"Lord, when did we see you?"

This is the kind of thing one reads in seminary. A pity it never makes it beyond the cloistered halls and ivy-covered walls:

To be sure, the established churches need the refreshing influx of new and wider ranges of charismatic experience, but in the long perspective of spiritual growth the individual charistmatic needs the home of the full church in which he or she matures in faith and learns the most important lesson of faith: to love God who gave the gift rather than to love the gift that God gave.--Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1976), p. 123.

Or, for that matter, this:

Nobody can come to grips with the drama of history unless he recognizes that most of the evil in this world is done by people who do it for good purposes. Evil is not that popular. If one gathered together a lot of people and said, "Let us be evil together," it would not go over very well. Thanks be to God!....

Thus the question is not to balance judgment and mercy. Whenever one reads the Bible or theology, what I would call the "who-is-who" question always arises. Who speaks to whom and for whom? The mighty message of God was often heard in a wrong way because one listened in on the wrong message. There are many examples of this. Jesus did say, "Man does not live by bread alone," but he never said that to a hungry person. When he was faced with hungry persons he fed them--4000 or 5000. And he massproduced wine in Cana just to prevent the wedding feast from turning into a fiasco. It was to Satan that he said "Man does not live by bread alone," speaking for and to himself. The church, however, often quoted Jesus in the wrong direction--to the hungry, in defense of the well-fed.

Who speaks to whom? For whom is judgment mercy? That is the question, and unless one understands it, even the most glorious dialectical understanding of theology becomes not only counterproductive but evil. (Stendahl, p. 105-06)

I will tell you know that I have preached this message; and it is not a popular one. As Stendahl points out, "reconciliation" is a beautiful word. "Yet here in the United States we have been poignantly taught that reconciliation may be a word abused by the comfortable and for the "haves." He goes on:

Of course, for him who has and for him who is comfortable, reconciliation is very attractive--the sooner the better, so that we give up as little as possible. That is what reconciliation has come to mean, in stark contrast to the Christian tradition's sign of reconciliation, the cross where Christ gave all in order that reconciliation might be had. Judgment and mercy. We must resist all homogenizing, neutralizing, dialecticizing and balancing acts with these terms. There is little mercy except the chance of repentance for us who sit in judgment; but when judgment comes upon us, there is much mercy for the oppressed.

As the people ask on Judgment Day in Matthew 25: "Lord, when did we see you?" For believers, that is always the fundamental question. Many critics of Christianity on the blogs insist such ideas don't exist, or are never considered by the church. Stendahl is a Lutheran theologian, as "churchly" a thinker as Protestantism can produce. What he says deserves consideration, even application. Pastors here and there manage to get some of this implemented. But churches large and small, and the "Christian church," to the extent such mythical beast even exists, is like an ocean liner: it changes direction very slowly, and is built to insist on and insure stability at all times. Sometimes that is a good design; sometimes it is not. But when dealing with such concepts as mercy and judgment, who wouldn't prefer stability to uncertainty? What we have to look for is not certainty in our doctrine, but adherence to the truth: where ever that truth may lead.

The Ugly American

Why does the Newseek story still have "legs"? Why does Daniel Schorr now intone gravely about the sins of Michael Isikoff? Mr. Schorr, after all, became the center of controversy himself in 1976, when he obtained a copy of the Pike Report on illegal CIA and FBI activities. He got it published despite the committee's decision not to publish the report, and many of his colleagues made him a professional pariah. William S. Paley, then head of CBS, was stopped short of firing Mr. Schorr, who resigned in 1976 after the battle to reveal his source (he refused to) was ended. Well, I can't speak to Mr. Schorr's motivations; but I can speak to his actions, which speak as loudly, if not louder, than his words.

Speak to them as an exemplar of a peculiarity, shall we say, in human nature; one touched on by Levinas' work in phenomenology. To put Levinas in some perspective (without tying us all down too much to an arcane philosophical discussion), his work was a reaction to the work of Husserl, who insisted all human experience (following closely on the heels of David Hume, actually) was personal, and all knowledge, of whatever kind, was known and knowable only in relationship to the self. Levinas, within the terms of phenomenology largely set by Husserl, set out to challenge that essentially(both as essence and as necessity) self-centered doctrine. But like Kant after Hume, Levinas cannot so much replace the fundamental insight, as seek to modify it. So we start with a basic acknowledgement: we are, by nature, selfish creatures. The question then is: is that all there is?

Are we doomed to selfishness, in other words, to seeing everything in the world only in relation to "same" (to use Levinas' term)? Looking at the Newseek controversy, it is easy to conclude that even if we are not, we are certainly prone to it; at least in a country as isolated as America.

In response to the allegation in the Newsweek article, Gen. Richard Myers went to Guantanomo Bay, reviewed the records, and found no evidence to support the 10 line claim in the longer Newsweek article. However, he also had no evidence that the article sparked violence in either Afghanistan or Pakistan.

General Myers also told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday that the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Carl Eichenberry, disagrees with the reports that protests in the city of Jalalabad were caused by anger over the alleged Koran incident.

"It is the judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eichenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran, but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his cabinet are conducting in Afghanistan. He thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine," he explained.

The allegation has been that Al Jazeera (the favorite whipping boy of the U.S. Government) translated the article and broadcast it in the two countries, setting off riots in response. It's an appealing idea for only one reason: if news doesn't appear in the American press, it doesn't appear at all.

Of course now we know, if we've heard of this story at all, that reports of Koran desecration are not new. Even NPR has been reporting one the number of detainees and released prisoners who have told stories of desecration of religious objects and of Islam in general during interrogations. There are too many stories to believe them to all be fictional. What Newsweek apparently got wrong, in fact, was that an act of desecration was officially recorded. Given that such acts violate Army regulations, it's no surprise no interrogator would make an official record of it. But why was the story that a Newsweek article sparked riots on the other side of the world ever believed here? Why is it still believed?

At least, in part, because of the issue of "same" and "other." There have been reports of Koran desecration since 2002, but the US press has not paid attention to them. Daniel Schorr did not intone gravely about these violations of Army regulations, no politician spoke on the subject for TV cameras or a reporter's pen, no one in the blogosphere, on the left or the right, thought such actions worthy of much consideration. We are all, for better or worse, parochial. We're more fascinated with what goes on in our own backyard. Reporters are vilified for their laziness, for preferring to sit in climate controlled comfort in the White House taking dictation from Scott McClellan rather than actually investigating stories, and right-wing bloggers are vilified by left-wing bloggers for supporting the troops from the comfort of their keyboards. But left-wing bloggers equally prefer to recount snarky tales of foolish sentences or outrageous opinions posted by their "right-wing" counterparts. And it all goes round and round, and comes out nowhere.

So we are all caught up in the same dynamic: the sense that what we know about is what is most important, and that if we don't know it, it isn't known to anyone, and what happens to us is the only information that can be of any importance. Until Newsweek reports on Koran desecration, then, it doesn't really happen. And if it is already known to the rest of the world, well, it isn't known to us in the U.S. (well, not widely known; after all, if it isn't being discussed ad nauseum by the chattering class, can we really say it is known at all?) And that dynamic stems, not from ignorance, but from the nature of our being. It is same that we know (an epistemological fundamental) and same that we relate our knowledge to. Wholly ignorant of life in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and physically removed from almost any other country except for Canada and Mexico, as well as inclined by our immigrant heritage and culture (the "melting pot" necessitates the disavowal of the "homeland" across the ocean) not to respect, or even acknowledge, other countries, we live in a national "same" that insists all "others" can only be connected to us, or have no existence at all.

