The Fortress of Self-Esteem

A hermenuetical philosophy...will try to get as close as possible to the most originary expressions of a community of faith, to those expressions through which the members of this community have interpreted their experience for the sake of themselves or for others' sake.--Paul Ricouer

Experience, of course, is the last refuge of our society. Experience is personal, and not be gainsaid. Experience is individual, and not to be examined by another. Except, of course, every community of faith interprets its experience for the sake both of the community, and its members, and for other communities it encounters.

"Community of faith" seems to refer, in some sense, to a community religious; but it needn't. "Faith" may be the conviction in things unseen, but "things unseen" is not limited to deities. Who has seen the law? And yet the "social contract" requires that we have faith in its workings. Precisely the problem, of course, encountered under the present Administration: there, faith is only in power, and the exertion of force. But without faith in the law, there is no governance: only tyranny, the rule of strength constantly applied. So faith is not the sole substance and realm of "religion."

Nor is experience mine or yours, alone. We are not born with experiences, nor are we born knowing how to interpret them. There are origins to the frameworks we give our experience; some old, some new.

In his masterpiece Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh uses a family and an individual to illustrate changes both within individual souls, and within societies. Waugh describes a scene aboard an ocean liner just before the outbreak of World War II, a change indicative of the shifting of tectonic plates. The narrator, Charles Ryder, is travelling on a luxury liner, and when asked by the waiter for a drink preference in the bar, asks for whisky with un-iced water. Unfortunately for Mr. Ryder's taste, as the ship has set out from America, all the water is iced. The waiter then brings him two pots: one of ice water, one of boiling water, which Ryder mixes to the acceptable temperature. "He watched and said: 'I'll remember that's how you take it, sir.' Most passengers had fads [Ryder observes]; he was paid to fortify their self-esteem."

A small point, but in the context of the story, a telling one. The family of Castle Brideshead has no problem with "self-esteem." The head of the family is the Marquis of Marchmain. His eldest son is Lord Brideshead. The family claim to the land around the castle, and to the privileges of the British upper class, go back for centuries. Theirs is a title built on money and acquisition from long ago. Indeed, the class that gauges its standing by what it owns and what it spends is represented in another character in the story, and not at all in an agreeable light. But the shif it plain. Here we get to see an originary expression, almost the birth of the "modern age." Having no historical or embedded claim to praise and approbation, but being hungry for it, we who come after the collapse of absolute authority of the "titled class" trick out our self-esteem based on our money and our most recent acquisition. And we have to be reminded, as often as possible, of how special an individual we are.

But is that experience particular, or social? Is that interpretation of what is important, most especially what is important to us, personal? Or is it provided? Are the origins of what we think and know embedded in truth? Or in what makes us comfortable? Ore our personal experiences really, in the end, so originary? Do we really keep them to ourselves, or do we inevitably interpret them for the sake of others, too? We interpret even our personal experiences through the expression of others. But where do those expressions originate?

Irony, We Hardly Knew Ye

From the LA Times:

The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist.

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Convention.

Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.

But the American victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says.

"It seems so strange to have our own country fighting us on this," said retired Air Force Col. David W. Eberly, the senior officer among the former POWs.

The case, now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, tests whether "state sponsors of terrorism" can be sued in the U.S. courts for torture, murder or hostage-taking. The court is expected to decide in the next two months whether to hear the appeal.

Congress opened the door to such claims in 1996, when it lifted the shield of sovereign immunity — which basically prohibits lawsuits against foreign governments — for any nation that supports terrorism. At that time, Iraq was one of seven nations identified by the State Department as sponsoring terrorist activity. The 17 Gulf War POWs looked to have a very strong case when they first filed suit in 2002. They had been undeniably tortured by a tyrannical regime, one that had $1.7 billion of its assets frozen by the U.S. government.

The picture changed, however, when the United States invaded Iraq and toppled Hussein from power nearly two years ago. On July 21, 2003, two weeks after the Gulf War POWs won their court case in U.S. District Court, the Bush administration intervened to argue that their claims should be dismissed.

"No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of this very brutal regime and at the hands of Saddam Hussein," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters when asked about the case in November 2003.

Government lawyers have insisted, literally, on "no amount of money" going to the Gulf War POWs. "These resources are required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq," McClellan said.

The case also tests a key provision of the Geneva Convention, the international law that governs the treatment of prisoners of war. The United States and other signers pledged never to "absolve" a state of "any liability" for the torture of POWs.

Former military lawyers and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have been among those who have urged the Supreme Court to take up the case and to strengthen the law against torturers and tyrannical regimes.

"Our government is on the wrong side of this issue," said Jeffrey F. Addicott, a former Army lawyer and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio. "A lot of Americans would scratch their heads and ask why is our government taking the side of Iraq against our POWs."

You simply have to read that much of the story to appreciate fully what is going on. Simply and frankly, unbelievable, indefensible, inexcusable. The war on "frivolous lawsuits" may even extend into the "War on Terror." Which "war" is now paramount, and why?



God with me lying down
God with me rising up,
God with me in each ray of light,
Nor I a ray of joy without Him,
Nor one ray without Him.

File under: "Earth, Stewardship of"

The oil age began in 1859 and peaked in 1970. The oil endowment allowed us to use the stored energy of millions of years of sunlight. Unfortunately the fossil-fuel honeymoon is almost over.

It has been estimated that without coal, oil, or natural gas, it would take several planets just like Earth to support the current number of humans living.

World oil discovery peaked in the 1960's. Since 1999, the discovery of large oil and gas fields has collapsed: sixteen in 200, eight in 2001, three in 2002, and none in 2003.

There are half a billion cars and trucks currently in use around the world.

We will not be rescued by the wished-for hydrogen economy. Our daily enjoyment of oil and gas has given us the energy equivalent of three hundred slaves per person in the industrialized nations. No combination of alternative energies will permit us to continue living the way we do, or even close to it.

All the major systems that depend on oil, including manufacturing, trade, transportation, agriculture, and the financial markets that serve them, will begin to destabilize. The boundaries between politics, economics, and collective paranoia will dissolve.

from The Long Emergency, by James Howard Kunstler, to be released by Atlantic Monthly Press in May, 2005.

Is any of this even half-right? Well, the last paragraph is certainly correct. All of the major systems of "this modern world" certainly do depend on fossil fuels. The computer I write on, and the one you read on now, are probably powered by natural gas or coal. The amount of petroleum available to be exhumed is certainly finite, and burning coal until it all runs out is simply not feasible. Nor will coal or natural gas or even hydrogen power ships that traverse the seas; or jets that circle the globe; or trucks that haul tons of material at a time. Sooner or later, whether or not it really represents the energy of 300 slaves per person, or just one slave per person, that energy flow will stop. And as dependent as we are on such energy, no diminution in it will seem gradual or easy; it will come suddenly, it will be sharp.

And what happens then? Have we been forcing the earth to yield crops? Has the "Green Revolution" been no more than a magicians's illusion? If the earth can sustain the output, can we sustain the fertilizer needed to force that output?

What happens when half a billion cars and trucks in the world go dry? What happens when energy supplies are simply reduced, when demand fully exceeds available supply? Will a million million Chinese simply take up their bicycles again? Will the rest of the world accept darkness so we can bathe in light?


Bless to me, O God,
My soul and my body;
Bless to me, O God,
My belief and my condition;

Bless to me, O God,
My heart and my speech,
And bless to me, O god,
The handling of my hand;

Strength and busyness of morning,
Habit and temper of modesty,
Force and wisdom of thought,
And Thine own path, O God of virtues,
Till I go to sleep this night;

Thine own path, O God of virtues,
Till I go to sleep this night.

Valentine's Day Movie Suggestions

Coincidence? I think not.

Today is the 75th Anniversary of the release of Dashiel Hammett's groundbreaking "hard-boiled" detective novel, The Maltese Falcon.

You humble correspondent just happens to own a copy of the classic John Huston movie, on DVD. Sold to him together with the other classic Valentine's Day movie: Casablanca.

So now there is no excuse not to enjoy both of them this evening.

Happy Valentine's Day

This kind of thing just fascinates me:

For thousands of years, love, passion and marriage were considered a rare and usually undesirable combination. Valentine's Day was originally envisioned by the Roman Catholic Church as a check on sexual passion. Even though young people centuries later turned the holiday into an occasion to celebrate romantic love and sexual attraction, few of them expected to marry on the basis of such irrational emotions. Almost no one believed that falling in love was a great and glorious thing that should lead to marriage, or that marriage was a place to achieve sexual fulfillment.

