Throwing in the kitchen sink (but not yet the towel)

A lot of random noise swirling around the case against Tom DeLay, much of it being generated by the criminal defendant himself. This Reuters article states, very clearly, just why that is:

DeLay was once one of the nation's most powerful politicians, nicknamed "The Hammer" for his iron-fisted control of House Republicans, but now is an accused felon fighting for his political life by casting himself as the victim of a Democratic plot.

I practiced law for a few years in Austin, and always had the highest respect for the judges. While Texas judges are elected, I never found one of them to be partisan in the court room. Austin was a small town, in many ways, and the lawyers all knew the judges, and basically elected the judges (almost no one outside of the lawyers paid attention to who the judges were on the ballot). I think Bob Perkins was on the bench when I was there. In any case, this certainly sounds like the kind of response I would expect from any judge faced with this kind of accusation of bias:

DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin, one of Texas' most prominent defense attorneys, told reporters after the hearing that Perkins had contributed to MoveOn.org and to Democratic candidates since the case came into his court a year ago.

DeGuerin told Perkins that MoveOn.org was selling T-shirts of DeLay's mug shot taken after he turned himself in on Thursday. DeLay, who was fingerprinted and put up bail of $10,000, is smiling broadly in the mug shot.

"I have never seen that T-shirt, number one. Number two, I haven't bought it. Number three, the last time I contributed to MoveOn that I know of was prior to the November election last year when they were primarily helping Senator Kerry," Perkins said.

DeGuerin is trying this case in the press. The case against his client is this:

[DeLay] and colleagues Jim Ellis and John Colyandro have been indicted by state grand juries in Austin for conspiracy and money laundering in a campaign-finance scheme conducted through DeLay's political action committee.

They are accused of laundering $190,000 in corporate campaign contributions through the Republican National Committee for distribution to Republican candidates for the Texas Legislature. Texas law forbids the use of corporate money in political campaigns.

DeLay's defense is not that these actions didn't take place, but that this is not illegal, because the state law banning such contributions, is unconstitutional.

He wants to get off on a "technicality," in other words. In criminal law, "technicalities" only exist when a poor person uses them. When the rich and powerful use them, they are seeking "justice." But I digress.

DeLay's defense, by and large, hinges on a ruling that the law under which he is charged cannot be enforced. That challenge is pending in the Texas appellate courts, which means the issue may not be decided until the U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to rule on the matter (whether that is even feasible, I don't know, but I presume the challenge in on First Amendment grounds, which would certainly allow the Federal courts to get involved). There are also reports that the House wants this matter resolved by January. GOP members of the House reportedly want a "permanent" leader in place for the 2006 elections, and DeLay can't take that position as long as a trial is pending.

Which would mean DeLay is caught between a rock and a hard place. If the appellate process moves slowly, this matter will be in the court for years. Speaking of the appellate process, that is the reason for all of the pre-trial activitiy in this case. DeLay cannot complain on appeal about something done at the trial court level if he didn't try to get it done, and his request was denied. What he's engaging here, is the classic "kitchen sink" defense. If he doesn't ask for it now, he can't complain later that he didn't get it.

But, as this New York Times article makes clear, everything DeGuerin and Perkins are quoted as saying, was said not for the press, but in open court. Wheich tells me DeLay's defense is weak indeed, because MoveOn is right:

MoveOn.org quickly denied that it had been selling DeLay T-shirts. "DeGuerin has either bad information or lied in court," said Tom Matzzie, the group's Washington director. "Americans are sick of the corruption in Congress and think it will be a better place without Tom DeLay."

And Congress may soon be without Tom DeLay; at least as Majority leader.

Adding Suburban Guerilla to the Blogroll

Susie Madrak has a post at Suburban Guerilla that is worth reading, if you haven't found it at Rude Pundit already. She has a an e-mail message that was posted there, along with her own introduction. I'll give you what she says, and if that interests you, you can read the rest for yourself:

I was just saying this about Patrick Fitzgerald at DL the other night – that there’s no one more dangerous than someone who went to Catholic school and took it seriously. You wouldn’t believe how many progressive activists my high school class turned out.

She also notes an interview with Brent Scowcroft (a/k/a/ Poppy's foreign policy mouthpiece) is going to be published soon in the "New Yorker." The advance word is that the article will detail what "turned Brent Scowcroft against this Bush administration."

I'd say the White House is right to be worried.

For want of a blue guitar

"Erin Brockovich." "North Country." "Silkwood." "Norma Rae."

Hollywood likes to make movies about underdogs, especially where laborers are involved; and corporations; and corporate secrets. We like these movies. We like to see individuals struggle against impossible odds and defeat the system and struggle like heroes in quests for the holy grail, the silver bullet, the smoking gun, the stake through the heart of the vampiric blood-sucking monster ghoul corporation.

We like to take the side of labor, of the working man and woman; so long as it doesn't cost us anything. So long as the costs don't go up and we aren't inconvenienced. We like to blame, them, too, for their problems. Like the report on NPR about the UAW, where the reporter stated as fact that the UAW "leveraged" it's membership into the middle class with "fat contracts" in the '70's, and now their members are suffering because GM and Delphi can't pay their insuranc premiums, can't afford the labor costs. No mention of the low wages in China, or the government health care provided in almost every industrialized country in the world but this one. Just an underlying message that laborers don't deserve to be middle class; that the first people who deserve the cuts are the people on the assembly line because, after all, why should laborers be "middle class"?

We're schizophrenic about labor. We don't want to honor it, because labor is expensive; because money is what matters. And so, while we like movies like "Erin Brockovich" or "North Country" or "Norma Rae," we never ask why the system is like this, and why we put up with it.

Studs Terkel makes us wonder why we tolerate it. He makes us celebrate people who didn't put up with it, who fought it all their lives, and took another route, and went another way, and were never heard from, and probably never won. Movies don't do that.

Movies tell us stories of people who made a difference. Or who should have. Even if they didn't; even if nothing really changed and they really didn't do anything. So long as it makes a soothing melodrama. And we never consider that it's a corporation that brings it to us; and a corporation that sells it to us; and a corporation that puts it on cable; and on DVD.

We like the stories of the underdog, the determined individual who sacrificed almost everything for a victory, for a certain outcome, for the glory we know is coming at the end of 90 minutes. Sometimes I think we like it because it makes us think a victory is possible, somewhere, somehow, for someone.

Sometimes I think we like it because it means someone else will do it, and we won't have to.

There is a lot of evil out there; much of it caused by corporations, by greed, by failing to see people as human beings, as individuals. And the question is not: how do we defeat it. The question is: why do we participate in it?

Dom Crossan made me think about that question in seminary. Only the poor, he insisted, are innocent. Only the destitute are without fault. "Easy for him to say," I thought. He had a summer house, and a good income. But it didn't make what he said, any less true.