This is the crux of the issue: not that the "other" must be known in terms of "same" first, and then finally acknowledged as "other" (Levinas' telos), but that we never make that move. The "other" is never acknowledged as "other" in the first place, except as "enemy." And even "enemy" is known to us only in terms of same, too. They "hate us for our freedom." The "other" that is not enemy, just like the enemy, only has existence to the extent they have a relationship to "same," which is to say, "us." And that relationship means that whatever we do affects them. But we only "do" what we are aware of. Still wholly unaware of what happened or is happening in Gitmo or Abu Ghraib, we continue to pretend that only what we know about has reality, and any stories related by released prisoners and "detainees" has no existence, and therefore no consequence.

And, of course, there is the whole issue that Afghanistan and Pakistan have their own lives, culture, politics, and issues, that may be wholly unrelated to "us." But we can't consider that, either; because that would mean considering that they have lives apart from ours.

This is, of course, also the weltanschaaung of the evangelical Christian who, convinced of his or her damnation, cannot concieve that you are not likewise similarly situated. And, saddled with the obligation to save your soul as well, or theirs is in peril ("Go, ye, into all the world, and make disciples thereof"), they eternally see the world in terms of same and....not yet same. So, on many levels, its a very American thing. But what legitimacy does it have? And what is the alternative? The "ugly American" is the stereotype of an American out of touch with the peoples of the rest of the world, and uncaring about his ignorance. How does the current flap about Newsweek challenge that stereotype at all?

"Nothing Gold Can Stay"

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

--Robert Frost

Via Holden at First Draft, I find this from the Washington Post:

"I don't think we're there yet," [Comptroller General David M.] Walker said. "The American people have to understand where we are and where we're headed."

And where is that? "No republic in the history of the world lasted more than 300 years," Walker said. "Eventually, the crunch comes."

He wasn't talking about filibusters.

Now, of course, there are no "expiration dates" on republics, no "self-destruct" mechanisms that keep them from lasting beyond a date certain. But Benjamin Franklin famously said we had "A Republic; if you can keep it." There is no guarantee we can keep it forever; or not lose it within a generation. It is too early to proclaim the end of life as we know it; but not too early to pay a bit more attention to what is being done in Washington in the name of morality, "compassionate conservatism," and "changing the tone."

Basiliea Tou Theou

The concept of pacifism in a Christian context raises the concept of "just war," an idea originated by Augustine in his apologia for Christianity, The City of God. Augustine was trying to resolve the conflict between the empire of Rome and the empire of God (the basiliea tou theou). It was that conflict, of course, that led to the crucifixion of Christ and the mocking sign: o basileus ton Ioudaion ("King of the Jews"). Augustine wanted to give Roman Christians the ability to keep one foot in each realm, an idea itself that can be criticized as distinctly un-Christian. "Just war" is part of this concept: that one can be a citizen of two realms. But, as Jesus said, you cannot serve two masters. One of them will demand your loyalty above your obligations to the other, and how then do you choose? Who gives you your life? God, or Caesar? To whom do you give it up, if demand is made?

It is the basiliea tou theou that is the stumbling block: the empire of God that is meant to be all-encompassing. Jesus, and Paul after him, proclaimed a complete alternative to the empires of this world. Israel itself found its identity in a covenant with the God of Abraham, a covenant that only belatedly turned into a kingdom, and when that kingdom was taken away from them for their injustice and greed, it was replaced with a kingdom that could never be taken away.

But one that could be abandoned. And the concept of this basiliea is just as controversial now, as it was in first century Palestine. It could be argued, in fact, that the origin of individuality, of the concept of the individual, began there.

Prior to the emergence of Romanticism, the "modern" concept of the individual was all but unknown. "That solitary individual" to whom Kierkegaard dedicates Purity of Heart is a wholly Romantic ideal, but one founded (consciously, in the case of Rouseeau; less explicitly in the case of Kierkegaard, raised in a church started by a conscience tormented former Augustinian monk) on the concept originated by Augustine, in his attempt to explain his conversion to himself, and to the collapsing Roman empire and the citizens of that empire in which he lived. Krister Stendahl has argued quite persausively that "Augustine may well have been one of the first to express the dilemma of the introspective conscience" (and noting that in this Luther was "a truly Augustinian monk"). Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia, Fortress Press 1976), p. 83. Stendahl's essay is aimed at the interpretation of Paul's letters, but the thesis he employs is applicable here: that what we generally consider human nature is not essentially the same throughout the ages. Some of what we cover with that umbrella term may be immutable, but some of what we consider immutable is certainly highly changeable, and has changed over history, and from culture to culture. The "introspective conscience" is Stendahl's aim, and he links it directly to Augustine:

For Paul had not arrived at his view of the Law [Stendahl is concerned with Romans 7:19] by testing and pondering its effect upon his conscience; it was his grappling with the question about the place of the Gentiles in the Church and in the plan of God, with the problem Jews/Gentiles or Jewish Christians/Gentile Christians, which had driven him to that interpretation of the Law which was to beome his in a unique way.....

Yet it was not until Augustine that the Pauline thought about the Law and Justification was applied in a consistent and grand style to a more general and human problem....His Confessions is the first great document in the history of the introspective conscience. The Augustinian line leads into the Middle Ages and reaches its climax in the penitential struggle of an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, and his interpretation of Paul. (Stendahl, pp. 84-85)

Recognizing this can have a very upsetting effect on one's assumptions about individual actions and the concept of corporate responsibility. Is it even possible to think of oneself as an individual, and yet not think of oneself in terms of an introspective conscience. Stendahl's thesis is that it is not only possible, but that it is precisely how Paul saw himself and the world, and so when he says "Miserable sinner that I am!," it is not a cri de couer or a mea culpa such as we, in a post-Augustinian world, imagine it. No more so than Paul would automatically interpret the act of the prostitute in Luke's anointing story as an outward display of an inward act of conscience. That kind of introspection, which we think so fundamental to "human nature," is not so fundamental at all. It is the result of human thought, of philosophy; of the efforts of a saint of the church.

Which realization makes everything more interesting. So, where, then, do I find my identity? In the introspection of my conscience, my personal place before God? Or in my community, my empire, neighborhood, family, friends? No one, truly, is alone: but our ideal "individuals," be they Thoreau or Byron or Kierkegaard, are all products of Romanticism, and this is the lingering effect of Romanticism, that we still seek to praise the indivdual, be it an action adventure hero or a moral hero, above and apart from any group.

So the basiliea tou theou poses the uncomfortable question: whose side are you on? Is your identity founded in family? "I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man will find enemies under his own roof." (Matthew 10:34-6, REB). Is your identity in the ruler, the country, the empire? "Pay the emperor what belongs to the emperor, and God what belongs to God!" (Matthew 22:10, SV) [note the Greek here is "kaisar," the obvious root for the German word "Kaiser." We are too prone to think of "Caesar" as a personal name, not a title] Or are you a citizen of the basiliea tou theou?

