A bit of teeth gritting

Perhaps this is a purgative in preparation for Holy Week. But reading this article in the New York Times, all I could think at the end was: Huh?

The article is about the Republican implosion, and it details the annus horribilus of the GOP, which was replicated last week in microcosm: DeLay abruptly resigns, the immigration bill blows up, the budget bill fails, Bush is identified as "leaker-in-chief." It's even clear that Tom DeLay, as ever, is not thinking of the party, but of Tom DeLay:

Mr. DeLay, meanwhile, told The Washington Times that the new House leadership lacked vision and an agenda.

"Breaking up our leadership team has taken its toll," Mr. DeLay said.

Here was the man who, having kept conservatives in power by his relentless insistence on party discipline, was now turning around on his way out the door and telling his former followers that they were falling down on the job.

"These guys went out on so many limbs for DeLay," said the Congressional scholar Norman J. Ornstein. "And now he saws it off just as they're trying to get their act together."

Now, of course, it can't be that the GOP were the only politicians in D.C. this week, so some kind of nod has to be made to the Democrats. And what can the mighty New York Times come up with? Cynthia McKinney:

But Democrats did not emerge unscathed. Representative Cynthia McKinney, the Georgia Democrat, made comic headlines after a scuffle with Capitol Police. Ms. McKinney, who is black, apologized Thursday on the House floor — but not before appearing on talk shows to accuse the police of "racial profiling."

Ultimately, Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat and 1960's civil rights leader, told Ms. McKinney, "You need to come to a nonviolence workshop."

Actually, the only reason I'm glad she's in this article is because it was the first I'd heard of Mr. Lewis's quote. He is, of course, dead on; and a reminder of what real civil rights violations are.

Ms. McKinney is what we'd call in a parliamentary system a "back bencher." She's known mainly for her inflammatory rhetoric (and not much known for that), and for losing and then regaining her seat. Other than that, she seems to be known now for having changed her hair-do, and having rendered the perfectly valid concept of racial profiling, almost completely meaningless. So the question is: how does her foolish contretemps with a Capitol Police office counter-balance the implosion of the GOP political and legislative machine?

As my favorite TV ad says: "Squirrel, please!"

Is a Christian Institution Possible?

The UCC is trying to defend itself:

The Rev. John H. Thomas, the denomination's president, has sharply criticized the Institute for Religion and Democracy, a conservative religious watchdog and advocacy group, for supporting groups within mainline denominations that would further a conservative theological and political perspective. And the church has undertaken new advertising and e-mail campaigns to combat more conservative forces.

And it has allies:

Others have joined the United Church of Christ in speaking out. Recently, the Rev. Michael Livingston, the new president of the National Council of Churches of Christ U.S.A., told a meeting of representatives of the group's member churches, "Mainline Protestant and Orthodox churches have been pounded into irrelevancy by the media machine of a false religion; a political philosophy masquerading as gospel; an economic principle wrapped in religious rhetoric and painted red, white and blue."

But it brings me back to the question: is this what church is for?

Although some mainline Christians feel energized by the new toughness, others worry that such an approach could threaten the very pluralism that the mainline churches have come to stand for and the gospel of love that so many preach.

"I think this is a dangerous place to be," said Mr. Sharen of Yale. "You stand to lose the integrity of 'turn the other cheek.' "

This is the paradox of powerlessness. Thomas Merton collected The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers, and specifically explained their retreat into the deserts in the 4th century as a means of salvation, of grabbing on to whatever piece of floating jetsam they could find in the shipwreck of civilzation they found themselves in. Rather than preserve the institution, in other words, Merton praises them for preserving the idea, the spirituality, of Christianity.

Thomas Cahill makes much the same argument in How the Irish Saved Civilization. Unconcerned with establishing a centralized institution, the Irish monks (and the Celtic church, according to many scholars) focussed on serving the ideal of Christianity, by serving individuals receptive to that ideal. Patrick was subject to more severe critique than John Thomas will ever know. The story that accompanies his famous "Breastplate" (and the reason it bears that title, as well as "The Deer's Cry") is because his life, and those of his disciples, was threatened by the Druids, and reciting that prayer they passed (so the story goes) before their enemies as a harmless doe and her fawns. Not, one should note, as a she-bear and her cubs, or something else equally menacing.

Merton's stories of the Desert Fathers never include one about a monk defending his cell or even his property. In one story similar to others, a monk returns to his cell to find thieves taking away what little he owns, and he runs after them to offer his Bible as well, reasoning they need it more than he does.

This is the paradox of powerlessness. Are we, as Christians, ever authorized to employ power to protect our Christian institutions? Is that why our institutions exist, because they need our protection? Do we call them into existence, or does God? There has been a very lively debate on this subject at Street Prophets, because both pastor dan and Chuck Currie are UCC members. So, in part, I suppose I am responding to that discussion, as well. Much as I am sympathetic to a desire to respond to enemies, I'm still inclined to wonder: as a Christian, when is my enemy not my enemy, such that I don't need to turn the other cheek, or walk the extra mile?

And now for something completely different....

We are developing a culture based on the "Ken Lay" defense: i.e., so long as you can seal off the top person, the person who is at the "top" because he/she is supposed to be the responsible one, then anything under their authority can be done with impunity. Remember "The Buck Stops Here"? That was a different reality. Now our reality is "The Matrix:" There is no buck, and there is no "here."

Supporters of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay protested at an event Thursday held by the Democratic candidate for the congressman's seat, and the event quickly dissolved into a shouting and shoving match. Police were called, but made no arrests.

"I got pushed. I got hit. I got a sign wadded up in my face and my hat pulled down over my eyes," said Marsha Rovai, 69, a supporter of Nick Lampson. "They just did it to be nasty."

DeLay campaign manager Chris Homan said he organized the protest but DeLay, a Republican, didn't know about it.

"Mr. Lampson is going to have to get used to being confronted about his voting record the next seven months," Homan said.

So DeLay is out of the race, but he's going to keep campaigning against Lampson anyway? And DeLay is absolved of all responsibility because his campaign manager doesn't tell him what is being done in his name?

I suppose, by the same token, DeLay can act in Jesus' name, claiming the authority without making Jesus responsible for what DeLay does. But then that's the whole point: if you act on another's authority, apparently no one has to take responsibility.

There is no buck. Just learn that, and you will know how deep the rabbit hole goes.

The Lost Gospel?

A word about the newly announced "Gospel of Judas," which National Geographic was breathlessly promoting to booksellers a few months ago, all the while withholding all information about it save that it would be a major event:

Whatever.

Probably that is too dismissive. No, certainly that is too dismissive. Here is what National Geographic is saying about it at their website:

"The Gospel provides an alternative view of the Jesus-Judas relationship and evidences the diverse theological beliefs that circulated among early Christians."

That sounds about right; if only it would stop there. This is an important find; for Biblical historians; of that there is no doubt. But I have a copy of The Complete Gospels, assembled and published by the Jesus Seminar. It includes the canonical gospels as well as: The Signs Gospel; The Dialogue of the Savior; Secret James; The Gospel of Thomas; Q; The Gospel of Mary; The Infancy Gospel of James; The Gospel of Peter; The Infancy Gospel of Thomas; Secret Mark; and the Egerton Gospel, along with various other bits and pieces. So this "Gospel of Judas" isn't exactly the lost coin or the single straying sheep. Frankly, I'd rather find a copy of Secret Mark. We only have two excerpts from that Gospel, in a fragment of a letter from Clement of Alexandria. The major interest is it seems to explain the strange appearance of a figure of a naked man running from the arrest of Jesus (check Mark's story and you tell me where he comes from).