Read it. Then give her that box of chocolates and the Hallmark card (or him; hey, whatever!), and pay no attention to the historian behind the curtain.

It's a lovely idea. Even if it does make us all nuts and keep the divorce lawyers in business.

Mea Culpa, mea culpa...

Allright,

having invited you to the new blog (link below), I went there myself and, as I said, threw a snit.

It's been a bad day.

Lent always does this to me.

Any other excuses?

No. Just pay no attention to your churlish host, or at least don't follow his example. Go and enjoy the company and the food and the conversation. I, at this point, am not fit for human society. Eh, it happens. Kind of like werewolves and full moons, only not as often. Time to recharge the spiritual/emotional/philosophical batteries. Fortunately, I downloaded Rick Wakeman's "Six Wives of Henry VIII," which is proving an excellent restorative (owned the album way back when, traveled to a Wakeman concert when I was in college; halcyon days).

And now I'm getting far more personal than this blog deserves. The state of mind, by the way, usually means something needs to be worked out, and worked out on a very deep level. Not the time, clearly, to be engaging in new conversations.

Oh, for a fortune cookie say, two days ago....

An invitation

From cervantes, that deserves wider dissemination:

Hey Robert M., I hope you'll stop by and be a part of a new project that some of your fans have started, maybe you already know about it. And everyone who comes here is invited as well. You'll probably hear also from some of the other participants but I figured I'd put my two cents in here.

dialogue concerning the two chief world systems

I've already made a rude opening comment, for which I must repent later (got to stay out of dialogues regarding "faith" and "genetics." It's not science, and it's not theology. Aaargh!) But this should be interesting.

First Sunday of Lent

The question of Lent is the question of our age: are we spiritual creatures, or not?

Unfortunately, we turn that issue into an either/or: there must be a dichotomy, a unitary fundamental that underlies all appearances and is consistent no matter external circumstances. It is our Hellenistic heritage. Thales of Miletus observed the rain showering the grass, the cow eating the grass, and then the cow giving milk, and concluded the underlying fundamental common to all these things was water. So, he surmised, all things are primarily and fundamentally water. Because ex nihilo nihil fit, and like can only know (and be; but phenomenology comes many centuries later) like. Socrates was on basically the same ground in Phaedo, when he argued for the immortality of souls from the existence of opposites. The opposites are not truly opposite, but merely aspects of the same whole.

Ex nihilo nihil fit is sound enough; but must everything be reducible to one known? Is there only this admixture of elements, but one is primary and at least first among equals?

Are we, as beings, fundamentally material? Or psychological? Or spiritual? Is that what we should be looking for? Purity of heart may be to will one thing, but it purity of being to only be one thing?

An issue worthy of at least 40 days meditation.

"The spirit cannot endure the body when overfed, but, if underfed, the body cannot endure the spirit."--Francis de Sales, 17th century

Faithful Genes

Nicholas Kristof has a column up on the subject of "genetically based faith" (not to be confused with faith-based genetics). I'll add a link when I'm back on the home computer, but for now, let's address the topic this way:

As Henry Ford said of history: bunk.

The first problem is: what is faith? How do we measure it?

The millimeter is an abstract concept, like faith. It doesn't exist in reality, except as an idea. But it can be defined in terms of angstroms of light. What similar physical referent can we give for faith?

The millimeter is the same for the Muslim, the Buddhist, the Taoist, the Christian, the Jew, the agnostic, the atheist. Can the same be said for faith?

And as long as we are looking for a "faith gene," or at least a genetic predisposition to "faithfulness," is there a rationality gene as well? A "scientific" gene? A "lover's" gene? A "sociable" gene?

Faith is a culturally determined concept as ill defined as "love" or "hate" or even "peace" (is the latter merely the absence of war? Something else? If so, what?) Indeed, the basis for the conversation puts me in mind of the discussions of Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Quotient. First thing to be determined in those discussions (yes, you guessed it): what is "intelligence"? How do we measure it? What is its physical referent? Until we can do that, it is rather difficult to scientifically establish that intelligent either exists, in humans or machines, or that it is measurable.

It demeans both science and the human experience to treat what are basically reductio ad absurdum arguments as if they were legitimate.

And don't get me started on "selfish gene" theory!*



*(which is just the great grand-daddy of these absurdly unreasonable ruminations)

Friday after Ash Wednesday

GOD said to Noah: "The end has come for all things of flesh."--Genesis 6:13

ONE does not appreciate the sight of earth until one has traveled through a flood. . . . As we progress up the river, habitations become more frequent but are yet still miles apart. Nearly all of them are deserted, and the outhouses floated off. To add to the gloom, almost every living thing seems to have departed, and not a whistle of a bird nor the bark of the squirrel can be heard in this solitude. Sometimes a morose gar will throw his tail aloft and disappear in the river, but beyond this everything is quiet-the quiet of dissolution. Down the river floats now a neatly whitewashed henhouse, then a cluster of neatly split fence rails, or a door and a bloated carcass, solemnly guarded by a pair of buzzards, the only bird to be seen, which feast on the carcass as it bears them along. A picture frame in which there was a cheap lithograph of a soldier on horseback, as it floated on, told of some hearth invaded by the water and despoiled of this ornament.--Mark Twain

PICTURES of the temptation of Jesus often show him in a bleak and barren place, the only living being among bare, gloomy rocks. Mark's reference to animals reminds us that the reality was probably quite different. We may imagine Jesus sitting among rabbits and wildflowers perhaps visited at night by a lion and in the morning by birds who came to investigate this new, and so quiet, dweller in their wilderness. Not only human beings, but through them all created things, are called into the communion made possible when the power of the spirit in Jesus broke through barriers of possessiveness and lust for power. Satan's plausible suggestion is that if we want good things we must make sure we keep them to ourselves. Someone else might take some. But Noah's ark is the sign that we can only be saved together. Those who refuse untidy and unpredictable intimacy, clinging to their right to control and manipulate, drown in the water which they cannot control. This water is the water of life, and life is the spirit that grows and flows and bears up the ark on its bouyant surface.--Rosemary Houghton

EVEN before the introduction of Lent it had been customary to fast before Easter: one day, two days, even a week. But even when Lent was generally accepted, not all of its forty days [from the First Sunday of Lent until Holy Thursday] were at first regarded as fast days. In Rome toward the end of the fourth century a fast of three weeks was usual; and even when people began to fast on all the other days of Lent they still made an exception of the Sundays. Because Lent contains six Sundays, there thus remained thirty-four fast days leading up to the ancient paschal triduum. But if Good Friday and Holy Saturday (which were also fast days) were counted as well, that made thirty-six days in all-just one tenth of a year. In this fashion, as was observed with a certain satisfaction (for example, by John Cassian and Gregory the Great), one paid a tithe of the year to God. But since the seventh century considerable importance began to be attached to the idea that in Lent there ought to be the full number of forty fast-days. It became necessary, therefore, to take in four days from the preceding week; and thus Ash Wednesday came to be the beginning of Lent.--Josef Jungmann

FOODSTORES in earliest spring are at their lowest. Animals are calving or laying eggs. Lenten fasting has its origins in these rhythms of nature. For forty days we remind ourselves that the earth is like Noah's ark, all creatures gravely dependent on each other. Lenten fasting is a participation in the new birth of this season. Only by fasting together can we preserve each other's lives, as well as the lives of generations yet to be born.--Keeping Lent, Triduum, and Eastertide

Only the despised...

AS Jon Stewart said, "You're killing the country."

More than any of his predecessors, President Bush understands the conventions of journalism and the traditions of political debate. These require that respectful attention be paid to whatever claims the president makes. Journalists who have the temerity to question whether the claims ring true (or whether the numbers add up) can count on being pummeled as liberal ideologues, even when they are only seeking the facts.

The president's claims are thus duly reported, and most of the challenges come from the political opposition. Then the administration defends itself (as in, "administration officials dismissed the criticism as partisan carping"). Even when the most diligent and numbers-savvy budget reporters try to explain what's going on -- and bless all of them for trying -- the truth is usually lost in the cacophony of claims and counterclaims.

E. J. Dionne

This is not new, just different. Observers as disparate as Charles Dickens and Jules Verne, as recently as the 19th century, found an American political culture that was long on producing heat, short on producing light. The cries of "partisanship" as a way to end discussion of public concerns did not begin with the Gingrich Republicans, and is not a creation of post-Reagan era politics. What Mr. Dionne identifies is just the latest variation on an old American theme. As Ecclesiastes said, there is nothing new under the sun.

