Hieronymus Blog

2006-11-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

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Around the World Winter 06

2006-01-17T17:32:00.000-07:00

Madrid Taxis

I’m finally sorting out the trek notes from my North Africa trip this past fall and thought I'd pass on some of my impressions and pics.

Que Ciudad!

On the way to work in Morocco I had a short layover in the Old World.
Madrid is a striking city. I wish I’d had more than 48 hours to take it in.

I’m a veteran “urban trekker,” though, so two days gave me enough time to get a feel. I covered over 20 miles on foot around town and had a great time. Probably even lost a pound or two.

Anyone traveling in Europe can’t help being impressed with the real affection the locals have for their cities. Madrid is a case in point.

You can see it in the dogged determination to hang on to historically significant buildings and neighborhoods, in the reverence for place that drives meticulous efforts to highlight beauty at every corner, and in the way Europeans actually “live” in their public places. Parks and plazas and streets are always full of people hanging out and enjoying the pleasure of being around other people.

It’s not that we Americans don’t like our cities.

But it seems we’re more ambivalent about our urban scapes.

We sort of like them and are willing to hang out with each other in movie theatres or malls or in stadiums.

At the same time, we’re willing to let cities deteriorate or die if it “makes sense” to do so and--in general--we seem to have a lot less trouble scraping even the most important buildings or sites.

A pretty interesting difference. You can’t help but notice it.

I kicked back in my room after the two day trek and watched a little television the night before heading out.

Didn’t have many choices so I ended up watching a local game show.

Some of it was familiar since it was very loosely based on “Jeopardy.” The production values were current.

The host could have passed for conventionally hip here. Slightly overweight, 30-ish, ironic and pleasant, soul patch, male pattern baldness, stylized 50’s bowling shirt and 60’s IBM ‘scientific management” heavy frame glasses.

The contestants had to answer detailed questions about various neighborhoods around Madrid. It was pop culture stuff along with the most specific questions about history and geography and architecture and current events.

If you didn’t know the city in great detail you got embarrassed.

The people on the show knew their stuff.

I guess that wasn’t so surprising. Any show can find individuals that will make the grade.

What surprised me was that the show is a big hit in Madrid. Again, Europeans may value their cities more than Americans.

If a show like that ever made it in a place like Los Angeles, contestants would have to know who built the Watts Towers or give the exact street corner of the giant stucco doughnut atop Randy’s in west LA.

I can answer both of those questions—even after moving out of town two years ago—so I guess in at least some ways I’m a European at heart.

The Color of White

Many European cities are full of millions of white people.

I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising. But it really is for an American traveling in Europe.

A place like Madrid can feel exotic to a New World citizen because most of our cities are so "racially diverse.”

Even a city like Minneapolis—the frozen home of powder milk biscuits that help Nordic Protestants do what needs to be done—can come across like the capital of the 3rd world compared to some places in Europe.

By nature I tend to look for difference and diversity, but like most Americans, I’m used to a racial and cultural idiom of white, black, brown, red and yellow.

Madrid, where pretty much everybody in the central city is “white” according to that simple “crayola crayon” world view, moves you into distinctions often lost in America.

I saw “white” people with dark brown eyes, light brown eyes, light green eyes, dark green eyes, light blue eyes, and dark blue eyes. Even red eyes post vino.

Every shade and hue of blonde hair, red hair, brown hair, black hair and sometimes blue hair among the grannies. Straight hair, wavy hair and kinked hair. Thin hair and thick.

Dark brown skin, light brown skin, pinkish skin, reddish skin, pale skin and pale skin with freckles.

Then you’ve gotta take the different eye, skin and hair colors and textures and mix ‘em and match ‘em into cool and complicated combinations to do justice to the actual people on the street.

Is there another “racial” group with more physical diversity than “white” people?

Makes you wonder if there’s more to things than the crayola thinkers imagine.

At the very least it makes “white people watching” in Europe pretty entertaining.

Lithping with the Betht of Them

I’ve noticed that people of various Spanish speaking nations are convinced that their version of Spanish is superior to others.

My family and I lived in Guatemala many years ago for a number of months doing intensive language study.

The Guatemalans laughed out loud at the way Mexicans speak Spanish, and some Argentines I met there thought that Guatemalan Spanish barely qualified as “civilized.”

Turns out Castilians are the cockiest of the lot.

My feeble attempts to speak the mother tongue provided amusement for more than a few of the locals I ran across.

They asked me about my “Mexican/American” accent with a knowing smile and encouraged me to soften my ‘c’s.’ In Castilian Spanish a name like “Garcia” is pronounced gar-thee-ya rather than gar-see-ya.

Ath a rethult, everybody thounds like they’ve got a lithp.

By my thecond day I wath lithping with the betht of ‘em.

Place des Nations-Unies

Ramadan at Rick's

Pretty much everybody in the US knows Casablanca in the landscape of our imaginations.

The city is cool 40's snap brim fedoras and foggy airports. Clipped and clever dialogue. Homely anti-heroes and conflicted beauties who love them. World weary wisdom and passionate heroic intensity. Bogart and noir. Rick's Cafe Americain. Mysterious and worldly Arabs.

That last part's the thing.

While I was doing my due diligence I heard about the "worldly Arabs" of Casablanca from a lot of experienced folks in Morocco.

The Moroccans were supposed to be a pretty "user friendly" Islamic people, with the Casablancans the most western of all. I was expecting a toned down take on the kind of Islamic religious zeal that has Americans worked up into a pseudo-religious frenzy.

In some ways that view is pretty true.

Casablanca looks more western than most cities in the Islamic world. And judging by the way some of the fashionable young men and women dress it's not your father's Caliphate. At first glance it's more Ayatollah of Rock-n-Rolla than Wahabi worldview.

I got in country at the start of Ramadan. When in Mecca do as the Meccans. I decided to keep the dawn to dusk fast as best I could while there.

Christians once valued fasting as a way to discipline desire and open a pathway to what might be.

Western believers largely dropped that discipline long ago and put their faith and money on an overflowing marketplace. So spending time in a place where lots of people ritually and socially deny themselves something as basic as food was new for me.

Traditional Shoe Sale

When I'm traveling I normally buy my food at local markets. It's a good way to save money and get a better feel for the place. But shopping at a downtown supermarket in Casa during the fast was even more revealing than usual.

The place was packed out with eager folks getting food for the “break-fast” meal at dusk when everybody chows down after starving all day.

Every city in Morocco has a slightly different official breakfast time, often announced with loudspeakers or sirens. In Casa you can start downing the couscous at 6:30 pm sharp.

Anyway, folks went out of their way to look their best even though I knew they were suffering from hunger pangs and even dizziness since it was about 3 pm. Muslim people consider personal cleanliness of the utmost importance, a fact I learned firsthand a few years ago when--after walking around the hot and dirty streets of Cairo for hours--a good natured young man pointed out my need for “a more effective deodorant.”

Everybody looked sharp and clean, with about half the people wearing more traditional clothes and the other half wearing the west. And nobody seemed noticeably out of sorts, something I observed in most of the people I met during the fasting hours throughout Morocco.

Check out lines in the developing world will normally test the patience of even the Dalai Lama. This market was no different. I was in the “express” lane, which meant I had a chance to get through a ten person line in 20 minutes instead of 30 minutes. But even in lines moving at geologic speeds, folks were positive and unruffled.

Well, except for me. By that point my stomach was grumbling and my glucose stores were pretty much burned up. Feeling dizzy and a little on edge, the last place I wanted to be was squashed among the pious and cheerful in a hot, humid market. By the time I got through the line I secretly wanted to wipe the annoyingly pleasant expressions off a few of their faces :^) I realized at that point that I had a few things to learn from my temporary neighbors.

Beyond people’s dignified and pleasant demeanor, though, the most impressive thing about Ramadan in Casablanca was the simple fact that everyone observed the fast. Or at least, everybody I ran across got with the spiritual diet.

No sign of anybody trying to sneak a mini-chocolate donut on the sly. No restaurant or café open between dawn and dusk (well, with one exception). No sidewalk food peddlers. No smells of food cooking. Nada. For a westerner, it's almost inconceivable to spend all day in a big city without the sights and sounds and smells of food and of people eating.

Human nature being what it is, I'm sure lots of folks in the city were doing potato chips and Snickers bars when nobody else was looking. And I'd guess some families in the high end suburbs got their three squares behind their high walls. But none of that is immediately visible to a person spending a week on the streets among Casablancans.

Hollywood visions of Casablanca aside, and in spite of Casa’s French colonial roots, the reality is the vast majority of folks there are deeply committed Muslims. So much for the “worldly Arab” reputation. Maybe Casa is ‘more western’ than some other cities in Morocco and the Islamic world, but it’s a place of serious faith and practice by any western standards.

I sometimes hear these days about the beginnings of a Muslim “Reformation” or even a Muslim “Enlightenment.” Some people believe that Islam will join Christianity and Judaism as a faith thoroughly modified and re-interpreted to make it more compatible with secular modernity, capitalism and democracy.

Well, maybe. But from my experiences in the Islamic world, I wouldn’t hold my breath that will happen anytime soon.

Hassan II Mosque

I don’t want to give you the impression that I faithfully kept my short-term fasting vows, because I didn't.

On my last day in town, after walking for a few miles along the “Corniche,” the developed water front and beach area in the western part of the city, I got so dizzy by late afternoon that I just had to get some food. But nothing was open. What to do?

I walked north--head hazy and stomach growling--for about another mile until I saw what looked to me at the time like a vision of splendor.

It was The Golden Arches. If there was any restaurant in Casa that would probably ignore Ramadan, McDonald’s was the place.

McMaroc is the local tag for a worldwide franchise that has simply kicked Mohammed's booty. Current score: 99 billion served to 1.3 billion believers.

McRick's

And sure enough, it was open for business. So I knocked down a meal along with some other happy infidels.

Now, I’ve probably eaten at McDonald’s ten times as an adult. Yes, it’s possible for an American to achieve this. I've never liked fast food, even as a kid.

But I’ve never been happier walking through the doors of a restaurant than I was walking into that air-conditioned ka-ching! sanctuary. I’ve never been so grateful to see such disregard for religious values and traditions.

It was a beautiful sight.

I guess hunger can re-arrange the mind wonderfully :^)

New Convert

I've never been much of a picture taker. I've always prefered to replay events in my mind rather than through photos or videos.

Visual memories stored in your mind get layered with emotion and interpretation and all kinds of other good things that turn them into a pretty rich mixture. Photos or videos sometimes seem too literal a medium for satisfying memories.

I'm a medievalist in some ways and I freely admit it.

But I've been getting more into picture taking recently. The only explanations I can give for my change of attitude are my ageing brain and digital cameras.

The problem with rich and layered visual memories as you get older is that they get stuck in some inaccessable corner of your brain where you can't get to them. All you soft lens contact wearers will recognize the experience of one of your dried-out contacts folding up and disappearing somewhere underneath your eyelid and around the corner of your eyeball.

That's pretty much what happens eventually with visual memories. You can't remember what people or places look like anymore. Sometimes--as you get into your 40's--you can hardly remember what you looked like at 20 as you stare into the mirror and wonder who this old guy is standing in the bathroom wearing your clothes. So pictures and videos can be a pretty good reminder that jump starts all that layered good stuff again.

And digital cameras just make the whole thing so easy....

Cross-cultural Pics?

I travel a lot internationally and picture taking in the two-thirds world is a whole different thing.

My work gets me into overseas slum communities. When I'm there I generally avoid taking pictures. Carrying a camera tends to create a certain distance with my hosts. Most people in the developing world associate picture taking with tourists or journalists and that's the last thing I want to communicate. Understandably, too, people living in urban poverty aren't normally thrilled about having folks snapping pictures of their difficult circumstances.

But aside from the connotations of tourism or poor folk's discomfort with photography, people in a lot of cultures just don't like to have their picture taken, period. Not everybody loves the camera as much as Americans do.

Quick Pics

Folks in Morocco frown on taking photos of people. And forget about getting easy pics of religious buildings of any kind.

That's a pain because religious structures are pretty much the only interesting architecture among the miles of butt ugly buildings in most developing world Islamic cities.

Some of those social restrictions are due to current Morrocan culture and some to the long-term influence of Islam which forbids human representation in art.

So if you're going to get some pictures of people (I just avoided religious buildings other than the Hassan II Mosque) you've gotta be stealthy and quick and ready for a lecture or two when you get caught camera in hand.

I've developed my own little idiosyncratic method for just such occasions.

Once you see what you want to photograph, you figure out the shot in your head. Then you turn your back to it with camera concealed under your crossed arms. You get the camera ready and get your finger on the button and ready to shoot. Then you quickly spin clockwise--if you're a right hander--in order to face the object or person and all in one motion bring the camera up to your face. Sort of like the motion you'd use to throw a frisbee except you keep your elbow in a lot closer to your body.

Line it up quick and bam! snap the shot.

Then quickly swing the camera behind your back and move off at a brisk pace.

With a little practice you can do the whole thing with one fluid motion in 3 or 4 seconds.

Yes, I agree. It's pretty embarrassing what a grown man will do sometimes to get a picture.

And like I said, no matter how careful you are to avoid offence, once in a while you'll face the judgment of a local. Just after I took the picture of the vegetable and fruit souk (market) above I headed quickly through the crowds thinking I'd gotten the shot off with no fuss or muss. But an older woman about twenty yards away must have seen me and she gave me her two dirhams worth in Arabic. I'm glad I couldn't understand her, though I'm guessing it had something to do with knuckleheads and Americans....

Strike a Pose

In contrast to the cultural consensus in these places, some locals make a living being photographed. Since it's hard for the average tourist to get good pictures of local people they'll pay a premium to snap one of these "professional voguers."

I really got an introduction to the Moroccan version in Marrakech.

Usually the "peevees" wear some kind of colorful indigenous clothing or do something "exotic." In Egypt these guys dress up like some romantic Bedouin Sheik and ride a camel. In Morocco they wear traditional Moroccan footware--kind of a pointy slipper deal--and "charm" snakes and strike a 1001 Arabian Nights pose.

The snakes are highly venemous cobras, though skilled handlers suture their mouths shut with medical filament just before showtime. Some tourists don't know that and I saw a few fearful and panicky looks on people's faces.

If you whip out your camera these guys are on you in a second speaking good English, Spanish, French, or German and demanding a fee for service. Once you pay up and take your shot, they jump on you again and coax your camera away from you so they can take a shot of you with the snakes in the background. After they snap the shot they double dip you and demand a further fee.

Not a bad joint.

Maybe lean and pacifistic European tourists in the U.S. would pay for pictures of "exotic" American voguers striking a pose with greasy fast food in one hand and a legal assault rifle in the other. I'm surprised nobody at Venice Beach has done that take for cash :^)

Pro Vogueing

The Airport as Destination

Frankfurt Airport

Travel writers do some of the best writing on the market today, but I’ve always been surprised at how little attention they give to airports.

If you do long distance international trips you spend a lot of time on the ground between flights. Ten hour layovers aren't out of the question.

I ended up stuck in Frankfurt Airport for almost 8 hours on the way back home from Morocco.

Seeing the suffering of poor urban slum dwellers is one thing, but experiencing the inconvenience of first world travel is quite another :^)

Privileged Ranting About Airports

International airports tend to bite.

Here’s my shot at a long distance travelers’ hierarchy of wants:

• Food
• Sleep
• Getting clean
• Exercise

Food’s a no-brainer of course.

When you’re trying to catch up on lost sleep or trying to adjust and readjust your body clock to your destination, getting some sleep at the right time can be pretty useful.

Few activities get you stickier than long distance travel.

And when you’ve been jammed in a seat for 12 hours next to a 230 pound fat guy with the seatback in front of you lowered into your knees, moving around and getting some exercise when you get off the plane can be pretty helpful.

How do most airports score in providing for those desires?

• The food sucks but at least it's expensive.

• Very few airports make a place for economy passengers to rest or sleep. Heathrow in London, which is probably the best international hub, provides relatively quiet sleeping lounges with comfortable chairs that will lay back and let you snooze. I can’t think of another major airport with something similar.

• Getting clean? Forget about it. Again, Heathrow provides a shower area where you can get a towel and a shower for a small price, but I know of no other major airport that offers that kind of service.

• If you want to get loose or exercise, you can either do your stretching or yoga on the carpet in front of your gate or walk in circles from terminal to terminal. McCarran Airport in Las Vegas has a 24 Hour Fitness right in the airport that travelers and airport employees use. Haven't seen that before or since.

Given the emphasis on customer satisfaction and the rise in international travel over the past 10 years, you might those kind of innovative services would be the standard around the world, but not so.

Cruel and Usual Punishment

I could have used a snooze for 4 or 5 hours in Frankfurt to begin resetting my body clock back to Mountain Standard Time in the US, so I asked around to see if they had a sleeping area. Happily, I found an official who told me I was in luck and pointed me in the right direction.

The “rest area” turned out to be a series of lounges set up right next to the main walkway between two terminals.

The designers made the walkway out of hard plastic material studded with circular bumps to increase traction. It created a thunderous sound when anybody dragged their luggage on wheels across it. Multiply that sound by crowds and you’ve got some idea of the acoustics of naptime. It was a little like trying to grab z's next to the Santa Monica Freeway during rush hour.

But that wasn’t all. The German engineers responsible for my suffering that day had even more in store.

Along the length of the rest area they installed bright overhead lights and high powered AC ducts in the ceiling, so you got a double whammy of bright light and frigid air blowing directly onto your body.

The lounges themselves may have been the most unkind touch of all.

They looked pretty cool from an aesthetic point of view. Sort of an edgy “Batman” thing with lots of pseudo black leather and sharp angles and an exposed aluminum frame.

They were about as comfortable as that sounds. Rumsfeld probably uses a similar design at Guantanamo.