In a time over-heated by The Da Vinci Code, when yet another book is already out claiming Jesus left children and didn't die on the cross (and this author has evidence of the 2000 year old conspiracy to cover this up!), it's all too clear what market The Lost Gospel is meant to appeal to. And I don't blame National Geographic from wanting to cash in.

I'm just not convinced there is any there, there. Dom Crossan, in a lecture he gave when I was at Eden (material I think he included in his book on the crucifixion, and how it was wrongly attributed to the Jews, one of the worst source of anti-Semitism in Western culture), claimed that "Judas Iscariot" probably didn't even exist, largely based on the name. "Judas," if I recall correctly, is an unattested name in the literature, but clearly derives from "Judea," from which place name the Romans got "Judean." German still retains almost that pronunciation: "Jüden." In English, we say "Jews." Crossan's argument is that the name designates, not a person, but a people. When you are a marginal religion among the marginal people, it's best not to incite the Empire against you; safer to blame another marginal people. That's only a piece of his argument, from a memory that is now over 10 years old, but there is good reason to believe "Judas" was an invention of the early church, and little reason to believe he was a real person. So the idea that there was a relationship between Judas and Jesus is about as probable as the idea that in his youth Jesus caused a rainbow bridge to appear over a lake, the better to lure children onto it to their doom. Yet that is the story in one of the infancy gospels.

Sadly, however, this is not how it is going to be reported in the press. The New York Times article opens this way:

The text gives new insights into the relationship of Jesus and the disciple who betrayed him, scholars reported today. In this version, Jesus asked Judas, as a close friend, to sell him out to the authorities, telling Judas he will "exceed" the other disciples by doing so.

Though some theologians have hypothesized this, scholars who have studied the new-found text said, this is the first time an ancient document defends the idea.

As Mahanoy indicates at Street Prophets (and the analysis there is very good), this is simply indicative of a Gnostic text, not of a whole new light shed on the "truth" of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Not unless, as I say, we are going to take the Infancy Gospel equally seriously. There will be comments like those of Craig Evans of Acadia Divinity College:

"It is possible that the Gospel of Judas preserves an old memory that Jesus had actually instructed Judas in private, and the other disciples did not know about it," Dr. Evans said.

But frankly, that strikes me as being about as plausible as the theory that Jesus walked on ice, and it looked like water.

In the end, I suspect this isn't even as explosive as Elaine Pagels thinks it is: "These discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion, and demonstrating how diverse — and fascinating — the early Christian movement really was." "Exploding" is perhaps a little strong. It certainly adds a new source for our knowledge of the early Christians. But it also means we have to endure statements which are, frankly, just stupid. As the NYT article points out, the Gospel of Thomas introduced popular audiences to the idea of the Gnostics in 1959:

The Gnostics' beliefs were often viewed by bishops and early church leaders as unorthodox, and they were frequently denounced as heretics. The discoveries of Gnostic texts have shaken up Biblical scholarship by revealing the diversity of beliefs and practices among early followers of Jesus.

As the findings have trickled down to churches and universities, they have produced a new generation of Christians who now regard the Bible not as the literal word of God, but as a product of historical and political forces that determined which texts should be included in the canon, and which edited out.

But the Bible as the "literal word of God" was more a product of the post-Enlightenment era, and itself only became popular in the late 19th century, as a response to German hermeneutics which challenged the readings of the texts in ways the discoveris of Nag Hammadi could never do. Before the German scholars, we all largely accepted that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, that there was one Isaiah, that Paul was the author of all the letters attributed to him, and that the Gospel writers were contemporaries of Jesus.

The generations of Christians that learned otherwise, especially in Europe, were hardly "new" by the late 1950's. This is why new Biblical discoveries vex me, more than thrill me.

DeLay delays

Not politics, really, more a question of law. And no comment arising from it, no diatribe or rant; just something to keep an eye on.

DeLay's announced (and pending) resignation has, as you might imagine, stirred a lot of interest locally. Fort Bend Now (a county next to Harris County, which includes Sugar Land, DeLay's home) has several articles on this matter, all of them interesting. (and go to the link now to see a picture of the DeLay supporters who tried to oppose Lampson's press conference today).

Let's start with the "special election." Apparently there is a fight over that, with DeLay telling Rush Limbaugh:

“No, there won’t be a special election,” DeLay told Limbaugh. “Texas has a law that there’s only two dates that you can have a special election, November and May, and this weekend the deadline for the May special election will have passed.”

Okay, here's some of the legal: DeLay is flat wrong. Texas Election Code Sec. 203.004 is the applicable law in this situation (scroll down to Chapter 12), and it doesn't specify either May or November as the only dates for a special election. This is why Delay is an ex-exterminator, not a lawyer, and why his name is not on any piece of legislation that ever became law. But pay attention to what he is saying, because it's in accord with the wishes of the Texas GOP:

DeLay’s resignation “will lead the governor to declare the seat vacant and either set a special election or leave the seat vacant for the remainder of the term ending December 31,” Fort Bend County Republican Party Chairman Eric Thode said in an email to party faithful on Wednesday. “If one is called, the special election should have NO impact on how the place on the ballot gets filled. In fact, I would argue that it could impair the Republican Party in November.”

Oh, well, we can't let a little thing like no representative in the U.S. House for District 22 stand in the way of the good of the GOP, now, can we? There's another problem, of course: Texas has open primaries, and has no law restricting who can run in a special election. Which means:

Gary Gillen, a run-off candidate against Linda Howell to succeed Thode as county party chairman, said a special election to replace DeLay and finish his term would “at this point be a circus because a special election is open to everyone. I don’t see the value to the Republican Party.”

Gillen said voters would be “better served by waiting until November and electing their candidate then.

You can see the dilemma for the GOP. Wait, it gets better. DeLay's opponent in the primary was Tom Campbell:

Campbell issued a press release calling on Gov. Perry to order a special election.

Republican Party executive committees in Fort Bend, Harris, Galveston and Brazoria counties each are expected to choose one precinct chairman to serve on a four-person committee that will be charged with nominating a candidate to replace DeLay on the November ballot.

However, Campbell said, the special election should be held first and Republican leaders should then select a nominee for the November election informed by the results of the special election.”

“Our party can send a strong message that it stands for open elections and integrity by choosing a nominee based upon the results of a special election,” Campbell said.

Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, interested but as yet unannounced as a candidate for DeLay’s November ballot spot, said his understanding is that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is not obligated under the law to act to replace DeLay.

“I don’t know that there’s any reason to call a special election,” Eckels added.

As I say, having the people of District 22 represented is no reason at all, is it? And then, of course, there's that pesky U.S. Constitution. Art I, Sec. 2: "When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies." Not a lot of wiggle room there. A suit seeking a writ of mandamus ordering the governor to act would, it seems to me, succeed rather handily.

And yes, just yesterday, everyone expected this would proceed normally, and the seat would not be left vacant. DeLay had said he would resign by June. Already even the date is important, and when he will actually do it is becoming an issue. My own guess? Gov. Perry will avoid this controversy like the plague. He called special sessions of the Legislature (each one can only last 30 days) until they passed DeLay's redistricting plan (that's when several Democrats left the state to prevent it passing). He'll certainly stand as a tower of Jell-O on principle now. But he won't have a choice, and District 22 is not the solid GOP district the 30 people who showed up in Sugar Land today might think it is. This kind of naked power grab by the GOP is not going to sit well with the voters, and the more publicity Lampson gets about the GOP's interest in their own welfare, the better.