Only the poor are innocent. Katrina exposed us to that. But we don't want to pay the price for such innocence. We don't want to accept our responsibility for things as they are.

Opening boxes at the store

which gives me time for only two quick observations.

John Gibson's new book is here: The WAR on Christmas, which tells me that: "A free expression of Christmas is fast becoming impossible." Apparently the big shopping center nearby doesn't know this yet; their Christmas decorations are already out.

And Al Franken's new book is in, too: The Truth (with Jokes). Also sampling the back cover, we find this: "From what I understand, if you cut out all the passages in the Bible where Jesus talks about the poor, about helping out the least among us, you'd have the perfect container to smuggle Rush Limbaugh's drugs in."

"The real hopelessness that is driving this strike

at Guantanmo is that they [the 'detainees'] have no idea when, if ever, justice will be done for them."

Julia Tarver, attorney with the New York City-based law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and cooperating counsel with the Center for Constitutional Rights, on DemocracyNow!

The torture at Gitmo continues. As does the silence of the U.S. Press.

The Washington Post doesn't seem to have an article since September 13th.

NPR's last story was on September 14th.

CNN's last story seems to have been on October 7th.

UPI has a report dated October 19th, about one detainee being "hospitalized."

ABCNews has a report from yesterday that leads with the denial of abuse. It's an AP report, the same one the New York Times ran yesterday. The article leas with the denial, and notes several paragraphs down that it is a response to affidavits released by a federal court Thursday.

Xinhuanet leads with the affidavits, and includes Dr. Moore's denial after.

We report. You decide. "We don't report, so you don't have to decide."

"We Can't Put it Together; It Is Together"

Much of our expectation about life and even reality is shaped by our culture. Culturally, we are Western Europeans, which means we are shaped fundamentally by Hellenistic reasoning. And the basic construct of reality the Hellenes accepted, was that creation arose from chaos, and that only unstinting efforts kept chaos from re-emerging and destroying all order again.

This is the reason we think, if we do, of life or even the cosmos as a "struggle between good and evil." This is the reason we think that, without the imposition of our will in the world, reason or order or good, will fail. This is the reason people so frequently, and so willingly, mis-read the teachings and the traditions of Judaism and Christianity.

DAS pointed out this, in response to my post about "Acts of God:"

I think it was in a recent issue of the Economist they pointed to a UN study which indicated that floods are really no worse geographically than they used to be. The big difference is that cities on high ground right by rivers which otherwise have floodplains (which are good places for cities to be -- near flood-born fertile soil to provide enough crops to feed them, near to rivers to transport goods, etc) have now expanded, because of population pressures, into the floodplains themselves. And, it is the poor who are squeezed into the floodplains.

If people had more hope beyond having enough kids that one was likely to prosper, we would not have these sorts of population pressures which lead to wars, people dying in floods, etc.

Of course, ecological devistation is a factor, in spite of what the UN report said.

In general, though, it is amazing ... given an allegorical interpretation of passages in the Torah and Talmud about the plagues that will befall a land if justice is not served, wealth is not properly distributed and the land is not properly cared for, how much God has warned us of what "acts of God" will befall us if we do not follow God's law.

What is a shame is how the very people who claim to be the guardians of morality are often the ones supporting ruinious policies that go against God's explicit laws. Didn't Jesus have a name for these people? Oh yes ... hypocrites!

There it is, in a nutshell: even if you set aside the very modern question of faith, Christianity and Judaism aren't rooted in a struggle with nature, or each of us with one another: they are rooted in the struggle with our nature. It is our selfishness which must be overcome, and "the passages in the Torah and the Talmud" teach us, if we will listen. And that is the true basis of religion, and belief: not mythology, not the extension of will in the world Both of those explanations of religion are rooted in 19th century critiques of religion, not of human religious activity. And that is the irony of Christian fundamentalism: although it is a product of the 20th century, it is rooted in the religious critiques of the 19th century and so created and forever bound to that which it seeks to destroy.

If you see creation as fundamentally chaos, then perhaps reason is your only hope for salvation. However, if you see creation as fundamentally good, then perhaps the way to have life "into the ages," is to consider the best ways we can care for one another. Because "acts of God" will continue to happen; and they will continue to plague us, if we don't learn the lessons about our own nature that are offered to us.

The trial by press release continues

and the motive goes public:

The defense later Thursday asked Judge Bob Perkins to step aside and for the trial to be moved out of Travis County. Perkins has donated to causes and people opposed to DeLay, and his impartiality might be questioned, the motion said.

The motion listed 34 contributions from Perkins, which included donations to John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004; MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group; and national, state and local Democratic committees.

Earle said he would oppose the motion to move the trial, and criticized the request that the judge step aside.

"The logic behind the defendant's motion to recuse Judge Perkins would mean that no criminal defendant could be tried in a court presided over by a judge who did not belong to the defendant's poltical party," Earle said in a statement.

The change-of-venue motion cited media attention and noted that Austin, widely perceived as a liberal town, is "one of the last enclaves of the Democratic Party in Texas."

DeLay had been expected to turn himself in in his home county outside Houston, Fort Bend, where a horde of reporters awaited. But under Texas law, he could check in anywhere in the state.

DeGuerin said he and DeLay went to the sheriff's office in Houston because it was convenient and because "I wanted to avoid the circus."

"That's what Ronnie (Earle) wanted. He wanted a perp walk and we did not want to do it," the defense attorney said.

How much longer is DeLay's lawyer gonna cry "wolf"?

The curious results

of a "real" on-line poll. Published in the Wall Street Journal, no less.

The online survey of 2,242 U.S. adults found an overwhelming majority (96%) of Americans "strongly" or "somewhat" favor Medicare, the medical assistance program for the elderly and disabled, while 91% say they support Medicaid, the program to assist people with very low incomes.

The poll also showed high support for policies or practices that are considered more controversial. Eighty-seven percent of those polled say they support funding of international HIV prevention and treatment programs, while 75% favor universal health insurance, compared with 17% who oppose it. Another 70% support embryonic stem-cell research, compared with about 19% who oppose it.

If these results could be validated by subsequent polls, only two questions would be left:

(1) Did Katrina shake things up more than anyone has yet realized? and

(2) When do we get our representative democracy back?

So, the first question is

how "top" is "top"?

"There was a systematic failure at all levels of government to understand the magnitude of the situation," Bahamonde testified. "The leadership from top down in our agency is unprepared and out of touch."

It certainly isn't meant to reach to the Secretary of Homeland Security:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff defended his actions before and after Hurricane Katrina, telling lawmakers Wednesday he relied on Federal Emergency Management Agency experts with decades of experience in hurricane response.

"I'm not a hurricane expert," Chertoff said several times in responding to criticisms from members of a special House panel set up to investigate the dismal federal response to Katrina, which killed more than 1,200 people, flooded New Orleans and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands.