Laying there exhausted due to sleep deprivation, I tried to block out the noise and light and cold along with the metallic sharp ends jabbing me in the wrong places.

After about an hour I was giggling semi-consciously at my situation.

After about two hours I was ready to confess to pretty much anything.

"Water boarding" or attack dogs couldn't have done more to break a person's spirit than the Frankfurt International Airport Rest Area. I guess being privileged is pretty hard sometimes.

Duty Free Hammer

I was pretty impressed with Teutonic consumer protection laws. The straight talking Germans don't mess around.

All the cigarette cartons in the duty free shops at the airport carried warnings in huge block letters that covered up most of the brand name. A few of the subtle messages:

Smoking Kills!

and

Smoking Destroys You and Those Around You!

and finally, my favorite that didn't quite make it cleanly into English

Smoking Damages the Sperm!

Achtung baby!

Faith, Culture and Politics: Illegals in Narnia Winter 06

2006-01-17T17:30:00.000-07:00

Andrew, Jan and Grandma Marge saw “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” this past weekend. I guess the movie is a blockbuster.

Something really bothers me about this Narnia mania, though.

Let's face it. The whole thing is nothing but a celebration of illegal immigration.

"Snow-Backs" Crossing Over

Yes, yes, I know that Lucy, Susan, Peter and Edmund ended up making a significant contribution to the economy and well being of their new country.

But that doesn’t change the fact that they crossed the border illegally and broke the law. Narnia’s got to be a country of laws or eventually all hell will break loose.

Something needs to be done and done fast. Let’s stop this nonsense about a guest worker program. We all know that would just affirm lawbreaking and would let those humans who have already illegally crossed into Narnia off the hook.

There's only one reasonable and effective response. We must fortify and electrify the wardrobe. That’ll make ‘em think twice about crossing over.

The Border

But if people won't listen to reason, and if the government won’t do anything about it, we’ve got to take matters into our own hands. In that case I'd support legions of “Minute-Dwarfs” who sit in folding lawn chairs with GPS devices and shot guns and guard the frontier along the wardrobe.

So let’s ignore this sentimental silliness about Edmund improving his life in Narnia, blah, blah, blah. Time to get tough and serious about a real problem. If we don’t, you never know what kind of Narnia we might pass on to our children in the years to come.

Faith, Culture and Politics: Bad Names Fall 05

2006-01-17T17:28:00.000-07:00

I read the other day about a woman in San Francisco who makes an extravagant living "branding" businesses and products with memorable names that move the merchandise. She specializes in replacing "bad names" that drive customers away.

She recently branded a popular soy milk product. A simple matter of blending the words soy and milk to get Silk. The new name suggests the texture of the liquid too, a professional complexity she made sure to point out during the interview. That name change doubled the sales of that product and made her some serious scratch.

What's in a name? Plenty, apparently, in a market economy. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet but it won't necessarily make a buck.

I guess that's no surprise since names have played a pretty significant role for quite awhile.

Our early ancestors thought that names contained something of the essence of a person or a nation. They thought if you knew the name of somebody you understood them and had a kind of power over them. And they thought a new name might signify a new kind of power and identity or even a rebirth.

In one of my favorite biblical passages the Old Testament patriarch Jacob wrestles with an angel of God all night long. Jacob won't let go until God blesses him. The angel dislocates Jacob's hip but eventually realizes that Jacob is too determined to be denied. So the angel asks Jacob his name. Jacob makes his tag known and then the angel says, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed." In the view of the writers of Genesis, Jacob's new name, Israel, was a critical part of his new identity and power.

Jesus meets a man possessed by demons in some of the gospel accounts. The demoniac is a pretty scary guy who tears chains to pieces and rips his own flesh and howls at the moon.

But rather than cutting his food stamps in order to increase his sense of responsibility or shooting him with an M-16, Jesus wants to know the suffering man's name.

The guy groans the name "Legion" because he's under the power of a whole army of evil spirits. Jesus casts the spirits out of the man and sends them into a herd of swine. A whole lot of the other white meat (patented trade name)then rushes down a hill and drowns in the Sea of Galilee.

Names are obviously important.

Even now we still seem to believe that corporate names should capture the essence of a company or a product.

I'm not sure that's true with individual names. Some parents name their kids with meanings in mind but most just want to please grandpa or create a pleasant sound that will give the little ones a chance to succeed. Individual names are mostly lifetime soundtracks now and a test of good taste and class consciousness.
---------------------------

I've always been particularly fascinated with bad names and why people dislike 'em.

Some names are "bad" because they have such dark connotations.

Few of us in the next century will ever run across a successful guy at work named "Bob Hitler." Not many local pastors or teachers will get by with the first names of "Lucifer" or "Cain" either.

On the other hand, there's a pretty good pro hockey player named Satan. First name Miroslav. He's from the Czech Republic where they implicate the Prince of Darkness with another sound.

Slap Shot Satan's bad name works in his favor since it makes such good headlines in the sports sections around the country. "Satan Torches Chicago" or "Satan Dooms San Jose" definitely gets your attention over the morning cup of coffee.

Satan (number 81 for those without a program) Levels Philadelphia

Clearly, a perfectly acceptable name in one culture can turn into a bad name in another.

When I finished college I had a chance to live in London for about 3 months and for part of that time I crashed at the apartment of a Scottish friend named Ian McGregor. Ian laughed out loud every time I mentioned one of my American friends named Randy.

Turns out that for the British "randy" is the equivalent of the American word "horny." Parents in London would no more name their son "Randy" than an American family would name their boy "Lusty." English Randolphs reliably remain Randolphs to deflect the heavy-breathing connotations.

My son Andrew is studying world geography right now. He cracked up when he found out there was a country in the Horn of Africa called "Djibouti" and pronounced "ja-booty." He now refers to that unfortunate country as "Shake Ja-Booty" and I'm guessing he'll think of it that way and giggle every time he comes across that name for the rest of his life. That probably kills the diplomat-in-East Africa career option.

Other "bad" names are weak cuz they're no longer in fashion. How often do you run across a "Hazel" or an "Ethyl?" Most folks associate those names with a frumpy dustbowl housewife in a smock, though I've noticed that some new Asian immigrants to the US use these kinds of old-timey names for their girls in a way more experienced citizens never would. I still can't get used to meeting the "Ethyl Nguyen's" of this world.

Sometimes "bad" names are the result of differences about "good taste."

Let's face it, how many people outside the Latino community can easily get with the idea of a used car dealer named Jesus?

Similarly, I've always thought that universities and colleges take themselves too seriously with magisterial names like "The Johns Hopkins University," and the "The Massachussetts Institute of Technology."

Why don't some schools have names like "Al's College?" More than a few of us would probably like to tell a corporate headhunter that we graduated from a place with a name like that, but you know the bad taste meter would go off the scale if we did.

Finally, seems that some names are "bad" because nobody can remember 'em and keep 'em straight.

A number of years ago I gave the non-profit organization I work for the name "Servant Partners." I've been regretting it ever since because people garble that name at least as often as they get it right.

Here are some actual samples of the kinds of creative renderings I hear on a regular basis:

Servant Partner-- Some people can't get it into their heads that there are more than one of us working for SP...

Service Parts--We're your auto parts experts...

Service Department--We're your trusty maintenance crew...

Servile Partners--Groveling doormats united to serve you...

Sentient Partners--Conscious, thinking vertebrates that are aware of you...

Shepherd's Parents--Nurturing unreached goat and yak herders everywhere...

Those are just a few of the ways people mess up our corporate name.
You know, come to think of it, I may just get in touch with that woman from San Francisco....

Faith, Culture and Politics: The New Meritocracy and the Poor Fall 05

2006-01-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

Day Laborers in New Jersey

Sometimes googling turns up some funny stuff in the "sponsored links" section.

I punched in “day laborers” and got two automated ads, one from ebay and the other from Kadazzle.

The first one read: “Day Laborers for Sale. Low Priced Day Laborers. Huge Selection!” The second read: “Compare Prices on Day Laborers and Save Money!” Somehow appropriate, I guess, for a post on class, culture and poverty.

OK, let’s get back to the aftermath of the hurricane and prophetic responses. This one is a bit longer because the topic is so complicated. Sorry about that. Think of it as a two posts for one deal.

Here are some too simple takes:

• A powerful multi-ethnic and dual gender meritocracy has arisen in the U.S. over the past few decades. A multi-ethnic and dual gender underclass is expanding at the same time. Diversity and a certain kind of priveleged racial reconciliation win but for the poor it may be the same old same old.

• Class and culture currently play a more significant role than race in perpetuating poverty. In fact, when people talk about “race” I think what they usually mean is “class and culture.”

• It's time to shake free of old school racial analyses of the American underclass and get a sharper picture of the importance of class and culture in perpetuating poverty, and a better picture of how the new meritocracy thinks and feels about the poor. Without that shift it could be hard to reduce the number of poor people in the U.S and improve the lives of those who remain in poverty.

The Oppression Model of Poverty

A generation ago most thoughtful people identified with what I'll call the oppression model of poverty. In short, they thought that poor people were poor mostly because people with influence and power did them at most every opportunity.

And during that time a lot of people thought racism was the heart of that abuse of power. In that model the powerful white upper and middle classes justified their systemic oppression on the basis of the supposed inherent biological inferiority of African-Americans or other "non-white" groups.

That's not to say that popular thinking in those days wasn't more subtle than the simple old school model suggests, but I think it gives a fair picture of people's basic 'worldview' of poverty from just after WW2 until the 1980's.

The Centrifuge Model of Poverty

I think a very different new school 'worldview' on poverty began to get up and go in the 80's and became the predominant way people understand poverty and society now. I'll call that new way of perceiving things the centrifuge model of poverty.

Scientists use laboratory centrifuges to separate out substances in test tubes from one another. As a centrifuge spins at high speed, various particles become “segregated” from each other due to their inherently different sizes, shapes and densities.

The centrifuge in this case is a highly competitive, American society built on the idea of meritocracy. As that societal centrifuge spins the winners get loose from the losers and the strong spin safely away from the weak. A natural segregation occurs as those without the “right stuff” remain in or descend into poverty while the others enjoy the economic and social benefits of their natural and social advantages.

As harsh as it can sound to some people, you've got to hand it to this model. It’s got deep roots in American soil because it has some important similarities to the old Puritan idea that God economically blesses the good with abundance and punishes the bad with poverty. But it’s different and even more powerful because it adds the critical elements of meritocracy and competition, both of which are also powerful—even totemic—American values. For all those reasons it packs a serious punch.

Again, most thoughtful people don't see things so simply, but I do think this new intutive "road map" of poverty and society lies behind a lot of the current discussion of poverty and the social policy meant to alleviate it.

The Rise of the New Meritocracy and the Expanding Underclass

Whatever intuitive road map folks might use to understand poverty and the poor, some developments are pretty clear to most fair-minded people right now.

Poverty's gotten worse over the past 4 years in the US in terms of percentages of people in poverty and in real terms. The appalling social situation of so many people in New Orleans didn't surprise any of us who have lived and worked in American inner cities. The hurricane exposed it in a new way.

And the expanding underclass continues to become even more diverse. African-Americans and Latinos are disproportionately represented, but whites make up the majority of the poor. In fact, the expansion in the numbers of the poor in the past 4 years has occured primarily among rural "trailer trash" whites. Women and children make up large percentages of the underclass.

The gaps between the middle class and the poor, and particularly between the well off and the poor have been getting a lot wider. In 1965 the typical CEO made 24 times as much as the average worker. Today that figure is 184 times as much. That would have been considered immoral and even obscene 40 years ago. How has it become acceptable now? Perhaps a change in world view?

Two longer term trends also contribute in a major way to the expanding numbers of the poor. The loss of a manufacturing based economy drove many people who previously worked at better paying jobs into low paying jobs with few benefits in the service industries. A lot of poor people, maybe most of them, work silly hours but still can't make ends meet. And the continuing flow of illegal immigrants swells the numbers of the poor while our government can't figure out what to do with lots of people who are simply looking for a better life.

We've also seen a steady effort on the part of our current political leaders to cut proven and beneficial programs for the poor while getting close and personal with the rear ends of the wealthy through dubious tax cuts for the rich and egregious pork.

Katrina stopped that momentum temporarily because people are now aware of poverty again and political leaders risk voter backlash if they press further cuts at the expense of the poor. But the ideological convictions of the congressional majority haven't changed. Americans have consistently voted over the last ten years for congressional leadership that clearly and obviously favors the "haves" and ignores or even punishes the "have nots" through cuts and the elimination of valuable and proven programs and approaches that help poor people better their lives.

But I think another very important development is making a decisive contribution to the current look of poverty in the U.S. I'll call that young thing The Rise of the New Meritocracy.

I believe the new school/centrifuge thinkers are right that America is far more competitive and meritocratic than ever. Large and thriving African-American, Asian-American, and Latino middle classes and even upper middle classes have arisen in the past 40 years, and woman have far more opportunities than ever before. Those are astonishing American social success stories by any historical standard.

This multi-ethnic wave of men and women, most 50 years old and younger, share a core set of values. They value competition, efficiency, meritocracy, entrepreneurship, education, and family stability. By and large, they're comfortable in an information economy. They're the new economic and cultural bedrock with potentially the greatest political influence of any group beyond the rich. Both major parties are desperately trying to win them over. The conservative Republicans, with their recent and pivotal victories in the entrepreneurial exurbs, got out to an early advantage.

But the new meritocracy has also chosen to segregate itself from the urban and rural underclass. The educated white middle and upper middle class mostly abandoned the poor long ago, and now this new class is following the same pattern. African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Latinos who identify with this new "culture" and "class" have largely left the ghetto and the small town in the rear view mirror. The immense creativity and economic resources and social capital of this new class aren't--in most cases--being invested in efforts to shrink the growing American underclass.

Here's something ironic about this new class. Though it's been forged by a greater cultural emphasis on opportunity and meritocracy, the new meritocracy may be creating greater and even more impenetrable class barriers. There are clear signs, outlined in a recent series in the NY Times and in various articles in The Economist, that America is becoming more class stratified. The old American value of upward mobility and the cherished myth of the American Dream may be threatened.

Why? These new meritocrats pass their centrifuge friendly values to their children and concentrate heavily--in a way no previous American generation has done--on the education of their own children, sparing no expense or effort and often placing them in private schools. At the same time the poor struggle in appalling public schools and in contexts where many important values that help bolster career success are simply not modeled. Any successful neighbors who might have modeled those values left the inner city or the small rural town long ago. Hence, a widening gap, and in many ways, a gap that may no longer come with a ladder which the poor can use to climb out.

It's not too late for that new class and culture of movers and shakers to commit in a new way to solidarity with the poor and to a new and updated version of the American Dream, but the signs at this point aren't good. It may be that the ideology of the centrifuge, which most of them embrace on one level or another, gives them reason to view the poor as the inevitable losers that every game requires. I'd guess part of the reason so many people have responded to the poor so differently post-Katrina is that folks knew the poor were not "at fault" in that particular instance. The exception here may prove the usual rule.

Or they may feel the class divide between themselves and the poor is insurmountable when they look at some of the more dysfunctional realities in many poor communities like common teenage pregnancy, high levels of family instability, widespread substance abuse, and a lack of emphasis on education. They may view the poor as "them" rather than "us."

Well, that's enough recap of some key developments that I think are influencing the expansion and persistence of poverty.

What These Developments May Mean

Here are a few glimpses of my own responses to these developments to get the ball rolling:

• Both models of poverty and society tell part of the truth. But while the new school thinkers suggest that the rise of a new meritocrats is an obvious good, I'd argue the development of that emerging class and culture has created a new kind of social division in the U.S. that has serious and potentially troubling ramifications for the poor.

That increasingly large section of society, who often have more in common with each other than they do with poor members of their own ethnic or gender groups, is largely ignoring the poor or in many cases actively working to improve their own situation at the expense of the poor.

The old school oppression model has something pretty eternal and biblical to contribute. The new twist is that a different group of folks gathered more on the basis of meritocracy than skin color is now in a position to ignore or take advantage of the weak and dispossesed.

• Seems to me that dealing with current American poverty will mean exploring the attitudes this new meritocracy has toward the poor. And calling that new and powerful segment of society to accountability to a wider understanding of community, to a deeper committment to distributive justice, and to a energized effort to invest their talents, lives and resources in poor communities. The focus of these efforts has to be true development, not charity. Economic investment, ownership, practical training, entrepreneurship and education have got to be the cornerstones.

This will mean challenging people to respond to the poor not primarily on the basis of race or ethnic identification, but on the basis of fairness and social justice. I think that will mean acknowledging and grappling with class differences in a way Americans usually like to avoid. We've always viewed ourselves as a classless society and we've identified class analysis with Marxists and other "crazies." We'll need more "Class Matters" and perhaps fewer "Race Matters" seminars.

Christian theology and teaching will have to take on class again and the church and other religious movements and institutions will have to take the lead in prophetically calling the new meritocracy to a faithful identification with the poor. In many ways, this kind of broad societal shift will require the kind of major spiritual awakening we experienced during the civil rights movement in the 50's and early 60's.

• Racism—-at least in the way that the old school thinkers understood it—-is a secondary factor in the perpetuation of poverty and the lack of conviction about reducing and ending it. The current social and economic effects of historical racism are still a very significant factor however, something that has to be acknowledged clearly and addressed in policy and action in politics, the business community, and in faith communities like the church. I was pleased and surprised to hear President Bush concede the ongoing impact of historic racism in his speech on rebuilding New Orleans.

• Changing some aspects of the "culture of the underclass" could make a big difference. Reducing teen pregnancy, increasing the stability of families, increasing the value on education, and reducing the incidence of substance abuse are key. Many people rightly believe that unless poor folks can introduce more constructive values into their own midst most of them will be caught in poverty for generations. The "centrifuge" rewards education and stability.