As Arundhati Roy says: "Radical change will not be negotiated by governments." If the bailiea tou theou is not here and now, then the question has no purpose, and the need to live it, see it, even to proclaim it, is pointless. We do not prepare the way of the Lord; we do not usher in the age, we do not negotiate for its presence at some time in the future, when everyone and all governments are ready. God can truly raise children of Abraham from the stones; God doesn't need us to act. But if we are called into the basiliea, if we are at last invited to "Come, buy grain and eat; come, buy wine and milk, not for money, not for a price," surely we should make that invitation to everyone. And if we hear that invitation, how can we accept it if we do not accept the reality, here and now, of that basiliea? And if we accept the reality of that basiliea, and the invitation into that basiliea, how can we then refuse the law, the comands, of that kaisar, the emperor of this empire? Not the command to be holy, but the command to be humble, to be servants, to live as if the first are indeed last, and the last first.

Symbols as self

Riverbend has a new post up today. It covers Condi's visit, the increasing and extremely confusing violence around Bagdad and the rest of the country, and, of course, the Newsweek flap

At the end of the day, it's not about words or holy books or pork or dogs or any of that. It's about what these things symbolize on a personal level. It is infuriating to see objects that we hold sacred degraded and debased by foreigners who felt the need to travel thousands of kilometers to do this. That's not to say that all troops disrespect Islam- some of them seem to genuinely want to understand our beliefs. It does seem like the people in charge have decided to make degradation and humiliation a policy.

By doing such things, this war is taken to another level- it is no longer a war against terror or terrorists- it is, quite simply, a war against Islam and even secular Muslims are being forced to take sides.

It has ever been thus. I'm sure there is much to be said about the importance of symbols. They have meaning for us at a visceral level, a level that, at times, is at odds with our rationality. What is so important about a book, a cracker and some wine, a scroll, facial hair, a head covering? Symbols are a representation of our reaching for a deeper understanding, and, as such, become vested with a significance far beyond themselves. It is as if the vehicle of our imagination and inquiry becomes for us more important than the journey or the destination.

We can argue about the importance of symbols, but it doesn't change the fact that in our symbols we place a part of our identity. Maybe I've told this story before, but in my first year of Seminary, in our first Biblical Studies class, our OT professor stood in front of us and, without a word, slammed a copy of the Bible onto the floor and stomped vigorously on it. Even I, who considered myself to be a rational person who viewed the Bible as a collection of texts that spoke to us about humanity's relationship with God in a series of snapshots, gasped. It broke something inside me. Mind you, it was a necessary breakage. But something twinged that I never suspected was even there.

Symbols have power over us. And we have power over them. We are seeing a clash of the Titans, a battle of identities, that really does reach into the depths of our self understanding. There is much more to be said about this, but I'm far from my resources at the moment and do not wish to trail a hodgepodge of half remembered quotes and perspectives through the blog. More later, perhaps.

"The cornerstone of our democracy is an open and accountable government,"

In the continuing Newsweek saga, I simply direct you to watertiger, who has the complete letter from Rep. John Conyers to Mr. Scott McClellan.

Enjoy.

Totality, Infinity, and Newsweek

Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality.--Emmanuel Levinas

It's an astonishing statement, when you think about it. It is clearly meant to be taken as a universal, but it must have some connection to the particular, else it is meaningless. That is, after all, the foundation of Western thought: that the universal has application and even appearance, in the particular. Thales of Miletus speculated that all things are fundamentally water, but if the chain broke down in some particular between the rainfall, the grass, the cow, and the milk, his univeral would break down, too; as, eventually, it did. The results were subject to change, but the method remained.

So how do we apply this method to be sure we are not duped by morality? And what would such a condition look like, in the first place? Perhaps like the current "scandal" over the Newsweek report.

It is a favorite technigue of this Administration to wrap itself in morality, and in doing so to dupe as many people as possible, for as long as possible. NPR had a story just this morning about religious groups that are encouraged to apply for government grants. However, when those grants are challenged as violating the separation of church and state, the organization suddenly finds itself alone in the courtroom (no Solicitor General comes to plead their case), and losing the grant money it had won. Sounds oddly like a clear case of being duped by "morality."

But "morality" of course is at question in Levinas' essay, not actions dressed up as morality. And here Levinas makes a neat turn, one not easily appreciated. If his language becomes complicated, it is because he assumes and at the same time does not assume, the weltanschauung of a first century Palestinian like Jesus of Nazareth (Judaism only came into its own after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.), or of the 20th century. His realm is quite particular: the realm of phenomenology. At the same time, it is quite general: the realm of human experience. One tries to talk in very deliberate language about the concept of existence; the other tries to understand the experiences we all, in one way or another, share. But the turn he makes, is to assume that morality has, for most people, an aspect of war about it. War, of course, is a totality. As George C. Scott says in Patton, all other forms of human endeavor pale in the face of war. For better or worse, he is right. Although it says more about what we value, and how, it is true. And Levinas assumes this truth in his examination of totality and infinity.

Does not lucidity, the mind's openness upon the true, consist in catching sight of the permanent possibility of war? The state of war suspends morality; it divests the eternal institutions and obligations of their eternity and rescinds ad interim the unconditional imperatives. In advance its shadow falls over the actions of men. War is not only one of the ordeals-the greatest-of which morality lives; it renders morality derisory. The art of foreseeing war and of winning it by every means-politics-is henceforth enjoined as the very exercise of reason. Politics is opposed to morality, as philosophy to naivete.

We have to accept that any assertion of power, for whatever reason, assumes the validity of war. When push comes to shove, it is our position that must prevail, because it is right. And if it must prevail by the assertion of power, then so be it. And that assertion of power, that assertion of the need to win by any means whatsoever, is politics. It is perfectly reasonable, and it must be so because it is perfectly moral. So even the personal becomes political, because politics is "the very exercise of reason." And only the unreasonable would oppose the applicaion of reason. But this means that politics is opposed to morality, just as philosophy is opposed to naivete.

The parallelism is not accidental. Naivete is perceived as weakness. Of what value is it to be naive, to be innocent and ignorant and prey to the world? No more valuable, then, is it to be moral. To be moral, indeed, is to be opposed to reason. And at that point morality is undone by reason, which used morality to gain its advantage and now discards it as if it were a ladder useful only for climbing, and using it again would mean going down. As Plato taught, once the good has been achieved, the totality from which all things originate, to go back is to turn toward imperfection, to admit imperfection into the realm of the perfect; and that is not possible. So totality leads us to the good. But this strikes us at the very root of our existence. It does not join us to reality; it cuts us off from reality:

The ontological event that takes form in this black light is a casting into movement of beings hitherto anchored in their identity, a mobilization of absolutes, by an objective order from which there is no escape. The trial by force is the test of the real. But violence does not consist so much in injuring and annihilating persons as in interrupting their continuity, making them play roles in which they no longer recognize themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance, making them carry out actions that will destroy every possibility for action. Not only modern war but every war employs arms that turn against those who wield them. It establishes an order from which no one can keep his distance; nothing henceforth is exterior. War does not manifest exteriority and the other as other; it destroys the identity of the same.