Mr. Dionne goes on to discuss the budget, and the deficit, which shows no signs of shrinking or even being reduced under this President, and reaches this conclusion:

The whole point (and, yes, this happened in the 1980s, too) is to create deficits, followed by a "crisis," followed by demands for cuts in domestic programs, especially in those "federal outlays" for low-income people.

In other words, the very people in charge are seeking only to preserve their power and their position. And if, indeed, "'twas ever thus," then I am haunted once more by these words, attributed to Jesus of Nazareth by Jon Dominic Crossan:

"Only the despised are blameless. Only the wretched are guiltless."

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

AND whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.--Matthew 6:16-18

THROUGH greed we underwent the first stripping, overcome by the bitter tasting of the fruit, and we became exiles from God. But let us turn back to repentance and,
fasting from the food that gives us pleasure, let us cleanse our senses on which the enemy makes war. Let us strengthen our hearts with the hope of grace, and not with foods which brought no benefit to those who trusted in them. Our food shall be the Lamb of God on the holy and radiant night of his Awakening.--Byzantine Vespers

SUCH exercises as fasting cannot have their proper effect unless our motives for practicing them spring from personal meditation. We have to think what we are doing, and the reasons for our action must spring from the depths of our freedom and be enlivened by the transforming power of Christian love. Otherwise, our self-imposed sacrifices are likely to be pretenses, symbolic gestures without real interior meaning. Sacrifices made in this formalistic spirit tend to be mere acts of external routine performed in order to exorcise interior anxiety and not for the sake of love. In that case, however, our attention will tend to fix itself upon the insignificant suffering which we have piously elected to undergo, and to exaggerate it in one way or the other, either to make it seem unbearable or else to make it seem more heroic than it actually is. Sacrifices made in this fashion would be better left unmade. It would be more sincere as well as more religious to eat a full dinner in a spirit of gratitude than to make some picayune sacrifice of part of it, with the feeling that one is suffering martyrdom.--Thomas Merton

A strict observance of Lent made possible a pleasure which is unknown to us now, that of "un-Lenting" at breakfast on Easter Day. If we look into the matter closely, we find that the basic elements of our pleasures are difficulty, privation, and the desire for enjoyment. All these came together in the act of breaking abstinence, and I have seen two of my great-uncles, both serious, sober men, half swoon with joy when they saw the first slice cut from a ham, or a pate disembowelled, on Easter Day. Now, degenerate race that we are, we could never stand up to such powerful sensations!--Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Knowing your country is in the hands of idealogues? Priceless....

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stood before the audience at the Institute of Political Studies on Tuesday afternoon and rewrote cold war history, to the consternation of many in the highly sophisticated audience.

In an answer to a question from the floor, she told her audience that in 1947 Greece and Turkey had suffered through civil wars. Greece, yes, but Turkey?

"It was a glaring mistake," said Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States, an independent research organization at the French Institute of International Relations. "She's smart, yes, but I don't think she is as knowledgeable as one would expect with a career like hers."

And if you think that's scary:

Indeed, at a private breakfast on Wednesday with six French intellectuals at the American ambassador's residence, Ms. Rice revealed her steely, deeply ideological side.

She shocked at least some of her guests by branding Iran a "totalitarian state," said four of those who took part. She added that the free world was wrong to accept the Soviet Union on its terms during the cold war and must not make the same mistake now with Iran, they added.

A number of guests challenged her assertion, but Ms. Rice is not the type to back down. She called her characterization of Iran deliberate. A year ago, she said, she would have called Iran's Islamic Republic authoritarian. But after flawed parliamentary elections last spring that produced a conservative majority, she said, it moved toward totalitarian, a term that historians tend to use restrictively to define violently absolutist regimes that govern through terror.

"I tried to explain that Iran was not like the Soviet Union, that the mullahs were deeply unpopular but unlike their predecessors over the last 150 years they were not in the hands of the British or the Russians or the Americans," said François Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. "She gave no proof that Iran was totalitarian, because she didn't have any. It was scary. Unless there is some give on the American side we are heading for a real crisis."

You mean Seymour Hersh was right? Imagine that. (The quoted material is from the NYT.

So, let's recap: Bush says there is no SS trust fund; Condi says there was a Turkish civil war, and continues to pile up bogus reasons for why Iran must be invaded. No wonder she wanted her questions at the Paris Institute of Political Science screened.

Father, forgive us, we know not what we did....

If Bush has his way the federal government will default on these bonds. Neither he nor the Republicans want to pay this money back. You won't hear them say that, but that's the plan. What about full faith and credit? With the hole that he's dug us into, the money is not there. But neither is the 1 to 3 trillion dollars that the transition to private accounts will cost us.

Frankly, when I read this, I thought it was a bit extreme, and not entirely supported by the "available evidence," as we legally trained minds say.

Then I went over to Josh Marshall's site. Now, Josh is someone I greatly respect. He seems to know what he's talking about, he has the background and scholarly temperament to be judicious in what he asserts; so when Josh speaks, I listen, whether I agree with him or not. And Josh says of the President's remarks today: "President Bush lays the groundwork for defaulting on almost two trillion dollars worth of US Treasury bonds, from today at the Commerce Department... It's what they're after. Just watch."

But that's just one. Then he says: "We and many others had predicted that the president's angle here was to default on the Treasury bonds sitting in the Social Security Trust Fund. And now we can be pretty confident that he plans to do just that since today he said that the Trust Fund doesn't even exist."

And finally he notes that the President's remarks violate Amendment 14, sec. 4, of the U.S. Constitution: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

Whether that provision carries criminal sanctions or not is another question. But can we all agree, now? Worst. President. Ever. And add "Dangerous" and "Reckless" to that appellation?

And will we see any mention of this on the NYT editorial page tomorrow? Or on the NYT front page? Or even on NPR, or CNN, or MSNBC?

My Lenten penance is going to be patience with the foolishness of others....

"Mr. President, about your 'political capital;' the People's Bank called...

You seem to be overdrawn...."

The White House has told lawmakers it has no immediate plans to submit its own detailed proposal to Congress for overhauling Social Security, sources briefed by the administration said on Tuesday.

President Bush has made adding private retirement accounts to the Social Security system his top domestic priority. The proposal has run into opposition from Democrats and some of Bush's fellow Republicans.

Bush bases his call for a broad overhaul of the 70-year-old Social Security program on his contention it is headed into a financial crisis, a characterization Democrats, and many in his own Republican Party, say exaggerates the problem.

Republican and Democratic congressional aides said the White House made clear in briefings this week it would not submit a legislative proposal, at least not for the time being. Instead, the White House will try to coordinate efforts with lawmakers crafting their own proposals.

A senior Bush administration official said no final decision had been made. "If there comes a point when the president needs to spell out specific legislation, he won't hesitate," the official said.

A Democratic congressional aide said the White House was "backsliding" in the face of stiffer-than-expected opposition.

The President also thinks we don't even have a Social Security fund at all:

Some in our country think that Social Security is a trust fund -- in other words, there's a pile of money being accumulated. That's just simply not true. The money -- payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent. They're spent on benefits and they're spent on government programs. There is no trust. We're on the ultimate pay-as-you-go system -- what goes in comes out. And so, starting in 2018, what's going in -- what's coming out is greater than what's going in. It says we've got a problem. And we'd better start dealing with it now. The longer we wait, the harder it is to fix the problem.

...It's the younger workers who ought to be asking the members of the Congress and the President of the United States, what are you going to do to fix the problem.

And I'm looking forward to working with Congress to fix the problem. All ideas are on the table except running up the payroll tax.

However, the "young people in this country don't have a lobbying group. Those near retirement do, and the AARP has an alternative in mind:

The U.S. retirement system does not need a major overhaul or private accounts and can be stabilized through a series of smaller fixes, the nation's largest lobby group for the elderly said on Wednesday.

The AARP, formerly known as the American Association for Retired Persons, said the amount of wages that can be taxed for Social Security should be raised from $90,000 to $140,000. The change could be phased in over about 10 years and would cut the projected shortfall by 43 percent.

Too bad that's not on the table. Would be nice if something was, since this White House thinks this is a "crisis."