Marty Bahamonde was sent to New Orleans by Brown to coordinate FEMA's response. Bahamonde was the only FEMA official on the scene until August 30.

As Katrina's outer bands began drenching the city Aug. 28, Bahamonde sent an e-mail to Deborah Wing, a FEMA response specialist. He wrote: "Everyone is soaked. This is going to get ugly real fast."

Subsequent e-mails told of an increasingly desperate situation at the New Orleans Superdome, where tens of thousands of evacuees were staying. Bahamonde spent two nights there with the evacuees.

On Aug. 31, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown to tell him that thousands of evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that "estimates are many will die within hours."

"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical," Bahamonde wrote. "The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out."

A short time later, Brown's press secretary, Sharon Worthy, wrote colleagues to complain that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. "He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes," Worthy wrote.

"Restaurants are getting busy," she said. "We now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise (sic), followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you."

In an Aug. 29 phone call to Brown informing him that the first levee had failed, Bahamonde said he asked for guidance but did not get a response.

"He just said, 'Thank you,' and that he was going to call the White House," Bahamonde said.

Bahamonde's response (to a co-worker, not "Brownie"; and, as Jon Stewart says, "We are not making this up"):

"OH MY GOD!!!!!!!" Bahamonde messaged the co-worker. "I just ate an MRE" — military rations — "and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends so I understand her concern about busy restaurants."

(and credit to greatscat for the catch!)

But wait, as the ads say, there's more:

In e-mails, Bahamonde described to his bosses a chaotic situation at the Superdome. Bahamonde noted also that local officials were asking for toilet paper, a sign that supplies were lacking at the shelter.

"Issues developing at the Superdome. The medical staff at the dome says they will run out of oxygen in about two hours and are looking for alternative oxygen," Bahamonde wrote regional director David Passey on Aug. 28.

Bahamonde said he was stunned that FEMA officials responded by continuing to send truckloads of evacuees to the Superdome for two more days even though they knew supplies were in short supply.

"I thought it amazing," he said. "I believed at the time and still do today, that I was confirming the worst-case scenario that everyone had always talked about regarding New Orleans."

Only because Brownie and Chertoff were in charge; and W. was the President. As for Chertoff's denial of responsibility: this is real simple. You take authority over the agency, you are responsible for what it does. The people you relied on failed you? You still take responsibility. Nobody cares whether or not your an expert in hurricanes, or earthquakes, or quoits. What they expect is that you belly up to the bar and take it like a man. You're the boss. If it goes well, you get the credit. If it goes wrong, you take the blame.

The most serious problem in this country today is the problem of responsibility. Nobody wants to take it.

Nobody. Tom DeLay blames Ronnie Earle. Chertoff blames "Brownie." Bush blames everybody. But no one is in charge, because no one is responsible for what happens.

It's like everything is just an "Act of God." And who are you gonna blame then?

Reading between the lines

A minor point, since Holden actually brought it to my attention, but read this AP article carefully, and what do you see?

DeLay has denied wrongdoing and accused Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle — a Democrat — of having partisan motives. Earle has denied the accusation. Earle did not ask for the arrest warrant for DeLay but approved the court's request, his office said Wednesday.

"What we're trying to avoid is Ronnie Earle having him taken down in handcuffs, and fingerprinted and photographed," DeGuerin said last month. "That's uncalled for, and I don't think that's going to happen."

Who is this "we" DeGuerin mentions? Does he have a mouse in his pocket?

As Holden's post notes:

State District Judge Bob Perkins on Wednesday issued an arrest warrant for the former U.S. House majority leader that allows DeLay to be booked in any Texas county, including in his hometown of Sugar Land, away from the media throng expected in Austin.

Until Wednesday's warrant was issued, DeLay had only been summoned to appear in 331st District Court at 9 a.m. Friday. The warrant, which requires a defendants to be booked, then could have been issued in court that day, and DeLay would have gone downstairs to be photographed and fingerprinted on the first floor of the Travis County Criminal Justice Center. The booking room has a wall of windows that would have allowed the news media to record the moment.

DeLay is having a harder and harder time making his case that this is all simply politics by other means.

An object lesson

in the problem of "faith based charities":

When Katrina evacuees started arriving from New Orleans, St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Sunnyside opened its doors even though it wasn't a designated Red Cross shelter.

Since then, it has provided about 60 evacuees with three meals a day, transportation and a place to stay.

But neither the Federal Emergency Management Agency nor local government has reimbursed the small church for the $12,000 spent on evacuee care.

At least 125 local churches and nonprofit agencies find themselves in similar predicaments. After taking in evacuees, they are worried that they do not have enough money in reserve to pay for operating the shelters as well as ongoing monthly expenses.

The situation is so dire for some that they are worried about utilities being shut off, said a spokesman for a church coalition.

They point the finger at FEMA, saying it has set up a reimbursement process rife with bottlenecks and red tape.

"We're doing this because we're Christian and it's the right thing to do," said Shirley King, assistant manager of St. Paul's activity center, site of the shelter. "The mega churches get all the recognition. What about the little churches that are spending all their resources?"

FEMA spokesman Charles Henderson said it has established a reimbursement procedure that requires nonprofits to verify expenses and obtain FEMA disaster-relief numbers or Social Security numbers for evacuees.

The process isn't meant to be onerous but does have some built-in safeguards.

This is precisely what most churches cannot afford to do: they cannot afford to front the costs of taking care of others, especially on the scale of a disaster like Hurricane Katrina. Now, sadly, they will find themselves caught in a web of promises from Bush, who promoted "faith based charities," and the bureaucratic reality of accounting for public monies and how those are spent. FEMA promises money will be allocated; the County promises money will come in two to four weeks. And this all sounds very familiar:

The Rev. D.Z. Cofield, a spokesman for Healing Hands, a coalition of about 25 churches formed to help Katrina victims, said he has been hearing for some time that reimbursements will arrive in several weeks.

Meanwhile, employees at small churches and nonprofits are wondering whether they will have electricity the next day, he said.

"Many of them have seen utility bills quadruple in a month," said Cofield, pastor of Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church, which runs a distribution center for donated goods.

Ultimately, it is a question of responsibility. Local churches responded to an overwhelming crisis, to a human need. Many which did not qualify as shelters under Red Cross guidelines (which automatically qualifies them for FEMA funds), helped anyway. Now, the issue is: who should pay? The small church, or the federal government? And should it be such a bureaucratic nightmare?

Nonprofit administrators were anxious enough about the reimbursement issue to arrange a meeting with local and FEMA officials at the County Administration Building last week.

FEMA officials advised them to submit requests to the county but added that nonprofits should cover all bases by sending a similar submission to the state Division of Emergency Management.

Cofield said many administrators and pastors are becoming impatient because the submission process keeps changing.

And because of these problems, some churches are not offering any further shelter.

