it is more than ironic. The descendants of those who sold millions into slavery, want the descendants of those who were sold to feel at home in the land that sold their ancestors?

The territory of Ghana is defined by the treaty boundaries of a former British colony. Unlike many modern African nations, it has a compact history pre-dating colonial intrusion. It was not cobbled together from parts of several mutually hostile ethnic groups, to suit European mercantile convenience. The land that today is called Ghana was, more or less, the heart of the Asante Union, sometimes also spelled Ashanti. The Asante cobbled together an empire from several mutually hostile ethnic groups, before the British ever arrived, and made those who were not sold as slaves into Asante.

No kingdom in Africa was more astute at dealing in slaves than the Asante. Troops of highly disciplined soldiers collected ground rent for all the slave forts on their coast. Sale of slaves was sometimes halted by decree, to extract higher prices from European merchants. In fact, when the British navy and diplomatic service began trying to suppress the slave trade, the reigning Asantehene, Osei Bonsu, complained that this left him no market to sell his prisoners. He asked that the trade be restored.

Africans sold into slavery were either prisoners of war, or the cast-off rejects of their own people. They could be either high-ranking enemies, or criminals of the same community from which they were sold. Sale of prisoners as slaves was deeply imbedded in African culture long before European ships found their way south of the Sahara desert. Human sacrifice of slaves on ritual occasions was common among the Asante, Cameroon, and Dahomey. Arab merchants developed a sophisticated long-distance network for marketing slaves – which makes the whole idea that Islam is the religion for people of African descent quite ridiculous. Merchants who professed Islam were just as involved in slavery as merchants who professed Christianity. Both were rightly suspected of violating their faith in the name of profit.

It is common for natives of Ghana to refer to African-American tourists by the same word used for Europeans and pale-skinned Americans, "obruni." This could be loosely translated "white foreigner," but Africans do not traditionally refer to Europeans as "white" – except when their words are translated by Europeans or Americans who have defined themselves as "white." An obruni is an obruni, whatever their color. (People with pale skin are often referred to as "ugly," but that is a description, not an identity.) Nor do most Africans think of themselves as "black." That too is a European and colonial innovation. Africans define themselves as Senegalese, or Ugandan, or as Herrero, Ovimbundu, Bakongo...

After all, at least one third of the people in Ghana live on less than a dollar a day. What do they have in common with Americans who have the discretionary income to afford round trip international air fare and hotel accommodations? People who live without electricity and running water might recognize as long lost brothers and sisters someone who came to install both in an impoverished village at affordable rates, or free of charge. But tourists?

During the last few decades before the Civil War, and during the decades afterward, Americans of known African descent were ruthlessly taught that they had no history, that they were descended from "jungle bunnies" and ignorant savages. This was patently false, and earlier generations in America knew better. The thousands of Charleston, South Carolina slaves enlisted by Denmark Vesey included a large number who knew their Ibo heritage, and at least 10% who retained the Islamic faith of their ancestors. Benjamin Banneker's Dogon grandfather had been a prince, and the family knew it. Banneker's grandmother, an English dairy maid from Kent, called her husband "the Prince" throughout their married life. Anthony Johnson, the owner of a 250 acre plantation in Virginia, was well aware of his Angolan roots. But once lies had been told, and for a time somewhat believed, it was a natural response to claim, with pride, a renewed African heritage.

Yes, Africa did have kingdoms and empires as glorious as any in Europe. That isn't much to be proud of. Our ancestors, European or African, were mostly either cruel, petty tyrants, or illiterate, ignorant, superstitious peasants. There were always a few exceptions, that is why we have all made a little progress, sort of. During the 1600s, when the trans-Atlantic slave trade became established as big international business, Europeans were burning witches at the stake, while Africans were pounding stakes into witches – both painful deaths. Europeans during that period lacked the military and economic capacity to kidnap the millions of men and women who were taken to America. They were sold, by the "motherland." European merchants came in large numbers because Africa had slaves for sale. Slave traders paid for the privilege, humbly requested on their knees before the local king.