Memento, homo

MEMENTO, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.
Remember, human, that you are dust, and to dust you will return
--Genesis 3:19

HEAR my prayer, O Lord;
let my cry come to you.
Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress.
Incline your ear to me;
answer me speedily in the day when I call.
My days pass away like smoke,
and my bones burn like a furnace.
My heart is stricken and withered like grass;
I am too wasted to eat my bread.
Because of my loud groaning
my bones cling to my skin.
I am like an owl of the wilderness,
like a little owl of the waste places.
I lie awake;
I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.
All day long my enemies taunt me;
those who deride me use my name for a curse.
For I eat ashes like bread,
and mingle tears with my drink,
because of your indignation and anger;
for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside.
My days are like an evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.
But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever;
your name endures to all generations.
You will rise up and have compassion on Zion,
for it is time to favor it;
the appointed time has come.
For your servants hold its stones dear,
and have pity on its dust.

--Psalm 102:1-14

I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.

--Ecclesiastes 3:18-20

THE cross, with which the ashes are traced upon us, is the sign of Christ's victory over death. The words "Remember that thou art dust and that to dust thou shall return" are not to be taken as the quasi-form of a kind of "sacrament of death" (as if such a thing were possible). It might be good stoicism to receive a mere reminder of our condemnation to die, but it is not Christianity.

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965

ASHES, ashes, all fall down. How could I have forgotten? Didn't I see the heavens wiped shut just yesterday, on the road walking? Didn't I fall from the dark of the stars to these senselit and noisome days? The great ridged granite millstone of time is illusion, for only the good is real; the great ridged granite millstone of space is illusion, for God is spirit and worlds his flimsiest dreams: but the illusions are almost perfect, are apparently perfect for generations on end, and the pain is also, and undeniably, real. The pain within the mill-stones' pitiless turning is real, for our love for each other-for the world and all the products of extension-is real, vaulting, insofar as it is love, beyond the plane of the stones' sickening churn and arcing to the realm of spirit bare. And you can get caught holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother's body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love's long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.

--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, HarperCollins, 1977.

IN some monastic communities, monks go up to receive the ashes barefoot. Going barefoot is a joyous thing. It is good to feel the floor or the earth under your feet. It is good when the whole church is silent, filled with the hush of people walking without shoes. One wonders why we wear such things as shoes anyway. Prayer is so much more meaningful without them. It would be good to take them off in church all the time. But perhaps this might appear quixotic to those who have forgotten such very elementary satisfactions. Someone might catch cold at the mere thought of it.

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration

Ash Wednesday

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do hot hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

(VI)

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.


--T.S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday," The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1971), pp. 60-61, 67)

Carnival

"There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink and find enjoyment, for these are from the hand of God."--Ecclesiastes 2:24

"CARNIVAL celebrates the unity of our human race as mortal creatures, who come into this world and depart from it without our consent, who must eat, drink, defecate, belch, and break wind in order to live, and procreate if our species is to survive. Our feelings about this are ambiguous. To us as individuals, it is a cause for rejoicing that we are not alone, that all of us, irrespective of age or sex or rank or talent, are in the same boat."--W.H. Auden

"O LORD, refresh our sensibilities. Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in, and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with, and casseroles that put starch and substance in our limp modernity. Take away our fear of fat, and make us glad of the oil which ran upon Aaron's beard. Give us pasta with a hundred fillings, and rice in a thousand variations. Above all, give us grace to live as true folk-to fast till we come to a refreshed sense of what we have and then to dine gratefully on all that comes to hand. Drive far from us, 0 Most Bountiful, all creatures of air and darkness; cast out the demons that possess us; deliver us from the fear of calories and the bondage of nutrition; and set us free once more in our own land, where we shall serve thee as thou hast blessed us-with the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine."--Robert Farrar Capon

"SEVERAL thousand years ago, King David was bringing the Ark of God into a city. This was a serious and awesome responsibility. Only a few months before a man had died at the hand of the Lord for absent-mindedly touching the Ark. Yet it is recorded that David played before the Lord. With much shouting and leaping, he displayed his melodious voice and grace of movement before the Holy. His wife, and probably most of those who observed him, knew him to be irreverent and so disapproved. But the Lord approved. She was made barren for the rest of her days and David was blessed.
Two hundred years ago, when the church still sponsored the education of children, the following rule was created:

We prohibit play in the strongest terms. . . . The students shall rise at five o'clock in the morning, summer and winter. . . . The student shall be indulged with nothing which the world calls play. Let this rule be observed with strictest nicety; for those who play when they are young will play when they are old.

Unfortunately, the church and school were successful, and the children could not play when they grew into maturity. They could not permit themselves to be irreverent. And like David's wife, their lives were made barren by the Lord."--Robert Edward Neale

"ONE will have to give account in the judgment day of every good thing which one might have enjoyed and did not."--The Talmud

WE shall have mead,
We shall have wine,
We shall have feast.
We shall have sweetness and milk,
Honey and milk,
Wholesome ambrosia,
Abundance of that,
Abundance of that.

We shall have harp,
We shall have lute,
We shall have horn.
We shall have sweet psaltery
Of the melodious strings
And the regal lyre,
Of the songs we shall have,
Of the songs we shall have.

And the King of kings,
And Jesus Christ,
And the Spirit of peace
And of grace be with us,
Of grace be with us.--Celtic Blessing on Ash Eve

"The Rapture Index"

I wasn't going to link to this, but it's so intriguing, I may even add it to the Blogroll.

Apparently someone has taken it upon themselves to keep track of all the "events" that will indicate the timing of the "rapture" (not something that is part of my theology, by the way).

It's an interesting site, though, because the home page lists quotes like this, which I really can't argue with: "He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse." (Proverbs 28:27), and "When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow, and even something the call an "Uninspired Quote:" "You can't just let nature run wild." - Wally Hickel, former Alaska governor

But then the "Rapture Index" includes such indications of the "end times" as: Ecumenism; civil rights; Gog (Russia) (I remember from Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth, back in high school, that "Gog=Russia, and "Magog"=U.S. Supposedly these were the countries involved in the battle of Armageddon. Kind of thought that designation had been dropped after the USSR collapsed. I do note, however, that: "The lack of activity has downgraded this category."); and, of course, "Liberalism."

So, I don't offer it in mockery, or in praise. But it's an interesting insight into how secular thinking ("Liberalism;" "Civil rights") can combine with religious zeal (honestly, this thing must take a lot of work to keep up with), and some valid attention to the teachings of Scripture (Proverbs 28:27) can exist alongside some...well, very curious concerns.

Hymns to the Silence

Nothing to say except to recommend it. If you don't know this album, by Van Morrison, you should. "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," an American hymn done with a jazz riff by an Irish rocker; what more could you ask for?

And "Be Thou My Vision," performed with the Chieftans. It is, alone, worth the price of admission. Not to mention the absolutely beautiful titular piece.

Two discs, in all. Think of it as the soundtrack for Lent.

"Take me back....take me way, way, way, way back...and the music on the radio..."

Responsibility for being at-one

Part of the point of the last post was to indicate that we are hardly a "religious" nation, because we abandon responsibility at the drop of a hat. As I've mentioned before, one of the largest churches in Houston puts up billboards that advertise "We Believe in You!" Ostensibly it is a Christian church, but with slogans like that (and since when did churches need slogans?), it's hard to tell just what's being advertised, or why.

It's church as consumer product. And, as mentioned below, now we have patriotism as consumer product. As long as it reflects well on the "brand" (Budweiser; the United States of America), it does its job. Of course, neither should it demand anything of us. When was the last time any consumer product required any sacrifice on your part? Would you buy it if it did?

Which brings us to this:

Robert:

I'm intrigued by the words "national atonement," because they remind me of the practice of the scapegoat whereon all the sins of the community were placed on the head of the goat which was sent out to die and symbolically remove the sins with the sacrifice.

My impression at this time, is that there is no overt sense of atonement in this nation, at least from the leadership. The thought that displays such as this commercial could be percieved subconsciously as a form of national atonement makes me wonder if perhaps there is something at work among those who believe that they are in the right as regards this war and our nation's responsibilities.

I'm probably being too vauge here. The concept I'm trying to address is the inner workings of grace and spirit on those who already feel that they have received the intentions of God and are working them out in the world (or those who could frankly care less about the intentions of God, but like to pretend that they do).

"Atonement" means, quite literally, "at one ment." The term arises from religion, and refers to reconciliation with the one offended; rapprochement; healing caused by a confession of error and request of forgiveness. Serendipitous or not, the Rector of my church yesterday preached on forgiveness, telling stories of people who had been insulted by others, and carried the wound of that insult for decades. It can be something impossible to put aside if the one who offended you doesn't offer an apology, doesn't accept fault. There are clearly two sides to forgiveness, and one of them comes from you when you are guilty of hurting someone else. Atonement is impossible until you take up that responsibility.