Enter Kierkegaard. This is the reason for the entire authorship, the pseudonyms and the speculations and the "leap of faith" and "either/or" and the "purity of heart" which is "to will one thing." Kierkegaard does not seek to promote totality, but to destroy it. And he does it, ironically enough, in the tradition of the great Platonic totalizer of Western theology, Augustine of Hippo.

Father in Heaven! What is a man without Thee! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know Thee! What is all his striving, could it even encompass a world, but a half-finished work if he does not know Thee; Thee the One, who art one thing and who art all! so may Thou give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing. Soren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, tr. Douglas V. Steere (New York: Harper & Row, 1948), p. 31

Virtually the language of the famous Confession. And it was certainly Augustine who introduced to Western thought the very idea of the individual which ultimately became so important to phenomenology, as well as to Kierkegaard's rejection of the totality of the Hegelian system. It is that creation of the individual that Levinas is referring to:

The visage of being that shows itself in war is fixed in the concept of totality, which dominates Western philosophy. Individuals are reduced to being bearers of forces that command them unbeknown to themselves. The meaning of individuals (invisible outside of this totality) is derived from the totality. The unicity of each presents is incessantly sacrificed to a future appealed to to bring forth its objective meaning. For the ultimate meaning alone counts; the last act alone changes beings into themselves. They are what they will appear to be in the already plastic forms of the epic.

That is the tension Kierkegaard's authorship aimed at: to pry individuals out of the role of "bearers of forces that command them unbeknownst to themselves." Kierkegaard's aim, if you like, was to give individuals the red pill that Morpheus (the god of sleep, death's second self, as Donne reminds us) offers to lead you down the rabbit hole to discovery of the true reality. And that true reality, is that morality is real:

The moral consciousness can sustain the mocking gaze of the political man only if the certitude of peace dominates the evidence of war. Such a certitude is not obtained by a simple play of anthithesis. The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alinenated beings their lost liberty. For that a primordial and original relation with being is needed.

We are alienated beings to the extent that we are separated from a primordial and original relation, says Levinas. That's a curious conception in some ways, a ringing continuation of the second Creation story of Genesis that continues the totality theme of Western culture: once, things were good and perfect and true, and one day we will return to that state. When the Messiah comes; when the Rapture comes; when the eschaton comes. Then all will be well; and all manner of thing will be well. "When the tongues of flame are in-folded/Into the crowned knot of fire/And the fire and the rose are one." Well, perhaps; or perhaps all things are well now. Perhaps it is infinity we should seek, and not totality. Infinity, which is outside of, extraneous to, apart from, the limitations of totality. Levinas still attends upon an eschatology: but there the Jew (Levinas) and the Christian (yours truly) part ways, albeit amicably. While Levinas awaits "the eschatology of messianic peace" which "will... come to superpose itself upon the ontology of war," I say it has already come. And so the only question now is not: who's in charge here, the Administration or Newsweek? The question is: who will see that justice is done?

Levinas says this of eschatologies:

It does not introduce a teleological system into the totality; it does not consist in teaching the orientation of history. Eschatology institutes a relation with being beyond the totality or beyond history, and not with being beyond the past and the present. Not with the void that would surround the totality and where one could, arbitrarily, think what one likes, and thus promote the claims of a subjectivity free as the wind.

It is a relationship with a surplus always exterior to the totality, as though the objective totality did not fill out the true measure of being, as though another concept, the concept of infinity, were needed to express this transcendence with regard to totality, non-encompassable within a totality, and as primordial as totality.

It stands, in other words, apart. It draws us out of the totality, into infinity. From the realm of sight, into the realm of spirit. But a realm that is in relationship to the totality, not arbitrarily free from it; a realm that imposes responsibility, rather than releases from it. A realm we have to achieve, if we are not to be duped by morality.

"NEWSWEEK LIED. PEOPLE DIED."

This has become my favorite line, because it reminds me of Rummy today, shocked and outraged that Newsweek would go to press with poorly sourced and badly corroborated "intelligence."

Er, excuse me, journalism.

Good thing no government would ever do such a thing. Why, we might get into a war with a country that we thought was a threat, only to find out our information was worthless, and we were thrown a "Curveball," and nothing the government told the people turned out to be true, and thousands of Americans would die, and tens of thousands be wounded, and hundreds of thousands of civilians dead, and a country in complete collapse with chaos and bloodshed and death and mayhem, and...


...well, anyway, it's a good thing that never happened, huh?

Now getting back to Newsweek and its responsibilities.....

Bill Moyers Speaks, You Listen

I've had the pleasure this morning of being able to listen to Bill Moyer's speak to "The National Media Reform Conference" in St. Louis, Missouri, this past weekend. It is a galvanizing speech, from a man now exactly known for his galvanizing demeanor. When Bill Moyers compares the current state of discourse on public issues to Orwell's Newspeak, he does so with an almost singular authority, because you know Moyers is not given to hyperbole.

This is a speech that deserves a wider audience; indeed, the widest possible. Democracy Now! has it on their website as a transcript and an audio file. It is worth listening to, just to catch Mr. Moyers' passion, and his righteous wrath.

School's Out

I was helping my daughter study for her 7th grade final exams last night, trying to explain the three branches of government in a way she'd understand. The legislative, I said, passes the laws, and the executive executes them. But that was abstract, so I said it was the executive who arrested you if you broke a law, and told the judge why you should be in jail. But the judge, I said, decides whether or not you go to jail and how long you stay there.

And all the while, Gitmo was screaming in the back of my head, complicating things once more.

So this morning, Gitmo is still complicating things. Newsweek and the retraction that isn't leads even NPR. But what news of this apology penetrated my sleep addled brain, and what Newsweek actually said are, "Surprise!," two different things. While the headlines sound like "Newsweek screwed the pooch!," here's a slightly different tale from the NYT this morning:

In its article published today, the magazine said that although the reference to the Koran was a side element in an article, it was worth printing because it had come from an American government official. Other news organizations had written that American guards had desecrated the Koran, Newsweek said, but those reports were based on testimony from former detainees who had been released from Guantánamo.

The Pentagon's outrage, in other words, is as credible as that of a shamed whore.

And, as Juan Cole points out, the issue isn't about the credibility of the story. The real issue is: why are there still prisoners in Gitmo? He comes up with a very credible, and very frightening, answer:

"So many have tried to commit suicide....by now they all must have some serious psychological problems. This is without a doubt torture. Premeditated, planned....a fine lot of criminals we have in charge of the USA these days. Gitmo is so Orwellian--so Room 101. They are playing on the deepest feelings and fears."

This informed former officer has suggested the real reason for which some in the Pentagon are so angry about the Newsweek story. It may well so focus international outrage on Guantanamo that Rumsfeld will lose his little psych lab.

What I tell my daughter about the balance of powers will have to remain a matter of intent and theory, not reality. But I'm thinking this is why Jesus condmened those who pray in public and make a great show of their piety. It's a wonderful cover for preying on widows and their families. (Luke 20:46) And frankly, all of us with any power whatsoever would rather pay tithe in mint and dill and cummin, rather than in the weightier demands of the law: justice, mercy, and good faith. (Matthew 23:23). But that's no reason to stop trying to do what the Lord requires of us (I speak to believers here); or to continue to work for justice, which brings peace.