As any pastor knows, faith alone doesn't pay the bills.

Hallowe'en and other urban legends

I was going to go to Snopes anyway, to find something about the topic of "poisoned candy" and "razor bladed apples" with regard to Hallowe'en. But on the way there, I found this, which, as G. B. Shaw would say, is too true to be good.

Right. Well, I'd mentioned before the horror some in this country have for Halloween. I don't know how far back this goes; certainly Ray Bradbury was writing about it during my childhood ("Usher II" and "Pillar of Fire" being two examples that come to mind), but his childhood seems to have been remarkably untainted by concerns with "satanic practices" or even poisoned candy associated with the holiday. So perhaps the paranoia is of a more recent vintage. It certainly seems to be connected more with the fundamentalist fantasies of Jack Chick than anything in the real world. Which I suspect is the root of the antipathy and fear this holiday seems to produce: that is, it has an anti-Roman Catholic root.

Per New Advent, the on-line Catholic encyclopedia (which I tend to take as authoritative in these matters), Hallowe'en is the vigil for All Saint's Day. According to American Catholic.org, the holiday is connected to Christianity through the Celtic church. That much is largely a familiar story, although I didn't credit the Romans enough in this connection. They adopted the Celtic festival of Samhain into their own feasts and celebrations, which would explain why it spread across Europe and came to America. But it also explains the antipathy it would generate among some Protestants.

I have two good books on Christmas, and I often blur the information from them in memory. One is Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas, and the other is Penne Restad's Christmas in America. But from one of those two excellent histories I know that Christmas was banned by the Puritans in America, in large part because it was "too Papist." Hallowe'en, of course, never had such explicitly Christian trappings as Christmas (even the "-mas" on the end was too much for American Puritans, as it is simply a corruption of the Latin "mass."), but of late it has come in for criticism remarkably similar to the diatribes against Christmas that resounded in this country until, well, until Clement Moore's "The Night Before Christmas."

Which is another story.

The celebration of the dead that is part of Hallowe'en and Samhain before it was, apparently, a celebration of life, not morbidity (much like the Mexican Dios de los Muertos, another festival Bradbury was writing about long before Mexican culture reached the tipping point in American culture). The Celtic (pre-Christian) belief was that the souls of the departed were always near, and that certain places ('holy ground') were "thin places" where the two worlds, theirs and ours, touched. Samhain was a time, like such places, when the "veil" was "thin," and so ancestors could visit and be near. It wasn't a time of horror (pace "Bald Mountain") but of comfort. (Indeed, a good argument can be made that much of the "horror" about ghosts and "evil spirits" is a paradoxical result of Romantic attempts to preserve the very folklore from which those stories arise. Divorced from its communal tap root, such stories soon withered into nightmare and terror; but that's also another story).

But now, of course, the day is a night, and the night is a celebration of candy and consumerism; and the fear, is the fear of the Other. Which is pretty well covered in these two Snopes articles: one about "poisoned candy," the other about "razor bladed apples." I'm still inclined to more skepticism about the story than Snopes is; the razor blades stories seem to be justified, per Snopes, on the basis of news reports, the same kind of reports that spread spurious fears of poisoned candy every year.

If I was of a more cynical turn of mind, I'd say such things were orchestrated by candy manufacturers, working assiduously to convince us that pre-packaged candy (despite the case of Timothy O'Brien and Tylenol) is safer than homemade goodies, or healthy food like apples, for that matter. I can remember houses in my childhood neighborhood where the "treats" were homemade: candy apples, popcorn balls, cookies, brownies, etc. Today, no parent would let their child keep such items: they would be discarded immediately. And no one would give them out, for fear of becoming a pariah within minutes, as word spread literally on the street about the suspicious goodies. I even remember houses where people turned rooms into Halloween chambers and invited children in to enjoy the atmosphere and take food off plates. Again, no one would let their child cross that threshold today.

Which is partly a product of our modern era, with stories of kidnappings on street corners (although the number of children taken by strangers is probably lower than the number struck by lightning or meteors), and partly a product of the drumbeat of fears about the "satanic" nature of the holiday. And it's all a pity: the Hallowe'en of Bradbury's childhood memories is almost as foreign to us now as the Christmas of Dicken's memories.

And we are all, as a culture, poorer for that loss.

Speaking of apples, corps, and corpses....

This is starting to gather attention. I heard this morning on NPR "headlines" (so no link at npr.org) that Australian TV had broadcast a film showing American troops burning bodies in Afghanistan (desecrationof a corpse, apparently, for Islam). Here is the story at the Guardian, and here's the AP version at ABCNews.

This is the basic story, per AP:

In the footage, which was seen by the AP, two soldiers who spoke with American accents later read taunting messages that the SBS said were broadcast to the village, which was believed to be harboring Taliban soldiers.

Dupont said the soldiers responsible for the taunting messages were part of a U.S. Army psychological operations unit.

The U.S. military said the Army Criminal Investigation Division had opened an investigation into alleged misconduct that included "the burning of dead enemy combatant bodies under inappropriate circumstances."

"This alleged action is repugnant to our common values," Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya said in a statement from the U.S. base in Bagram, Afghanistan. "This command takes all allegations of misconduct or inappropriate behavior seriously and has directed an investigation into circumstances surrounding this allegation."

Islamic clerics warned protests may break out.

"This is against Islam. Afghans will be shocked by this news. It is so humiliating," said Faiz Mohammed, a Muslim leader. "There are very, very dangerous consequences from this. People will be very angry."

Atrios (first link above) has the link to the response by CENTCOM.

Guardian credits AP as well, but gives us a bit more of the story (which says as much about ABC as it does about the U.S. military):

According to a transcript of the television program, the broadcast by soldiers from the psychological operations unit called the Taliban ``cowardly dogs.''

``You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve their bodies,'' said one message, according to the transcript.

Muslims in Afghanistan face west, toward Mecca, when they pray. When the dead are buried, their heads point to the north, their feet to the south, and just their faces toward Mecca.

Cremation of bodies is not part of Islamic tradition, which calls for remains to be washed, prayed over, wrapped in white cloth and buried within 24 hours.

The video did not show the messages being broadcast, though it did show some military vehicles were fitted with speakers and playing loud music.

Dupont told the AP the messages had been broadcast in the local dialect but were translated into English for him by members of the Army psychological operations unit.

He declined to provide further information.

Dupont said the soldiers who burned the bodies said they did so for hygiene reasons. However, Dupont said the incendiary messages later broadcast by the U.S. army psychological operations unit indicated they were aware that the cremation would be perceived as a desecration.

``They used that as a psychological warfare, I guess you'd call it. They used the fact that the Taliban were burned facing west (toward Mecca),'' Dupont told SBS. ``They deliberately wanted to incite that much anger from the Taliban so the Taliban could attack them. ... That's the only way they can find them.''