Throughout history spiritual revivals among the poor created the conditions for an escape from poverty. The Methodist movement in England during the 18th century broke the power of despair and alchoholism and helped huge numbers of the poor to break out of poverty, a sea-change that altered English society and the English economy for the better.

• Anybody with a good idea or a proven plan for reducing poverty, no matter what their ideology or politics, should get a hearing. Right now American approaches to poverty are highly ideologically driven and have been for many years. That's part of why they usually don't work very well. Our national genius is pragmatism. I pray for a return of common sense and a concern for outcomes rather than harsh ideological battles.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on race, culture, class and poverty, and any thoughts on practical approaches to make a prophetic difference.

Faith, Culture and Politics: Race and Raising Kids Fall 05

2006-01-17T17:21:00.000-07:00

I’ll be out of town and offline for a week so I thought I’d leave a post you can kick around in the comments section while I’m gone.

I’ve mentioned a time or two that I’m not always clear what the concept of “race” means at this point.

Seems to me that the best way to take a look at how people view race is to see how they raise their kids, or in some cases, how they plan to raise their kids.

Economists have long been aware that people’s actual economic decisions reveal a lot more about their attitudes than what they say about those decisions. I guess you could modify the old saying, “Follow the money” and substitute “Follow the moves” if you want to get a better feel for what people really think about race. And what could be more important or revealing than how people raise their children?

I recently reread Being White: Finding Our Place in a Multi-Ethnic World by Paula Harris and Doug Schaupp.

Overall it’s a useful book on race and culture in America.

But they make what I think is a very curious and specific plea for parents to avoid raising their children “color blind.”

They argue that parents of all "races" should raise their kids with a clear commitment to their "racial identity.”

They go to great lengths to explain the specific cultural and behavioral markers that characterize the "white race." In one section they catalogue a long list of ways “white” adults can be spiritually and personally inauthentic by departing from those characteristics. Innovation is one of those characteristics and presumably all 'white' children should be raised to understand that marker of 'whiteness' and be proud of it as a part of their racial identity.

They encourage parents of all 'racial' groups to get clear on the markers of their particular race and make sure their kids embrace those racial distinctives.

To their great credit, Harris and Schaupp make this argument as a way of encouraging a more honest and just society. They believe that the vast majority of European-Americans aren’t aware that they have a specific ethnic culture (or cultures) and believe their culture is just “American” culture.

They also believe most European-Americans are out of touch with the tremendous advantages they have as a “racial” group due to historical racism and racial prejudice and therefore aren’t willing to take actions and support policies that would create a fairer society. They believe the only way to remedy that wrong is to embrace race and ensure that children are not only aware of their racial history and its implications but also committed to their own ongoing “racial identities.”

I haven’t raised my kids along those lines. We’ve tried to make Andrew and Rebecca very aware of their ethnic background (northern and southern European roots, which are quite different, by the way) and keenly aware of historical and present ethnic and racial prejudice and the effect that has on their own opportunities and the opportunities of others. We’ve encouraged them to live now and as adults in a way that helps “make amends” for the damage that has been done by ethnic and racial prejudice and to build strong relationships with people of varying cultural backgrounds.

But we’ve also encouraged them to hold the concept of race lightly.

By race, I mean the idea that biological and physical characteristics and differences are truly meaningful and are somehow determinative of the way people will behave or act. Racial prejudice takes that definition a step further and says that biological and physical characteristics make one group superior to other groups. Racism, as I understand it, takes that second definition a step further still and says that racial superiority entitles the superior group to set up a society and economy that dispossesses the “inferior” group or groups.

Here’s how Jan and I have thought about race and why we’re raising the kids the way we are.

From a biological point of view it’s very clear right now that the physical differences between various ‘races’—in particular skin color, which is at the heart of the concept of race--are so minor as to be virtually meaningless. Basically, we’re talking about different adaptions to getting Vitamin D from the sun. So why make a big deal about race? Culture and ethnicity and history are all pretty solid concepts, but what about race?

And with the mixing of people of different ethnic backgrounds—which has been going on for millennia—what does race mean? Americans have reduced the ethnic and cultural complexity of the world to a 5 crayon crayola pack world view (white, black, brown, red, yellow), but it’s not clear to me that our point of view corresponds to the actual ethnic diversity in the world. Various asian cultures have always thought of themselves as different “races” throughout history and in many ways still do—-it took immigration to the US to learn that they were all one 'race' (“yellow,” I guess). And of course, the whole concept of a ‘brown’ race really creates headaches if you think about it for even a few moments. Does that include both Mexicans and Pakistanis?

And do physical characteristics really strongly influence culture or behavior? Culturally speaking, what does a Somali sheepherder have to do with an African-American banker in Cleveland? Or even a wealthy and 'white' Protestant suit in California and a poor and desperate farmer from a distinctly non-innovative place like Bulgaria?

But I guess my final question is “What good, on the whole, has the concept of race ever done anybody?”

There are physical differences, and people are indeed descended from ancestors coming from different parts of the world. So the concept of race can’t simply be ignored, but why play with fire by emphasizing it? If history has shown anything clearly it’s that whenever race is emphasized prejudice, racism, and injustice soon follow.

That's just our current take. But every parent has to decide whether to embrace race or hold it lightly. I'd enjoy hearing any thoughts.

Faith, Culture and Politics: Race and Raising Kids 2 Fall 05

2006-01-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

Got some interesting emails from folks about my recent post "Race and Raising Kids" so I thought I'd get back to that topic one more time.

Some people obviously felt better discussing race privately than on the blog itself. I guess that probably says something significant about our sense of freedom to get into race openly.

Anyway, as a result of those emails, here are a couple of quick clarifications and additions to my original thoughts:

• One person was surprised and thought I sounded a little like many Euro-Ams who deny that racism and racial prejudice are current and relevant.

I’m sympathetic to that comment. Writing or talking about race is pretty complicated. I have fundamental respect for anybody who makes an honest and good faith effort to do so and sometimes clarity is hard to come by.

I think ‘racial’ prejudice and racism are both alive and well. The current effects of historical racism are so obvious that it’s hard to know how to respond to the people—mostly social conservatives--who don’t take it seriously

Unfortunately, there are many Euro-Am folks, mostly conservatives but some progressives too, who truly believe that ‘racial’ bias and racism are a thing of the past. I have some sympathy for that take because so much progress has been made in the past 50 years, but at this point I think they’re wrong. I hope someday they’ll be right.

So, no, I’m not among those who want to deny that current racial prejudice or racism exist or who want to downplay the current effects of historical racism.

I do think, though, that there are lots of folks who take the effects of historical racism seriously but simply disagree about how to deal with them.

I don’t automatically assume that people who reject affirmative action, for example, lack an appreciation of our disgraceful national history of racism and genocide. I support thoughtful affirmative action, but it has to stand on its own merits in an honest discussion of social policy.

Seems best to appreciate our history while also paying attention to the realities of the current moment and planning for something better in the future.

• When I say that racial prejudice and racism still exist, I mean there are still a significant number of people who believe that biological and physical characteristics and differences—-skin color being the most obvious example--are truly meaningful and are somehow determinative of the way people will behave or act.

The traditional concept of race—as Americans understand it--is a fairly recent social construct meant to justify European supremacy on the basis of biological superiority. We’re talking about an idea that is probably no more than 5 or 6 hundred years old. It was one of the most effective weapons of European imperial expansion.

We’ve lived for four centuries here in the US steeped in that kind of thinking and perception, so it’s silly to think that lots of people don’t think in those terms. Some still believe in their heart of hearts that their 'racial' group is somehow "genetically" superior (to use our current biological terminology).

But I’m just not sure that most people in the US really think in terms of biological superiority anymore.

That’s why I say that when people talk about ‘race’ (which is a biological concept) what they usually mean is ‘class’ and ‘culture.’ The prejudices and systemic injustice we’re dealing with in the US right now are based—-in my view—-mostly on class and cultural differences. I go into more detail on this whole thing in a previous post, “The New Meritocracy and the Poor.”

The distinction between race on the one hand and class and culture on the other is important for people who are serious about justice.

Europeans marketed the concept of biological superiority and inferiority so successfully that almost all Americans swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

Slavery and Jim Crow and the indigenous genocide were all firmly based on the idea of biological superiority and inferiority.

A turbo-charged version of that same racial ideology led to the killing of 60 million people during WW2. That was just 60 years ago.

I travel a lot around the world. Traditional biological racism is thriving.

If the idea of biological superiority or inferiority (traditional racism) has lost most of its historical hold in the US we should party. People who are serious about justice should lead the celebration.

If what I’m saying is accurate, those who are serious about justice in the US should still work hard for racial reconciliation and should still challenge traditional racial prejudice and racism where they exist.

But perhaps we'll need to pay a lot more attention to prejudice and systemic injustice based on differences in class and culture. I think that’s where the real action is now. A change in language and terminology could help too.

I’m not hopeful for any quick changes along these lines. The ideas of “white” and “black,” etc., etc. are so deeply ingrained that we can hardly think or speak without them. Even though I believe most of us have left behind the substance of traditional "biological" racial ideas we’re still trapped in the old-timey language and categories of traditional race.

• When I say we should consider raising our kids “color blind” I mean we should teach kids that physical characteristics don’t determine character or behavior. I think that’s what Dr. King meant.

Raising kids color blind doesn’t mean raising them to ignore:

--the obvious variety of ethnic backgrounds and cultures in the US
--our collective history
--current forms of traditional racial thinking, racial prejudice and racism
--current prejudice or systemic injustice based on differences in class and culture.

• Here’s something curious. Some of the most outspoken justice-oriented proponents of what I consider to be old-timey racial thinking marry across traditional ‘racial’ lines and raise kids who don’t fit into any traditional ‘racial’ category. I guess sometimes our lives can be more relevant and eloquent than our words.

In a famous film from the civil rights era that most of us have seen at one time or another, an Imperial Wizard of the Klan rails against integration because he thinks it will create a “mongrel nation.” He had the good sense to know that youth and love--given some social leeway--would tend to break down arbitrary ‘racial’ barriers faster than almost anything else by mixing up the gene pool.

Count me among the 'mongrel' lovers. Marriage and family across traditional 'racial' lines might be the most effective tool of all in dealing a final blow to old school racial thinking in the US.

Books, Films, Media Reviews: Grizzly Man Summer 05

2006-01-17T17:17:00.000-07:00

Jan, Andrew and I saw "Grizzly Man" today.

GM is a documentary about Timothy Treadwell, an enviromental activist dedicated to protecting wildlife who lived unarmed among grizzly bears in Alaska's grizzly infested Katmai National Park for 13 years. A grizzly killed and ate he and his girlfriend at the end of his final summer there.

Treadwell video taped over 100 hours of his experiences during his last 5 years among the grizzlies. Werner Hertzog, a German director I like who specializes in movies about obsessed heroes, edited Treadwell's footage and adds interviews with his friends, family, co-workers, and critics.

It's truly unique and well worth seeing.

Some brief takes on GM:

It's disturbing yet also pretty hilarious a lot of the time. Hertzog--who appears as himself in the documentary and gives the voice of God narration--is obviously European in his approach. He's ironic and open-minded but also a little pretentious at a few unfortunate moments that take away from the power of the whole thing. His accent reminded me of Mike Meyers' German uber-hip character "Dieter" from SNL. I kept expecting Hertzog to start dancing to techno while offering to let the people he interviewed "touch my pet monkey."

Treadwell comes across as a kind of wierdly funny Pee Wee Herman version of Henry David Thoreau in the midst of a much more violent and dangerous Walden Pond. He hated "civilized" life and was willing to go to almost any lengths to escape it.

Before he went to Alaska he grew up in Florida as an All-American boy and then lived in LA trying to make a career as an actor. He became a drug addict and alcoholic along the way.

Then, like John Newton, a slave ship captain who converted to Christianity and eventually wrote "Amazing Grace," Treadwell left his dissolute life behind in order to devote himself to a higher calling.

He knew, along with Karl Rove, the value of Christian myths. Everybody likes the tale of the drunk frat boy who converts and becomes a crusader for goodness and right.

But in Treadwell's case, it's nature--and grizzly bears in particular--that give him a reason to live rather than God or the glory of American empire.

So he begins living among grizzlies and imagines that he's saving them.

He brought along his video camera and recorded himself and the grizzlies in some of the most astonishing footage I've ever seen.

He lived very directly among the grizzlies and other wildlife with no protection other than a flimsy tent and his own wits and intuition.

But he also recorded his most private thoughts and emotions, some of which are profane and disturbing. He comes across as troubled and obviously self-destructive. Like a lot of addicts and recovering addicts he battled self-absorption and delusional thinking. More than a few people who watch GM will wonder if his whole grizzly adventure was simply a way of taking his own life while going out in a blaze of glory.

In spite of all that, quite a few of his introspective moments and unhinged rants are really funny. One summer very little rain falls, which begins to kill some of the grizzlies and other animals that Treadwell has gotten to know well. He films himself begging God for rain even though he isn't religious and isn't sure exactly who to address. So he covers his bases and asks/demands help from "Christ Man, Buddha Dude, Allah, and That Floaty Hindu Thing."

To be fair, though, he obviously never thought that many of those "private moments" in his footage would end up in a documentary distributed around the world. How would any of us like our private thoughts and worst moments--which we thought we could edit out before the final version--open like a book for the whole world to see?

The effect, though, of those parts of the documentary is reminiscent of the strange attraction of "reality tv" and Oprah culture, but taken to an extreme.

Hertzog demonstrates some restraint and thankfully chooses not to show images of Treadwell's remains or play the audio version of his death. The attached lens cap on Treadwell's still-running camera blocked any visual version of his violent end but the microphone was working fine and picked up every detail. The bizarre county coroner--who would fit right in on the Addams Family--used the sound recording immediately after the deaths to reconstruct what happened.

Speaking of extremes, Treadwell's also a poster boy for "X Games" culture where the more extreme and dangerous it is the more authentic it is. If civilization is all about guard rails, what could be more heroic and edgy than living with grizzlies?

He probably sounds like a whack job by now. He was a whack job. But he was also--in his own way--a courageous visionary.

He did something nobody else has ever done--living for many years succesfully 24/7 among arguably the most powerful predators in the world, mostly alone and without protection of any kind. He knew the risks he was running and had to be careful at every moment. Even one mistake would have killed him. One mistake did kill him.

His critics in the documentary strongly challenge his approach as naive and destructive. They wonder if he did more harm than good to the grizzlies by crossing the ancient dividing line between humans and animals. They--including the director Hertzog--question the fact that he imagined nature as mostly benign rather than "red in tooth and claw." They make good points and I agree with many of them.

But in the end, even if you're put off by aspects of his personality and worry about his sanity, it's hard not to like--or at least respect--somebody who accomplishes the ecological equivalent of landing on the moon for the first time. As truly wierd and deeply troubled as he was, there was something authentically great about Treadwell.

He's already a semi-legend in the outdoor community, but if he'd done what he did 150 years ago I think he might have been remembered along with other great amateur naturalists like John Muir. His life among the grizzlies would have come down to us in more positive generalities along with some colorful stories about his eccentricities. That would only have been possible, though, in an era with no video cameras and no obsession with therepeutic psychology.

Some people may be born at the wrong time and in the wrong place. If so, Treadwell was one of them.

Around Town Denver Small Town Fourth of July Summer 05

2006-01-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

For the 4th we all went up to Golden, a little place just 10 minutes up the mountain from here.

This is the first time I've ever participated in a "small town" Independence Day celebration. I'm used to big beach bashes with friends or the kinds of mega-celebrations you tend to get in SoCal.

A few quick observations on this new cross-cultural experience.

---Golden may be small, but the security is tight.

While saving a parking place I momentarily dropped one of our backpacks in the empty slot next to my car. I walked 30 ft. to throw something in a trashcan, and as I headed back to the car two Golden police vehicles screeched up and a couple of cops jumped out and carefully checked out the backpack.

I caught on right away and had to suppress my laughter. They thought I might be an Islamic terrorist ready to blow up the celebration even before the fireworks went off.

Leaving the backpack alone in an empty spot was my big mistake.

Most of us wouldn't think of doing something like that in an airport, but it never crossed my mind that the police in dinky Golden would be concerned. Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney Fife were definitely ready to thwart the big attack.

They were very cool about it. After I showed 'em my ID I said "Sorry to give you guys a start." The oldest cop replied, "Oh, people sometimes lose things."

Yeah, and I'm sure they normally send multiple squad cars out to retrieve lost and found items.

I thought his comment was unusually kind. What he probably wanted to say was, "What were you thinking, you bonehead?!" While the intense security suggested "large city," the cops' attitude definitely said, "welcome to Mayberry."

---There must be a rule at small town 4th of July celebrations that men should look as silly as possible. A subsidiary rule states that children should look nearly as silly as their fathers. See above.

I thought the guys were pretty funny. Since the 4th of July is mostly a celebration of all the ways America is not like sophisticated and socially oriented European countries like Britain and France, what better way to capture the spirit of the thing than by looking goofy and demonstrating your own very personal bad taste?

To be fair, it's hard to avoid looking dumb on the 4th. As long as people insist on wearing clothes covered with various American flag designs, there really is no escape from the essentially silly look of the star spangled banner.

We're all emotionally intimate with the flag on one level or another. So we may miss how goofy the colors and design really are. I've always thought it looked like it was designed by a clown at Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey.

Why couldn't the Founding Fathers have chosen a cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing look? Take the flag of Botswana, for example:

Now, think of all those people at the 4th of July celebration wearing clothes with variations on that flag design See what I mean? Instant good taste, as far as I'm concerned.

---Golden is dominated by the Coors Brewing Company, the venerable Colorado institution led by the very conservative evangelical Coors family. They market their stuff by associating the beer with big cleavage and extreme sports with an emphasis on the cleavage. I'm sure they paid for most or all of the celebration.