Update: Yes, this stuff is all over the Web, and really not that hard to locate. When blogs come into their own, the propaganda that is starting to flow around the Newsweek "apology" will hopefully be nipped in the bud. In the meantime, we can rely on the report from Human Rights Watch:

Detainees also complained about the interference with their ability to pray and the lack of respect given to their religion. For example, the British detainees state that they were never given prayer mats and initially were not provided Korans. They also complained that when the Korans were provided, the guards “would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it."

And Arthur Silber is right: it is about censorship. Which will not only work to "silence" the "bad news" about Iraq and Afghanistan, but to distract from the question: why, exactly, haven't we given the prisoners in Gitmo at least the hearings ordered by the Supreme Court? Why do we still have prisoners there? Don't ask, and we won't tell. Look, over there! Newsweek apologized! Let's picket them!

Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing--Søren Kierkegaard

This is the consequence of violence:

On good days, Cpl. Richard Twohig doesn't throw up or have to spend 12 to 14 hours hiding in bed with the shades drawn. The bad days come about once a week. The headaches are so bad, his knees buckle from the pain. Sometimes, his wife, Sang, has to help him into bed.

Twohig is a former Ranger and paratrooper who used to hunt, fish and play sports. He would dive under the hood of his car and make repairs or chase his 2-year-old son, Damon, or 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, around the yard.

Now, even on good days, too much noise or light brings on the headaches. Just the clanking of the weights at a fitness center on Fort Bragg makes him nauseated. His short-term memory constantly fails him, forcing him to have simple questions repeated. He has a constant ringing in his ears.

"I don't feel like a man anymore. I can't do normal stuff," Twohig said.

He is unable to work and, like many injured veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was counting on the Army to provide him and his family with medical benefits. But lawyers representing some of those soldiers said the Army is making it difficult.

The Army determined that Twohig was less than 30 percent disabled. In order to maintain his Defense Department benefits, he had to meet the 30 percent level.

Now, not to put too fine a point on it: if someone can tell me what level of violence, from angry outburst to armed insurrection, will solve Cpl. Twohig's problem, and prevent any others from being similiarly situated, I might reconsider the value of violence.

But it isn't really a quiver, where you can choose various weapons from vicious to caring, or a Chinese menu, where you can take one from column A, another from column B, as you wish. Søren Kierkegaard said purity of heart is to will one thing. It seems too simplistic to say that you cannot will one thing one time, another at another. But, as Leonard Bernstein said in his Mass: "God is the simplest of all."

We are the ones determined to complicate matters.

Thanks to echidne for finding this story.

American Life Changes

This Sunday, May 15, is Retired Ministers Sunday in the UMC. The North Texas Reporter featured a column by retired minister Rev. John Brand. American Life Changes.

Here is a snip from the column:

During the McCarthy era, Americans began seeing enemies behind every rock and in every nook and cranny. Respect for the rule of law was replaced with decisions expressing personal judicial bias based on litmus tests administered before appointments. Belief in capitalism gave way to an economy embracing opportunistic materialism.
Now conspicuous consumption replaces righteousness. Character and integrity assume second place to the size of one's bank account, the value of one's fiscal portfolio and stock options. The poor steadily become poorer. The Middle Class has a hard time making ends meet. The wealthy become even wealthier. For the rich, too much is never enough.
Statesmanship is replaced with the influence of lobbyists peddling the myopic interests of their masters. The people's needs for representative government is replaced by monied lords buying the government. Biblical justice is stifled with a shallow, selfish sentimentalism.

Please go and read the rest of what this 81 year old retired Methodist pastor has to say.

Love your enemies

What are your thoughts about using religious faith as an excuse for so much violence? Violence is not my understanding of the Christian notion of love. I know you address these ideas often in one way or another, but how about some more? How about good old Dobson?
-may

Well, begin with what Levinas said; it is a cogent explanation behind the command "Love your enemy":

The trial by force is the test of the real. But violence does not consist so much in injuring and annihilating persons as in interrupting their continuity, making them play roles in which they no longer recognize themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance, making them carry out actions that will destroy every possibility for action. Not only modern war but every war employs arms that turn against those who wield them. It establishes an order from which no one can keep his distance; nothing henceforth is exterior. War does not manifest exteriority and the other as other; it destroys the identity of the same.

Violence is a matter of control, and control is exerted through discontinuity. If I disconnect you from yourself (Cartesian language invades our thinking everywhere!), I destroy you at an existential level, at the level of "the identity of the same," the self. Violence allows me to do this. It takes you away from your "self," and when you are playing "roles in which [you] no longer recognize [yourself], I have won. The root of the effectiveness (and the supposed terror) of terrorism: if you are terrified, you will betray not only commitments (the "social contract" that protects our "civil liberties," for example) but your own substance, and you will "carry out actions that will destroy every possibility for action." Or, as Jon Stewart said last night, run around like headless chickens in all directions, with no idea what you are doing. Blind action as inaction. Due to one of course private plane, government in Washington, D.C., if only for half an hour, ground to a halt.

Violence and the threat of violence, whether it is physical or political, seeks the same end: control. Dobson doesn't care about judicial appointments; what he cares about is power, and he uses the violence of political threats and "grass roots" pressure groups to achieve his aims. Simply another type of violence. As Levinas says, the concept of totality dominates Western thought. And fixed in this concept is war; because through violence, all things necessary are deemed to be possible. Which makes war the most necessary of all.

Listen to the remarks by Tom DeLay last night at his "testimonial" dinner. Every victory he proclaimed was couched in terms of morality, but spoken in terms of authority. And authority is always backed by violence. Which is precisely why Jesus said: "My kingdom does not belong ot this world. If it did, my followers would be fighting to save me from the clutches of the Jews." And when Pilate asks: "You are a king, then?", Jesus answers: " 'King' is your word." (John 18:36-37, REB)

I should note here that "king" was what Israel demanded for itself, too; and God, through Samuel, tried to dissuade them from that course. Centralizing of power in one person is not a doctrine of Christianity, or of Judaism. Teachers are one thing; rulers another.

Kings, you see, can only rule by violence. It's as necessary as the velvet glove. Even when the urge toward totality is tempered, it is never quenched. So the prophets came along, to remind the king that only violence tempered with justice, which mean care for the poorest, the weakest, the most vulnerable, was even close to being acceptable:

"These are the words of the Lord: Deal justly and fairly, rescue the victim from his oppressor; do not ill-treat or use violence towards the alien, the fatherless, and the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.

Woe betide him who builds his palace on unfairness
and completes its roof-chambers with injustice,
compelling his countrymen to work without payment,
giving them no wage for their labour!
Woe to him who says
'I shall build myself a spacious palace
with airy roof-chambers and windows set in it;
it will be panelled with cedar
and painted with vermilion.'
Though your cedar is so splendid,
does that prove you a king?
Think of your father: he ate and drank,
dealt justly and fairly; all went well with him.
He upheld the cause of the lowly and poor;
then all was well.
Did not this show he knew me?, says the Lord.
But your eyes and your heart are set on naught but gain,
set only on the innocent blood you can shed,
or the cruel acts of tyranny you perpetrate."--Jeremiah 22:3, 13-17, REB

Doesn't get much plainer than that: injustice is violence. Care for the poor and the lowly is justice, and is not violence. One way is totality, which is war. The other way is....