The SBS report suggested the deliberate burning of bodies could violate the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of enemy remains in wartime. Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers must ensure that the ``dead are honorably interred, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged.''

Furthermore, the rules state that bodies should not be cremated, ``except for imperative reasons of hygiene or for motives based on the religion of the deceased.''

Of course, at this point, it's really just a matter of: "The more things change, the more they remain the same."

UPDATE: More on this, via Magpieblog. And there is a print article here from SBS in Australia(the TV station which broadcast the footage), which adds this to the tale:

The footage showed two US soldiers reading two messages from a notebook that they said had been broadcast earlier.

"Attention Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs," one message said.

"You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be."

Another stated: "You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Talibs but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are."

The Geneva Convention requires soldiers to dispose of war dead in an honourable fashion and "if possible, according to the rites of the religion to which the deceased belonged".

The transcript of the SBS story is linked here, along with a link to the video. This conclusion to the report pretty much says it all (and say much more than I've ever heard from any U.S. news source):

Unable to travel far from their fortified bases, the troops are resupplied and flown in and out on choppers. One soldier told me he felt like he was fighting on the moon.

Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, recently told journalists he didn't think there was a need for US military activity in Afghanistan any longer and operations such as house searches and air strikes should be curtailed.

But as this footage from photojournalist Stephen Dupont reveals, the US-led operations are still being carried out. In the south, where these troops are based, more than two dozen Afghan soldiers, 18 police, two US soldiers and five aid workers have been killed in the last fortnight.

The response US troops are provoking with their psychological warfare is set to continue well into the future and Australian troops operating from the same base as these men will also be in the firing line.

Having said that, I can only note that the NYTimes is actually on this story, and links it's on-line report to the SBS website. The Times adds still more to what we know:

According to the program's translation of the taunts, which were delivered in the local language by American forces on the scene, a soldier identified as Sgt. Jim Baker, said: "You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve the bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be."

....
Several senior officials said preliminary indications suggested that the video and the program's translation were accurate, and that the incident posed the potential to do further harm in the Islamic world to the image of the United States, already badly tarnished by the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.

The reference to the bodies "facing west" appeared to be a deliberate mocking of the Islamic requirement to face Mecca during prayers. The Muslim faith prohibits cremation and holds respect of the body of the dead as a central tenet.

The American soldiers told a freelance photojournalist who recorded the incident that they burned the bodies for hygienic reasons, he said in an interview in the studios of the SBS program "Dateline."

And why are the soldiers doing this?

In the interview with the producers, Mr. Dupont explained that the American soldiers had been trying to bait the Taliban fighters to shoot at them. "They want the Taliban to fight them because they can't find them otherwise."

But, as Dr. Rice told the Senate committee yesterday: Remain calm; all is well.

Meanwhile, reality is busting out all over.

Bobbing for Apples

The "rotten apples" meme has always been a way to dodge responsibility. But it's still true: a fish rots from the head, and a bureaucracy, especially one as structured as the U.S. military, does not tolerate "rogue elements."

"Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January," has decided to go public with his criticisms of the Bush Administration. As the article notes, this is "the harshest attack on the administration by a former senior official since criticisms by Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism czar, and Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary, early last year."

Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.

“He's not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world's most loyal soldier."

That sentence raises two issues simultaneously. One: loyal soldiers do what they are told. They don't go "rogue," and decide on their own to torture, abuse, and violate other human beings. My Lai was not a random incident or a matter of demonic possession. Neither is Abu Ghraib, or Gitmo. The other issue: what are the proper limits of loyalty? Doesn't the kind of loyalty Colin Powell is displaying border on the kind justly denounced at Nuremberg? At some point morality has to trump even the most loyal government employee, which, after all, is all a soldier truly is. They are not the government, nor the embodiment of the ideals of that government or its people. They are individuals, responsible for their actions, and responsible to others for the evil they see, and refuse to expose.

As Colonel Wilkerson says:

The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example” of the
decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect
giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don't have this kind
of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.”

He doesn't think much of Condoleezza Rice, either:

Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of
state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the
best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy
with the president”.

Yesterday Secretary Rice refused to rule out the possibility of going to war with Syria. And, given the undeniable evidence of Abu Ghraib and of Gitmo (it may be in Cuba, but it affects Iraq and Afghanistan, where the prisoners come from), how can this statement be interpreted as anything but a lie?

"I have said our strategy is to clear, hold and build," Ms. Rice said. "The enemy's strategy is to infect, terrorize and pull down." She explained that this meant efforts to clear out insurgents' sanctuaries, occupy these areas with Iraqi and other forces and build a political consensus while reconstructing the country.

The abuses of which our military stands guilty can only be defined as: "infect, terrorize, and pull down."

But to say that, would be to take responsibility; and we can't let that happen. We have to remain loyal to our highest ideals.

Even as we trample them beneath our feet.

Act of God?

Obviously, when we say that, we mean it in the legal sense: an act beyond the control or responsibility of any person or persons. An act for which, truly, no negligence to human agency (much less intent), can be ascribed.

Of course, as we have learned (and may learn again with Hurricane Wilma), it is much less the "act of God" itself that is the problem: it is the man-made structures in the way. Earthquakes are the simplest example. Earthquakes themselves are not necessarily deadly: it is, by and large, the falling buildings that kill people. Obviously, you say. But do the buildings have to fall? Can they be built to withstand most expected quakes, and sustain less damage in serious tremors? Can they, in other words, be prepared for the inevitable?

The same can be asked of hurricane prone areas. I seem to recall a story (apocryphal?) of a house in Florida that withstood Andrew (if I recall correctly, the hurricane that marched twice across Florida, from first one side and then the ohter, and obliterated trailer parks on the way). It was an old house, built to withstand hurricanes, and by George, it did.

As Michael Lewis observed in the NYT Magazine, parts of New Orleans were not, in fact, below sea level. Earlier generations knew that, because the oldest houses, and much of the French Quarter and Garden District, stayed dry. Disasters do not always have to be disastrous. "Acts of God" are a given. It is how we, the human agents, prepare for and respond to them, that determines the fate of those affected by the storm, the tornado, the earthquake (and why do tornadoes like trailer parks so much?)

Which brings me, circuitously, to Holden's observation. It seems that "No Child Left Behind" has been a complete failure:

Despite a new federal educational testing law championed by the Bush administration, scores among fourth and eighth graders failed to show any improvements in reading, and showed only slow gains in math nationally during the past two years, according to a study released today.

....
There is no rationale on eighth-grade reading other than we are not making progress," said Darvin M. Winick, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the testing.

But according to our President?

This is an encouraging report....It shows that a system that measures and focuses on every child is a system that can help us, and achieve a goal that we really want in America, and that is every child learning to read and no child -- and add and subtract, and no child being left behind.....No Child Left Behind is working.