Vendors sold Coors at stands spaced 50 feet apart. This contributed significantly to the silliness index as some folks who were dressed stupidly began to act that way too.

The city supplied 10 Porta-Potties for a crowd of many thousands. When the beer stand to bathroom ratio is one-to-one you've got a pretty uninhibited crowd that's really gotta go.

So the lines for the bathrooms were very long and filled with lots of people crossing their legs and hopping up and down.

Rebecca and I took a dip in Clear Creek, a beautiful river that runs right through Golden. When we went to the Porta-Potties to change our clothes I had the opportunity to get to know one of the Coors family's best customers while waiting in line.

He insisted he'd seen me "riding your kayak" in Clear Creek and told me how cool I was and how much he loved and respected kayakers.

I told him I wasn't in a kayak.

He wasn't having any of it and kept praising my skill and courage.

Colorado lushes may be the only drunks in the country that have delirious delusions of kayaking.

---Overall, I loved the whole thing in spite of the overzealous police and the inordinant chemical influence.

Most people seemed to have a great time--very welcoming and friendly all the way around.

The Golden civic band played through the entire event and they were really good--they did a bunch of pretty sophisticated patriotic stuff by Copeland and George Gerswhin as well as the expected pop standards.

The fireworks were exciting.

And it's pretty hard to beat the natural surroundings in Golden--really striking red mesas under a blue sky on the north horizon and green Mt. Zion to the south.

I think we'll probably do it again next year.

Books, Films, Media Reviews--Robert Kaplan and the Importance of Hard Truths Spring 05

2005-05-30T20:05:00.000-06:00

Stubborn Reality

"To know the worst is not always to be liberated from its consequences; nevertheless it is preferable to ignorance." Isaiah Berlin, The Originality of Machiavelli

I can't think of a quote that captures Robert Kaplan's journalistic genius better. Or his potential importance for correcting the way Americans view themselves and the world.

Lots of us probably read Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince back in college. To this day the adjective "Machiavellian" means "coldly realistic" for most educated people in America and in the west.

I've been reading Kaplan for years and I'd encourage you to take a look at his work. I think his kind of realism is pretty important right now.

He writes regular pieces for The Atlantic Monthly and he's published a series of fascinating and best selling "travel and foreign policy" books.

His book titles include:

Soldiers of God--a report from among the mujahidin in Afghanistan during their war against the Russians. He predicted what was to come after that war when almost nobody else got it

The Ends of the Earth--an intimate journey among "the least" from West Africa to South East Asia

Eastward to Tartary--a trip through the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus--basically, the deeply troubled modern remains of the fallen Ottoman (Turkish) Empire

The Coming Anarchy--a pretty accurate prophetic vision so far of the post Cold War world

An Empire Wilderness--a look at America's transition from nation-state to a new kind of empire, a process that Kaplan thinks is well underway and inevitable

How to sum up Kaplan's writings? If the publishers of the Rough Guide asked Machiavelli himself to write a series of travel guides about some of the most desperate parts of the current developing world, you'd probably get something like Kaplan's books and articles.

His stuff is unflinchingly real, detailed and intimate. I've learned more about the developing world from Kaplan than from any other writer or journalist.

No one who reads him regularly is surprised by the course of the war in Iraq over the past couple of years.

And he's just as honest about the west and the US. He has little patience for Americans (including some of our most significant politicians) who insist on seeing the US and the rest of the world through sentimental and traditional American ideological lenses.

His most recent AM piece described the indigenous proxy armies the US military is training in Africa and throughout the developing world. Those local extensions of American power will play a key role in bolstering America's relatively new imperial role.

He's fun to read and different because he's no leftist railing against American empire and he's even less of a sentimental conservative nationalist who refuses to acknowledge the obvious reality of American imperial power in the world.

He does his best to describe things the way they are and then lets the chips fall where they may.

I'd describe his worldview as a kind of "high paganism." He has a frankly realistic and tragic sensibility. His perspective isn't fatalistic, and he is sometimes surprisingly hopeful given his regular subject matter, but he knows in a deep way that life for most of the world's people is brutal and unfair and without a lot of happy endings. The title of his very first book, Surrender or Starve, pretty much sums up the kinds of choices he believes many poor folks face in the worst parts of the developing world.

Why is his writing and journalism important? To answer that I return to Isaiah Berlin's quote. Even though knowing the worst doesn't always free you from the consequences, sometimes it does.

His clear eyed view of some of the most intractable problems and some of the most challenging situations around the world offer the possibility of addressing those challenges in a realistic and pro-active way. Westerners and Americans have little real idea of what life is like for most of the world's population. Romantic and sentimental images won't create effective solutions. That much is certain.

And when Americans operate out of self-delusional images about themselves (i.e., "We're the most generous nation on earth and we're a peace loving republic that has no interest in imposing our will on other people) there's much less chance to respond in a practical and life giving way to the concrete realities that most folks around the world recognize.

Kaplan's kind of realism could be the start of a better and more realistic theology, mission, and public witness for American Christians. We have a hope for transformation that Kaplan's neo-paganism doesn't, but many of us could probably learn something from his courageous willingness to look at things more honestly than most people do.

I've often prayed that God would raise up a Charles Dickens for the 21st century. Someone who would be a realistic and artistic voice for the masses of the urban poor and the dispossessed around the world.

No sign of anyone or anything like that on the horizon. While we're waiting, there's no reason why someone like Robert Kaplan can't help us get a little closer to true.

"...it appears to me more appropriate to follow up on the real truth of a matter than the imagination of it..." Machiavelli, The Prince

Books, Films, Media Reviews--Best Media Sources Spring 05

2005-05-30T15:53:00.000-06:00

Being Present

Last summer I asked some of you to tell me about your reading habits. I was looking for the kinds of weekly and monthly publications you like.

Lots of you responded and I got more feedback than I asked for with many of you making recommendations for online sources and television shows and radio programs.

After taking a look at people’s responses, I realized I’d asked the wrong question. Most of you obviously thought I was asking for your favorite sources of current events and information.

At the end of the 19th century, lots of religious people worried that the regular daily habit of reading newspapers would divert people’s attention from the kinds of habits--like prayer and bible reading and contemplation--that helped folks concentrate on eternal things. They thought that focusing on the stream of current events and experiences would blunt people’s abilities to get with the deeper spiritual currents flowing just a little bit beneath the choppy surface.

As it turned out, they had good reason to be concerned.

But I also think it’s pretty hard to make sense of eternal things without participating seriously in the moment. There are lots of ways to do that. One of them is to keep up with what’s going on and to be a part of the larger conversation of thoughtful people in the country and the world.

“Real theology springs from a bible in your right hand and the daily newspaper in the left.” That’s a paraphrase of a statement by Karl Barth, one of the very few significant evangelical theologians from the last century.

Here are some resources that may help you get “the moment” into your left hand and might encourage you to get into the discussion and into the creation of some theologies and missions and ways of doing “church” that make sense for today.

The Recommendations

I’ve broken your picks down into the categories of periodicals and newspapers, online sources, television shows and radio programs.

I’ve also shaped it into popular choices--three or more people recommended the source—and less popular choices—less than three people recommended the source. The less popular choices are some of the most interesting and fun possibilities. The editorial comments are mostly your words though I’ve taken the liberty of editing and adding when it seemed appropriate.

Nobody mentioned blogs as a source of serious input. I’m pretty surprised by that, though I know that blogs at this state in their development are mostly intensely personal and only occasionally ready for a wider readership. None of you seemed willing to recommend any during this first round. If you’ve got recommendations I’d love to check them out.

Popular Periodicals

Daily

LA Times—The best paper west of the Rockies
NY Times—The best paper east of the Rockies
Wall Street Journal—Very conservative and strongly pro-business paper read across the nation. The best place to get a fix on power and money in America .

Weekly

The Economist--The best news/analysis weekly around the world
Newsweek--One of the two leading American news weeklies

Monthly

The Atlantic Monthly--In-depth cultural and political analysis
Sojourners--Progressive, justice oriented Christian take
Prism--Progressive, justice oriented Christian take
Scientific American--Serious and interesting science for lay people
Christianity Today--Conservative, traditional Christian take on current events in the church and the world

Less Popular Periodicals

Harvard Business Review--Cutting edge business practice
Harvard Technology Review--Cutting edge technology
The New Republic--Leading progressive monthly
National Review--Leading conservative monthly
Outside--Leading x-sports monthly
MIT Technology Review--Cutting edge technology
Discover--Serious and interesting science for laypeople
Fortune—Investing and getting wealthy
Time--The other American news weekly of record
International Bulletin of Missionary Research--Mission shop talk
Mission Frontiers--Ditto
Missiology: An International Review—Ditto
Evangelical Missions Quarterly—Ditto, though lower quality than the others
Presbyterians Today--It’s comforting to know that the endangered species, Presbyterianicus Suburbianis, continues to roam the earth.
Nature --Serious and interesting science for laypeople
Science--Serious graduate level science
Manhattan Institute—The publication of a conservative think tank. I’ve read a number of issues online after getting the recommendation. It’s one of the more strongly conservative publications I’ve read in quite some time. Sort of the conservative version of “Mother Jones” (see below). Harsh and extreme, but there is important truth to be found even among folks you wouldn’t want to hang out with. Sometimes, especially among that group.
PC Magazine--You get the idea…
InfoWorld--Web, internet rag
eWeek--Web, internet rag
Philosophical Review--Reviews of current philosophical writing
Skeptical Inquirer--Debunks ufo, urban legend, spiritualism,
Free Inquiry--Rational inquiry against superstition
First Things—Insightful Catholic take on culture, politics
Foreign Affairs Journal--Foreign affairs by policy makers
Cooks Illustrated --Yes, it’s about the empirical method of cooking, for all of you skeptical and mathematical chefs who like to count.
Utne Reader—Uber-funky, progressive alternative to Reader’s Digest
Mother Jones—In your face, far left, take no prisoners and brook no disagreements view on culture and politics. Really the only left wing publication that faithfully follows the current right wing conservative, Karl Rove inspired recipe of motivating the red meat base with extremist arguments and ridiculing those who think differently. The striking difference is that Mother Jones is a fringe publication while its counterparts now run the country.
Brookings-Metropolitan Policy Program--Urban policy journal
Urban Institute--Urban policy journal

Popular Online Sources

BBC International www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice--Comprehensive world news
The Economist Online http://www.economist.com/--Comprehensive world news
CNN Online http://www.cnn.com/--Comprehensive world news
National Public Radio Online (especially “All Things Considered,” “Fresh Air,” “The Motley Fool,” “This American Life,” “Justice Talking”) http://www.npr.org/ --Thoughtful, intelligent takes on American life, world news
N.Y. Times Online http://www.nytimes.com/--Online version of the slim, grey lady
L.A. Times Online http://www.latimes.com/--Online version of the heavy multi-colored lady
The Onion http://www.theonion.com/--Satirical take on national and world news
Al Jazeera Online http://www.aljazeera.com/home.asp--And now for something completely different

Less Popular Online Sources

The Straight Dope http://www.straightdope.com/--Satirical take on trivia
SlashDot.com http://www.slashdot.com/--News for nerds, strong Linux and Mac leanings, which for those of you who are mostly ignorant of the IT loop—like myself--means that these guys help stoke the resistance to the Microsoft empire. Nerds of the world integrate!
Slate http://www.slate.com--/ Progressive e-zine with great writing and an alternative point of view

Popular TV Sources

CNN News--Moderate, comprehensive world news
The Daily Show--Hilarious, moderate to liberal satire on current news at Comedy Central. According to many sources, this is the main place people under 25 get their news
Charley Rose Show--Influential PBS interview show about news, culture, science, and literature
PBS--In general, some of the best quality television no matter where you live

Less Popular TV Sources

Fox News--The number one “news” source in America. The Fox Network puts out the trashiest programming on network television by far, but their news (read “entertainment”) division is the darling of the conservative right.

It’s the moral values, stupid! WWJD?

He’d watch Fox News, of course.

Popular Radio Sources

National Public Radio

“All Things Considered” (wide ranging news and cultural topics)

“Fresh Air” (brilliant interviews, important conventional and unconventional topics)

“The Motley Fool” (funny and canny investment advice)

“This American Life” (snapshot stories of remarkable Americans)

“Justice Talking” (wide ranging and unusually fair discussions of justice issues)

All in all, thoughtful, intelligent takes on American life, national and world news

My Own Recommendations and Non-Recommendations

Here are my own takes with some explanation on why I chose ‘em and—in a couple of cases-- why I didn’t. I’ve left out sources—like eccentric mission journals and x-sports journals—which probably wouldn’t interest most of you.

What I Read

Weekly

The Economist—In my mind it’s the top source of political, economic, and cultural news in the English speaking print world. Don’t be put off by the title—only a small part of it is devoted to economic analysis and business news. It’s British and the editors are clearly committed to a western agenda of democracy and free trade, but in the more reasonable European way rather than the goofy and misplaced religious intensity of current American politicians and free traders. Exceptional and balanced reporting which tends toward more conservative and libertarian positions. Some of the best and clearest writing you’ll find. Also has a real sense of humor. I wish there was a progressive weekly as well done as The Economist.

It’s the model for the kind of fair, potentially life-giving and healthy conservative approach that many Republicans I know wish their party stood for rather than the version currently in power.

Newsweek--There was a time when American news weeklies were really good. Now it’s mostly infotainment with the emphasis on tainment. Newsweek is probably the best of what remains. At times good investigative journalism and a relatively painless way to get a feel for what a broader spectrum of Americans are thinking about.

Westword--Westword is a fairly typical urban alternative weekly—good and eccentric news and cultural coverage and analysis, events and what’s what around Denver and the Front Range , etc. Most large urban areas in the U.S. have a weekly like it. Good way to stay in touch with local stuff.

Monthly

The Atlantic Monthly--Edited for people who like their news analysis in depth and are in no particular hurry—basically, old school top quality journalism. And it publishes fine fiction and poetry too. In my view, The Economist and The Atlantic Monthly are the two indispensable sources of news and analysis for thoughtful people in the U.S. today. The first leans slightly to the right, the second slightly to the left, but both do a good job of being fair—The Atlantic publishes the best American writers and observers regardless of their point of view or slant.

Scientific American--SA is probably the layman’s best tool for keeping up with what’s going on in science and technology. Since science and technology shape western culture decisively, it’s important to stay somewhat current with the thinking and development in these areas. Doing theology--for example--without a reasonable understanding of the basics of current science and technology will produce theologies and ministry approaches that are mostly nostalgic and escapist visions rather than life-giving takes on the kinds of forces and ideas that are actually shaping most people’s lives.

The New Republic and The National Review--I often read both for a kind of cultural point/counterpoint.

The New Republic is unapologetically liberal but doesn’t have the goofy stridency of some “alternative” liberal mags like Mother Jones. Right now most of the writers are recovering from their disappointment--along with 48% of the American voting public and 85% of the rest of the world. Give them 6-12 months to adjust and they’ll get back at it with helpful stuff.

It’s a good place right now to listen to people who have good and potentially transformative ideas while they struggle with their very human tendency to resist ideological and personal change and admit their shortcomings. I guess that’s true on the conservative side of the aisle as well.

The National Review is generally well written and is sometimes interesting. It represents the way conservative Republicans tend to think.

As a 7 year old I campaigned for the then libertarian Republicans with my mom in the S.F. Bay Area by handing out cans of orange soda labeled “Goldwater” during the ’64 presidential campaign against Lyndon Johnson. We were trying to defeat the crazy immoral liberals who were about to end legal racial segregation and deepen our involvement in Vietnam. So I grew up reading the National Review.

As a young man I revered William F. Buckley, who founded the magazine, because of his willingness to calmly and reasonably challenge arrogant and established ways of thinking. I guess in my zeal for change, I missed how arrogant and narrow-minded he really was. While the gross incivility and unfairness of most current conservative discourse is not his legacy in any way, I’m realizing how much the arrogant tone of the current conservative world truly is.

Given the ascendancy of the current version of the Republican Party I don’t have much confidence we’ll see any important changes in the tone or the magazine in the short run. That’s a shame in the truest sense of that word. But in spite of all that, this is still probably the best place to get a feel for what conservatives are thinking and feeling.

I say all this because I actually have great respect for more traditional conservative thought and wonder how it got so off track. I guess the lust for power degrades everything it touches.

Prism and Sojourners

Well done magazines for “progressive” and “moderate” evangelicals.

I appreciate the emotional, spiritual and editorial honesty in the writing at Sojourners.

At one point many years ago I cancelled my subscription to Sojourners because the tone seemed too angry to me and I couldn’t read it and keep an emotional balance.

But as I’ve gotten older and had more experience with the kinds of gross injustices that are so common around the world, I’ve become more receptive to those who are angry about injustice, and I’ve learned how to balance those feelings better in my faith life. And during the past 15 years or so I think the folks writing Sojourners have grown wiser and learned more about grace and patience.

Prism isn’t as well written or engaging as Sojourners, but it’s a good model of a healthy, thoughtful and balanced alternative to the kind of far right, conservative and simple-minded thought that informs and shapes the vast majority of evangelical and fundamentalist churches these days. If the majority of American evangelicals read this magazine on a regular basis—and had more humble and honest political encouragement from their spiritual leaders--the tenor of our evangelical and national political culture might change for the better.

What I No Longer Read Much

Christianity Today—Some of my friends subscribe to Christianity Today and keep it in their bathrooms. I occasionally read an article or two if nothing else is available in that intimate part of their homes where the plumbing is often more useful than the publications.

Wall Street Journal—Money makes the world go around. Money is the root of all evil. It’s possible to believe both of those statements at the same time. The key is which one you accent. I don’t think a person who emphasizes the second interpretation can read this paper or its editorials regularly and stay true to any kind of Kingdom perspective without unusual spiritual discipline and insight.