It's hard, really, to believe these people were ever able to organize a fire drill, much less take over the political power of the country. We'll just have to see what happens next, but my own expectation is that the courts and the voters will corral the more outrageous ambitions of the GOP. Finally.

Update: Supreme Irony of Life points out Gov. Perry has already decided not to call a special election. Let the lawsuits begin!

Further update: Well, more recent reports put a little flesh on the bones of the earlier report. The AP report (cited just above) said:

The Democratic candidate for the seat, former Rep. Nick Lampson, had called on the governor to set a May 13 special election so the district would be represented after DeLay leaves. Perry, Republican, refused without elaborating.

Now, apparently, he has elaborated:

Perry told reporters in Austin that if DeLay does not notify him by Friday that he has quit, "the election will be in November."

Democrat Nick Lampson, who is running for DeLay's seat, said in a raucous press conference on Thursday DeLay should resign immediately so a special election can be held at the earliest possible date -- May 13 in this case -- to choose his successor.

Under time requirements in Texas election laws, DeLay would have to quit by Friday to allow Perry to call for a May 13 vote.

An election could be held between May 13 and the November 7 vote if the governor, a Republican, wants it, but Perry's comment appeared to rule that out and raise the possibility the congressional seat could be empty for a while.

If the regular and special election are held on the same day, and there are two different winners, the winner of the special election would serve only until the winner of the regular election is sworn in January 2007.

DeLay said he was resigning because polls showed Lampson, a former congressman who lost his seat in a controversial redistricting pushed by DeLay, might beat him in the November election.

Lampson, speaking in front of the Sugar Land, Texas, city hall near Houston on Thursday, accused DeLay of putting off his resignation so there would be no quick special election and he would have time to "handpick his successor."

"Even in his resignation there is corruption," said Lampson while surrounded by two dozen DeLay supporters who shouted throughout his remarks while holding up signs calling him "Liberal Lampson."

I don't know the history of Art. I, Sec., 2, but the plain language seems to require that an election be held to fill the seat, not that it be delayed until the next regular election.

It will be interesting to see if Lampson or Campbell (or both) want to pay for the legal research on that issue.

Don't wanna study war no more...

Blogs beget blogs. A great deal of the energy for this blog ends up coming from other blogs, from what they are saying. And a great deal of that ends up being negative. My "break point" appears to have come yesterday, when Chuck Currie posted at Street Prophets about Tom DeLay's resignation, and included a link to his own blog where he had enouraged readers to e-mail Tom DeLay's pastor and tell the pastor what he should be preaching and saying about his most famous congregation member.

It crossed a line for me, and I told Chuck so in a comment there. But it wasn't an argument I wanted to engage in, and I knew I would be sucked into a defense of my comments, so I regretted it even as I was comfortable doing it, and I walked away. It's another problem with blogs: there is less discussion in them than there is justification. One posts looking for confirmation for one's views, and as you seek more confirmation, your views get more and more strident. Like a child you test the limits of the envelope, find out just what the extent of your grasp is, and how much you can carry before you drop it all.

So maybe I'm about to drop it all.

Some blogs avoid this problem, but they do it by avoiding politics. It is hardly a critique to say they avoid it; it is a compliment, because the dominant style of blogging is becoming harsh political diatribes, whether they are dressed up as news analysis and recovery of minor news items, or are just community billboards for roiling discussions. But this is the only reason the media are paying attention to blogs, and attention equates to power, so surely this is a good thing?

But it leaves me with a different question: why is it easier to curse the darkness than to light a single candle? What is it about trust, that we no longer trust? The word "faith" that our Bibles usually translate from the koine Greek of the New Testament, is actually the word "trust." It isn't that we are asked to believe in what ain't so. It is that we are asked to trust in what we no not see affirmed in the world.

Maybe it's the new book I started that prompts this reflection: In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom, by John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005). It was certainly the comments here in the last few days. Crossan and Reed put forth a thesis that Paul co-opted the language of imperial Rome, of Augustus as Savior, Lord, Redeemer of the World, and God, Son of God, and God from God (which they call a Roman theology), and preached a counter-empire where the first were last and the last were first. Ironically that approach to the kerygma is very American today; we call it "secular religion," and it fuels our public discussions by everyone from Tom DeLay to Jim Wallis to Gore Vidal. You don't have to be a believer, in other words, to engage or critique the idea of American exceptionalism, but few question that the very notion springs from Christian roots. Our political discourse has co-opted the language of the church: all that is lacking is to call our President our savior, just as Augustus was proclaimed Lord, Savior, and redeemer of the world, and the circle will be complete.

But that's getting political again, and I don't want to do that here. Reflecting on what Merton said, I can't help but find it true, and yet realize that I don't reflect that here and even if I do, I look too much to other blogs for my reflection, and end feeling like an unsilvered mirror. I need to light a candle. I need to find some light I can reflect. And I'm going to start with Merton's insight, and this thesis, from Crossan and Reed's book:

The Roman Empire was based on the common principle of peace through victory, or, more fully, on a faith in the sequence of piety, war, victory, and peace.

Paul was a Jewish visionary following in Jesus' footsteps, and they both claimed that the Kingdom of God was already present and operative in this world. He opposed the mantras of Roman normalcy with a vision of peace through justice, or, more fully, with a faith in the sequence of covenant, nonviolence, justice, and peace. In Search of Paul, xi.

The political applications are perfectly obvious. But the spiritual applications are the ones I am interested in.

What I have lost and found, lost and found....

From A Year With Thomas Merton:

"The Lord has plucked up proud men by their roots, and planted the lowly peoples." "He hath put down the mighty." - from the daily office in May, 1965.

He goes on to say:

If I were more fully attentive to the word of God I would be much less troubled and disturbed by the events of our time; not that I would be indifferent or passive, but I could gain strength of union with the deepest currents of history, the sacred currents, which run opposite to those on the surface a great deal of the time!

(courtesy janeboatler)

Pursuing other interests?

Tell me again Tom DeLay wasn't pushed:

A special election to fill the remainder of DeLay's term likely will be held on the next uniform election date, which is in May. Gov. Rick Perry will set the date.

It was unclear Monday night how Republicans will select a November nominee to replace DeLay, who won the GOP primary in March.

"We've never had this happen in a congressional race," Woodfill said. "We'll have a little bit of time to figure it out. We have our lawyers looking at it."

At issue is whether the responsibility for selecting a nominee falls to the 62-member state Republican Executive Committee or to GOP officials in the five counties that lie partly within the 22nd Congressional District.

"It's in our best interest to choose a nominee before the special election. Otherwise, the election is going to be a free-for-all," Woodfill said. "The situation you don't want is for our nominee to be someone different than the person who runs for the special."

And, to add insult to injury:

[Campaign Manager Mike, yes-that's-his-real-last-name] Malaise said [Democratic nominee Nick] Lampson hasn't decided whether to run in the special election, and isn't sure DeLay legally can withdraw from the November ballot.

This is not a situation the GOP in Texas wanted to be in, or even expected to be in. His resignation and withdrawal throw the race into disarray, quite a different picture from the self-serving one he painted for Time Magazine. "I'm very much at peace with it," he told TIME. Clearly, the Texas GOP is left with a mess on its hands, and aren't exactly at peace with what he's left them.