We are not so much better today as we sometimes think. Less than twenty years ago, the Inkatha militia in South Africa was engaged in battles with the African National Congress military wing, Umkonto we Sizwe. I remarked to a South African exile in America that a good solution would be to airlift the entire Inkatha militia to Yugoslavia, for United Nations peacekeeping duties. Moses replied "Yes, we have to stop the white-on-white violence." Isn't that the truth? Serbs practice ethnic cleansing on Bosnians, Croats practice ethnic cleansing on Serbs, Hutu practice ethnic cleansing on Tutsi... Yoruba and Hausa ganged up on Ibo a few years ago, resulting in the Biafra war...

A couple of years ago, a weekly paper in the Washington, D.C., area, published primarily for African American readers, ran a headline "Benin apologizes for slavery." That may have been the first time that a modern west African nation openly acknowledged its own historical role in the slave trade. Benin also wanted Americans of African descent to come home. After all, there are a fair number of African Americans who are prosperous today, and immigrants with money are desirable to any impoverished land. The millions of African Americans who are barely getting by? They don't have the money for trans-Atlantic air fare anyway.

Oddly enough, one of the pretexts for Britain establishing colonial administrations in west Africa was that the local rulers practiced slavery. There was a certain amount of hypocrisy in the British government posturing as friend of freedom. True, there was genuine spirit to William Wilberforce's anti-slavery efforts, endorsed by the aging John Wesley. But the British royal family and merchants, Tory and Whig, had been up to their eyeballs in the slave trade. American colonies who tried to prohibit importation of slaves were over-ruled by the King. After wringing immense profits out of the business, Britain turned around and condemned it. By then, certain American colonies, now independent politically, were so dependent on slave labor that they invented some ingenious justifications to keep it going another 70 years or so. The results for their descendants were both bloody and poisonous.

When British ships intercepted slave traders, the human cargo was taken to the nearest African coast and settled in villages. Generally, they were far away from their own kin and cultures. Local people often raided these villages, to obtain slaves to sell to another merchant willing to defy the British blockade. And so British colonialism arrived under the banner of progress and civilization, to bring enlightenment that Britain itself had suppressed for many centuries. Colonial administration of course was in the hands of another set of petty tyrants, who had absorbed the identity of "white man" and viewed all people of darker complexion with contempt. That attitude germinated first in the American colonies, then was brought back to Africa.

The glorious African kings, who financed their mighty empires on the sale of slaves, had no idea of the perverted culture their satisfied customers were digging, for themselves and their "property," on the other side of the world. Humanity will never really get over the poisonous legacy of the past until we recognize that none of us have clean hands, none of us would really want to live the lives of any of our ancestors, and none of us are defined by the past. We reinvent our own warped identity with every new generation. And then we have to recognize, whether our ancestors came from Europe, Africa, or both, the truth of that old saying "You can't go home again."

Alito Needs a Different Job

2006-01-07T10:32:00.000-06:00

Each time the president nominates a new Supreme Court justice, there are shrill voices ready to denounce the nominee. These voices are generally unworthy of serious consideration. Condemnation, as a thoughtless reflex, may emerge from the muddled menagerie that passes for a sort of "left wing" in the modern United States. It may come from the poisonous stew that passes for "right wing." Neither source has distinguished itself for reliance on facts, or careful consideration of evidence. Neither has demonstrated any significant knowledge of constitutional law, or reliance on the fundamental principles which formed our nation. Both amount to little more than "I want what I want, I want it now, and it must be in the Constitution somewhere."

When Samuel Alito, Jr. was nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, there was no cause to line up for or against confirmation. No member of the United States Senate, few if any of the citizens those senators represent, knew enough about the man. Oh, the senate did confirm him for other federal judicial positions. But that is generally a pretty routine process. To confirm a nominee for a judicial position bound to follow precedents of the Supreme Court is one thing. To confirm the same person for a seat on the court that makes the precedents is quite another. And the rest of us didn't know much more than what hurried news articles slapped together.

Some time has passed, and the man's record has begun to be revealed. It is not his worth as a human being, but whether he is the right choice for a particular job that are at issue. Here is the opinion of one bus driver in a somewhat shrunken midwestern city: Samuel Alito is not qualified to expound the Constitution of the United States. Confirmation of Alito to sit on the Supreme Court would be an insult to our Republic, and a slap in the face to the Framers of our fundamental law.

Two broad trends can be traced in the construction of Constitutional law for our nation. One relies on the Constitution to protect individual freedom. It limits the jurisdiction of government, restrains government intrusion into private decisions. It endeavors to keep citizen participation in government free from intimidation by power and wealth, concentrated in a small number of private hands. This infuriates anyone in a position of power and authority, who naturally resents limitations on their own exercise of power. But it has been a great thing for the people of the United States.