Online

I get almost all of my timely news online. I go to my favorite sites in this order:

LA Times Online http://www.latimes.com/ Definitely a homer pick, but in my travels and experience there are probably only two memorable newspapers in the country—the LA Times and the NY Times. The editing is sometimes too lax and the articles too long in the LAT, but it’s good, solid and sometimes creative journalism. Reading the local papers here in Denver can be a numbing if eye-opening experience. I think a good bit of the country deals with that kind of half-baked newspaper quality every day. I read the LA Times online as often as I can.

BBC International www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice Excellent international coverage that is sympathetic to western and American concerns but lacks the Amero-centric views of most U.S. News outlets.

At the BBC one dead American is worth about three dead Iraqis, unlike the time-tested (and current) imperial ratio of one American for every 15-20 of those unfortunate people who are abstract, collateral damage. It falls far short of the prophetic mathematics of the Kingdom of God, but I still like the BBC ratios better than the alternatives.

CNN Online http://www.cnn.com/ Not as willing as Fox to turn news into entertaining propaganda in order to get better ratings. That may seem like damning with faint praise, but in these days of evolved spin you take what you can get.

CNN is a pretty solid news outlet by current standards.

Al Jazeera Online http://www.aljazeera.com/home.asp Infuriating and moving. If we’re going to humiliate and kill lots of these camel jockeys and towel heads who are enemies of all that is good, we may as well get to know them from their very different point of view.

The Onion http://www.theonion.com/ Can be very funny, if often more than a little sophomoric. They recently had a satirical article about the ridiculously overdone funeral for Ronald Reagan that described the building of a pyramid in his honor and the ceremonies marking his passage with Ra, the Egyptian Sun God, into the afterlife that was hilarious. That should give you some idea of the tenor and tone.

Remember, it’s satire. That’s the kind of writing that exaggerates the weaknesses of a particular point of view in order to make people laugh and make a point at the same time. Please forgive me, but many people seem to have forgotten this kind of distinction in their grim and literal drive to control the culture.

The CIA Fact Book http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/

The Fact Book presents very up-to-the-minute accounts of every country in the world, which is very useful to me on a regular basis. If you want to learn about a country or a region, this is the best place to start.

Hey, Hey, what can I say…I consult the CIA! Do you think that phrase, in the form of a chant, would ever catch on among far right Republican protesters…?

Of course, given the CIA’s recent track record--caught by surprise by the fall of the Soviet Union and 9/11, and serving up bad intelligence on Iraq which simply confirmed the desires of our current political masters--maybe this isn’t a site you’d want to bet the farm on.

But in the work I do--which doesn’t include doctrines of unilateral, pre-emptive violence--the very human and limited competency of the CIA is good enough and helpful. The way you judge something depends on the standards required.

Radio

Like most people, I only listen to radio while I’m driving. I like National Public Radio, music and sports in that order.

There are so many excellent NPR shows that it’s hard to choose among them. See the ”Popular Radio Sources” above for some of my favorites.

I’m also partial to Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion

CT may be the weirdest show on radio—the hosts are two goofy post-middle aged brothers with thick east coast accents who give callers advice about various car problems. They also tell bad jokes and silly riddles. I have no interest in cars at all but I love this show for reasons that are buried deep in some inaccessible part of my brain.

I also have a friend who loves Janet Jackson’s music. The weird attraction of some things—like CT and Janet Jackson--is inexplicable and humbling.

Many of you have probably listened to PHC at one time or another. Garrison Keillor, who hosts this truly original variety show based in St. Paul, MN, is the closest thing to Will Rodgers or Mark Twain on the market today. You can hardly claim to be an American if you haven’t listened to this show at least once.

I’ve found I can't listen to conservative talk and news radio very long because the tone is normally so harsh that it gets on my nerves. That’s an approach that elects presidents and administrations these days, so call me old fashioned. But I prefer NPR. They do the news and analysis as if they're communicating with adults rather than lecturing frightened, self-righteous children.

On the other hand, you’ll have to put up with the persistent NPR style, which can be annoyingly soft-spoken and abstract. They sometimes seem to be trying too hard to show that they’re gentle, intelligent and free-thinking souls. The music in the interludes and introductions is almost all improvisational jazz, which adds to the “we’re so free” but possibly “too-low-key” and “out-of-touch” approach.

Conservative radio has learned that it’s ok to play some rock music and try to be a little more contemporary in their attempts at entertaining and influencing people. NPR sometimes seems like the Amish of the media world. They could learn a few things from the culturally conservative part of the frequency.

Television

I watch very little television, so I’m probably not the best guide in this area. I haven’t seen a single episode of Seinfeld or Friends—you know when whole TV empires have arisen and fallen without you ever laying eyes on them you’re living in a parallel universe.

Some folks feel like television is a wasteland. I don’t feel that way. I’ve seen a lot of great stuff, particularly on cable. I just feel there are a number of other ways to spend time that are more rewarding.

When I do watch the tube, I often watch sports. Janet refers to the non-sports shows I like as “Nazi/Shark/Comedian” programming on the double digit and triple digit cable channels. Or in other words, history, nature and comedy shows on outlets like PBS, Discovery, National Geographic, Science Channel, History Channel, Comedy Central, etc. You get the idea.

Some specific shows that I really like:

The Daily Show-- It makes me laugh out loud regularly, and there aren’t too many things I can say that about. Political and cultural satire that makes you feel like someone is awake at the wheel and has a sense of humor.
The Charley Rose Show—The best news, arts, and culture interview show I’ve seen. Unfortunately, it’s on late at night on PBS. Simple and very direct conversation around a table. Just people with their own thoughts talking to each other in an always civil, creative, and encouraging way.

Faith, Culture and Politics: A Pope Points the Way? Spring 05

2005-05-19T20:59:00.000-06:00

Life Giving Politics

For the past few years I've been trying to identify--in a more intentional way--an American Christian political and social ethic that makes more sense to me than the same old same old stuff from the loudest voices in the current arena.

Recognizing the weaknesses of various social and political points of view is an important starting place. But criticism is only half the task in creating something more life giving. At some point thoughtful Christians who aren't with the current program have to offer a clear alternative.

The fastest growing segments of the conservative protestant church in the US have largely abandoned an authentically prophetic role in the political and social arena.

Christians who want to change that situation can't just complain. We've got to create a compelling alternative vision that we can take into churches and into the national public policy discussion.

A lot of folks are working on that challenge right now.

I was encouraged by the publication of "Toward an Evangelical Public Policy, " the NAE's (National Association of Evangelicals) recent statement on Christian social and political action. You can get it at Amazon.

They pointed out that racial reconciliation, economic justice and environmental conservation are just as important as "family values" and opposition to abortion.

I don't know how much influence their statement will have in the wider evangelical and fundamentalist world. Fear makes listening difficult.

Yet sometimes words do more than we might think in a dark moment. Words created the world.
Words and practical witness are even better.

I think the life and witness of John Paul 2 might turn out to be a pretty good starting place for a new kind of social and political thinking among American evangelicals.

A Consistent Witness

During my college days I was a regular columnist for the Stanford Daily. I recently dug out a column I wrote about the newly elected Pope John Paul 2 way back in 1979.

As I re-read the column for the first time in 26 years (wow, was it really that long ago...?) and then reflected on the recent obituaries written after his death, I was pretty struck by the remarkable consistency of John Paul 2's social ethics and teachings throughout his life.

JP2 influenced me a lot over the years and I wanted to highlight some of his most important potential contributions to the current American conservative Christian protestant debate on social policy.

Is there a debate? Let's pretend.

A Compelling Christian Social Vision

Prophetic Independence

JP2 refused to identify Christian faith with particular political, social or economic movements. He challenged western democratic culture and capitalism as clearly as he questioned communism and authoritarian regimes. The gospel must cut through any accumulation of power at strange and uncomfortable angles. He understood that truth more than most.

Individual Freedom and Social Solidarity

He thought that a creative combination of individual freedom and social solidarity was a biblical mandate for healthy cultures in a fallen world.

Some cultures do social solidarity at the expense of individual freedom. Other cultures do individual freedom at the expense of social solidarity. He challenged traditional cultures to increase individual freedom and challenged developed western cultures to increase social solidarity.

He believed that current western cultures--particularly America--support individual freedom in a way that threatens social solidarity. In particular, he felt that an extreme and ideological committment to competitive individualism within western capitalism threatens social fairness in the west and around the world.

When he was still Archbishop of Krakow he wrote "The Acting Person," a major Catholic philosophical work. He argued that people only become fully human in the act of individual ethical choice. In the tentative and non-ideological way that is appropriate for Christians, he supported the world's experiments in political democracy and economic systems that put more power into the hands of individuals and families.

But he also believed that God calls individuals to make "a radical committment to justice and a determined display of social solidarity." He meant, among other things, that Christians should place a very high priority on serving the poor and the dispossessed. He also thought that Christians were commissioned to hold societies accountable to protect and encourage those who are currently "weak" in economic or cultural terms.

A More Biblically Consistent Ethic of Life

JP2 thought that current American social movements support certain biblical ethics while ignoring other important Christian social teachings.

His social thought makes little sense in the current American conservative protestant world. And it makes even less sense in the broader American political community.

He was trying to construct a consistent ethic of life. He wanted to support and protect human life and dignity wherever it was threatened and he worked to counter "the arrogance of power with reason, force with dialogue, pointed weapons with outstretched hands, evil with good."

Here are some of the more important specific elements of his possibly life giving social ethic:

Opposition to Abortion

Support for Economic Justice and a Priority on Serving the Poor

Support for More Traditional Sexual Morality and Reproductive Responsibility

Opposition to Capital Punishment

Support for the Integrity of the Family

Support for Human Rights Including Religious Freedom

Opposition to War and Coercive Violence

Support for Ethnic and Racial Reconciliation

Support for Strong Environmental Conservation

JP2's social teachings don't fit anywhere on the current American "left/right" dichotomy. That's easy to see at a glance.

The Potential Relevance of JP2

I don't agree with every element of John Paul's social teaching and his words were clearly better than his follow through. I guess that last part is pretty true of everybody, though.

But if his teaching represents a clearer picture of truly biblical social ethics it could be important.

An approach like his might help American conservative protestants regain a biblical credibility and honesty in the current political and social discussion in the US.

That would be good. And timely.

Around Town Denver Spring 05

2005-03-25T19:47:00.000-07:00

More notes from the nose bleed seats....

Mysteries of the Front Range

Since we've lived here I've been trying to get a feel for the way Coloradans drive and what that might say about our new home.

What have I learned at this point? Well, I'd summarize it by saying that people who get behind the wheel here are a mystery to me. That's my personal truth after a couple of years of sharing the road with these good citizens.

Let me count the ways.

Folks here actually obey the law. They often drive even slightly slower than the posted limits.

That kind of thing could hardly be more disorienting and frustrating for a person who grew up and learned to drive in California.

Nobody drives the speed limit on the lower left coast.

People there either drive very low and slow to show that they're not chumps who obey the arbitrary rules, or they drive fast and furious along with everybody else to demonstrate...well...that they're not chumps who obey the arbitrary rules.

California drivers aren't known for their patience either, which is just another reason to kick it up at least 10 mph faster than the posted limits.

To add to my confusion, people here often seem to drive just as slowly in the left lane as they do in the right. Sometimes there isn't even the possibility of using that cutting edge alternative known in some places as the passing lane.

Besides doing the moto thing slow, a lot of drivers here also enjoy a generous sip from a fifth of Wild Turkey or the better part of a six-pack before heading out on the road.

Some recent national drinking studies place Colorado in the top 5 imbibing states. The University of Colorado may receive a "lifetime achievement" award by regulary finishing near the top of the Princeton Review's "Biggest Party School" category. And we came out close to the top of a recent study on drunk driving arrests per capita.

In many states people get upset because teenagers and people with cell phones tend to drive as if they're drunk. In Colorado, quite a few of them probably are drunk.

The fact that we have lots of drunk drivers here and that most folks drive at speed limit or slightly below doesn't make immediate sense to me. Generous alchohol consumption and obeying the law don't normally go hand in hand.

And Colorado is one of the fittest and most physically active states in the nation so you wouldn't expect the drinking levels to be so high in the first place.

There are obviously other factors I've yet to understand. So far, the whole thing has me stumped.

One factor is clear, however. Colorado drivers tend to be a little moody.

They may drive at speed limit or slower, but try to pass them and they will normally speed up and try to keep you from doing so. Good luck to you if you want to move over into a crowded traffic lane to get where you want to go.

And I think a surprising number of people here have a wierd regional form of osteo-arthritis that cruelly curls down all the fingers on their right hand with the exception of their middle finger which often freezes into a ridid, upright position.

Coloradans are some of the kindest people I've run across in day to day interactions. Without question they are friendlier--on the whole--than the urban types I ran across on the West Coast.

But put em behind a wheel and look out. Your guess is as good as mine as to why that would be.

So what does it all mean? Who knows? The only glimmer of an explanation may lie in a ticket I received in Boulder last year.

They got me going about 3 mph faster then the speed limit, so it may be that the magic
"+ 5 rule" from California (which states that you can safely go up to 5 mph faster than the limit with no danger of being pulled over) doesn't apply in Colorado.

When I tried to enroll in traffic school to take the ticket off my record, I was told there is no such thing in Colorado. It seems you can't avoid higher premiums in Colorado if you get a ticket or a succession of tickets like you can in some other states.

The police and sheriffs departments in Colorado spend a lot of time giving tickets for moving violations.

I'm accustomed to law inforcement agencies that spend their time trying to contain truly serious crime and violence. People in that line of work don't tend to go after motorists who are threatening the social contract by driving ten miles an hour above the speed limit.

So here's my latest scientific and unbiased (of course) theory that seems to cover the available evidence.

Colorado drivers are intimidated into strictly obeying the speed laws by law enforcement agencies that have nothing better to do than write tickets. As a result of that helplessness they sometimes alter their mood through the soothing wonders of chemistry. As their inhibitions weaken they let loose with some colorful rudeness.

Yes, I agree. That's a silly explanation.

Let me know--especially the Coloradans among you--if you've got a better theory.

High Land

A few more thoughts on the drinking culture of the Rockies....

Prohibition era drinking laws still exist in a few states and Colorado is one of them.

State law requires that all liquor stores close here on Sundays. Supermarkets and convenience stores like 7-11 can only sell half-buzz beverage 24-7.

Many brewers make half-strength beer so they can make a buck in states with governments that feel the need to appear to be restraining adults from hurting themselves.

In reality, you can drink yourself silly with full buzz stuff at any bar here 7 days a week.

Basically, Colorado attempts to be Utah on Sundays and tries to keep some semblance of the ideals of the Women's Christian Temperance Union alive during the rest of the week.

In spite of all the legal sanctions and restrictions, people here still manage to drink in impressive proportions.

Some of us wonder if legislating most forms of personal morality actually works very well.

Other places in the Rockies take a more libertarian approach.

I ran down to Santa Fe for a couple of days recently to recharge my batteries among the loveliness of the land and the art there. More on that trip to come.

New Mexico is a whole different deal when it comes to drinking.

Turns out liquor stores there are open 7 days a week and you can buy full strength stuff in any market or convenience store whenever you like.

As I passed through on my way to Santa Fe, the tricked out cars drove low and slow past the Saints and Sinners liquor store in Espanola, a small town in Northern New Mexico.

It was the first time I'd ever seen a religious reference on a six-pack stop.

The Devil had more due there than was fair. A red neon pitchfork on the roof flashed on and off, though there was no corresponding white neon halo.

Maybe the halo had shorted out.

About an hour later in Santa Fe I ran across Simply Divine Liquors on the main commercial drag in town.

By that point I was expecting to see Our Lady of the Perpetual Happy Hour on some New Mexican liquor stop.

On the surface of it the New Mexican attitude toward liquor outlets seems inappropriate and maybe too lax.

But I wonder.

I grew up in a southern Mediterranean culture and church where drinking wine was considered a normal part of social interaction.

The adults in my family circles introduced everyone to drinking wine when we were in our elementary school years. They did their best to teach everybody how to drink in an appropriate way from the time all of us were little.

In the cultural and spiritual tradition I came to know in my childhood, the church absorbed the general inevitability of drinking and brought it into a healthier balance than seems to be true in some other Christian traditions.

I can't think of a single person in my mother's family circle going back many generations who had a drinking problem. Or among the many families in our Greek and Eastern Orthodox Christian circle of friends.

Maybe that has more to do with the southern European culture than with Orthodoxy since the Russians--who share the Orthodox faith--seem to drink like fish and drown themselves as well as anybody.

Or maybe the poor Russians never had a chance to make a decision for themselves and didn't really have a chance to grasp Orthodoxy on a personal level that might have made a difference in their individual behavior.

New Mexicans--with their southern Meditteranean influenced culture that has a more relaxed attitude toward alchohol--drink more constructively by any measure than we do here in Colorado.

Hmmm.... Sometimes more libertarian approaches to issues of personal morality may get better results than fundamentalist approaches, particularly when they're expressed in religious contexts that are more flexible and realistic.

Drinking and drug abuse are emotional and complicated issues for most everybody who has a first or second hand experience with them. That's especially true for anyone who has lived and worked among poor people. Genetics obviously play a critical role. And discerning the spiritual currents that seem to protect some folks and put others in jeopardy is difficult for even the wisest person.

But whatever the case may be, New Mexicans definitely have a better sense of humor about the whole thing than most. That may not be such a bad thing.

Art in the Land of Elk Jerky

I promised a few Around Towns ago to come back to the art scene in Denver and abouts, so here goes....

A while back I focused on the institutional art scene here in town.

Time now to give some props to grass-roots talents in Denver and the heart of the regional artistic scene centered in Santa Fe.