Sorry, I keep thinking about this: the Chronicle article lists quite a few local luminaries who might be interested in this seat; not an unusual sitaution when there is a shift in power like this. How they will be selected for the special election, I'm not sure. It may be all of them could get on the ballot without going through a party selection procedure; or it may be party officials get to decide who the standard bearer is. My memory of special elections is hazy, but I think the former would prevail over the latter, and it could be the GOP's worst nightmare: a smorgasbord of candidates v. Nick Lampson.

And guess who wins? It gets worse if DeLay can't get his name off the ballot, and Lampson is the incumbent, even for a few months. Suddenly November looks very interesting, indeed.

DeLay is saving his hide with this departure, because he's hearing footsteps; and the shoes aren't being worn by Ronnie Earle. The time of reckoning labelled "Abramoff" draws nearer.

One last update on the way out the door: another reason DeLay quits now, is so he can use his campaign funds to pay his legal defense bills, which undoubtedly will be rising quickly. Wonder if these folks expected that?

Ain't politics grand?

Never say never again update: TPM Muckraker raises an interesting point: DeLay told Time Magazine he decided to quit the race on March 29th. He announced his decision yesterday, and continued fundraising for his race in the meantime. Federal law apparently allows him to commit this fraud on his benefactors. But his idea of ethical behavior is certainly a curious one.

POI's

The sound on NPR this morning was the sound of the narrative disappearing. Deborah Amos reported not just on how civil war has probably already started (the meaning behind the words of the report) but on how it all went wrong: when Americans invaded Fallujah, they had no "cultural sensitivity" at all. No one who spoke Arabic, no translators; and shaming men and women in public, all in the name of "security." And, shockingly, if you kill the people you mean to liberate, they don't look kindly on you and decide maybe they should help you.

But doesn't this mean we are responsible for what is happening in Iraq? And couldn't that mean we were just as responsible for what happened on 9/11? That, ineed, no man is an island, and whatever our actions, they have unintended consequences, and so we never stand apart from what we do, we can never separate intentions from results. No one, of course, is going quite that far on NPR, but it was exactly that result which prevented, for the longest time, any discussion about US culpability and responsibility for the present crises in the world. Now that narrative is being permitted, and even the idea that a civil war is already active in Iraq is presented in the report almost without comment; certainly without critique or contradiction.

And it's all a little too much like 1984. We have always been at war with Eurasia; except when we were at war with Oceania. Orwell had that shift in enemies and allies occur mid-speech, to dramatize the moving target of modern statecraft, the amorphous and fundamentally abstract nature of warfare. What we are seeing now is merely a slow-motion version of that speech. We stand amazed that people hate us, but listening to reports from "the other side" of the war, what is amazing is how much we still think warfare and violence are pathways to peace. I read it everywhere in left blogistan; I hear it in all the news reports. Power is the only way to success, is the only path that leads to the goal, is the only energy that will fuel the ideals we aspire to put into practice. Power is the only hope for transforming the world.

And we never stop to think that, to the person with a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. Small wonder, then, that the mass of humans still lead lives of quiet desperation. Small wonder, then, that Merton's observations (courtesy of janeboatler) seem so trenchant. Because it does always get back to the same thing; it does always go round and round because the problem is not more power, or power used more effecively, or power used for our purposes rather than their purposes. The problem is standing inside a system that depends and relies on and worships, and is wholly controlled by, power:

It always gets back to the same thing. I have dutifully done my bit. I have been "open to the world." That is to say, I have undergone my dose of exposure to American society in the '60s - particularly in these last weeks. I love the people I run into, but I pity them for having to live as they do, and I think the world of U.S.A. in 1967 is a world of crass, blind, overstimulated, phony, lying stupidity. The war in Asia slowly gets worse - and almost more inane. The temper of the country is one of blindness, fat, self-satisfied, ruthless, mindless corruption. A lot of people are uneasy about it but helpless to do anything about it. The rest are perfectly content with the rat race as it is, and with its competitive, acquisitive, hurtling, souped-up drive to nowhere. A massively aimless, baseless, shrewd cockiness that simply exalts itself without purpose. The mindless orgasm, in which there is no satisfaction, only spasm.

How many of us can honestly get beyond the first two sentences there? It may even be we love the people we run into, but if we pity them for the way they live, don't we do it hypocritically? If "the temper of the country is one of blindness," how many of us can claim to truly see? How many of us "are uneasy about it but helpless to do anything about it," and so we beat our little fists ineffectively against our computer screens, from the inside out, pounding our keyboards because we cannot otherwise pound sense into those who seem hell bent on ruining our country? How many of us think it is any different now from how it was then, in 1967, and think so simply because 1967 is history, and we know how it turned out? How many of us think it has never been this bad, and that what America was has been corrupted, co-opted, taken over by aliens and body-snatchers and interlopers and thieves?

How many of us think it is only a question of who has the power, and not a question of why we think power is more important than anything else? How many of us contemplate the paradox of that pursuit, in the face of a crucified God, the very antithesis, the very symbol and reality and icon, of powerlessness?

"POI's" the report calls them: "Pissed Off Iraqis." Is it love that pisses people off? Or is it power? And which one are we wiser to employ?

"Freedom? That is a worship word!"

If you are young (old) enough, or geeky (sad) enough, you will remember the worst allegory of the Cold War the original Star Trek series ever engaged in: the Coms (long "o" so you don't recognize what it's short for) and the Yangs, where the former are very Asian looking (!) and the latter all look like blonde Beowulfs. The central idea, of course, is very American: that freedom is not just a concept, but a thing, and it is endemic, and identical in its precepts, for all "right thinking" people. Even on another planet far, far away.

Or in another country, on this planet. Listening to this story on NPR just now, I heard Dr. Richard Land express concern that Afghanistan, after all 'we' had done 'over there,' might not guarantee freedom of religion in its constitution. Now, that assumes that freedom of religion is a thing to which all "right thinking persons" would assent, and that it would be accepted as a result of American largesse following on an American invastion; a kind of benefit, as we bestowed on Germany and Japan.

Problem is, the Afghan people seem to have another idea about the importance of religion, and it isn't a tradition informed by the experience of the Baptists in England and later in this country. Here are the "money quotes" from that previous post:

Hamidullah warned that if the government frees Rahman, "the government will lose the support of the people. What sort of democracy would it be if the government ignored the will of all the people?"

And from another report:

Franklin Pyles, president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, said his organization is appalled Rahman's life is at risk for converting to Christianity.

"If we are not going to fight for all freedoms, then what are we doing (in Afghanistan)?"
...
Rahman's neighbours in Kabul showed little sympathy for him.

"For 30 years, we have fought religious wars in this country and there is no way we are going to allow an Afghan to insult us by becoming Christian," said Mohammed Jan, 38, who lives opposite Rahman's father, Abdul Manan. "This has brought so much shame."

I suppose my sympathies are with Mr. Pyles. But is it freedom to force another culture to accept your standards? My Google skills are rather poor, but I remember hearing something in connection with this case about a centuries old decree settling some differences between Christianity and Islam, differences undoubtedly arising from the Crusades. One of the provisions of the degree was peace between Islam and Christianity, but a death sentence on any Muslim who converted to Christianity. We may find it a reprehensible position in this day and age; but we cannot forcibly change the minds of Aghans like Mohammed Jan.

Maybe before we decide freedom means the same thing to us it does to everybody else, and before we assume everyone wants the same cultural traditions we have, we'd better ask them. Maybe "freedom" is a worship word for us, but that doesn't mean our idea of freedom is shared by the rest of the planet.

Oy, where to begin?

I just posted the comment below on this thread at Street Prophets. You'll have to read the thread to know what I'm talking about, but when you do, you can come back and make sense of my response. Or not. This is one issue upon which I definitely don't have any answers, and I'm not sure I even like the issue very much.