A responsibility absolutely rejected by our society, by our nation. How many wounded veterans do we honor, except in very special cases? How many times to do say "Support our Troops" and show a bandaged soldier, a legless soldier, a blinded soldier? Perhaps "left rev." is right, and those are the ones we put our "sins" on. The scapegoat is never honored for its work; to honor it, would be to admit some responsibility for your "sin."

Are there people who believe they are in the "right" regarding this war? I know some of them. They are old friends of mine, people I literally grew up with. Do they have a sense of atonement? From their religion, they know the term. But do they apply it to their public life, to their national concerns? No. They make a very careful separation. (and that is one of the dangers of separating religion from public life.) This is, to them "one nation, under God." But God makes no demands on them that middle-class morality doesn't make on them. God and their comfort zones are co-terminous. If there is a need for atonement, it is not for their sins, but for the sins of Vietnam, for the sins of those who "spat on the soldiers" when they came home. If there is an atonement for people who think that Budweiser commercial was stirring, moving, and right, it is the sense rather that "things" are finally being put back into place. And that their attitudes and beliefs are finally being confirmed by circumstances.

The "inner workings of grace and spirit," on the other hand, are just that: inner workings. Jesus says it is not what goes into a man, but what comes out of him, that matters. He was talking about pure and impure, but we don't know what is in someone's heart; we only know what their actions are. God tells Jeremiah the same thing: that God tests the heart, to find out what is there. And letting the inner workings of the Spirit and of grace change you, means first taking responsibility for your errors, your mistakes, for the sinful nature of the world you have adopted, and called "God's own." Creation is good; but what we do in it, is sometimes our own work alone. Are these people, these friends of mine, bad? No. I think they are wrong, but I am in no position to change their thinking. To them, "atonement" means not "getting right with God," but "getting right with what's right." They think that is God.

I don't; but that difference is my responsibility. Atonement without responsibility, is delusion, is denial. It is empty. But then, our consumer culture is filled with empty gestures. Because consumerism is all about money; and money is the emptiest symbol of all.

"Religion is responsibility, or it is nothing at all."

This was supposed to be "a post on the denigration of responsibility in authority." Or that's that the original note said, holding this place for me. But then talk at Eschaton turned to the Budweiser commercial for the soldiers, shown yesterday during the Super Bowl.

Missed that commercial, but heard it described on NPR this morning. One man in an airport starts applauding, then a few more, then everyone, and finally the camera shows why: soldiers disembarking from a plane, returning (obviously) from Iraq.

Even the ad critic on NPR referred to the iconic image of Vietnam veterans being spat on upon their return to America. The only problem there being, that never happened. But it's part of our national mythology now, and apparently we can only express our national sentiments in commercials, so presumably this is a proper forum for thanking our troops.

But since when does a beer commercial substitute for respect for our friends and family in the military?

Respect for persons, whether military soldiers, police officers, or just someone on the street, is an individual matter, isn't it? If Budweiser makes an ad showing people applauding soldiers in an airport, does that mean I don't have to? Does that mean it's "been done" and we can all go back to ignoring the wounded and the maimed and the dead?

I'm assuming that ad didn't show anybody on crutches, with a prosthesis, in a wheelchair, or suffering neurological damage (the worst because it is not visible). We applaud the fact "they" come home "whole." The wounded remind us of the price we asked them to pay, and remind us that we aren't sure why we asked them to pay it. Ads like that cheapen what is done, and cheapen our sense of responsibility for asking others to do it.

I will thank military personnel personally, if I know them. Otherwise, it's treating them like celebrities. And my only relationship to celebrities, is selfish: what have they done for me lately? How have they entertained me, either through their art or through their antics? Soldiers and sailors and pilots and marines are not entertainers. They do not fight from some abstract notion like "our freedom." They fight because they are told to. Showing respect for what they do, is a personal matter; not a corporate one.

Corporations put commercials on during the Super Bowl; not individuals. Budweiser speaks for no one but the corporation. To allow them even to seem to speak for "us," is to abdicate our responsibility to speak, or to be silent; to show respect, or show disdain, or simply keep our feelings to ourselves.

Celebrities make their living from crowds, not from individuals. We like celebrities precisely because they don't remind us of life's realities. Wounded soldiers remind us all to well of the realities of war. If we prefer actors as soldiers in beer ads over the responsibility of individually confronting or upholding or helping a wounded soldier, a broken family, a shattered life, then let the judgment be on us.

Because if beer ads are accepted in any way as a form of national atonement, we have already been weighed and found wanting. Such ads shouldn't be banned from the air; but they shouldn't make anyone feel proud, or like "the right thing" has been done. We are not the beer company. And we are not the consumers of the soldiers' "services".

As a nation, we should at least understand that much.

"That's right, you're not from Texas..."

It's a comfort to me to know that in Texas there are some people as broad minded and open hearted as yourself. I suppose my impression of Texas is probably most of the world's impression of the USA. Can you say more about what you love about Texas? Any time I ever met someone from Texas,starting way back when I in 3rd grade and the new boy in school was from Texas, it's seemed that when someone from there even says the word Texas, they say it with a swagger that implies that they're so much bigger and better then you, and quicker on the draw too. Never seemed like an auspicious way to start a friendship. Is there more to Texas than the swagger?

A lengthy post was readied in response to this request: first detailing the geography and history of the state, the various groups who settled it and their influences on state culture; the dominance of Mexico in the South, of the American West on one side, the American South on the other; the connection to the great plains and even the fact that there's nothing between Texas and the North Pole but a strand of barbed wire (it's true; look at a topographical map).

But it comes down to this: we don't swagger in Texas, either. And we find the people who do, just as obnoxious as the rest of you. Why do you think we keep sending them to D.C.?

The one thing to understand about Texas, is that most of the people here are still working class, blue collar types. Not many "owners" of the "ownership" society in East Texas, or South Texas, or the Trans-Pecos, or the Panhandle. Most of us are what we've always been: working stiffs.

Those people who come here, or are born here, and start believing the jokes we tell, start taking them seriously, are the obnoxious ones. And we apologize for them. We even accept some responsibility for them. But we're sad, too, because we really meant for them to get the joke.

You see, the thing about Texas is, we know it's hot, flat, dry, dirty, everything that doesn't have a sticker on it has a stinger or fangs or teeth or claws, or some combination, and most of all down here it's hot. Houston, as Molly Ivins said, is L.A. with the climate of Calcutta. San Antonio is a military town that still doesn't understand it's really in Mexico. Dallas suffers from a huge inferiority complex (but please don't tell 'em, it just makes it worse). And still, most of us know how to have a good time, and welcome anyone else who wants to have one, too.

The most Texas thing possible, is the Texas Tall Tale, and the first rule of the tall tale is: it's a joke, and we know it's a joke, and we want you to be in on the joke. This is where the "swagger" comes in. We don't mean it. We've never meant it. It really comes from working cowboys too long in the saddle walking bow-legged on stiff knees and boots with high heels (useful in stirrups, but a little tricky for negotiating non-mounted travel). What we really like here, across Texas, is a good time. We like a joke, and we especially like jokes on ourselves. That's why we tell whoppers and fish stories and tall tales, and want you to be part of the humor, laughing with us as we laugh at us. It's all pretty funny when you think about it, because if you think about it some other way, why, it's enough to break your heart. And there's enough of that in the world. Better to laugh, any day.

So we're loud, because the spaces are big, and we're noisy, because it can get too quiet, and we're passionate, because we eat too much spicy food to sit still, and we eat spicy food because this is where it grows best, and because we're passionate. But we don't swagger, and we don't encourage swagger.

But some people, sad to say, swagger. They hear our tales and think we mean them, and think that's the way we all oughta be. They don't get the joke at all, and we're just too polite to laugh at 'em. That, and we have too good a time laughing at ourselves; we don't want to ruin it by starting to laugh at other people.

That may not be the best or the truest explanation, but it's the one we like, and the one we'd like to think was true about us. We don't want to brag, we just want to have a good time. We like to laugh, and we like it better when you laugh with us. And the tales are silly and loud and make us look funny, because we know we're funny lookin', but, hey, this is what we're really like. Except if we told it for true, and as it is, we'd cry. And there's enough in this world to cry about, without cryin' over us.