The emerging arts scene here in town and in the mountains is lively. I'm delighted. Artists seem to be attracted to places that sit on the margins between different orthodoxies and various life zones. Lots of natural beauty doesn't hurt either. As a result we get more than our fair share of creative types here in culturally "purple" Colorado where the Great Plains and the abrupt Rockies come together.

I'm always inspired when I get a look at various kinds of art. I'm encouraged by the work of people who truly love what they're doing and who are willing to step out and take some risks.

Back to Basics

Many of the small mountain towns here host some good collections by local artists. Jan and I have been checking out some galleries and exhibitions in these small towns that have names like "Leadville" or "Bonanza."

If they don't have a reference to mining or get-rich-quick schemes in their names, they seem to have some variation on the name, "____ Springs."

You can pretty much fill in the blank with anything that might make sense up against the ending Springs and you'll probably find a town here by that name.

We've got your Glenwood Springs, and your Colorado Springs, and your Idaho Springs, and your Steamboat Springs (Steamboat Springs...??--your guess is as good as mine on that one), and your Poncha Springs, and well, you get the idea.

A few months ago we were up in Georgetown and got a chance to hang out at a great little gallery called Arts at Georgetown.

Lots of these galleries are artists' co-ops of one kind or another and they focus on up-and-coming local and regional talent. Arts at Georgetown is run by a lady named Paula Colette who is so relaxed she would probably fall asleep in the middle of a car accident. She has encyclopaedic knowledge of the local arts scene so we enjoyed talking to her both for her wit and for her ability to put people at ease.

She told us that most artists here focus on realistic, natural themes. Serious abstraction is definitely out among working artists in the Rockies, and we really enjoyed the moving landscapes in her gallery.

It sometimes seems like everybody is getting back to the fundamentals these days, though they're doing it in very different ways.

The post-mods want to deconstruct every abstract orthodoxy and live among the rubble and jumble of the fundamental building blocks. They want to go back and re-examine "settled questions" and then--in the healthiest and least nihilistic versions of pomo--recombine things in new ways that might offer more hopeful and better ways of living and thinking.

Many U.S. political leaders and judicial nominees want to return to a literal obedience to the thinking of their 18th century founders.

Fundamentalists Christians and many American evangelicals want to keep addictively fighting the same 15th century European theological battles over and over again (not to rock anybody's boat, but it's the twenty first century, people!).

And current visual artists are trying to find a way to get past the sense that everything has been done before by returning to their visual roots.

I have mixed feelings about this simplifying, fundamentalist cultural project. Some it will give life but just as much of it--or probably more--will do more harm than good.

Fundamentalisms of all kinds help prepare for the future and make life-giving contributions when they take a fresh look at the basics and challenge the current progressive dead stuff that won't stand the test of experience.

They're even better when they selectively highlight the best values of the past that still make sense and then figure out how to communicate those values effectively.

Fundamentalism isn't so good when it encourages fear, nostalgia and addiction. Religious and political and business leaders tend to manipulate all of 'em to gain power and profit. As Jesus taught, where the body is the vultures will gather.

I'm glad artists are returning to the basics. I support that kind of fundamentalism and the honest way many artists are going about getting back to their life-giving roots.

As for the rest of the current versions of fundamentalism, well..., I guess we'll see.

In my mind any notions we have of beauty come from our responses to the the natural world. If the art world in tired and discouraged, getting back to the sources of beauty may be just the thing. I'm enjoying the exhuberant naturalism and realism of so many artists here.

It's Just Art

Jan and I took a 10 minute drive to nearby Golden to see the Colorado Art Open.
If Arts at Georgetown was about natural art, the CAO was about the art of self-deprecation.

Emerging artists here clearly have a sense of humor about themselves and about their work.

I think that's a regional characteristic that you see in all areas of life along the Front Range. I mean, how many major cities outside of Denver would have elected a microbrewer named Hickenlooper as mayor? The guy's only qualifications for the role were his tasty amber ales and his endearing goofiness and geekiness. But he won by a landslide!

Time magazine just named him (John Hickenlooper, by the way) one of America's top 5 big city mayors, so maybe folks here know something about the importance of not taking yourself too seriously that other people don't.

Whatever the case may be, that irreverant and relaxed attitude shows up in so much local art. It makes checking out new work here a pretty amusing experience a lot of the time.

There was a good example at the CAO show, an annual exhibit that highlights 50 of the best new works of art by Colorado artists in the past year.

The work was a sculpture entitled "Troutillac" by an obviously goofy and talented artist named David Wicks.

The piece is a remarkable rainbow trout carved out of marble and painted in such a lifelike way that it looks alive. The twist is in the trout's tail, which is a rendering of one of the tail-light fins from a late 50's pink Cadillac.

We were in the room with about 10 other people, and everybody cracked up when they saw it. I think most folks "got it" on some level or another.

Putting nature and the machine together--exemplified by the "fish fins" on cars in the 50's and early 60's--has always been a design element in the auto world. That unlikely combo of the machine and the natural is what makes a lot of science fiction go and ensures a big box office for the endless number of movies about cyborgs. Californians recently elected a cyborg image (certainly not the man himself) to be their governor. That's a pretty powerful artistic idea if you ask me.

Wicks turns the classic Detroit design around but with an interesting variation. The old school car designers put fish tails on cars. Wicks puts the tail end of a car on a fish.

But that pink Cadillac fin was simply a creative take on the rainbow trout's tail in the first place. So Wicks' trout swims with a beautiful and mechanical cybernetic tail inspired by its real tail. Brave New World indeed. Or maybe a vision of hope for the sick and the crippled.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

I've been traveling to Santa Fe since I was a kid and I've never gotten tired of the trip.

I had a chance to get down there a few weeks ago for a couple of days. From our front door it's about a five hour drive.

Santa Fe is the heart of the artistic world in the Rocky Mountain region. Though there are only about 80,000 people in town, it's the third largest art scene in the U.S outside of New York and Los Angeles.

I'll focus on just a couple of observations from this trip so I can come back to it again in future posts. A delayed joy is a doubled joy.

Vamping It Up

I saw a video art piece there that moved me and made me laugh.

Nancy Shersty, a video artist, wanted to make a comment on the way so many women spend their lives trying to live up to a fundamentalist vision of beauty.

She uses a split screen to show the vision of beauty on the left and everywoman on the right.

The vision of beauty on the left is a very short film take from the 50's of Jane Mansfield, who was one of the big time sex symbols of her era.

During the clip, which lasts about 3 minutes, Jane thrusts out her improbably large boobs and purses her bee-stung lips. She wrinkles her nose and runs her hands through her hair suggestively while looking at the camera with chase me/do me bedroom eyes.

The vision of beauty on the right is a 3 minute clip of the artist--looking like she probably does on a Tuesday morning just after waking up--trying to copy the movements of the love goddess.

As you might expect she can't quite pull it off.

What makes the whole piece especially funny and moving is that she keeps shifting her gaze from the sex goddess on the viewer's left--in order to copy her every movement--to nervous glances directly into the eyes of the viewer as she looks for your approval while she fails miserably to do that thing that Jane does so well.

But as the loop of the film replays over and over again she can't break out of the endlessly repeating pattern. She's like Sysyphus, the Greek mythological figure who is fated to keep endlessly pushing a huge rock up the side of a hill over and over again only to have it roll back down every time before he can get it to the top.

In less skilled hands the whole thing would have been a ham fisted feminist screed. She's skilled and it wasn't.

Enforcing Beauty

New Mexico is famous for pueblo architecture. I can't think of a building style that fits its natural surroundings better.

But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Santa Fe's city government decided about twenty years ago to enforce a strict building code that requires all new buildings in Santa Fe to adhere to the basic designs of pueblo architecture.

That means that banks and Burger Kings and used car lots have to look like 13th century Pueblo Indians designed and built them.

Creativity out and conformity in. The result is as cheesy as you might expect.

Santa Fe is divided between the stunning and authentic pueblo architecture that people chose freely and the commercial part of town where most of the buildings are heartless copies of a style forced on them by the well meaning city fathers.

Much of Santa Fe in now a parody and satire of itself.

Even in one of the capitals of progressive creativity I guess you can't escape well meaning fundamentalists. Maybe there's a theme here....

Around the World Winter 05

2005-02-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

Kunming, China

I recently spent 5 days in the PRC checking out a potential new work among ethnic minority groups in the southern province of Yunaan.

Yunaan is the Chinese dynamic equivalent of Mississippi—an ethnically diverse, backward and southern-most state that has always been on the frontier of the Chinese psyche.

The rebellious citizens of Kunming--the provincial capitol--coined the famous Chinese phrase, “The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away.” That’s got to be one of the world’s cleanest takes on cultural confidence in the face of violent and self-righteous powers. What phrase could be more nostalgic for Americans? Or perhaps—someday--more authentically Chinese?

A friend in Kunming picked me up and took me to his house on the back of his locally manufactured bike, a jarring trip that bruised some previously unknown bones in my rear end.

After lunch we headed out to meet some of his colleagues. He suggested I follow him on his “other” bike.

When you’re in somebody else’s house you tend to go with the guidance of your host. That’s true even when the word “other” makes you wonder what might be in store just down the road.

So I risked riding a bike around on my own for the first time in the chaotic traffic of the urban PRC.

The rickety bike rolled over the old asphalt road like a rock bouncing off a corrugated metal roof. I felt each crack and pothole in fundamental parts of my body and I quickly came to appreciate why this was his spare bike. I just wish I’d worn a jock strap and a cup.

Traffic in Kunming, as in most major Asian cities, is an intuitive game of high speed chicken. People on bikes are the most apt to demonstrate their bad karma by getting smashed and crushed. I guess it just goes to show that what morally goes around comes around, especially if you can’t afford a motorcycle or a car.

I survived thanks to some urgent personal prayer (Oh my God!) and the pity of the locals for the clumsy and hapless ‘white devil.’

The country has done a flip-flop since my last trip 5 years ago. Kunming puts some western cities to shame. And the members of the underground church--along with the other Chinese who respect the unseen world--grow stronger and more confident by the day.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

At the tail end of the same trip I also had a chance to visit Vietnam. I was looking for face time with some Filipino missos who’ve made their mark in that rapidly developing country. There is a growing spiritual movement in Vietnam, and a lively church scene starting up among the urban squatter poor in Saigon.

My older brother fought there and I graduated from high school just as Saigon (the old school name for HCMC) fell to the North Vietnamese armies, so I grew up from the time I was little with the war in Vietnam as a constant background to life.

Throughout my stay I had the odd feeling that I'd seen everything in town. I’ve never had that sense of geographical déjà vu before. I guess watching news reports during childhood about a place for almost ten years and then watching movies after that for almost 30 years will play some tricks on your memory.

Saigon is a two-shirt-a-day city. It's 90 % humidity and 90 degrees all day long. I don’t know if you could fry eggs on the sidewalk at noon, but I’m sure you could steam some carrots and broccoli by half-past the hour.

And the architecture is one of the craziest mish-mashes of styles I’ve ever run across. Lots of big metal and glass boxes and butt-ugly socialist realist sculptures do their best to ruin a potentially good urban thing, but on the other hand there are some really lovely French colonial buildings that look like they came right out of a Graham Greene novel. Actually, some of the best of Greene's writing came out of those very same buildings and the people and characters who used to hang out in them, so I guess the order of inspiration should rightly be reversed.

But wow, some of the larger colonial piles can only be attributed to sweaty French imaginations fueled by a hit or two off the old opium pipe. A good number of major public buildings—which date from the early 20th century--look like gigantic wedding cakes covered with the worst kind of decorative frou-frou. There is a definite drag queen quality to these models of flagrant bad taste.

For some of us, these kinds of misguided efforts can be chalked up to disoriented and dominant French colonials who could create whatever they wanted, probably for the first time in their lives. As the history of colonialism makes very clear, great freedoms in a new context are almost always used badly.

I guess this kind of architectural gender ambiguity could also be interpreted by some as the fruit of a nation of cowardly and effete “surrender monkeys.” After a brief look at these buildings, it would be clear to some that the roots of French pooftah-hood run long and deep. What else could you expect from a people who don’t speak English and who, as Steve Martin once observed, “have a different word for everything!”

Along with most other Americans who come to Saigon, I wanted to see some things associated with the war. So I went to The War Remnants Museum as well as the village of Cu Chi, which is a kind of “living war memorial” about 70 clicks outside of town.

The Vietnamese Communist Party, which still controls Vietnam, opened up the country, and especially Saigon, to greater economic and social freedoms in the 90's. So tourism is a pretty recent experience for people here.

At that time the War Remnants Museum was called The Museum of American War Crimes. For some strange reason, that name seemed to turn off a lot of prospective western visitors.

Fortunately, some budding marketing genius among the cadres came up with a better idea. His catchy new name for the building, War Remnants Museum, apparently spared the sensitive feelings of the visiting lackeys of the capitalist running dogs, and Americans soon began to pack the place out. It’s now the single most popular tourist attraction in Saigon.

It’s the story of local cadre makes good that should go down in advertising history along with Tony the Tiger and Just Do It.

The museum itself is a well told—if pretty unsophisticated--story of Vietnam’s battle for self-determination over many decades as they fought off the Chinese, French, and Americans. While it makes no attempt to downplay the immense destruction and damage that the American military rained down on the country, it also recognizes the courage and humanity of many American soldiers and journalists and photographers. One section of the museum even recognizes countries and movements around the world that supported the country during its worst hours—including the vast American anti-war movement.

The war remnants that gave the museum its name—including lots of American and Vietnamese weaponry—are worth the inexpensive admission price by themselves.

The tone isn’t bitter or angry or boastful. It’s somber and instructive, which struck me as just how a war memorial should be. The best single piece in the museum is a very cool and hopeful metal sculpture crafted out of a huge bomb fragment.

After I left the museum I thought about the warm welcome the people in town gave me and the enthusiastic welcome they apparently give pretty much all Americans. When you see the museum and learn about the 3 million Vietnamese killed and the ruthless efficiency of the destruction, you do wonder how they could have learned to forgive so quickly and so well.

When I think back to our own Civil War, and even reflect on our national reaction to 9/11, I honestly don’t know whether Americans could do likewise if our nation ever experienced that level of apocalyptic violence and damage. Maybe so. But whatever our American propensity for letting go of hostility might be, the whole experience in Saigon underscored for me once again the spiritual potency and importance of forgiveness.

A couple of days later I rode out to Cu Chi through some intensely green countryside. After living my whole life in the arid American west, places like Vietnam still seem almost fantastic to me, even after many years of visiting locations at that sort of latitude.

When we got there I was herded into a ramshackle space along with 30 or 40 other people where we were forced to watch a very old and disintegrating film about the resistance of the “primitive” people of Cu Chi to the American military. It was a kind of shaky super-8 David and Goliath story that moved everybody who saw it. The room was tiny and crowded and had no air conditioning, so I was sweating within 10 minutes. That particular trip turned out to be a three shirt day.

After they let us out of the lecture, we went across a road and entered what can only be called “Cu Chi Land.” The local Vietnamese have created a kind of crude theme park meant to introduce westerners to the realities of the Vietnam War in the kind of language and form they believe westerners understand and are willing to pay to see.

In Cu Chi Land you can climb down into the tunnel network that the local Vietnamese lived in for a decade while they tried to survive constant heavy bombing and American patrols. These weren’t tunnels built for larger westerners—I went down and followed the tunnels for about 50 yards and barely squeezed through.

There were over 200 miles of these kinds of tunnels in the countryside just outside of Saigon. The local people lived largely underground like animals for the many years it took them to outlast the people above ground who were trying to kill them.

As you walk along the trails in the park you pass through forests of recovering trees and jungle vegetation. About every 30 yards or so you run across one of the massive craters left behind by the constant B-52 bombers runs.

During the following hour or so the guides introduce you to strange and poorly constructed dummies and models depicting Cu Chi’s people building nasty and lethal booby traps and Viet Cong troops outwitting the much better armed Americans.

The climax of this weird re-enactment of the war was a shooting range at the very end of the trail. For a small fee, you can shoot almost any weapon used during the war, including armor piercing machine guns which are so loud they could burst your eardrums from 30 yards away. Obviously, consumer lawsuits have yet to develop much momentum in this part of the world.

The targets at the receiving end of the firing range were large wooden cutouts of colorful African animals that looked they’d been bought at a steep discount from some children’s zoo that was looking to upgrade its look.

I have to admit that I paid a couple of dollars to fire 20 rounds from an AK-47. I proceeded to annihilate a big purple giraffe target.

I immediately felt bad for the damage I’d inflicted, but my pangs of conscience didn't last long.

I'm just grateful that as an American I now know I'm on the right side of history and destiny, and that in some small and symbolic way my target practice was probably advancing God's Manifest Plan for the inexorable spread of republics and stock markets.

You might even say, I'm part of a kind of Manifest Destiny for the world. Hey, how exciting is that! Now that history is really over, and we're just tidying up for the inevitable, there's nothing to do but pitch in. Cool! No need to worry ourselves with confusing books like the Bible. And anyway, haven't we all heard that manifest destiny thing before--it's almost, kinda like, in our genes!

It reminds me of a great line from the comedy Young Frankenstein, when Dr. Frankenstein's son--played by Gene Wilder--emotionally breaks out into a rhythmic football cheer when he finally realizes he is going to choose to repeat his father's hated and foolish experiments in re-animating dead tissue: "De-sti-ny, destiny for me! De-sti-ny, destiny for me!" Maybe we can have folks start chanting that in church.

And God bless those poor dummies and targets on the wrong side.

Books, Films, Media Reviews--The Unconquerable World, God's Politics, Walter Mosely Winter 05

2005-02-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

The Unconquerable World Jonathan Schell

Schell challenges the commonly held belief that warfare is an unfortunate necessity in the relationship between nations. He argues persuasively for a more practical and ethical approach to getting rid of unjust governments and regimes.