But it's worth thinking about. Here's my comment (you may need to skim the comments at Street Prophets to understand even this, come to think of it; but the remarks all come in response to the original post, so that might make it easier):

Idolatry? True, that's a matter of the beholder. The Orthodox Christian sees windows on eternity; the Reformed tradition Christian sees the idols condemend by the Hebrew prophets. Some Jews even forbid representations of humans as idolatrous, as we are made "in the image of God."

Go and please the world.

Membership? What does church membership mean? You must pay dues? You must come to church every Sunday you are in town? You must tithe, accept the leadership of the priest/pastor, vestry/church council? You must volunteer? You must believe?

I had a neighbor once who was, in practice, the most Christian person I've ever known. If we judged solely by behavior, he was a Christian, no doubt about it. Kind, caring, sympathetic, generous with his time and talents. He was also an avowed atheist. We had stimulating discussions on the issue of God, and had to agree to disagree. And we still loved each other. Could he be a member of a Christian church? What would it mean if he was?

Is Church about faith, belief, doctrine? Or is it about behavior? Oy, now we're entering ecclesiology and traversing soteriology, not to mention implicating Christology and pneumatology.

Are we having fun yet?

Another issue that comes to mind (you see how open ended this can be): is it fair to call Jensen a doubter? I appreciate Jim Rigby's distinction between atheism and antitheism, but I'd thought agnositicism had already filled that gap, and atheists had decided there is no "god" to worship.

Which, you see, raises even more interesting questions. What is church for? How do you worship something you don't believe in? (Why would you worship it is a question for Mr. Jensen.) And I have to say that here, Rev. Rigby just wades into something he really can't explain very well:

The problem with most religious discussions is that we are usually swimming in a sea of undefined terms. What sense does it make to ask whether God exists if we don't define what we mean by the term "God." For some it's easier to reconcile themselves to the universe by picturing a large person overseeing the process, while others reconcile themselves to the ground by using impersonal elemental images. These approaches are in conflict only when we forget what we are trying to do in the first place, which is to harmonize with the ground of our being.

Locke and Kant struggled to identify the ultimate categories that shape human perception, which is also the business of religion. We cannot think about being itself because it is too basic. We are like flowers that emerge out of a soil too primordial to be understood in plant terms; we can neither speak about the ground of our being nor ignore it. Religion is a kind of art that reconciles us to the ground from which we emerge.

First, it's Paul Tillich who gave theology that "ground of being" talk, and I've never liked it. It's pseudo-phenomenology, and it's very weak stuff. True, Heidegger and Husserl can be nearly incomprehensible in their discussions of "being," but it isn't that we can't talk about the subject, any more than we can't talk about God. There is an apophatic tradition in Christianity ("negative theology," which says we can only say what God is not) but clearly that is not a wholly satisfactory answer to the question: "How do we speak of the transcendent and ineffable which is also active in creation and human history?" Nor is it really sufficient to say religion "is a kind of art that reconciles us to the ground from which we emerge." But it is a nice, fuzzy way of excusing making an atheist a church member.

Which brings me back to the question of church membership. What is it for? Why do we have boundaries around who is "in", and who is "out," of church? What is that all about?

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

The New York Times comes around:

Iraq is becoming a country that America should be ashamed to support, let alone occupy. The nation as a whole is sliding closer to open civil war. In its capital, thugs kidnap and torture innocent civilians with impunity, then murder them for their religious beliefs. The rights of women are evaporating. The head of the government is the ally of a radical anti-American cleric who leads a powerful private militia that is behind much of the sectarian terror.

...
One vital goal is to persuade the Shiites to abort their disastrous nomination of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mr. Jaafari is unable to form a broadly inclusive government and has made no serious effort to rein in police death squads. Even some Shiite leaders are now calling on him to step aside. If his nomination stands and is confirmed by Parliament, civil war will become much harder to head off. And from the American perspective, the Iraqi government will have become something that no parent should be asked to risk a soldier son or daughter to protect.

Unfortunately, after three years of policy blunders in Iraq, Washington may no longer have the political or military capital to prevail. That may be hard for Americans to understand, since it was the United States invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and helped the Shiite majority to power. Some 140,000 American troops remain in Iraq, more than 2,000 American servicemen and servicewomen have died there so far and hundreds of billions of American dollars have been spent

....
It was chilling to read Edward Wong's interview with the Iraqi prime minister in The Times last week, during which Mr. Jaafari sat in the palace where he now makes his home, complained about the Americans and predicted that the sectarian militias that are currently terrorizing Iraqi civilians could be incorporated into the army and police. The stories about innocent homeowners and storekeepers who are dragged from their screaming families and killed by those same militias are heartbreaking, as is the thought that the United States, in its hubris, helped bring all this to pass.

The wise are put to shame;
they are dismayed and entrapped.
They have spurned the word of the Lord,
so what sort of wisdom is theirs?
Therefore I will give their wives to other men
and their lands to new owners.
For all, high and low,
are out for ill-gotten gains;
prophets and priests are frauds,
everyone of them;
they dress my people's wound,
but on the surface only,
with their saying, 'All is well.'
All well? Nothing is well!
They ought to be ashamed
because they have practiced abominations,
yet they have no sense of shame,
theou could never be put out of countenance.
Therefore they will fall with a great crash,
and be brought to the ground on the day of reckoning.--Jeremiah 8:9-12 (REB)

Just to close this off...

I'm imagining Jill Carroll has some choice words for her U.S. critics, too:

In her statement, Carroll thanked everyone who worked for her release, but devoted a significant portion of the statement to defending herself against criticism regarding the video, in which she said the insurgents were "very smart" and had treated her well.

"During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video," she wrote. "They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed.

"Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not."

She even lambasted her captors, who allegedly killed her interpreter, Alan Enwiya, when they abducted her in western Baghdad in January.

"They robbed Alan of his life and devastated his family. They put me, my family and my friends -- and all those around the world, who have prayed so fervently for my release -- through a horrific experience," she wrote. "I was, and remain, deeply angry with the people who did this."

Saying she wants to be regarded as a journalist, and not a hostage, Carroll said she would not engage in polemics against her kidnappers, "but let me be clear: I abhor all who kidnap and murder civilians, and my captors are clearly guilty of both crimes."

She was criticized for wearing traditional Muslim clothes (which her captors supplied) and for speaking well of her captors. As I said, she undoubtedly had good reason to do that. And she said as much today:

"The party had promised me the interview would never be aired on television, and broke their word," Carroll wrote. "At any rate, fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn't threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times."

She is angry with her captors; that seems perfectly reasonable to me. The CPT team has melted back into their lives out of Iraq, and don't seem anxious to return. That, too, seems reasonable.

My prayer is that they may find healing.

Literary Processions

What Eliot said
I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD


APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What Eliot was thinking of:

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke

What Churchy LaFemme said:

"Verse don't come no blanker'n what I done blunk at 'em!"

Blessed are the peacemakers...

Alright, this Jill Carroll matter is getting odder and odder.

This post, on AlterNet, pretty much sums up my feelings, whether Jill Carroll is a Christian, or not:

Apparently Jill Carroll's attitude is just too damned Christian for conservative America. Angry and suspicious at her lack of vitriol for her captors who killed her translator but released her, the National Review-ers are doing a pile-on while the producer of the Imus show is doing his best to sound like an overgrown fratboy.