So if you don't quite "get it," that's all right. You're not from Texas. And if somebody else doesn't quite get it, and takes it all too seriously and decides the jokes describe them, well, that's why they're from Texas. They just sorta got squeezed out, like a watermelon seed. And we're sorry about that, but they aren't our ambassadors, either. They're just the ones who didn't get the joke. And if you think this isn't serious, consider this last of all:

All of my family and most of my friends are from Texas, and I've never known nicer, quieter, kinder, friendlier people. My family, aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, taught me that my friends were their friends, that no one is a stranger, that there's always room at the table and we don't care what color you are or how funny you sound or even much whether you talk or not. All we ask is that you laugh with us, because we want to let you in on the joke. Because Mr. Lovett was right: if you're not from Texas, well, Texas wants you, anyway.

Oh, never mind....

Haloscan is not accepting posts, apparently, and this was simply too interesting to leave unnoticed. Maureen Dowd seems to be getting the idea:

What I love about movies and plays is seeing fictional characters behaving in ends-justify-the-means ways I never would. What I hate about politics is seeing real officials behaving in ends-justify-the-means ways on the W.M.D. "crisis" in Iraq, the Social Security "crisis," and the spread of federal disinformation from paid "journalists." Now that's worth howling about.

Now, if she'd just talk to Judith Miller, and maybe take Friedman out for a daquiri and introduce him to Juan Cole's blog. Still, consider it a sign of hope that columnists on the NYT are beginning to question journalists.

Addendum: And then I wake up this morning, and realize her reference is to "journalists" receiving money from the Administration, and not to the drumbeat of criticism of journalism that has gone from the blogs to some magazines (Lewis Laphams of "Harper's" comes to mind). Ah, well....

They get letters

Maybe it's because I'm in Texas, from Texas, and love Texans...but this caught my eye.

To the Editor:

A senior Marine general who commanded forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been admonished by the commandant of the Marine Corps for saying publicly, "It's fun to shoot some people" (news article, Feb. 4).

To this retired career military officer, this is a frightening example of the state of mind of the United States military today. Trickle-down at its worst - from the White House through our new attorney general through the Pentagon - down to the lowly M.P. at Abu Ghraib. The general is scolded; the M.P. is tried by court-martial and imprisoned.

Concepts of command accountability proudly respected by me and others during our service appear to be no more.

James E. Brown Jr.
Crystal Beach, Tex., Feb. 4, 2005

I know of the military only what I am told about it. This tells me something about the military I approve of; and disapprove of, at the same time.

As the saying has it: the fish rots from the head.

Our national standards sink lower every day.

Meanwhile, in other news....

Maybe this is why Condi and W are rattling sabers at Iran:

Partial results from Sunday's election suggest that U.S.-backed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's coalition is being roundly defeated by a list with the backing of Iraq's senior Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani, diminishing Allawi's chances of retaining his post in the next government.

Sharif Ali bin Hussein, head of the Constitutional Monarchy Party, likened the vote outcome to a "Sistani tsunami" that would shake the nation.

"Americans are in for a shock," he said, adding that one day they would realize, "We've got 150,000 troops here protecting a country that's extremely friendly to Iran, and training their troops."

"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters..."

Enough politics. Time for consideration of something else.

THE EPISTLE: 1 CORINTHIANS 1:26-31

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

As I mentioned, quoting Ricouer: "Nothing is said about God or about humankind or about their relations that does not first of all reassemble legends and isolated sagas and rearrange them in meaningful sequences so as to constitute a unique story, centered upon a kernel-event, that has both a historical import and a kerygmatic dimension."

Stories of resurrection and special blessings by the gods are rife in the "ancient literature." More than once in the Iliad Zeus debates plucking a warrior from the battlefield to give him immortality rather than death. Jesus was not the only religious figure in and about 1st century Palestine who had followers to claim he had been resurrected. It was a common motif: the "good" man's virtues were proven by this special favor of some deity or deities. But this story, as Paul recognizes, is unique.

Jesus of Nazareth died as a political prisoner. He died in pain and humiliation, the twin purposes of crucifixion, which existed only as a deterrent to other would-be challengers to the power of Rome. What glory is there in that? He died powerless at the hands of the greatest power known in the European world. How to turn that to credit? How to explain his resurrection, if his death was so ignominious, so pointless, so final to the movement he apparently led? How to explain that, except to explain it in terms of the God of Abraham who cared for the widow and the orphan, who gave Israel laws to ensure justice for the poorest, which is always justice for the society? How else to explain it, except to say that while God is in the world, as active in human affairs as the gods of Olympus in the Iliad, God is not of the world; not as vain and petty and capricious and bound by human standards as Homer's gods (Zeus' hand is stayed from saving a warrior because it will diminish his stature in the eyes of the other gods).

How else, in other words, except to appeal to the power of powerlessness? And what is love, ultimately, if not powerlessness, and vulnerability, and foolishness? Who among us behaves wisely out of love? Who among us behaves strongly, out of love? Who among us is protected, out of love?

Love gives us strength, courage, shelter, even power to act. But only after we have been vulnerable, weak, defenseless, and powerless. Love first makes us foolish, in order to make us wise. What the world counts foolish, God can see is wisdom. What the world counts powerful, God sees as puny. Consider the example of Ozymandias; and then, for all it's faults, the example of the Christian church. It is human; it is fallen; it is riven with error and greed and stupidity and mendacity. And yet without it, would we have the hope of the message of love, of the virtues of the gospel?

Would we ever have the chance to imagine that we were chosen, that our foolishness has value, that our weakness is our blessing?

Why the appointment of Alberto Gonzalez matters....

From Bob Herbert's column in the NYT this morning:

The Supreme Court ruled last June that the administration was acting illegally in depriving the detainees of their liberty without allowing them to challenge the cases against them. The administration responded bizarrely. Its lawyers argued, with "Alice in Wonderland" logic, that, yes, in accordance with the Supreme Court's ruling, the detainees can challenge their detention. But since (in the administration's view) they don't actually possess any rights to support the challenges, the courts must necessarily reject the challenges.

The administration is fighting for nothing less than the death of due process for anyone it rounds up, no matter how arbitrarily, in its enemy combatant sweeps. Such tyrannical powers should offend anyone who cares about such old-fashioned notions as the rule of law, checks and balances, and constitutional guarantees.

Under the procedures set up by the administration for dealing with the detainees, we have no way of distinguishing between a terrorist committed to mass murder and someone who is completely innocent.

In her decision, Judge Green wrote, "Although this nation unquestionably must take strong action under the leadership of the commander in chief to protect itself against enormous and unprecedented threats, that necessity cannot negate the existence of the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over 200 years."

[snip]

In one hearing that led up to Monday's decision, Judge Green attempted to see how broadly the government viewed its power to hold detainees. Administration lawyers told her, in response to a hypothetical question, that they believed the president would even have the right to lock up "a little old lady from Switzerland" for the duration of the war on terror if she had written checks to a charity that she believed helped orphans, but that actually was a front for Al Qaeda.

To their credit, even the NYT led off with an editorial blasting the "racism" argument made in Mr. Gonzalez' defense yesterday on the Senate floor: "... this debate had a sinister overtone as well: in a ham-handed way, the Republicans tried to portray a vote against Mr. Gonzales as an act of bigotry."

It is not bigotry to say Gonzalez is unworthy of office, any more than it is treason to say Bush is unworthy of the office. What is being done to our legal institutions now, makes Dred Scott and the Alien and Sedition Acts, look like wise and carefully thought out actions, by comparison.

We are becoming precisely the country we always said the Europeans had: paranoid, parochial, inbred and ingrown, fearful, and reactionary.

When do we finally decide that actions speak louder than words?

"I knew a woman, lovely in her bones...."

Bringing the Social Security debate down to particulars.

My best lay understanding of this plan as of now (numbers make my English major brain hurt), is that workers invest in private accounts, either with or without government oversight, and then apparently they turn it over to the government upon retirement to create an annuity, which the government then pays out to them.

Now, what if dear old wage earner dies young, with young children at home as "survivors" (as happened to my wife, when her father died when she was 12 months old, the youngest of four children)? Not much annuity built up there, unless he was a genius investor and stayed away from Enron and Worldcom, and such. Even then....

...so where do the survivor benefits come from in that case? Enough to put my wife through college (state college, granted, so low tuition, but still), when she's the last of four?

I guess this is what they mean by "cutting benefits," huh? Of course, with her college education, she's more than repaid the money given to her. But since it was never her money in the first place (her bad luck being born a minor, I guess), then she never deserved it, huh?