The other trend grants almost unlimited power to government. In a cruel perversion of constitutional liberty, this trend would allow a small number of influential and well-placed men, as well as self-perpetuating political machines, to control the levers of unrestricted state power. Samuel Alito has placed himself, throughout his life, in this camp. Mark Twain wrote that nobody's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session. With Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court, there would be nobody on watch to restrain the legislature. It would literally be employing the fox to guard the chicken coop.

This has nothing to do with his position on Roe v. Wade. If there is one thing certain about the confirmation process, nobody will ever find out his true intent regarding Roe v. Wade unless and until he sits on the court and a controversy concerning abortion actually comes up on the docket. It is nearly impossible to penetrate the innermost soul of a candidate for any office and discover their true intentions. It is incredibly easy to give bland, deceptive answers to any question, without actually lying.

Besides, how a nominee may vote on some hypothetical future case truly is irrelevant to either a nomination or confirmation which retains any pretense of integrity. No person is qualified to be a justice of the Supreme Court who comes to the confirmation process with an agenda either to overturn, or to preserve a all costs, any existing precedent. Samuel Alito clearly has had such an agenda for his entire life as a law student and practicing attorney. He would make an excellent litigator for his causes. He cannot dispassionately judge them.

In this light, Thurgood Marshall would have been a terrible choice for the Supreme Court in 1952, when he had a record of actively seeking to make new constitutional law and overturn existing Supreme Court precedents. The ruling in Brown v. Board of Education had just barely enough force to actually change our national culture precisely because the most conservative judges joined in a unamimous decision. Putting Marshall on the court, then voting 5-4 for what he had sought as a trial lawyer, would not have had the same impact at all. By the time Marshall was actually nominated and confirmed, older and more dispassionate justices had already accepted most of what he advocated as valid constitutional interpretation. Marshall came on the court not to advance his agenda, but to handle new and unforseeable controversies, after his advocacy had been fully vindicated.

Applying for a position in the Justice Department under then-president Ronald Reagan, Alito wrote that he was attracted to constitutional law "in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause, and reapportionment." Most of the case law he profoundly disagrees with remains settled law. It would be wrong to confirm any nominee who said "I will never reconsider those precedents for any reason." It is equally wrong to confirm a nominee whose honest attitude is "just give me a chance to set the clock back."

Reapportionment is not an issue that most people even think about any more. The line of cases Alito referred to began with Baker v. Carr in 1962. At that time, state legislatures were free to draw district lines that had forty times as many voters for one state senator as the number in a neighboring district. Alito, in short, questions whether the Supreme Court, as guardian and arbiter of the federal constitution, should "insure that the democratic process is not rigged to thwart the will of the majority" (Adam Cohen, New York Times, Jan 3, 2006, page A18).

Alexander Hamilton stated in several articles of The Federalist Papers that a constitution is a mere piece of paper, unless the legislature, and the executive, are confined to the exercise of powers granted by constitutional authority. For this purpose, the courts must serve as a restraint on the legislature. In fact, the courts must declare null and void any legislative enactment that violates the constitution. This duty, Samuel Alito is clearly unwilling to fulfill. His concept of constitutional government corresponds closely to that of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who remarked "Law? Who cares about law? Hain't I got the power?" (One wonders what Vanderbilt's genteel descendants would think if they could meet their illustrious ancestor in the flesh).

Alito is not without role models among the founding fathers. Pinckney of South Carolina, and Benjamin Harrison of Virginia come to mind. Hamilton himself, while serving in the cabinet, advocated strong executive government. James Madison's valiant efforts to secure explicit constitutional restraints on state governments, to defend the same liberties guaranteed by the federal Bill of Rights, were unsuccessful. It took a full-fledged Civil War to bring the capacity for tyranny by individual state legislatures under the restraints of the Fourteenth Amendment, largely vindicating Madison.

A constitution, or an amendment, is only as good as the judges who apply it. With the right logic, and a string of legal arguments long enough, any lawyer can affirm that green is red, or night is day. The unfolding of Samuel Alito's record clearly shows that the job of expounding a constitution is not matched by his qualifications. He needs to apply for another job, more suited to his talents and inclinations.