Athenae took the overgrown fratboy to school; out behind the woodshed, actually. And CJR called his remarks "absolute lunacy." But that's not what bugs me. What bugs me is this, also from that Alternet post:

After yesterday's Podhoretz comment that Carroll may be a latter-day Patty Hearst, Podhoretz's little acolyte (and the LA Times' newest columnist) Jonah Goldberg is "getting a very bad vibe" by Carroll: "MAYBE IT’S JUST ME... But Jill Carroll is increasingly starting to bug me... But it would be nice to hear her say something remotely critical of her captors..."

E&P and Think Progress point out the obvious: how many of these critics have spent 82 minutes in captivity, much less 82 days in what is the most dangerous city in the world? How dangerous? Consider this opening paragraph from the Boston Herald:

Jill Carroll, described as “emotionally fragile,” went reluctantly to Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone - the place her captors had warned her was infiltrated with insurgents - and spent Friday in seclusion, recovering from 82 days of captivity (ermphasis added).

Ms. Carroll's actions and dress starting to make more sense, now? 82 days in captivity, and the first interview is with the Sunnis, and she's told even the Green Zone is not safe for her? Ask yourself: what would you do? Rush to explain yourself to the satisfaction of Jonah Goldberg and Howie Kurtz? Neither would I. And scared? Yes, she was very scared:

Jill Carroll wondered from day to day whether she would grow old or die a hostage.

"It was like falling off a cliff for three months, waiting to hit the ground," the 28-year-old American reporter said Thursday after being released by her kidnappers.

A shuffle from car to street to the branch office of a Sunni Arab political party and then to its headquarters brought Carroll to freedom on a beautiful spring day in Baghdad.

When she walked into the Iraqi Islamic Party's branch, she was still wearing one of the head scarves and enveloping embroidered dresses given to her by her captors. The black gloves of a conservative Muslim woman, also given to her by her captors, hid her hands.

Shortly after Carroll's arrival, the head of the party telephoned The Washington Post's Baghdad bureau. Carroll, a freelance journalist who wrote for the Christian Science Monitor, said she wanted to see familiar faces and had had many friends on The Post's staff since the early days of the war. Devoted to mastering Arabic and Middle Eastern culture and to covering Iraq, she was particularly close to the paper's young Iraqi interpreters and reporters.

In the party leader's chair-lined offices, with Sunni politicians looking on, Carroll and her friends were reunited. They embraced and cried through her first conversations in English in more than 80 days.

Take all that into account; and then take this into account:

Party leader Tariq al-Hashimi presented her with an embossed Koran in a plush box. The Koran was for the true followers of Islam, Hashimi said, and he mentioned the Iraqi people. Accepting it, Carroll said her suffering was nothing compared with theirs.

The real issue of the reaction to Jill Carroll is part of what I was trying to get at: we dare not see people as anything but enemies, or friends. "Peacemakers" are what we name rifles and missiles. We don't like them when the come packaged as human beings. Again, as Alternet says:

The point, the mission Carroll has been on from the get-go, is that seeing the enemy as human beings with their own customs but essentially like us, makes it that much harder to kill and fight and support killing and fighting. These right-wingers are angry because this kind of humanizing threatens to expose them to a different reality, a reality in which human lives are at stake and not just "ragheads" and "terrorists."

I learned this in seminary, about the Hebrews, and the Jews of 1st century Palestine, the clouds of witness that attest to the presence of the living God: they were not strange figures in stained glass or children's bible illustrations: they were "human beings with their own customs but essentially like us." It was a great revelation. It meant I could, and did, worship the living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus. But I also learned that Jesus was killed, not because he was a peacemaker, but because he proclaimed the basiliea tou theou, the empire of God that rivaled the empire of Rome. It seemed a reasonable conclusion: why would you want to kill someone who simply preached, and enacted, peace?

Jill Carroll is not a "Christ figure," in the sense Northrop Frye meant the term; and her life is certainly not in danger because she has not cursed her captors and called them vermin. But I am beginning to understand why Pilate would want to dispose of an itinerant rabbi, one with the presence and charisma to sway hundreds if not thousands while alive, and at least the presence to sway disciples and believers and followers long after his death (even setting aside the pneumatological explanation). And it wouldn't have to be because he preached a competing political vision.

It could very well be because he was such an effective preacher, and teacher, of peace. It could very well be that lesson is the one the powers that be simply cannot tolerate.

We did so well so long....

In case you missed the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on C-Span2 this morning (I had to turn the TV up as loud as I could while I wandered the house doing chores and working on my spiritual auto-bio, which is going nicely, thank you!), this is the Glenn Greenwald post Sen. Feingold referenced in part of his questioning.

I mention it only because it is a concise effort (Glenn is sometimes a bit wordy for moi) and makes a very salient point:

It is rather striking how the White House's defense of its activities -- and its explanation for why there need not be any Congressional investigation into its actions ("you shouldn't worry") we are only eavesdropping on the "very bad people") -- is virtually identical, both in substance and in words, to the assurances given to us on the same topic by the Nixon Administration. John Dean is an extremely appropriate witness at these hearings in so many ways.

If Watergate was truly the nadir of the American republic in the 20th century, how is the Bush Administration any different? The strongest defense of the wiretapping I heard in the hearings was from Sen. Hatch, who averred that John Dean did not have prima facie evidence of a crime, as Dean asserted. It was also as close to "Did not!" "Did too!" "Well, you're a big filthy liar! Liar, liar, pants on fire! And 'did not' times a billion!," as the hearings got. Only the rules of decorum kept Hatch from taking his defense to that logical conclusion.

The Administration has, quite simply, become indefensible. Sen. Graham carefully avoided Bruce Fein's argument that if the President (as the President claims, no one disputed this point) has the power to investigate anything under the banner of "foreign intelligence," then the President can read mail and invade houses, claiming to be seeking information related to foreign intelligence. And none of this gets the oversight of a judge, or more than a handful of Congresspersons (Specter bristled at the idea that informing him of this program was not Constitutionally adequate; so much for "government of laws, not men.") Graham sidestepped that argument because he knew Fein was right: Bush has laid claim to nothing less than the power to shred the Constitution, in order to protect the nation.

But is there a nation, without a Constitution?

Noam Chomsky was interviewed for the full hour of Democracy Now! this morning, over his new book Failed State. He mentioned something interesting:

...Clinton devised the concept of rogue states. ‘It’s 1994, we have to defend ourselves from rogue states.’ Then, later on came the failed states, which either threaten our security, like Iraq, or require our intervention in order to save them, like Haiti, often devastating them in the process. In each case, the terms have been pretty hard to sustain, because it's been difficult to overlook the fact that under any, even the most conservative characterization of these notions -- let's say U.S. law -- the United States fits fairly well into the category, as has often been recognized. By now, for example, the category -- even in the Clinton years, leading scholars, Samuel Huntington and others, observed that -- in the major journals, Foreign Affairs -- that in most of the world, much of the world, the United States is regarded as the leading rogue state and the greatest threat to their existence.

By now, a couple of years later, Bush years, same journals’ leading specialists don't even report international opinion. They just describe it as a fact that the United States has become a leading rogue state.

Which puts Derrida's comments in a wholly new light, at least to me. Sadly, this is not entirely news to the American public, but neither will we see Chomsky on national television to discuss or even debate these ideas.

Worse still, Chomsky argues we are on the way to being a "failed state," one "that cannot protect its citizens from violence and has a government that regards itself as beyond the reach of domestic or international law." Chomsky points out, for example, that weapons sites were under UN guard, and weapons manufacturing equipment were being disassembled and destroyed by the UN. Remember Al Qaa Qaa? It wasn't protected when we went in, and now, Chomsky says, all that material has disappeared. Where did it go? Presumably the Bush Administration no more cares than it cares where Osama Bin Laden is.