Is this what we mean by "ownership society"? Those who can own things, should. And those who can't, because they are too poor, too young, or simply incapable (her father's brother was mentally incapable of caring for himself, and while the sweetest man I ever knew, needed care most of his life, and relied on government disability to pay the bills), are just not going to be owners? Is that what "ownership society" means?

Because once you get it out of the abstractions and the statistics, this is what you are talking about. People may be living longer today, but as even the SS Administration has pointed out, that doesn't mean life expectancy has dramatically risen. Some of us still die young: too young to build up a "nest egg," too young to leave an annuity sufficient to take care of our family. What do we do for them, if we radically change Social Security?

Isn't there an old adage: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"?

"The point is, it's all fuzzy math..."

And knowing the truth, and the truth setting you free (okay, that's an abuse of the scripture): How many people actually voted in Iraq?

For three days now, the press has routinely referred to the figure of 8 million Iraqi voters, following the lead of Farid Ayar, the spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq. In the original press citations, what Ayar actually said (hedging his bets) was "as many as 8 million," which most in the media quickly translated as "about 8 million," and then, inevitably, "8 million."

Curiously, the day before the election, according to press reports, Ayar had predicted that 7 to 8 million would turn out, giving him some incentive to later spot the numbers in that neighborhood.

Also, one dares to ask: If the commission expected close to 8 million, and that's what happened -- and there was less violence on election day than anticipated -- why was the turnout greeted as such a surprise? Especially since U.S. and Iraqi leaders have spent months knocking the press for failing to report that the vast majority of regions in this country are safe and friendly.

The percentage of turnout supplied by Ayar came to 57% (happily rounded off by the press to 60%). This was based on what was described as 14 million potential voters divided by those 8 million who braved the potential bullets and bombs to go to the polls.

On Sunday, while hailing the millions going to the polls, I also raised questions about the 14 million eligible figure: was that registered voters, or all adults over 18, or what? Few on TV or in print seem to be quite sure, to this day.

The Sunni turnout seems to have been about 10%, or 50,000 voters. Voting in the Anbar province is described by a Western diplomat as "quite low."

And on the question of registered voters actually voting: "...80%-90% of our registered voters usually turn out. The problem in our country is that so few people bother to register, bringing our overall turnout numbers way down." Even the much maligned (in some circles) Howard Kurtz didn't buy it: "This was my stab at just trying to tell readers the 60% figure that had been so widely touted was hardly definitive, and it may be lower."

For the record: the CIA estimated the population of Iraq in July 2004 to be 25,374,691. Which, of course, puts the suspect "8 million voters" at nearly 1/3rd of the population. That also means the "60%" registered voter figure, would have to be a very high percentage of the population registered to vote, indeed. Probably more people than would be considered eligible to vote.

And thanks to Holden for putting me on to this article in the first place.

"It's in the wrist action..."

We destroyed Fallujah in order to defeat resistance to American rule in Iraq. Which, of course, didn't work. And our bombing of Iraq has produced huge casualties (as bombing often does), but apparently has done nothing to quell the insurgency.

Now, the President says "to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you." Which, press reports indicate, is clearly code for: "let the bombing of Iran begin." Because this bombing will destabilize support for the Iranian government; and the people of Iran will rise up, and throw off their chains, and be free. Free from a government, presumably, which cannot protect them from being bombed by the U.S.

But, of course, the people of Fallujah were bombed in order to make them submissive to a government that encourages the bombing of its own people, by the U.S.

So it really is a matter of what we say, not what we do. Or maybe it's the way we hold our mouths, or something. Because clearly bombing achieves different ends, through the same means, depending entirely on what we intended by the bombing.

So, world, judge us by our hearts; not by our actions. Because our hearts are pure. And our hearts know no cognitive dissonance.

Apparently.

What if they gave a war, and nobody came?

Lovely wife and golden child watched SOTU last night, as yours truly was away listening to a lecture by an old friend (and catching up on old times). It was a school assignment, not a choice.

And she mentioned this morning that Bush asserted our troops will be in Iraq for as long as it takes. Which made her wonder: are the 30 year olds there now going to turn 40 in Iraq?

Who, indeed, is going to fight this fight for the Administration?

For the first time in nearly a decade, the Marine Corps in January missed its monthly recruiting goal, in what military officials said was the latest troubling indicator of the Iraq war's impact on the armed services.

The struggles of the Army, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard to recruit and retain soldiers have received national attention in recent months. But the recent failure of the Marines, who historically have had the luxury of turning away willing recruits, is a potential problem for the service.

The Marines missed their January goal of 3,270 recruits by 84 people, or less than 3 percent. The Marines last missed a monthly goal in July 1995, and 1995 was also the last full year in which the corps fell short of its annual recruiting quota, said Maj. Dave Griesmer, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command.

No draft; fewer people willing to volunteer to be car-bomb fodder in a foreign country. Who is going to pay for this folly? Who is going to go to Iraq to protect our freedom?

Or is that not what Iraq is about, after all?

Thin Ice

Elections do not mean democracy.

There. I said it. Got into a "discussion" on this point at Eschaton, and then, today, NPR broadcasts an interview with the U.N. observer of the Iraqi elections who made the same point. Elections are essential to a democracy, he noted; but they do not equal democracy.

Gore Vidal has mentioned recently, in an interview aired on Pacifica Radio, that the U.S. is not a democracy. It is a republic. Consider ancient Athens, and ancient Rome. When Socrates went on trial in Athens, all the citizens of the town turned out to sit in judgment. Like the "town meetings" of New England, that kind of total participation in governance, is "democracy." Rule by the "demos," the group, the "mob" when "demos" is followed by "-gogue." In Rome, select persons held power. They even had a "dictator," someone given absolute power over the military and the government in times of crisis. The much bally-hooed "peaceful transfer of power" TV talking heads swoon over every four years during an Inauguration, reminds us we are a republic. The people elect representatives, and vest them with the powers of government.

But voting, does not make a democracy, or a republic. Iraqis voted for Saddam Hussein; or, at least, a vote was held. No one outside Iraq (and probably few inside) considered that "vote" either free, or fair.

But is a vote under occupation either free or fair? Many Muslim scholars don't think so, which is one reason they urged Sunnis to boycott the vote last Sunday.

So, is there democracy in Iraq? Not yet. Not nearly. Despite what all the pundits and politicians and possible purple fingers in Congress say tonight, a patch of ice still doth not a winter make, nor a single swallow summer. They had one vote. That's all. A good thing, but only in the sense that it was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. It is no assurance of anything.

Certainly no sign that the last 3 years have been "worth it." Or that peace has now come to the Middle East. And even W. is not likely to say, tonight, that, once again: "Mission accomplished."

Reason within the limits of reason alone

I'm wrecking the point of having comments by posting on every possible turn in the conversation, I suppose, but Philalethes raises another good point: what is reason, and when is it "reasonable"?

Simply stated, I would say that reason is the terms of discourse to which all agree. The scope is broad, but has its boundaries; and, for the most part, like pornography, we can't define it, but we know it when we see it (discarding, of course, arguments that discussions of theology or religion cannot be reasonable).

When we appeal to such terms of discourse, we are appealing in part to the elimination of contradictions. "Up" cannot simultaneously refer to "down"; "black"cannot also refer to "white"; and so on. Which runs us up against Philalethes' other observation: that "our" opponents in many a political (or religious) discussion, don't even reason by their own definition of the term (i.e., it is "reasonable" to assert that the earth is only 6000 years old, or whatever), but revel in irrationality. And this is certainly true: here is a hypothetical as an example.

I've never had the chance to do this, but if you could confront a Christian fundamentalist, a devout believer in the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, and that every word therein is literally true (and inherently correct, i.e., non-contradictory), the shot to the solar plexus would seem to be the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke. They are absolutely irreconcilable.

In both stories, Jesus is born in Bethlehem: but for Matthew, that is because that's where his parents live. In Luke, they travel to Bethlehem when Mary is pregnant, because of the Roman census. Mary and Joseph, with Jesus, later return to Nazareth, where he grows up. No mention of Herod, or a flight to Egypt.

But in Matthew, Jesus lives in Bethlehem until he's about two years old. That's when the Magi arrive, Herod learns of the boy's birth, and the Holy Family flees to Egypt to avoid the massacre of the innocents. They return to live in Nazareth to stay out from under the nose of Herod's son, after the old king's death.

Now there are enough silences in the stories for many literalists to reconcile the differences. Shepherds could have visited the child on his birth night, and the magi come later; Matthew could record the flight to Egypt while Luke records the dedication in the Temple; and so on. It takes a lot to twist these strands together, but I've seen it done.