He looks carefully at the intellectual foundations of modern war--from Von Clausewitz to The Donald (Rumsfeld).

He also examines the uses of violence in the creation of empires and totalitarian regimes, liberal democracies and the many “peoples’” revolutionary struggles for self-determination in the 20th century.

While the neo-conservatives assume the rightness of aggressive international pre-emptive state violence, Schell challenges that thinking by rolling out a sharp and detailed take on the use of both state and revolutionary violence in the past 200 years.

He makes a very strong case that classical forms of warfare—and particularly pre-emptive forms of warfare--are hard to justify in light of the developments of the past few centuries.

He demonstrates that non-violent people’s movements have been more effective at overthrowing oppressive and ruthless regimes than wars have, at less cost, and with clearly more positive results.

Schell is writing from a Christian background and a grounding in the teachings of Jesus and the NT, though he lays out his argument in a way that anyone can appreciate and take seriously.

TUW will tax you and challenge you. I know that some folks now—even some of the brightest—tend to get their input from a few links and brief websites.

TUW is a pretty good reason to break out of that pattern. If you’re going to read a couple of serious books this year, this should be one of them. It's gotten a remarkable critical reception among people from across the spectrum of views on the use of violence. In my mind, this may be the strongest challenge ever written to the continued reliance on warfare. If you're a thoughtful Christian and you're going to support the use of warfare of any kind, and especially pre-emptive wars of choice, you need to deal with Schell's comprehensive argument.

God’s Politics Jim Wallis

I had a chance to talk to a lot of evangelicals before and after the last presidential election. Though they ranged from conservatives and progressives to Republicans and Democrats, almost all of them felt torn from a spiritual point of view.

If you’re one of those folks, you might enjoy and appreciate God’s Politics. It's a remarkable book.

GP recently spent significant time on the NY Times and Amazon best seller lists. I believe it’s selling well because many people are so desperate for a Christian political take that is authentically biblical and prophetic.

When was the last time a serious book about Christian politics and ethics became a best seller? Or at least, when was the last time that kind of book became a hit without focusing on the piles of shirts, pants and shoes left behind as conservative, white evangelicals rose up to meet Themselves In That Big Exurb In The Sky?

The subtitle of the book, Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, is a good guide to the gist of the book.

Wallis believes that the conservative religious right serves up only half a gospel while claiming to be the righteous, and that the political liberals—like the Good Samaritan in one of Jesus’ most significant parables—serve up a big portion of the other half through the best of their attitudes and actions even though some of them reject Christianity and traditional moral teachings.

He calls for a new movement among American Christians of all persuasions that will call both right and left to biblical accountability, and a more mature Christian voting population that doesn’t vote for a right wing agenda that is obviously un-Christian in many respects simply because that party talks God talk and verbally supports certain family values positions.

Wallis describes a coherent Christian politics that combines a commitment to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles and prophets, personal moral responsibility, and a biblical emphasis on social justice.

Or in other words, a politics and morality that neither current party comes close to representing, even though the conservative right claims that righteous distinction in a way that brings to mind a particular religious/political party that Jesus confronted in the harshest terms in his own day.

He believes a movement of Christian people from both left and right could come together and become a truly prophetic political force for good. I agree. May it be so. I think this is one of the more important Christian books on practical social ethics to come along in a while.

But whether a movement like this develops or not, the heart of the matter is the way Christians respond to all this. Will we develop the insight to recognize not only the weaknesses of the Samaritan, but also the more dangerous weaknesses of the self-righteous Pharisee? I hope so.

Little Scarlet Walter Mosely

If you like bullets and blondes detective novels you’ll enjoy the stories of Walter Mosely, though in this instance it’s a case of bullets and blacks.

I’ve been a fan of detective fiction, and especially noir writing and film, since I was a teenager.

Jan and I re-read all the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle about six months ago. We’ve been introducing Andrew to Holmes through the wonderful BBC film versions of those fascinating stories.

The Holmes stories--written in the 19th century--were some of the beginnings of detective fiction.

As a result of the senseless slaughter of WWI and the carnage of WWII, the detective genre evolved into noir fiction and film. Some creative and thoughtful people wanted to find a way to witness to the fact that a lot of life is righteous posturing which covers up the kinds of violence and lies which Christians think of as sinfulness and even wickedness. Noir is a form of fiction that’s all about stumbling onto and identifying, like Jesus, the whitened sepulchers everybody encounters in real life. So while it can seem dark and cynical, it’s really rooted in the deepest kind of moral consciousness and a kind of worldly wise idealism.

In noir (“black” in French) detective fiction, the anti-hero is normally a morally flawed inner-city detective or some regular guy who ends up in a downward spiral of events beyond his control. He starts on the sunny side of events and little by little descends into the heart of an increasingly darker mystery.

Los Angeles became the American heart of noir fiction and film through the writing of authors like Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) and Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye) and the many Humphrey Bogart “hard boiled detective” flicks.

Eventually the mood and formula of noir detective fiction were re-interpreted again and again. You may have seen Chinatown (70’s noir film set in 30’s LA), Blade Runner (80’s film noir set in the year 2200 in LA), LA Confidential (90’s LAPD film noir set in the 50’s), The Grifters (90’s film noir about contemporary con-men) and even The Name of the Rose (80’s film noir based in a medieval Italian monastery!).

Mosely is the latest--and one of the greatest--interpreters of noir detective fiction. His stories are about African-American LA in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s.

His African American noir anti-heroes (Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, Paris Minton and Fearless Jones) are some of the most interesting fictional characters I’ve run across in a long while.

Mosely, who is an African-American born and raised in LA, has written a ton of these stories, so it will keep you occupied for a while. I’m only half way through and it’s taken me 4 months.

Little Scarlet is his most recent Easy Rawlins book which is set in LA just after the Watts Riots in the 60’s. I’m in the middle of it right now.

His other Easy Rawlins books include A Red Death (Easy ends up investigating the murder of a Jewish labor organizer in McCarthy era LA), Gone Fishin’ (Easy and his murderous friend “Mouse” return from LA to Louisiana to solve a mystery), Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy solves a mystery and tries to survive in 40’s LA—Denzel Washington played Easy in a 90’s movie version of this one), Black Betty (more Easy in early 60’s LA), and Bad Boy Brawly Brown (Easy uncovers corruption among African-American community leadership in Compton).

His Fearless Jones stories—which I like even better than the wonderful Easy Rawlins books—are Fear Itself (bookstore owner Paris Minton and his friend Fearless Jones do everything they can to stay alive while uncovering dark secrets among 50’s LA African-American nouveau-riche), and Fearless Jones (Paris and Fearless use their clear eyed understanding of how the world actually works—one of Mosely’s basic themes—to survive black gangsters, corrupt white police, and Israeli hit men in 50’s LA).

This is just great writing.

Faith, Culture and Politics--A Few Thoughts Re War on Iraq 03

2005-01-22T01:17:00.000-07:00

Wanted to pass on some thoughts re Iraq. What a world, eh?

The Main Thing Is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

There are multi ways of looking at the impending invasion of Iraq. But the question I’m interested in at this point is whether Christian people can support the invasion and conquest of Iraq from an ethical or moral standpoint.

Wars are hard to fight without high levels of moral certainty. Because the people who give the orders to kill hundreds of thousands of people are human beings who on some level recognize the stakes involved, in most cases they feel the need for a certain moral certainty on their side. The killers themselves, largely young men and career military people, also need to believe they are doing the right thing.

Calling that moral foundation into question is an important way of resisting an unjust war. Perhaps it’s the most important way.

Point of View

I believe a U.S invasion and conquest of Iraq would be immoral. I feel Christians should resist our current government’s preparations and plans for war.

The Heartbeat

The present U.S. administration has clearly and repeatedly announced a new doctrine which they hope will guide our foreign policy in the future.

This new way of engaging the world is the doctrine of pre-emption. In this new approach to foreign policy the U.S. reserves the right to violently attack—with our full “conventional” arsenal and possibly even with “limited” versions of our nuclear weapons of mass destruction—any nations who are potential sources of future violence against the United States or our allies. Whether they are actually a present threat to the U.S., or whether they have more recently committed direct violence against the U.S, is a secondary issue under this new approach. Put most simply, this doctrine legitimizes “first strike” warfare to eliminate potential future threats using some of the most terrifying weapons ever developed.

This is an important departure from past U.S. views on the use of warfare and crosses well over the line of respectable and considered Christian views of the use of warfare which have been created over thousands of years of experience in many cultures and in many ages.

From a Christian moral and ethical point of view, whether the U.S achieves a UN mandate is perhaps less important than some seem to believe. That’s primarily a political and pragmatic issue, though it also has some potentially important moral implications. The key issue from a moral and ethical standpoint, I believe, is whether pre-emption can be supported.

Why Pre-Emption is Wrong

It’s important to underscore the fact that believers, for the first three centuries of the Church’s life, refused to support or participate in any state-sponsored military violence. That’s perhaps not surprising given the fact that the early Christians believed that their God had been violently crucified at the hands of the greatest state of their day and that the crucified Jesus would return very shortly and end all of history, including the Roman state. It’s not hard to imagine that their assertive non-violence also grew out of their reactions to the violent state-sponsored persecutions they experienced from time to time.

That comprehensive non-violence didn’t last. Eventually Christianity became the official state religion of a military empire.

It was during that imperial period, under St. Augustine, that the basic precepts of the “Just War Theory” (from now on JWT) were developed. Those precepts were refined over the centuries in many places and cultures and centuries.

The goal of the JWT was (and is) to influence political leaders with a Christian prophetic stance on warfare which is, at the same time, both realistic and in touch with the kind of “real world” tensions and contradictions that people in power—even Christian people--face when making decisions about the use of military violence. The situation in Iraq is a classic example of the complexities leaders encounter in trying to do the right thing in a very fallen world. It’s precisely the kind of situation for which the JWT was developed.

The JWT is arguably the most permissive Christian stance on war ever developed which also has reasonable biblical integrity. It has been the reigning Christian litmus test for the legitimacy of war for over 1500 years.

I thought the best way to ask whether a potential invasion of Iraq was ethically legitimate was to apply the most lenient and still legitimate Christian measuring stick to it, which is the JWT. Obviously, other less lenient but still biblically legitimate Christian perspectives would be even less likely to support state sponsored military violence.

The JWT
A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.
A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate.
A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause (although the justice of the cause is not sufficient--see point #4). Further, a just war can only be fought with "right" intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury.
A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.
The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.
The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered.
The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.
After reading over the principles of the JWT you may have been struck, as I have been, by how deeply the contemporary debate in the West over the potential war in Iraq is rooted in the various requirements of the JWT. Governments are struggling to demonstrate that they are fulfilling its various articles because it represents millennia of Western values and is a basis, sometimes unconsciously, of moral legitimacy in matters of war for Westerners. And even among non-Westerners I believe many if not most people would find the principles of the JWT to be morally self-evident.

Reflect for a minute or two on the various precepts of the JWT, using your moral and historical imagination, and then ask yourself why you think these 7 tenets have survived 1700 years of the Church’s experience with nations and powers of every kind. There is a subtlety about the JWT which might be missed in a quick skim job.

The elements of the JWT most relevant for a moral critique of a potential war and invasion of Iraq are points 3 and 6.

Together these two moral directives are explicitly aimed at ruling out “preventive” or “pre-emptive” wars. The nation or power attacking must be redressing a clear “wrong” it (or by extension, an ally) has suffered. A nation or power which attacks another nation with a pre-emptive strike is acting unjustly.

Even the intentions of a nation or power are addressed. If the intention of a nation or power initiating violence against another is anything other than redressing an injury it has suffered, that nation or power’s intentions are explicitly understood to be unjust. There is nothing ambiguous about that moral reasoning in the JWT.

There is not time to go into all the reasons why the JWT so strongly emphasizes this third point. But suffice it to say that this element of the theory has been crystallized over millennia because of Christian people’s long experience of warfare in many ages and cultures, the clear teachings of the Bible (which regularly condemn nations and cultures for pre-emptive military violence), and as I mentioned before, the witness of even non-Christian peoples to what they intuitively understand to be right and just in terms of the use of violence between nations.

If there were any residual ambiguity after point 3 about the view of the JWT of pre-emptive war, it is dispelled by point 6. According to this tenet of the JWT, any nation or power that uses proportions of violence that are beyond what it itself (or by extension, an ally) has directly suffered is acting unjustly and immorally.

I simply don’t believe a potential pre-emptive U.S. invasion and conquest of Iraq meets either of these two tenets of the JWT. Actually, I don’t think the upcoming war even comes close to meeting the moral requirements articulated here.

That’s not surprising since the JWT has been constructed to rule out pre-emptive war from a moral and ethical point of view.

Why is that important? Well, when a moral standard like the JWT has been the consensus of the Church for millennia, and when it is arguably the most permissive (and still biblically legitimate) Christian moral standard for evaluating war, and when it explicitly rules out the kind of massive, pre-emptive war contemplated by our present government, then I think Christians should evaluate soberly if they can give any support to that war. In any case, I believe the onus of “proof” lies with Christians who would support such a war. I believe they need to make a strong case why this war should be supported.

Past American Views on Pre-Emption

I also want to touch briefly on traditional American views on pre-emptive wars, and especially pre-emptive wars in which the force and violence applied are grossly out of proportion to any wrong suffered.

The reality is that American leaders have consistently repudiated this kind of warfare. Perhaps the most striking example of this was the Kennedy administration’s response to the Soviet Union’s installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba in the early 60’s. If ever a “pre-emptive” strike would have been called for to protect American citizens it was during the Cuban missile crisis. One important reason, among a number of reasons, why that administration chose not to make a pre-emptive strike against Cuba was that they believed such a strike was immoral and would likely brand the U.S. as an unjust power in the world. They explicitly argued that the U.S. had never engaged in first strike, pre-emptive warfare, and they made it clear they didn’t want to be the first to cross that ethical line.

That is not to say that the U.S hasn’t made immoral decisions during wartime in the past or that we haven’t crossed crucial moral boundaries before. We’ve done so a number of times. Our wanton destruction, even obliteration, of cities and vast civilian populations during WW2, and the fact that we did it as a specific and conscious military strategy, was grossly immoral by any Christian standards of ethics or warfare (see tenet 7 of the JWT). From my point of view it was one of the most shameful episodes in our national history.

Many argue that it was a militarily necessity. That may be so (I’ll address those kinds of ideas in a bit), but its immorality can’t be doubted, in my mind. We crossed a moral line when we began killing hundreds of thousands of women and children in horrifying bombing raids on enemy cities at the end of the Second World War, and I fear we are going to cross another one as we make pre-emptive war on Iraq, and as we make it a part of our new policy of warfare.

So in summary, I’d maintain that the witness of generations of Christians in the past (as expressed in the JWT) as well as the witness of our own nation throughout its history makes it hard to argue that pre-emptive warfare has ever been understood to be moral or acceptable. Why it would be considered acceptable now is not clear to me.

Why So Few Like Our Upcoming Rambo on Iraq

I think part of the reason why such huge numbers of people in polls all over the world reject the legitimacy of this war is the moral issue I’ve been focusing on. While there are obviously a number of governments that are supportive, I don’t think there is any question that this war is highly unpopular among the people of most any nation in which public opinion polls have been taken.

I’d guess people’s response around the world would be different Iraq had recently attacked the US in some way, or if it had recently attacked or done violence against some other neighboring country. I don’t think there’s any question that large numbers would be supportive of US military action against Iraq in that situation, as the first Gulf War and the recent campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan made clear. Most people believe that a war fought to redress violence in self-defense is at least potentially moral and just.

But another important reason for the almost universal resistance around the world to this potential war is another new U.S. foreign policy doctrine, pre-eminence.

Our present government has announced that its policy--and what it hopes will be the policy of our nation in the future--is to pursue ongoing and unchallenged U.S. dominance in the world. No nation or power, whether friend or foe, will be allowed again to compete with the U.S militarily or politically, according to the people running our country these days.

That is now our official and public foreign policy, whether many Americans are aware of it or not. It’s obvious from public reactions to a potential U.S. war on Iraq that people from other nations around the world are very aware of it.

In effect our present leaders have extended the Monroe Doctrine--which announced our intention to pursue a decisive and unchallenged dominance over the western hemisphere 200 years ago—out to the whole world. We will no longer tolerate serious political or military rivals on the world scene.

That’s a clear departure from our past foreign policy, which has always been about alternating years of isolationism with periods of intense alliance building. During the Cold War the idea was to achieve some kind of strategic parity with the Soviet Union while at the same time encircling it with alliances and treaties. The method was keeping the pressure high and waiting patiently for 40 years, and the end game we were seeking was the collapse of the Soviet Union from within.

Some who are more cynical may say that global hegemony has always been our real but unstated goal, but I don’t think that point of view will stand up to even a cursory look at our national history. No American administration that I’m aware of has ever clearly announced a foreign policy doctrine like this one. And even if the cynics’ point of view is accurate, I believe an important moral and ethical boundary has been crossed when immoral behavior is publicly announced and publicly supported.

I think the doctrines of pre-emption and pre-eminence, taken together, frighten and galvanize many of the world’s people against the U.S. and especially against the potential war in Iraq.

Again, I would argue that many people around the world are responding out of their own cultural and religious traditions, and often from their own moral intuition. They understand that both pre-emption and pre-eminence are morally wrong and very dangerous. They are a witness against this kind of approach just as past American leaders and the mainstream of church tradition are. To me these are powerful reasons for Christians to consider, or re-consider, any support they might give this war.

The fact is that the U.S. now has an overwhelming advantage in terms of power and influence in the world. And that overwhelming advantage is a relatively new state of affairs for our nation.

Many respectable and leading thinkers in all parts of the world argue seriously that the U.S. now has greater relative power in relationship to the nations of its own day than any other nation in history. Whether that is true or not isn’t the point. The key issue is that we possess overwhelming military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural might.