Paul Simon wrote "American Tune" after Watergate. Sadly, it's even more relevant now. Given what Greenwald says, and what happened in the Senate Judiciary Commitee this morning, is there any doubt Chomsky's thesis is essentially correct?

Demonizing the Other

Listening to Tom Tancredo this morning, I started thinking about the tangled issue of immigration in this country.

He mentioned a 700 mile fence along the Mexican border. If you can't spend time along the Rio Grande, than read Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, to get an idea what the country is like "down there." You will end up with a better idea of the geography of the Texas borderlands than you would ever get from a textbook. A fence is as useless against illegal border crossings as it would be against a hurricane.

Then consider that Texas is, culturally and ethnically, "Mexican" from just south of Austin, on a line that runs from El Paso straight across the state to Houston. The border is porous because Texas left Mexico in legal status only, and Mexico has been reclaiming it ever since. People on the border don't argue about "English Only." They become bi-lingual. And they don't worry about immigration, because you're talking about family, friends, customers, clients. Notice there is never a push for "immigration reform" coming from Representatives along the Border, or even from Senators of border states. Tom Tancredo is in Colorado. James Sensenbrenner is from Wisconsin.

But to really consider the issue fairly, consider the solutions being offered. Tancredo talked about immigrants basically "taking" jobs from Americans. If we could stop them from wanting to be here, he argued, they would go home. Of course, stopping them from being here means making them felons. That is the only status of person we can deny jobs to in this country, and do it not just with immigration laws, but with the full force of police forces from county constables to FBI agents. This is the import of House Bill 4437, and the reason so many people are taking to the streets, in Texas as well as elsewhere. And this is, in fact, the issue: the economic magnet of jobs in America, drawing poor people from below the Rio Grande (and from deep in South America) like iron filings. If you want to stop that flow with the blunt instrument of the law, Rep. Tancredo is right: you need to deny them access to jobs.

But the simplest and best way to do that is not to create 11 million felons, and do to the criminal justice system what Bush and Rumsfeld had done to the U.S. military. The most effective way to deny jobs to those illegal immigrants, is to prosecute employers for hiring illegal aliens (and usually cheating them in the process), and to make farm workers subject to minimum wage laws.

That would solve much of the problem. American workers don't want the jobs Mexican laborers will take in large part because those jobs pay so poorly, or because employers would rather cheat undocumented and unprotected laborers. That's not the whole of the picture, of course. But if we are so anxious to criminalize a segment of our population, and to regulate our economic system so as to dissuade illegal immigration, it's an easy matter to use the workforce we have to crowd out the workforce that wants to risk its life in the Chihauhua desert to come here.

Too easy, in fact. So easy, we'd rather rely on good old American xenophobia, and demonize the other.

"Peace, peace, when there is no peace."

I'm going to get in trouble for this, but here goes.

The Christian Peacekeeping Team, absent the murdered Tom Fox, was released recently. Try as I might (and Google is not infallible) I can't find any coverage of that fact in the blogs I frequent (nor in mine; mea culpa, mea maxima culpa). However, I can find coverage of the release of Jill Caroll in an idle browse down the blogroll:

Street Prophets

Eschaton

First Draft

Mia Culpa

Now somebody may point out a blog post I've overlooked, and I will gladly take corrections on this point. I don't mean to point a finger at anyone; just to point something out. Like the blogs I scanned, NPR made sure I knew, when I woke up this morning, that her release was the day's top story. Amy Goodman treated it the same way. As Holden says, the news is "fantastic." As Athenae says: "Thank God."

But still, I'm wondering: did we react the same way when the surviving members of the CPT were rescued? And could this be part of the reason why?

The head of the British Army, Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, said in a statement he was "saddened" there did not seem to be any gratitude for the efforts by U.S. and British soldiers to free Kember and his fellow peace activists, reports CBS News correspondent Larry Miller.

However, upon his arrival at London's Heathrow Airport, Kember said, "I do not believe that a lasting peace is achieved by armed force, but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my rescue."

Before leaving for his peacemaking work in Iraq, Kember said if he was taken hostage he did not want to be freed by the military.

Well, maybe. When Kember was released, he pointedly did not thank the military. James Loney, however, did:

"To the British soldiers who risked their lives to rescue us, to the government of Canada who sent a team to Baghdad to help secure our release, to all those who thought about us and prayed for us, for all those who spoke for us when we had no voice, I am forever and truly grateful," he said. "It's great to be alive."

So it isn't a simple matter, and I don't want to oversimplify it. Call it an uncomfortable reflection, then, but peace is a very difficult concept for us. What we usually mean by it is peace for us: comfort, safetey, security. What we usually mean by it is peace from the other. It's why we have a Dept. of Defense now, instead of the old Dept. of War. We don't make war; we just insure our peace. And we are still more comfortable doing that by violence.

I am grateful Jill Caroll was released. I am glad she was not harmed, and her ordeal was one she should not have gone through. I do not, in any way, compare her ordeal to that of the CPT, or even our response to the two.

I was just noticing the difference; and it's interesting.

Ain't gonna study war no more

There's a great deal of generalizing going on here, and I hope I can be forgiven for not providing links and footnotes to all this rumination, but I'm just wondering aloud: why aren't Sweden and Norway and Finland in the news more, for violence?

I'm curious because, culturally, these are the lands of the Vikings, people who would split their enemies backs open and pull their lungs to out through the wound (according to Annie Dillard, in a memorable passage from her novel The Living.) This is the land of Beowulf, which includes a compendium of stories that leads to one conclusion: these people simply couldn't get along with each other. One story in Beowulf is of a wedding party bringing the bride to seal peace between two tribes, but the party gets trapped by the winter, and by the spring thaw they've slaughtered their hosts and returned home with the bride. The poem even ends with the great hero dead, and his tribe convinced they will be slaughtered the next day, when word gets around. There is, in other words, no dearth of violence in the history of the region, no culture of neutrality, a la Switzerland; no tradition of extreme Christian tolerance or non-violence. In fact, unless I am wrong, it is today the least Christian part of an increasingly secular Europe.

But I was listening to the BBC World Service, and a story about the World Cup came on. Germany is hosting it this time, and they are worried about security; not because of terrorists, but because of soccer fans, "hooligans," as they have been dubbed. And the problem now is not hooligans from Britain, but from Poland. Now, taken as a normal human attribute, violence doesn't seem so unusual, and in that context the fact that the hooligans are now more likely to be Polish is just something of a curiosity, something worthy of a news report. But I wondered: why don't I ever hear of Swedish hooligans; or Norwegian thugs; or out of control Finnish soccer fans?

Somebody with more knowledge of the World Cup may pop up and tell me it's because the Scandavian countries don't play soccer, or aren't big soccer fans. But then I never hear about hockey game violence in those countries, either, and I assume they like hockey. And it may be just my ignorance, too. It may be the violence exists, but it isn't reported. Certainly Scandinavians have police, and murders, and the other violence that human communities are heir to. But how much, I wonder? Per capita, how much do they have?