However, why was Jesus born in Bethlehem, and why did he come from Nazareth? The explanations simply cannot be reconciled. Either they lived there, or the census forced them there. And he grew up in Nazareth because that's really where his parents lived, or because of Herod. It is either/ or; it cannot be both/and. But if Christian fundamentalism was so easily undone, if this thread alone would be enough to unravel the tapestry of inerrancy and literalism they have woven since the 19th century, Christian fundamentlism would never have lasted this long.

How do they do it? Obviously by loosening the standards for consistency and reasoning enough to let such matters slip through. Does that mean "they" are completely without reason? No. But it means what is sacred will not be sullied by simple problems of consistency. "Reason" will always give way to what is "holy." Every group has something sacred to its identity, something holy that must be kept pure. Which is an observation, more than a critique. No group stands so far outside of human existence as to be exempt from this fundamental necessity. Finding out what is truly worth preserving is hard work, indeed. Existentialism considers it the creation of the self, even the establishment of the world one lives in. Quite a responsibility; and the issue really is, have we done the work? If we haven't, who are we to complain about "them"?

The other issue is: is politics all about getting "them" to reason like "us"? Or is it about the implementation of governmental power? An issue quite different from either morality or rationality (although not wholly divorced from either).

Or is that killing the conversation before it gets started?

"Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but one Sordello!"

"But Sordello, and my Sordello?"--Ezra Pound

Philalethes gives rise to this thought. He argues, quite rightly, that the "Left" cannot change the mind of the "Right" by way of a frontal assault. One side cannot, in other words, persuade the other side of the "error of their ways" simply by making them see things from "our point of view."

We cannot, in other words, convince "them" to be "reasonable. By their lights, they already are being reasonable.

Quite simply, the appeal of George W. Bush in the last election was through fear. He wasn't an appealing candidate, he wasn't even a reassuring candidate. But he was the candidate who played on our fears, and convinced us he understood we had something to be afraid of. Not that he would protect us from it, necessarily; but we were right: the world is a scary place, full of people who hate "us," people who want to kill us. Why? Because "they" are our enemies. "They" hate our freedom. In the end, motivation doesn't matter. 9/11 shattered our complacency and proved we cannot be too vigilant. Tom Clancy was right, and the dangers of the Cold War exploded into reality, and we almost had another Nazi Germany on our hands. Thank God for a leader who understands that threat.

Look at the voting pattern. Even "The Daily Show" understood that the places least likely to be targeted (such as "The Corn Palace") were the states that went strongest for Bush. Why? Fear. New York and California are not afraid, they are rational. But "middle America," "flyover country," receives the shocks of catastrophe in California or assaults in New York, and trembles with the aftershocks long after the coasts have shrugged it off and gone back about their business. Natural disasters middle America understands: tornadoes, droughts, floods, thunderstorms. Man-made disasters, because they never happen "here" ('here' being the area between the coasts), are therefore absolutely terrifying. Last time it was Pearl Harbor; this time it was New York City; next time it will be Omaha.

And our politics doesn't help. Gore Vidal points out that the 2004 election was about gay marriage and abortion, rather than invading foreign countries and countering terrorism in the world. In the name of fear, we have declared war on 1 billion Muslims. But middle America, snug in its coccoon between the coasts and secure in its ignorance and complacency, insists "they" started it. Ignorant of what we do in the world, who we arm, support, how and why, middle America is shocked and surprised when there is a consequence to any action. The fundamental principle of the narrative of The Iliad, that every action has its consequence, is lost on them. Theirs is is a moral universe where they are pure and innocent, and so never have to face outsized responsibility for outsized acts, because they never commit any, and they refuse to believe their government would commit any in their name. So they are easily motivated by fear. Since Harry Truman told them to fear the Russians, a country that wanted only to recover from the 20 million dead in World War II, from the depravity and cowardice of Stalin, they have been convinced to be always afraid.

We are talking, after all, about the land of the missile silos. They convinced themselves a generation ago that they were the shield against godless Communism, and they still believe horror and evil walk the earth, looking for an opening into Paradise. Homer they don't read, but Milton they took in with their mother's milk.

How do you talk to such people? How do you persuade them they are wrong?

You don't.

What, then, do you do? Let's think about that.

THE LESSON: MICAH 6:1-8

Hear what the LORD says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the LORD has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. "0 my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 0 my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the LORD." "With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Start with Paul Ricouer's thesis: "namely that religious experience comes to language through specific modes of discourse," and we have a better starting place for considering the words of the Hebrew Prophets.

First: they were talking to a specific community: Israel, before, during, or after, the Exile. And most of them were strong proponents of social justice, which they linked to the worship of the God of Abraham. But even for prophets like Micah, who promoted "pure" worship (i.e., uncontaminated by the practices of non-Hebraic cultures), that worship was also carried out in life, not just in the temple.

Second: the "specific modes of discourse." The image of a trial is almost a constant in the Hebrew Scriptures. As first the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians, and then the kingdom of Judah first lost power, and then even existence, the people wondered where their protection from the God of Abraham had gone. They challenged God, and the prophets often responded with a courtroom of Creation, where Creation itself was called to bear witness and hear the complaints of Israel (the people), and God. This touches on Ricouer once more, whom I am taking for my own uses (obviously), but who is nonetheless instructive here:

Ricouer's thesis rests in part on the relation between the form of discourse and the theological content, an understsnding developed by Gerhard von Rad. Ricouer applies it to narratives in the Scriptures, and finds:

This example, systematically developed, no longer allows us to construct theologies of the Old or New Testaments that understand the narrative category to be a rhetorical procedure alien to the content it carries. It seems, on the contrary, that something specific, something unique, is said about Yahweh and about Yahweh's relations with the people Israel because it is said in the form of a narrative, of a story that recounds the events of deliverance in the past...Nothing is said about God or about humankind or about their relations that does not first of all reassemble legends and isolated sagas and rearrange them in meaningful sequences so as to constitute a unique story, centered upon a kernel-event, that has both a historical import and a kerygmatic dimension.*

So this story of God calling a "cosmic courtroom" together is a theological expression as well as a visionary episode. Micah speaks about the relationship of the God of Abraham to the children of Abraham. When God calls for justice, God is placed before justice, too: not as judge, but as petitioner. God calls upon Creation to witness and to judge, in a way more like the trial of Socrates in Plato's Apology than
like the second half of "Law & Order." God, like Job, is willing to be judged, because God knows who is innocent, and who is at fault. But God, take note, is willing to be judged.

But not, apparently, so anxious to judge. This is the real significance of the scene. "What does the Lord require of you?" Not the firstfruit of the land; not even the firstfruit of your body (just as the concluding verses echo Psalm 51, there are echoes here of Deuteronomy 26:1-11, and Genesis 22); in fact, before any "demand" is made, there is a reminder that first comes the blessing, then comes the duty. And the budren is, indeed, light: "He has told you, O mortal, what is good." God gives, in other words, and asks for exchange only later. It can be argued, in fact, that what God offers is as close to a gift as is possible under Jacques Derrida's strict definition (i.e., something given without knowledge by the giver or by recipient, so that there is no economy of exchange, no cycle of delivery and compensation for delivery). God sells without price, and we buy without money.

And what is "good"? Those would be the moral precepts of the Mosaic law: the social justice, the proper worship of the God of Abraham. The way of life, as opposed to death, as set before Israel by Moses (Deuteronomy 30:15). We all have to live, and we all have to follow some rules; but which ones are good, and lead to the "good life"? The question, quite simply, of Aristotle's Nichomacean Ethics. That is what Micah is referring to, what God is offering: an ethic, a practice for life.

And what is it? That's the law of Moses, the teachings of the prophets. And what does it require of you? What do you give up, in order to gain this good (even Aristotle understood some things had to be given up, in order to make greater gains)? What, indeed, except to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

An address, let me repeat, made to the children of Abraham: and now to those who want to walk with the God of Abraham. But what does it cost you? Only the willingness to do the justice the God of Abraham is willing to submit to; the love the mercy offered unconditionally by the God of Abraham; and to be humble before the God of Abraham. It is the lesson of Moses; of Job; or Isaiah; of Jesus of Nazareth and Paul and St. Augustine and St. Aquinas and St. Francis and Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day and Jim Wallis and...well, you get the idea.

As Moses said to Israel: "Surely, this commandment...is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say 'Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?' No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth an din your heart for you to observe." (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, NRSV)

*Paul Ricouer, "Philosophy and Religious Language," Figuring the Sacred, tr. David Pellauer (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 40