Now, before you bang your head against a wall, consider: the article leads with that opening paragraph. It later gives the President's response, one so clearly at odds with reality as to be ludicrous.

But that might not have been the case only a few months ago.

Hurricane Katrina changed everything. It took an "Act of God" to do it, but the truth about our government and those who lead it, may finally be undeniable to all but the most partisan supporters of the President.

Ironic, no?

Justice and the Kingdom

Dostoevsky's question is a product of 19th century Europe. And the curious thing about the 19th century concern with "losing God" and so "losing control," is that concern focusses on power, not on justice.

You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were all aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry; my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children orphans. If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall exact interest from them. If you take your neighbor's cloak in pawn, you shall restore it before the sun goes down; for it may be your neighbor's only clothing to use as cover; in what else shall that person sleep? And if you neighbor cries out to me, I will listen, for I am compassionate. Exodus 22:21-27)

Not too compassionate, you might think, since God promises to kill those who abuse the widow and the orphan. But that sentence is the clue to God's audience: the men, the ones with the power. Notice the symmetry of the punishment: "your wives shall become widows and your children orphans." And maybe then, they'll get better treatment, because they are a specially protected class, under God.

We also have to keep in mind that this is covenantal language, part of the law of Israel, the bond made between Israel and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Europe tried to lay claim to that privileged status more than once, but no European country ever tried to live under the laws of Moses.

The other point here is that the power rests in God, but God recognizes the power men had in Israeli society. God doesn't supplant that power; God directs it, to be used to care for and protect the powerless: the widow and the orphans. If there is an obligation placed on a society by Christianity, that is where it begins: in justice, in the use of power to benefit those without power. God is not interested in power and punishment: God is interested in justice.

Which is why the lawyer asks Jesus the question:

"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' this is the greatest and first commandment. and the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Matthew 22:36-40

The heart of justice is love; is concern first for the other. Take care of them, and you will be taken care of; and justice will be known, and done.

But worry about who is in control, and how much control they have, and how to maintain control; and you are playing the game of the world. The game Ivan Ilych had to stop playing, in order to depart in peace.

I'm still waiting for an answer:

Why does Michael Chertoff still have a job?

As Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans on Aug. 29, Michael D. Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, appeared confused over whether Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had put him in charge, senior military officials could not reach Brown and his team became swamped by the speed of the unfolding disaster, according to e-mails to and from Brown.

And what was Brown doing? Complaining about his "demotion"!

When Chertoff belatedly named Brown the on-site disaster coordinator on the night of Aug. 30 and declared Katrina an "incident of national significance" -- the highest- order catastrophe under a new national response plan -- Brown and his assistants privately complained.

"Demote the Under Sec to PFO [Principal Federal Officer]?" an outraged FEMA press secretary Sharon Worthy wrote Brown at 10:54 p.m., soon after Chertoff's decision. "What about the precedent being set? What does this say about executive management and leadership in the Agency?" "Exactly," replied Brown, then-under secretary for preparedness and response, according to e-mails obtained by The Washington Post.

And as for that plan? FEMA don' need no steenkin' plan!

"Let them play their raindeer [sic] games as long as they are not turning around and tasking us with their stupid questions. None of them have a clue about emergency management," Altshuler told Brown and Brown's chief of staff, Patrick Rhode.

What's the Biblical metaphor about the blind leading the blind?

And where is Chertoff? Not in these e-mails. Maybe he knows better than to leave a written record:

Chertoff's voice is markedly absent from the correspondence so far, said I. Michael Greenberger, a former Clinton administration official who heads the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. "Chertoff appears to be sort of an interested overseer, rather than the chief of staff to the president managing this in Washington," he said.

But never fear: the GOP Congress is large and in charge:

"[Rep. Thomas M.] Davis [III (R-Va.), chairman of the investigation] wants to know if Michael Brown had it right. Does Secretary Chertoff agree that FEMA has grown emaciated, that its budget's been hijacked and that it's been organizationally undermined since Congress folded it into DHS?" Davis spokesman David Marin said.

Perhaps that is another reason Congress' job approval rating is down to 29%. Keep it up, guys!

The Wapo article also notes that communications were so bad that on Sept. 1 Gen. Honore was forced to ask FEMA officials to track down Brown for him. And they couldn't do it. And as for previous FEMA statements, well; they may no longer be operative:

Brown's e-mails show that FEMA leaders acted on information that conflicts with the timeline released by Homeland Security a week after the hurricane. Altshuler's e-mail of Aug. 28, for example, referred to White House pressure to create the interagency team that would include FEMA, the Pentagon, the State Department and others. The group began meeting Aug. 26, according to the department timeline.

Well, as soon as Rep. Davis has figured out the bureaucratic tangle that is DHS, I'm sure he'll get right on that.

(But how is the kingdom of God like that?) Part 3

So, I'm teaching "The Death of Ivan Ilych" to my Freshman English class, and, as is my wont, puzzling them with questions from Derrida: "My death; is it possible?" and statements by Wittgenstein: "Death is the only experience of life that is not lived through;" and even Tolstoy himself: "How should we then live?" And I'm re-reading this article by George Monbiot forwarded to me by Prior Aelred, and finding a link there to this article, which made me think of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms.

Let's see if this makes sense.

Robert Winston starts off with what looks like "the big question:" Why do we believe in God? And the answer, not surprisingly, starts by considering the practical applications:

It is possible that strong levels of belief in God, gods, spirits or the supernatural might have given our ancestors considerable comforts and advantages. Many anthropologists and social theorists do indeed take the view that religion emerged out of a sense of uncertainty and bewilderment - explaining misfortune or illness, for example, as the consequences of an angry God, or reassuring us that we live on after death. Rituals would have given us a comforting, albeit illusory, sense that we can control what is in fact ultimately beyond our control - the weather, illness, attacks by predators or other human groups.

This, of course, is subject to criticism ("Why would it be necessary, in the daily scramble to stay alive, to make time for such an indulgent pursuit as religion?"), and Winston proceeds to examine that issue in detail. (The illusion of control, for one, is a dubious and dangerously reductionist claim, especially given the history of Israel presented in the Hebrew Scriptures). I leave it to you to read his article and consider his arguments, but for Winston it bends around to a genetic predilection toward an "intrinsic religion." The validity of that conclusion is, to my mind, both dubious and of marginal value. But the concept of "intrinsic religion" is an interesting one:

Extrinsic religiosity he defined as religious self-centredness. Such a person goes to church or synagogue as a means to an end - for what they can get out of it. They might go to church to be seen, because it is the social norm in their society, conferring respectability or social advancement. Going to church (or synagogue) becomes a social convention.

Allport thought that intrinsic religiosity was different. He identified a group of people who were intrinsically religious, seeing their religion as an end in itself. They tended to be more deeply committed; religion became the organising principle of their lives, a central and personal experience. In support of his research, Allport found that prejudice was more common in those individuals who scored highly for extrinsic religion.