I do remember a story on NPR, so long ago now I'm too lazy to even Google for it, about what we now call "corporal punishment," but what I grew up calling a "spanking" (at home) or "getting licks" (at school.) We have, since my childhood, pretty much eliminated "getting licks," but we still tolerate spankings, if people want to inflict them. Tolerate legally, that is. We may prosecute parents for child abuse, but "abuse" doesn't include raising your hand to your child on occassion; at least not legally. In Sweden, if I recall correctly, it does. Parents, this story reported, cannot raise their hand to their child, even at home, even in calm reflection and complete conviction that: "Spare the rod, and spoil the child." (Which, no, does not mean beat the child with the rod, but that's the generally accepted interpretation, wrong though it is.) Indeed, the children in this country know of spankings and corporal punishment only from fairy tales. They've never experienced it, and consider it as unreal as dragons and fairies and fair damsels and charming princes.

And every once in a while I reflect on this, and wonder: is violence learned? Or is it inherent? Is it a concomitant of our make up as human beings, or a conclusion we reach by deciding first that power is the only venue available to work our will on the world? So much of the issue of violence comes down to will, and the obstacles to its exertion, to our exertion of it. Iraq stands in our way for some perceived reason, will not accede to our will: violence is the solution. Killers wander the streets; violence is the solution. My child will not obey my will: violence is the solution.

That last one we're giving up on, more and more. I've never raised my hand to my daughter, and I never will. Never having learned violence as a solution within the family, I doubt she will decide to use it in her family, one day. Curiously, the issue is tied up with magic, in my mind. Magic works as the perfect exertion of our will in the world: the magic does precisely what we wanted done, whether we had worked out all the goals of our desire or not. In fact, that is the magic, that what we will is perfectly realized, without flaw or hindrance, and even what was not foreseen or forethought, is already accounted for and a response made, a perfect response that solves even the unforeseen consequences or our act. That's the magic of Harry Potter, and most fantasy films and stories.

It's also the magic of technology, or "smart bombs" and "weapons systems," which will work our destructive will, but do only what we intend to do, not what we actually do. Garbage may go in, but surely only goodness and virtue will come out. Which is always our excuse for violence. "This will hurt me more than it hurts you," was simply wishful thinking, a displacement of guilt as you let violence take over and hopefully work the magic you were too angry, too tired, too limited in your thinking, to work out yourself. It is blaming the victim, be that person Saddam Hussein, or "the insurgents," or the child, for what you do. Your intent is good, and if only the magic, the violence, would take over and smooth out all the unforseen and inherent consequences, would make right what you intended to make right, and do it the way you intended it to be done, then your will would be done. God's will would be done. Which you always hope is one and the same thing. But you never know, until you exert your power, do you? And then, what does that power do to your spirit?

Magic, violence, technology. What is the spiritual value of these things?

"The writ is the writ."--Justice David Souter

[This is going to get stale if I don't go ahead and post it.]

"Jurisdiction over habeas corpus is jurisdiction over habeas corpus."--Justice David Souter in oral arguments in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The statement came in this exchange with the Solicitor General (courtesy of the NYT article). Habeas corpus can be suspended, per the Constitution, but only by Congress (an important distinction for this Administration) and only in "cases of rebellion or invasion." Follow the bouncing ball of the Government's argument:

Addressing Justice Stevens, the solicitor general said, "My view would be that if Congress sort of stumbles upon a suspension of the writ, that the preconditions are satisfied, that would still be constitutionally valid."

Justice Souter interrupted. "Isn't there a pretty good argument that suspension of the writ of habeas corpus is just about the most stupendously significant act that the Congress of the United States can take," he asked, "and therefore we ought to be at least a little slow to accept your argument that it can be done from pure inadvertence?"

When Mr. Clement began to answer, Justice Souter persisted: "You are leaving us with the position of the United States that the Congress may validly suspend it inadvertently. Is that really your position?"

The solicitor general replied, "I think at least if you're talking about the extension of the writ to enemy combatants held outside the territory of the United States —— "

"Now wait a minute!" Justice Souter interrupted, waving a finger. "The writ is the writ. There are not two writs of habeas corpus, for some cases and for other cases. The rights that may be asserted, the rights that may be vindicated, will vary with the circumstances, but jurisdiction over habeas corpus is jurisdiction over habeas corpus."

The Solicitor General is trying to bootstrap his argument on Scalia's dissent in Hamdi, always a dicey argument and doubly so considering that opinion is not exactly cold in its judicial grave. Still, as Souter points out, even that desperate attempt isn't enough to save him. I think Souter has done much more in that exchange than express his position on the jurisdictional issue raised by the Detainee Treatment Act. It's really worth listening to the NPR report to hear the exasperation in Justice Souter's voice, and the weak attempt by Justice Scalia to give the solicitor general some grounds for argument. Scalia may believe what he says, but his tone betrays his confidence in his position.

This case is absolutely historic, and it will not be resolved on a question of lack of jurisdiction, although jurisdiction is what this case is all about. The question before the Court is: who gets to establish courts and the rules under which they operate? That power has traditionally been split, by Constitution and by statute, between the legislature (laws) and the Courts (rules, which the Supreme Court establishes under a Congressional grant of authority to do so). The Court recognizes this threat, and doesn't seem to have been too impressed with the Government's arguments:

Mr. Clement argued that the detainee law would allow a detainee to argue in federal court, after a conviction by a military commission, that the commission's procedures were illegal or unconstitutional.

Justice Ginsburg then asked him to "straighten me out." She said, "I thought it was the government's position that these enemy combatants do not have any rights under the Constitution and laws of the United States."

"That is true, Justice Ginsburg," the solicitor general answered.

So up is down, and black is white, except when it suits us to reverse that. And when we do, it's up to us (the Administration) to decide, and we don't have to tell anybody when, or why. Nor was there any apparent support for the government's argument that the President needed this power due to an "emergency":

Justice Stephen Breyer said that lawyers for Hamdan, who faces a single conspiracy count, argue there is no emergency to justify the special trial.

"If the president can do this, well then he can set up commissions to go to Toledo, and in Toledo pick up an alien and not have any trial at all except before that special commission," Breyer said.

As Justice Souter said: the writ is the writ, and (in a clear slap at Scalia) there isn't one for citizens, and one for non-citizens.

And while that business of the "colloquy" inserted into the Congressional record did not affect oral arguments, it was clearly an embarassment to the two Senators.

Justice Souter eviscerated the government's argument that Congress had removed jurisdiction over this case, by noting that the government's argument rested on inadvertence, i.e., Congress, without meaning to, had removed jurisdiction from the Court for all cases coming from Gitmo. A majority of the Justices didn't seem too impressed with it:

Justice David H. Souter said it would be "stupendously significant" for Congress to retroactively close courts to constitutional challenges.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said "it's an extraordinary act, I think, to withdraw jurisdiction from this court in a pending case."

The NPR report provides an excellent summary of the arguments with the original recordings. Even if they are a bit bewildering to you (I haven't practiced law in years, nor studied the finer points of habeas law since law school, but I found it fascinating, as well as heartening to hear the Court understand the basic issues as I do), the opportunity to listen to the recording of the actual oral argument is worth your time. Only excerpts, of course, but there is a link to the full argument, if you are so inclined.

Always a dangerous thing to speculate on how the case will go based on oral arguments, but as Ms. Totenberg notes, the Government got a chillier reception than was expected. Even Scalia's interjections sound half-hearted, as if merely for the sake of stubbornness he wants to insist on a "purer" position that has no relevance in the real world. In the context of remarks by Justices Ginsburg and O'Connor recently (which comments Tom DeLay managed to make even more disturbing, and I didn't think that was possible) , of the Hamdi case, and the tenor of the questioning yesterday, I don't think the Court is inclined to give President Bush the powers he claims to have.

It's a cinch the Congress won't stop him; but there is hope the Court will. Now if we can just get to the issue of "signing statements."