Well, Jesus demolished the pursuit of totality in a single command: "Love your enemy."

But to you listening I say: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you; pray for those who treat you spitefully. If anyone hits you on the cheek, offer the other also; if anyone takes your coat, let him have your shirt as well. Give to everyone who asks you; if anyone takes what is yours, do not demand it back." (Luke 6:27-30, REB).

And yes, I really think he meant it. No room for violence there, because violence, and war, are merely expressions of power, the instrument through which totality seeks to establish its presence, which presence is, by definition, absolute. But as this passage makes extremely clear, there is no power without resistance. A friend of mine has pointed out that when you strike someone's cheek in the Arabic countries, you do it with the back of your hand. To turn the other cheek is to offer them another strike, but the return blow comes with the open palm, the side used for greeting a loved one.

There is no power without resistance, no violence or war without cooperation. And before you ask: yes, I am that much of a pacifist. Or at least, I strive to be.

How to get there, well, that's a spiritual question. A topic I want to get to, before too long. But right now, I have papers to grade.

Sign o' the times

If there is a theme that I hear constantly from the left leaning political sites that I frequent so often, it is that the rhetoric of the religious "right," has highjacked Christianity in the same way that radical fundementalism in Islam has determined the public face of that faith. And just what are those who stand in the Christian faith and are appalled at the theology and praxis of this extremely shrill minority doing to counter this?

Well, voices are getting louder. And now, from a grassroots level (courtesy of kos), new attempts to take back the language of faith in a way that reflects the values I would like to see a political organization have. Behold, new signs in South Dakota.

Despite the unfortunate grammer and lack of visual impact, the signs are garnering a response.

"We have received some hate mail, but most of the feedback has been very positive."

Executive Director Roger Berggren noted, "I am not sure the 'Jesus cares for the poor' sign speaks to everybody, but it does speak to those Christian progressives that have spent the last two years walking though church seeing James Dobson fliers and hearing their Priests and Ministers tell them they cannot be a good Christian and a good Democrat at the same time."

Amy Crusinberry a student at Sioux Falls University said she loves the sign. After attending an english class where a student calmly got up and told the class "all Democrats are going to hell," she changed her mind about being silent on faith issues. "For me, a huge part of being a Democrat is changing people's narrow-minded views and I think it's possible. It's just going to take some people who are not afraid."

Will these signs have a positive impact? I really don't know. At this time, they are only going up in Souix Falls, SD, and it will be interesting to see what happens.

For what its worth, I doubt that this will change anyone's voting habits. This is all about re-framing and re-imaging the Democratic party-reaching back to rural, conservative roots. This is, again, using the language of faith to create an identity in people's minds.

With all respect to Ms. Crusinberry, I don't think that being a Democrat is about "changing people's narrow minded views." All indications are that there are plenty of those to go around at all points on the political spectrum. And I can gaurentee you that these signs won't do it.

What will the signs do? They will make those who have thought this way all along (like myself) say: "Yeah! Its about time I saw this!" It will make those who wouldn't beleive it, even if a voter registration card registering Jesus bar-Joseph as a Democrat fell out of the Shroud of Turin, say: "Damn, liars! They've got no right to use Jesus' name in an advertisement." For most people, the signs will barely impinge upon their conscious thought.

Nevertheless, I'm glad to see them. I will be even more glad when the actions of our representatives match the sentiments on the sign. If these signs in any way embolden people of faith to demand that their representatives live up to the standards to which they claim to adhere, that's a good thing. If these signs are the beginning of a true effort by the Democrats towards self-definition, and is accompanied by a firm rejection of the identity imposed upon them in the ongoing battle of the "frame," that is also a worthy effort.

Cynic that I am, I'm not too hopeful that business as usual is going to suffer a loss in profits. Idealist that I am, I am hopeful that by defining the Democratic party this way, we can actually become what we say we are.

Life in tension-is there any other way to live?

Totality and Infinity

Thinking of Levinas yesterday forced me to pull out my copy of Totality and Infinity again. Surprising what one has read and then forgotten:

Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality.

Does not lucidity, the mind's openness upon the true, consist in catching sight of the permanent possibility of war? The state of war suspends morality; it divests the eternal institutions and obligations of their eternity and rescinds ad interim the unconditional imperatives. In advance its shadow falls over the actions of men. War is not only one of the ordeals-the greatest-of which morality lives; it renders morality derisory. The art of foreseeing war and of winning it by every means-politics-is henceforth enjoined as the very exercise of reason. Politics is opposed to morality, as philosophy to naivete.

We do not need obscure fragments of Heraclitus to prove that being reveals itself as war to philosophical thought, that war does not only affect it as the most patent fact, but as the very patency, or the truth, of the real. In war reality rends the words and images that dissimulate it, to abtrude in its nudity and in its harshness. Harsh reality (this sounds like a pleonasm!), harsh object-lesson, at the very moment of its fulguration where the drapings of illusion burn war is produced as the pure experience of pure being. The ontological event that takes form in this black light is a casting into movement of beings hitherto anchored in their identity, a mobilization of absolutes, by an objective order from which there is no escape. The trial by force is the test of the real. But violence does not consist so much in injuring and annihilating persons as in interrupting their continuity, making them play roles in which they no longer recognize themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance, making them carry out actions that will destroy every possibility for action. Not only modern war but every war employs arms that turn against those who wield them. It establishes an order from which no one can keep his distance; nothing henceforth is exterior. War does not manifest exteriority and the other as other; it destroys the identity of the same.

The visage of being that shows itself in war is fixed in the concept of totality, which dominates Western philosophy. Individuals are reduced to being bearers of forces that command them unbeknown to themselves. The meaning of individuals (invisible outside of this totality) is derived from the totality. The unicity of each presents is incessantly sacrificed to a future appealed to to bring forth its objective meaning. For the ultimate meaning alone counts; the last act alone changes beings into themselves. They are what they will appear to be in the already plastic forms of the epic.

The moral consciousness can sustain the mocking gaze of the political man only if the certitude of peace dominates the evidence of war. Such a certitude is not obtained by a simple play of anthithesis. The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alinenated beings their lost liberty. For that a primordial and original relation with being is needed.

Morality will oppose politics in history and will have gone beyond the functions of prudence or the canons of the beautiful to proclaim itself unconditional and universal when the eschatology of messianic peace will have come to superpose itself upon the ontology of war. Philosophers distrust it. To be sure they profit from it to announce peace also; they deduce a final peace from the reason that plays out its stakes in ancient and present-day wars: they found morality on politics. But for them eschatology-a subjective and arbitrary divination of the future, the result of a revelation without evidences, tributary of faith-belongs naturally to Opinion.