The evidence generally is that intrinsic religiosity seems to be associated with lower levels of anxiety and stress, freedom from guilt, better adjustment in society and less depression. On the other hand, extrinsic religious feelings - where religion is used as a way to belong to and prosper within a group - seem to be associated with increased tendencies to guilt, worry and anxiety.

Which brings us back to Ivan Ilych.

Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

For Ilych, religion is certainly "extrinsic." He is "Christian" in the sense Kierkegaard blasted in The Attack upon 'Christendom: a Christian only because he was born into a "Christian" culture. To Kierkegaard, that meant one was not a Christian at all; and Ilych certainly betrays no attitude or action that can be even vaguely referred to as "Christian," until he is nearly dead. And even then, it is only the extremis of death that forces him to consider how he should act in life:

At that very moment Ivan Ilych fell through and caught sight of the light, and it was revealed to him that though his life had not been what it should have been, this could still be rectified. He asked himself, "What *is* the right thing?" and grew still, listening. Then he felt that someone was kissing his hand. He opened his eyes, looked at his son, and felt sorry for him. His wife camp up to him and he glanced at her. She was gazing at him open-mouthed, with undried tears on her nose and cheek and a despairing look on her face. He felt sorry for her too.

"Yes, I am making them wretched," he thought. "They are sorry, but it will be better for them when I die." He wished to say this but had not the strength to utter it. "Besides, why speak? I must act," he thought. with a look at his wife he indicated his son and said: "Take him away...sorry for him...sorry for you too...." He tried to add, "Forgive me," but said "Forego" and waved his hand, knowing that He whose understanding mattered would understand.

For three days, Ilych writhes in pain, screaming in spiritual and physical agony. His only relief is when, for the first time in his life, he thinks of others first.

And suddenly it grew clear to him that what had been oppressing him and would not leave his was all dropping away at once from two sides, from ten sides, and from all sides. He was sorry for them, he must act so as not to hurt them: release them and free himself from these sufferings. "How good and how simple!" he thought. "And the pain?" he asked himself. "What has become of it? Where are you, pain?"

While his death agony continues, internally he dies quite peacefully, even embracing death:

"It is finished!" said someone near him.

He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.

"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is no more!"

He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died.

Not exactly a scientific response to the question of "Why do we believe?," but then my point is to indicate that, as Hamlet says to his friend: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Is religion really about what's in it for me? Or is it about how I care for another? These are, as I've said before, some of the fundamental questions of Continental philosophy. Jacquess Derrida was a Professor of Philosophy of Religion in California. Emmanuel Levinas said he was struck by the altruism of a man who dashed forward one day to pluck a child out of the path of a speeding car, a child to whom the man had no relationship. It set him thinking about matters of Totality and Infinity, or same and Other. Much of phenomenology, from Kierkegaard through Husserl to Sartre and Levinas and Heidegger and Derrida, is concerned with this very question: how do we understand life as a self among so many others? In terms of Western philosophy, "intrinsic religion" is intrinsically a phenomenological pursuit.

Which is to say, it is not a scientific one. Indeed, science posits a "selfish gene" (if not as a fundamental theory, at least as a presumption) which religion must, in some way, fit into. But if evolution is a sound materialist explanation for life, that does not mean it is also a sound spiritual explanation. Which brings me around to Monbiot.

Are religious societies better than secular ones?

Not, we should not, a question limited to Christianity (though Monbiot's examples, and indeed the study he cites, seem to be so limited, he notes that the study is limited as well, and questions its conclusions on that basis). A very modern and even Western question, too. For much of human history, the word "religion" would have had no meaning, or certainly not the meaning it has today. To speak of "religion" would be equivalent to speak of drawing breath, or needing sleep, or hungering for food: religion was not an "option" on a list of "lifestyle choices." It was as central as one's identity in the community; often (and this is still true today for much of the world) it was one's identity. Indeed, it's an interesting question whether the "Western" idea of religion isn't peculiar to culture that spawned it. In stories like "Beowulf" there is ample mention of the God of Abraham, but absolutely no mention of the worship of that God; as contrasted with Homer's Iliad, where certain points of the plot actually turn on worship and sacrifice made to the Greek gods (especially Apollo). Perhaps these is something intrinsically "non-religious" about Western, or especially Northern, European culture. Certainly the standards of anthropology, sociology, and science in general, are peculiarly Western in origin and orientation. Perhaps that is a clue as to how valid our questions about "humanity" are: they certainly begin in one culture, and yet are universalized to all human cultures.

But I digress. Monbiot points to invididuals made bold by their religious beliefs; he touches on the same issue Tolstoy did: what makes us decide others are more important than we are? And isn't that discovery the true secret to happiness, or at least to the "right life"? It frees Ilych from the fear of death; and seems to have done the same for Frei Adolfo.

But what of the kingdom of God? Surely if there is such a thing, it would be obvious in a "religious" society. Yet the opposite seems to be true:

The US is the only rich nation with teenage pregnancy levels comparable to those of developing nations: it has a worse record than India, the Philippines and Rwanda. Because they're poorly educated about sex and in denial about what they're doing (and so less likely to use contraceptives), boys who participate in abstinence programmes are more likely to get their partners pregnant than those who don't.

Is it fair to blame all this on religion? While the rankings cannot reflect national poverty - the US has the world's fourth highest GDP per head, Ireland the eighth - the nations that do well in Paul's study also have higher levels of social spending and distribution than those which do badly. Is this a cause or an association? In other words, are religious societies less likely to distribute wealth than secular ones? In the US, where governments are still guided by the Puritan notions that money is a sign that you've been chosen by God and poverty is a mark of moral weakness, Christian belief seems to be at odds with the dispersal of wealth. But the UK - one of the most secular societies in the study - is also one of the least inclusive, and does rather worse in his charts than countries with similar levels of religion. The broad trend, however, looks clear: "The more secular, pro-evolution democracies have ... come closest to achieving practical 'cultures of life'."

Monbiot's conclusion is rather silly, actually, although consideration of the isse from that position would prompt some valuable soul-searching among committed Christians and other religious believers. As I imply here, I think the issues are more deeply cultural than theological (the U.S., in particular, is a "frozen" culture of immigrants, trying still to remain "true" to the culture of a world they simultaneously abandoned, and tried to re-create in the "New World." Many of the Puritans, after all, were radically conservative in matters of religion and society; not radically progressive.). But the issue of the necessity of God is still a thorny one:

It is hard to dismiss Dostoyevsky's suspicion that "if God does not exist, then everything is permissible". Nor can we wholly disagree with the new Pope when he warns that "we are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which ... has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires".

Although I'm not sure the absence of God makes everything possible, since the presence of God has never been a brake on the actions of Christians, and relativism has always itself been, well, a relative thing. Still, one does need a position upon which to stand, even if that position is itself mystery and uncertainty. I'm not sure, for example, that the kingdom of God is necessary; but it's a much better idea than any of the alternatives. And that brings me back around to Kierkegaard's pseudonyms.

One theory about the pseudonyms is that they were intended to express "indirectly" what the Edifying Discources (actually sermons) were meant to express "directly." The problem with this theory, as some modern commentators have pointed out, is that it bifurcates Kierkegaard's works into "allegories" and "explicitly religious" works. In other words, the pseudonymous works, despite Kierkegaard's plain statements on the matter, were just S.K. "expressing himself" in another way. In fact, the pseudonymous works are the explicitly philosophical ones, the attempts by "non-believers" to explain faith in Western "philosophically rational" terms. Hence the notion of "Absolute Paradox" and the "Knight of Faith" (and, erroneously, the "leap of faith.") In Wittgensteinian terms, Kierkegaard is attempting to use the "language games" of Western philosophy to explore the faith confessions of Western Christianity. And the results are not unlike scientific (anthropological; sociological) attempts to understand religion: helpful in some regards (seminaries rely heavily on the insights of sociology in examining practical issues of ecclesiology), but not, finally, dispositive of the issues.

Is God necessary? Is the basiliea tou theou necessary? Well, for that matter, is a theory of electricity, or nuclear physics, or quantum mechanics "necessary"? Kurt Godel's speculations on physics and logic led him to conclude time did not exist. No one questions the necessity of his conclusion, especially if his reasoning is shown to be sound. These things all have their uses, but are they "necessary"? A Christian could confirm that God creates weal and woe (indeed, trying to deny it creates all kinds of epistemological tangles), but that doesn't make any of those things "necessary." What, really, does necessity have to do with it, except as another way of trying to limit "religion" to a sphere that is places it within our grasp?

The questions bring us back to Kierkegaard, and the notion of the individual. "Intrinsic" religion seems to be a description of the ideal of religious faith. It is that religious belief Kierkegaard championed in both his pseudonymous and acknowledged writings. It is that sense of religion Tolstoy presents in his re-telling of the morality play "Everyman" (which itself presaged many of the issues of modern existentialism: death is, for each of us, an entirely individual matter). Ilych dies in peace only when he "acts" by turning his thoughts from himself to others; but even that change is entirely hidden from his family. His widow knows only that he died after three days of screaming in pain. The final sentences of the story make it plain that his agony only ceased when his life ceased. And yet, beyond our observation, yet wholly in keeping with Tolstoy's "realism," we know Ilych accepted death, and passed away (but not necessarily "over") in peace.

Extrinsic religion was not a "necessity" to him; but "intrinsic" religion clearly was. Is it, then, really a question of what we are defining?

How Concrete is the Kingdom....?

Birth castrates some

Owners castrate others

There are also those who castrate themselves
for the kingdom of God

John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus (New York: HarperSanFranciscso, 1994, 1st ed.), p. 138

Crossan derives this aphorism from Matthew 19: 10-12a. On this, Crossan says:

The Mediterranean was (is?) a magnificent sea surrounded by layers of pathological male sexuality, and nothing accosts that profound insecurity like the mention of eunuchs and castration. This aphorism does not necessarily commend celibate asceticism but uses castration as a metaphor, directed especially and deliberately at men, for all the abandonment of normalcy that the Kingdom of God demands. Like so many of Jesus' other metaphors, such as children or weeds, it is (for males) a devastatingly precise challenge.

Crossan, p. 169.

The problem with talking about the "kingdom of God" is that we too easily slip into abstraction and broad aphorism, and ignore the not insignificant barriers of applying ideas to the concrete situation.

Or we focus so much on the barriers and the concrete situation, that we posit the whole business in simple terms of impossibility (and despair). Caught between afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, we end up doing both.

When Jesus answers the question about the coin, we have to be reminded what a dangerous situation he was in, and what serious consequences his answer would have. It was a very concrete reality he was dealing with, and like all things concrete, a very complex one, full of abstract issues bursting out of it, impinging in on it. We don't take the question of the kingdom all that seriously, or if we do, we tend to take it seriously as an intellectual endeavor. We consider it as a matter of ecclesiology, or theology, perhaps even just an issue for individuals. Jesus' answer is a "devastatingly precise challenge." But does it challenge us? Should it challenge us? It is an answer very much of the moment, but is it for all moments? Sometimes seeing the kingdom is precisely the problem of such challenges.

Barbara Ehrenreich, in her new book Bait and Switch, challenges the individualism now run amok in America. As she notes in the interview with Amy Goodman about the book, anyone unemployed for more than a few months in America is soon made to feel they are to blame for their position; that it is simply a matter of attitude, of their "will in the world" that holds them back, or causes them to lose their place in the corporation, or to be so long on the unemployment line. If the individual is unique, in other words, and "special," perhaps the individual is also too unique, and too special, and needs to find a way to conform, the better to get along in society. Thus do we "preach it round and square," and continue to foist responsibility off on everyone else, while absolving ourselves of all blame. The poor, after all, are poor because they choose to be, or because of the policies of the Great Society, or the New Deal; certainly not because of the policies that have been in place since Ronald Reagan left office, or because of the stinginess of the GOP House. But how much of our current situation is "of the moment," and how much of it is of our weltanschaaung, our culture?

Ehrenreich reminds us that this system: of governance, of economics, of corporations and "free markets," of "capitalism," are not conditions of nature or creation; they are our own creation. "Birth castrates some; owners castrate others." Are we in this position because of the nature of our birth? Or because society allowed some to be owners before we got here? And when how much that is asked of us is too much, what then? "There are also those who castrate themselves for the kingdom of God." What does the metaphor of castration mean now?

Where is that break point, that limit beyond which we will not go? And why?

The kingdom of God is not the only place that requires our all; requires, perhaps, more than we are able to give. That demand is always being made on us. It really isn't a question of how much of a sacrifice we make, but more a question of which kingdom we make the sacrifice to.

Run, Forrest, run!

If this information is true and can be trusted:

On Oct. 3, the day the Miers nomination was announced, Mr. Dobson and other religious conservatives held a conference call to discuss the nomination. One of the people on the call took extensive notes, which I have obtained. According to the notes, two of Ms. Miers's close friends--both sitting judges--said during the call that she would vote to overturn Roe.

The call was moderated by the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. Participating were 13 members of the executive committee of the Arlington Group, an umbrella alliance of 60 religious conservative groups, including Gary Bauer of American Values, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation and the Rev. Bill Owens, a black minister. Also on the call were Justice Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court and Judge Ed Kinkeade, a Dallas-based federal trial judge.

Now we know why Bush was making Harriet Miers' religion such a central tenet of her nomination.

And, of course, why this week, he's running away from it.