However, the extraordinary phenomenon of prophetic eschatology certainly does not intend to win its civic rights within the domain of thought by being assimilated to a philosophical evidence. In religions and even in theologies eschatology, like an oracle, does indeed seem to "complete" philosophical evidences; its beliefs-conjectures mean to be more certain than the evidences-as though eschatology added information about the future by revealing the finality of being. But, when reduced to the evidences, eschatology would then already accept the ontology of totality issued from war. Its real import lies elsewhere. It does not introduce a teleological system into the totality; it does not consist in teaching the orientation of history. Eschatology institutes a relation with being beyond the totality or beyond history, and not with being beyond the past and the present. Not with the void that would surround the totality and where one could, arbitrarily, think what one likes, and thus promote the claims of a subjectivity free as the wind.
It is a relationship with a surplus always exterior to the totality, as though the objective totality did not fill out the true measure of being, as though another concept, the concept of infinity, were needed to express this transcendence with regard to totality, non-encompassable within a totality, and as primordial as totality.

--Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, tr. Alphonso Lingis (Duqeesne University Press 1969, pp. 21-22)


In a first pass at that, set aside the complex phenomenological ideas and focus strictly on the language you understand. French phenomenologists, especially, often manage to speak on two levels at once, and here Levinas is no exception. Taken at face value, this is a disquisition on war: on the centrality of the metaphor of war to human thought, human behavior, governance, international relations, etc. Apply some of these words to the present situation, and see if they don't elucidate the situation we find ourselves in:

"The state of war suspends morality; it divests the eternal institutions and obligations of their eternity and rescinds ad interim the unconditional imperatives." Or, for every difficult question, such as: did we really need to panic over a slightly off course Cessna?, the answer is: "We are at war."

"The trial by force is the trial of the real." Does anyone paying attention to the current international situation and U.S. foreign policy, really need that sentence explained?

"Not only modern war but every war employs arms that turn against those who wield them....War does not manifest exteriority and the other as other; it destroys the identity of the same." Or, as Molly Bingham put it: "Or do I need to start facing the reality that all I love and believe in is simply self-delusion?" And she despairs precisely because: "The meaning of individuals...is derived from the totality." If the totality is not what I was taught it was, then what is it? And who am I?

Enter morality; and through morality, infinity.

Benedictus

from Luke 1 (REB)

68 Praise to the Lord, the God of Israel
For he has turned to his people and set them free.

69 He has raised for us a strong deliverer from the house of his servant David.

70 So he promised: age after age he proclaimed by the lips of his holy prophets,

71 that he would deliver us from our enemies, out of the hands of all who hate us;

72 that, calling to mind his solemn covenant, he would deal mercifully with our fathers.

73 This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham,

74 to rescue us from enemy hands and set us free from fear, so that we might worship

75 in his presence in holiness and righteousness our whole life long.

76 And you, my child, will be called Prophet of the Most High, for you will be the Lord's forerunner, to prepare his way

77 and lead his people to a knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins:

78 for in the tender compassion of our God the dawn from heaven will break upon us,

79 to shine on those who live in darkness, under the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

"Can't We All Just Get Along?"

I am assuming most of the readers of this blog saw this earlier, at Eschaton (and thanks again to Attaturk for finding it). What intrigues me is not the factual allegations (about which many commentators at Eschaton tried to make hay), but the moral stance taken. It starts here:

But the basic point for this discussion is that we both thought it was really journalistically important to understand who it was who was resisting the presence of the foreign troops. If you didn't understand that, how could you report what was clearly becoming an "ongoing conflict?" And if you were reading the news in America, or Europe, how could you understand the full context of what was unfolding if what motivates the "other side" of the conflict is not understood, or even discussed?

One of the fundamental issues of morality (as opposed to ethics; we'll come back to the distinction later) is that morality tries to get us to see the other as wholly other: someone deserving of as much respect and regard as we claim for ourselves. The presumption there is that I know myself: but I only know you in relation to myself. Modern phenomenology (Levinas, Derrida, etc.), discusses this in the deceptively simple terms of "self" and "other." But it becomes complicated rapidly. In Totality and Infinity, for example, Levinas starts from "the claim that the Other is not knowable, but calls into question and challenges the complacency of the self through Desire, language, and the concern for justice." (I borrow this language to race on to the main points). The other is the one who is not Self; but the Self has a relationship to this other, a relationship that disturbs and creates at the same time, that is dialectical, in the nature of Buber's "I and Thou." The other cannot be "known," because any attempt by the self to know the other is essentially an attempt to subsume the other, to destroy its "otherness" and make it like the Self. In essence, then, all we can know is the "self." But this does not lead to despair; rather, it leads to morality, to the need to appreciate the inherent inability to know the other, and to define the relationship to the other so that self respects other as "other."

This is the issue of Ms. Bingham's "five lessons," and the way she arranges them is not accidental. The inability to accept the other as other, is: "Lesson One: Many journalists in Iraq could not, or would not, check their nationality or their own perspective at the door." Sticking strictly with Atterton's language a moment, the challenge to the complacency of the Self is: "Lesson Two: Our behavior as journalists has taught us very little. Just as in the lead up to the war in Iraq, questioning our government's decisions and claims and what it seeks to achieve is criticized as unpatriotic." This, of course, assumes a "national" self, a sense that "we" are "Americans" first, and individuals second. A curious reversal of attitude that we commonly identify with Europe or the "Old World" in general, although it becomes our default position when "overseas."

Lesson Three for Ms. Bingham is: "To seek to understand and represent to an American audience the reasons behind the Iraqi opposition is practically treasonous." Here the other is perceived straight up as the threat to Self. This is also the point where other, as Atterton says, "calls into question and challenges the complacency of the self through Desire...and the concern for justice." Levinas has a particular definition of Desire, but certainly there is almost a national desire in the U.S. to be loved and respected and accepted, a desire that is thwarted by the failure of Iraqis to welcome us with open arms and baskets of flowers. More deeply and importantly, though, is the question of justice. Americans take great pride in their sense of justice. But justice most essentially and importantly, as the Hebrew prophets proclaimed, demands recognition of the claims and value of the other, of the "otherness" of the other.

Lesson four, of course, leads from lesson three; but it takes us further and further away from any claims of justice: "Lesson Four: The gatekeepers -- by which I mean the editors, publishers and business sides of the media -- don't want their paper or their outlet to reveal that compelling narrative of why anyone would oppose the presence of American troops on their soil." The other, it seems, is not even to be given a voice, lest it call into question the absolute authority of the Self. But that authority is already called into question by the very presence of the other. Hiding from it doesn't make it go away.

"Lesson Five: What it's like to be afraid of your own country." The realization that your self is, itself, a construct, something created by tacit agreements among apparently like-minded people, who may not be so like-minded, after all. This is the starkly existential revelation of this article: that the world as we have explained it, is not the world as we live in it, after all. That our existence does not preclude the existence of others, and that those others are not exclusively foreign nationals. There is more than a touch of angst and existential despair in Ms. Bingham's closing words:

I still believe in that country that I love so dearly, the place I think of when the words "freedom," "opportunity," "liberty," "justice" and "equality" are spoken on lips, but I want it to be a country I see, hear and feel every day, not one that lives in my imagination.

It's time we looked in the mirror and began to take responsibility for what our country looks like, what our country is and how it behaves, rather than acting like victims before we actually are.

Or do I need to start facing the reality that all I love and believe in is simply self-delusion?

Peace by definition

I don’t really know what it means to bring “democracy” to the rest of the world. Is justice a commodity to be packaged and exported? Is freedom deliverable on weekends only for an extra charge? Does democracy really have anything at all to do with justice and freedom, or have we simply convinced ourselves that they are synonymous? Update: please read this by Molly Bingham if you haven't already.

“Peace,” is a word that rolls easily off the lips of our leaders and representatives to the world. It is a word rightly greeted with skepticism:

For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying ‘Peace, peace’, when there is no peace. Jeremiah 6: 13-14.

I have heard again lately the musing of how to withdraw from our conflicts and achieve peace with honor. What does peace look like?

Say ‘No’ to peace,
If what they mean by peace
Is the quiet misery of hunger,
The frozen stillness of fear,
The silence of broken spirits,
The unborn hopes of the oppressed.

Tell them that peace
Is the shouting of children at play,
The babble of tongues set free,
The thunder of dancing feet,
And a father’s voice singing.

Say ‘No’ to peace,
If what they mean by peace
Is a rampart of gleaming missiles,
The arming of distant wars,
Money at ease in its castle,
And grateful poor at the gate.

Tell them that peace
Is the hauling down of flags,
The forging of guns into ploughs,
The giving of fields to the landless,
And hunger a fading dream.
-Brian Wren

Isn’t peace, by definition, honorable? I guess it depends on your dictionary.

History is a dialogue between
Forward and backward
Going inevitably forward
By the misuse of words

Now the function of the word is:
To designate first the machine,
Then what the machine produces,
Then what the machine destroys.
Words show us these things not only in order to mean them
But in order to provoke them
And to incorporate us in their forward movement:
Doing, making, destroy or rather
Being done, being made being destroyed.
Such is history.

The forgotten principle is that the machine
Should always destroy the maker of the machine
Being more important than the maker
Insofar as man is more important than God.
Words also reflect this principle
Though they are meant to conceal it
From the ones who are too young to know.

Thus words have no essential meaning.
They are means of locomotion
From backward to forward
Along an infinite horizontal plane,
Created by the history which they themselves destroy.
They are the makers of our only reality
The backward-forward working of the web
The movement into the web.
-Thomas Merton.

We interrupt this diversion...

Interrupting the flow to say that Garrison Keillor has it just about almost exactly right:

I don't worry about the right-wingers on AM radio. They are talking to an audience that is stuck in rush-hour traffic, in whom road rage is mounting, and the talk shows divert their rage from the road to the liberal conspiracy against America. Instead of ramming your rear bumper, they get mad at Harry Reid. Yes, the wingers do harm, but the worst damage is done to their own followers, who are cheated of the sort of genuine experience that enables people to grow up.

I don't worry about the wingers on AM radio, either. I do worry about James Dobson and Pat Robertson, but only because they are trying to seize their moment before it passes, and do serious damage to the country, to me and mine. But the response is to make sure the Democrats know whose behind them, and whose side they are supposed to be on.

Grown ups will, eventually, take care of the rest.

All the Subtlety of a Flying Brick....

I had read Athenae's post earlier and may actually have been influenced by it, though in general I rather believe as I said that God manifests Him/Herself in our compassion for others....
Tena

Actually, Tena, I'm shamelessly using your words as an excuse to introduce an almost-wholly unrelated idea.

It's a thing I do.

But the connection between the thing and your intention is purely conjectural, if it's connected at all.
Rmj

Gravatar Well I sort of noticed that, Robert, but thought I might be missing something.
Tena

No; sometimes I'm no more subtle than a brick.

What I was leading to is the question of ethical systems and how they are constructed without resort to deity. It is possible, of course; it may even be laudatory. I'm not at all comfortable with the idea that an ethic is only "ethical," or at least efficacious, if it has a religious basis. But non-religious ethical systems can be critiqued from a religious point of view, which is why I find Mr. Wiegel's position interesting, even if I as yet know nothing about his particular position.

To approach this subject properly we would have to go back to the idea of 'ethic' itself, and that's almost impossible to do in a small space. "Ethic," as I've noted before, is simply a Greek word that means "custom." When Aristotle all but codified it for Western thought, he meant only to put the customs of Athens under the same analytical microscope as he put plays (Poetics), the non-physical world (Metaphysics), and many other topics to which we still owe Aristotle a debt for setting the ground rules of the discussion. Western philosophy really hasn't gotten very far beyond the discussions begun in Athens centuries ago, no matter how much the jargon or the conclusions seem to have wandered.

So in discussing ethics, we are discussing customs. It is really the overlay of the Hebraic model of society that "ethics" becomes synonymous with "morals," and a distortion of that model that "morals" becomes synonymous with what "thou shalt not" do. Aristotle's ethics began, really, more as what we could call "wisdom," today. He was trying to describe what should be done to live a happy life. The Mosaic law of the Hebrews had the same purpose; not to delimit pleasure and provide a set of rigidly enforceable rules, but to describe the way to a happy and fulfilling life. This is the idea caught up again in Christianity, or at least in the letters and gospels of the New Testament: that one might attain "life into the ages" (the more literal translation of the Greek "dzonae aionion"). Ethics (or morals) as a club to beat people down and chastise them for their shortcomings, is precisely the use of such rules that Jesus of Nazareth criticized. Of course, we all find it easier to be Pharisees than Christians, so the more things have changed, the more they have remained the same.

But Wiegel's argument seems to be based on the idea of a spiritual vision; and what intrigues me is his metaphor of the "cathedral" and the "cube." We imagine, in our historical ignorance, that the "Middle Ages" (even the name is derogatory; it literally means a "middle" time between the "civilization" of Rome and the Renaissance. All you need to know about the "Pax Romana" can be understood in the pillaging of Jerusalem, a slaughter conducted for purely political reasons. And the Renaissance gaves us, among other things, the Borgia family and Machiavelli. Hardly exemplars of moral probity and the sweet rule of reason. But I digress....) was a time of superstitious and ignorant barbarism, with rigid control of the a cowed society.

To which I answer, first: read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Pay attention in particular to two of the most famous tales: that of the Miller, and the Wife of Bath. Note who prevails in both of those stories: despite the image of a rigidly patriarchal society, it's not the men. Consider the history of the "Feast of Fools," a time when the most powerful religious rulers could be ruthlessly lampooned. Look again at Chaucer's Prologue, and notice how many of the "religious" are portrayed in honest, and far less than flattering, characters. Try to imagine anyone describing James Dobson or Pat Robertson in terms similar to Chaucer's Monk. Things haven't changed much, but the medieval church didn't supress Chaucer's poetry; a similar portrayal of Dobson in a work of similar power would raise such howls of protest today it would likely never see publication or release.

Small examples, but indicative. Much of the rigidity of the "Great Chain of Being" which defined European society actually came about as the application of that metaphor was coming to an end. Alexander Pope was a much more fervent defender of that Chain that Geoffrey Chaucer, even though Chaucer uses it to structure his Prologue. Nowadays most Britons speak of "the lucky sperm club." Most Americans still overlay "merit" on what they really consider the blessings of a "higher power," whether that power is deity or the "marketplace." We are actually more mired in our structures and strictures than much of Europe in the "Middle Ages."

Which gets us to ethics and utilitarianism. But that will have to come up in another post; I have to get some work done now.