When a nation which possesses such powers also commits itself unselfconsciously and publicly to resisting any serious rivals for power, and when it allows itself the moral leeway to engage in pre-emptive war using many of the most terrible weapons ever devised, is it any wonder why people around the world are deeply concerned?

And given the clear biblical judgments in the Old Testament and the New on nations who seek such pre-eminence and who achieve and maintain it through violence, shouldn’t Christians in this country resist the direction our present government is taking us?

The Bible clearly teaches and warns that all nations, no matter how well meaning, are fallen and are primarily concerned with advancing their own interests and assuring their own survival. So skepticism is the order of the day when evaluating any government or power. It also warns that when nations or powers begin to seek pre-eminence they are more prone to sin and to doing real damage to others and ultimately, to themselves. And finally, it warns that when nations actually achieve pre-eminence through military power and when they are convinced of their own moral rightness, a dangerous combination has emerged.

Some will say that the peoples of the world reject this war because many have a cultural hatred of the U.S. Some say it’s because many people reject or are ambivalent about modernity (which the U.S. symbolizes) Many believe the resistance springs from envy, jealousy, and pettiness. Others point out that some of the governments who are negative are cynical and self-serving (“champaign and cheese, anyone?”). And still others point to our policies in Palestine and believe we have acted unjustly toward the Palestinians, which casts doubt on our fairness to the Islamic world.

All of those points of view have validity to them. All are obviously part of the picture. But I also believe very clearly that many people are responding to the truly frightening, and I believe, immoral developments in our foreign policy which are summarized by the doctrines of pre-emption and pre-eminence.

There are other people who argue that the war on Iraq isn’t really pre-emptive, in spite of the fact that the present administration has clearly labeled it that way and has announced pre-emption as a new military doctrine which is “suited to our times.” Those people argue it’s really a police action in which the U.S, deeply concerned for the UN’s credibility and deeply concerned that international treaties be upheld, is simply doling out the consequences of Iraq’s failure to be a good member of the international community.

I don’t know how to respond to that point of view. Some people obviously believe our government is being drawn in as a world policeman in order to uphold international organizations and treaties. Personally, I side with those who believe our government is moving us toward war in order to take out a potential future threat in a pre-emptive war. Perhaps we’ve been following different world events.

If there have been any efforts on the part of the U.S. government to uphold the UN’s credibility, it’s pretty obvious to me that this has been seen as a necessary evil by our present government in order to allow them to do what they’ve been planning to do for quite some time.

Dark World and Difficult Decisions

For the sake of clarity I’ve made a strong and pretty one-sided argument against the moral legitimacy of the potential upcoming war.

But the decisions American leaders and leaders around the world are making are anything but easy or simple. There is a lot to be said for considering war.

We’re being told that present circumstances are so unprecedented that they require a new morality of warfare. There are a number of dangers our leaders are pointing to, but the heart of the argument for war against Iraq—and for pre-emption—seems to be that because of the tremendous and unprecedented power of weapons of mass destruction, and because there are now terrorists who will use them against us, past moral arguments against pre-emption, like the elements of the JWT, are no longer valid.

Are present circumstances dire? And do supporters of war have a strong case? And finally, are the circumstances so unprecedented that they require a new moral and ethical reasoning about war?

There is no question in my mind that Hussein is an evil man and that the Baathist regime in Iraq is evil. I say “evil” very specifically, and distinguish it from simply “fallen.” I think the Bible recognizes gradations of sin. There is “falleness,” which is the ‘garden variety’ of sin (excuse the pun). This is the common condition of all people and certainly of all governments and powers.

But there is a deeper wickedness which is evil. This is a moral and spiritual condition in which a person or group of people, or even nation, become so alienated and so distanced from God that they become what might be called “demonic.” At that point most vestiges of concern for the well-being of others are lost and self-obsession becomes almost pathological. Lying and the distortion of truth become routine. There is often pleasure taken in inflicting suffering and pain on others and in the sheer exercise of power and domination in the lives of others.

When this kind of spiritual and moral condition is combined with great power, something truly terrible has arisen which must be prophetically identified and resisted.

Some of the Europeans no longer seem comfortable thinking about a regime like Iraq’s as “evil.” My response is that if this regime is not evil the term has no meaning. Actually, though I understand why for political reasons governments might refrain from “speaking” about Iraq as evil, I wonder how to think about people who would not be willing to “view” Hussein this way.

So I do believe Iraq is a true threat, though I have major doubts about whether it is a true threat to us right now. I don’t doubt that many in the U.S. government honestly believe that Iraq’s regime is both evil and a threat to this country and his neighbors, and that they are motivated by it.

And of course, after 12 years of sanctions against Iraq, our government has good reason to doubt whether further sanctions of the type we’ve seen so far will actually disarm Iraq. Hussein is a master liar and manipulator, and a skilled politician. Why would anyone trust this man or this regime?

And perhaps most importantly, I believe many in our government and others who support this war also understand that the “peace” over the past 12 years in Iraq has hardly been non-violent. By even the most conservative estimates, over 200,000 Iraqis, mostly children, have died because of the deprivations caused by the sanctions and by Hussein’s wicked callousness toward his own people. Many others have been permanently physically and mentally damaged.

We’re also being told by our government that Iraq is working with terrorists to strike at the U.S.
I see little evidence that the Iraqis are working with terrorists, though I understand why there is a fear of “what might happen” were Hussein to give weapons of mass destruction to such terrorists.

When the Iraqi regime’s evil, the seeming failure of sanctions over 12 years, and the terrible loss of life and suffering during the “peaceful solution” to Iraq are all taken into account, there are very good reasons to consider a military “solution.” I don’t believe those reasons are strong enough to sanction a new morality, but I do understand them.

Political leaders and governments cannot afford romantic and idealistic views of the world. The bible clearly teaches that the world is a dark place of conflicting powers all seeking their own advantage, and where some of those powers become evil and demonic. Moral clarity is often hard to come by, and events present new challenges that people and governments are often unprepared to meet well and thoughtfully.

And as much as some Christians don’t like to hear this, because of the nature of evil in the world and because the world is fallen, sometimes governments and powers must use violence. Or in other words, sometimes there is simply no good choice.

So I don’t view the present administration or others around the world that support a war on Iraq, as “evil” people. I believe they are fallen people trying to make decisions in a fallen and complicated situation, and who are confronted with a specific challenge that is difficult and which might tempt anyone to use violence to solve it. I’m sure they understand that there will be many tragic deaths whether they choose to continue sanctions (200,000 and counting) or strike Iraq militarily. There are no good choices in a situation like this, no matter what politicians say for public consumption. Until we have strong evidence otherwise, I think we have to assume our leaders are human beings who are aware, on at least some level, of the “bad hand” they’ve been dealt.

This is part of why it is hard for me to get with much of the “peace movement.” I believe many of the people protesting are very well meaning and motivated by the kinds of issues I’ve been addressing, but quite a few seem to have lost (or maybe never had) the ability to draw finer moral distinctions or the ability to understand that the people leading are facing a very difficult challenge. To draw parallels between Bush and Hitler, or to be unable to distinguish between what is simply fallen and that which is evil, really damages the moral credibility of many of the protesters in my view. And when people support a more “simple-minded” anti-violence stance based on an unrealistic and naïve view of the world, well, that’s just weak anthropology and poor theology. Perhaps it’s the result of too much post-modernism, too much therapeutic mush that passes as a moral point of view, and too much TV…. Sorry, now I’m getting cynical!
It’s just frustrating when what I believe to be the best point of view on this war is discredited unnecessarily.

A Brief Comment on Presuppositions

I realize my comments in the section immediately above, and probably in the entire essay, would make more sense if I made my presuppositions about the Church and its relationships to nations and powers and to violence more explicit.

The Bible recognizes that violence must sometimes be used by governments or powers to restrain evil in this world. This kind of use of violence, on one level, is always a sign of falleness in that it is only necessary because of human sinfulness and rebellion against God. The Bible understands that violence in a fallen world is sometimes necessary precisely because it takes the sinfulness and darkness of the world very seriously. If you’re looking for idealism and romanticism, you’ll have to look elsewhere than in the pages of Scripture.

On another level, however, some uses of violence are worse than others. It is important for Christians to be able to draw moral and ethical distinctions between various situations they encounter in a fallen world. It is not enough to simply pronounce the standards of the Kingdom of God, which are to govern the Church, and then lump all nations or people or decisions into the hopelessly fallen category and draw no distinctions between them. To fail to do so is to fail to act morally and responsibly in this world. The governments of Sweden and Iraq may both be fallen, but there is an important difference between the two from a moral standpoint.

Some uses of violence to restrain evil may be understood to be “moral,” in the tentative and relative way that term must be used by Christians evaluating fallen governments and powers. War should never be celebrated or rejoiced in by Christians. It can only be grudgingly affirmed on those occasions when sin has made other options unworkable. And when the way it is waged meets both biblical and more common standards of morality.

Interestingly, in the prophetic literature nations are judged by God both by how far they fall short of Kingdom ethics (by how they manifest general human sinfulness along with all nations), but also in terms of how much they live up to their own stated codes of morality and the moral standards of the nations around them in their own day. This is based, I believe, in the Bible’s confidence that basic moral understandings remain in every human heart and culture and are expressed in all moral codes, though the way they are expressed may vary.

Since that is true, it’s important for Christians to evaluate how their own nation and other nations are doing in living up to important moral standards. And the standards related to the use of power and violence are some of the most important because they have such a dramatic effect on the lives of so many people.

What Should Be Done?

It’s time to summarize. My original question was whether Christians can support this potential war morally or ethically. My answer to that question is no.

What it comes down to in the end is deciding whether the potential moral good done by attacking Iraq justifies creating a new morality of pre-emption and putting that new morality into the hands of a fallen and very heavily armed superpower which has committed itself officially to a policy of pre-eminence. I just don’t believe the potential benefits of assertive military violence against Iraq or the present circumstances here create that justification, however understandable it may be that others disagree. I believe a pre-emptive war on Iraq would be morally very dangerous for our country’s future and the world’s future. This is a precedent that should not be set and a line that should not be crossed.

What should Christians do? Well, I believe part of our role in the world is prophetic. We must be willing to publicly evaluate both the U.S. and Iraqi governments and their policies in light of biblical teachings and standards, in light of Christian tradition, and also in light of the standards of our own nation and other nations and their traditions. That is what I’ve been trying to do in this argument.

I think Christians should resist this war both lovingly and non-violently. That means seeking to persuade leaders (I’ve been writing letters and making phone calls, for instance), but doing so in a way that shows respect for them as people and recognizes the moral ambiguities inherent in this particular situation.

Others may be motivated to actually become political leaders because of the directions they see us moving as a country. For some believers, if they believe they can actually do some practical good, this could be an important step to take.

It may mean protesting publicly as well. There’s no doubt in my mind that the public protests around the world have had a major impact on what politicians are doing and saying around the world.

And it might even mean practicing civil disobedience if a meaningful and helpful way of doing that can be created. I have been arrested doing civil disobedience on a number of occasions. Sometimes it is called for depending on the circumstances.

Well, I’ve tried to make clear what I think we should be against. What should we be for?

I think our government, and other world governments, should resist and contain the regime in Iraq in whatever ways clever people can devise. Much more intrusive measures may need to be taken, and Iraq may need to be squeezed much more tightly than it already has been. That may mean an even more dramatic reduction of Iraq’s sovereignty.

This will probably mean a much more active investment on the part of many nations to punish Iraq diplomatically and economically, and high levels of pressure on Arab governments and others to work for Hussein and his regime to step down.

In effect, it will take a concerted, intensive, and sustained effort to break the Iraqi regime. We did it with the Soviet Union. I see no reason why this kind of containment would not work against a much weaker and more isolated state like Iraq. If we have to exercise patience rather than go down the perilous road of pre-emptive war then by all means let’s be patient.

This will not change the terrible situation for the Iraqi people in the short run. But their situation will be terrible either way. A quarter of a million of them were horribly killed in the Gulf War, and any attack this time around is very likely to kill many more. They are people we should be praying for every day.

May God deliver us all from evil and lead us away from temptation. Amen.

Faith, Culture and Politics--Post War Thoughts on Iraq 03

2005-01-22T01:07:00.000-07:00

Before the war on Iraq began I sent out a moral argument against the war from a Christian point of view. I made no attempt to look at the war from a political perspective, though that’s certainly an important way to analyze any war.

The gist of my argument then was that a pre-emptive and unilateral war fought by a nation which is a superpower by any historical standards, and which is now officially committed to a policy of perpetual pre-eminence and to pre-emptive violence against other nations, would be unjust and immoral and should not be supported by Christians.

I based my argument on the ‘just war theory,’ which is arguably the most lenient and widely held Christian viewpoint on state sponsored violence. I’m not necessarily a devoted supporter of the just war theory, but using the most lenient and respectable Christian view on war seemed the best way to measure the moral acceptability of a potential war on Iraq and the best way to give that war’s supporters the benefit of the doubt. Other respectable and historical Christian viewpoints on war would have been much less open to sanctioning a pre-emptive and unilateral war.

The war’s been fought.

It seemed appropriate after a year to revisit the whole situation now that we have the benefit of a measure of hindsight and now that we aren’t limited to well meaning attempts at foresight.

The primary moral argument for the invasion of Iraq was that Iraq was a clear and present threat to the US and to other “civilized” powers. The threat was so great and pressing, from the point of view of the current administration and its supporters, that no time could be wasted in destroying it. The uniqueness of the threat required a new morality of war which discarded time tested Christian views of war and previous U.S. perspectives on state sponsored violence as well.

As it turned out, responding to the perceived threat also meant alienating most of the nations of the world and the vast majority of the world’s population.

I went into some detail arguing against the war beforehand while trying at the same time to be fair to those who felt this kind of state sponsored violence was necessary. There were strong and understandable emotional reasons and a few concrete reasons as well to consider a war against Iraq, given the apparent “facts” at the time, even though I considered those reasons to be insufficient to create a new morality of war.

But my main concern was to argue that fallen nations and individuals, particularly when they have an overwhelming advantage in power and influence, are in a very tenuous moral position when they choose pre-emptive violence against other nations and peoples, especially when they act alone and without honest accountability.

The reason that’s true is that they are fallen. And besides being fallen, they are also simply human and therefore limited and fallible; as are all of the complex governmental and military and intelligence structures they inevitably create.

They are susceptible, along with every one of us, to believing what they want to believe, and at times to trumping up or even creating reasons against the evidence to do what they would like to do. The temptation to do those kinds of things increases exponentially as a person or nation’s relative power over others increases, as both the Bible and simple common sense make clear.

In my original piece I wanted to apply these kinds of moral critiques to the current U.S. regime.

Now that we have a bit more experience to go on, I’ll leave it to you to decide if there were actually weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or whether the Iraqi regime was potent and powerful and an immediate threat to “civilization” and the US. Or whether it was so powerful and such an immediate and unique threat that a new and more invasive ethic of war was required.

Or whether it was so grave that we had to rush into the war and alienate the nations that are our natural allies by virtue of values and convictions, if not always by virtue of national interest. Or if there was any real evidence at any time that Iraq was allied with Al Queda and other terrorist groups.

Those were the moral justifications for war that our present government aggressively pressed onto a nation still emotionally overwhelmed by the events of 9/11.

And you can make up your own mind whether the whole thing distracted us from the more reasonable and just pursuit of the Al Queda terrorists and their collaborators.

The issue, in my view, isn’t whether intelligence agencies believed Iraq to be an imminent threat. Some important leaders in some intelligence agencies, especially those who had to please their bosses, obviously did, though it’s interesting that the CIA is scrambling now to distance itself from this position and to demonstrate that they made every effort to tone down the intentional and very generous spin toward war on the part of the Bush administration officials.

Many people within many intelligence agencies, no matter what kind of spin our leaders now want to give it, warned that the intelligence on Iraq was iffy and tentative. And it’s important to also state that the striking majority of countries who’s intelligence indicated Iraq could have some form of chemical weapons did not consider those potential weapons as a serious current threat and therefore rejected the invasion as unnecessary and inappropriate.

From a Christian standpoint, we shouldn’t be surprised that the CIA and the Bush administration “were all wrong” in believing Iraq was a serious threat, to quote the administration’s own chief weapons inspector. Fear combined with immense power is a bad combination when it comes to discerning the truth and sticking with the facts.

Chief Inspector Kay’s findings were pretty much what the UN inspectors found. I feel especially bad for those unfortunate and honorable people who were ridiculed—hilariously in my view--by our current administration as “cheese eaters and chocolate makers.”

Recent revelations by two top ex-Bush Administration officials (one of cabinet rank) indicate fairly strongly that the administration was committed to taking out Iraq militarily both before and immediately after 9/11. Richard Clarke, who was the Bush Administration’s top Anti-Terrorist Director, and who served in four presidential administrations of both parties (three under Republican presidents), makes it clear that Bush and others in his administration wanted to attack Iraq from the get go.

The vicious political “smear” machine which both parties run so well, but which the Republicans seem particular gifted for, will undoubtedly try to discredit both of these officials, especially Clarke, but after a while the argument that key past administration officials “weren’t in the loop” or “don’t understand” or “have a personal vendetta” or “are in league with the devil” (a.k.a. the Democratic Party) simply won’t wash. That’s particularly true in the case of Clarke, who has an impeccable non-partisan track record of over 20 years and who was one of the people most “in the know” about the war on terror within the Bush Administration. I think there is enough evidence at this point to raise important reservations about the present Administration’s motives in the run up to the war on Iraq.

The strong consensus on the part of 2000 years of Christian theology and tradition—with very few exceptions--has always opposed pre-emptive war, and especially unilateral pre-emptive war, because Christians have understood and appreciated in an unusual way the weaknesses and failings of the flesh, and because they’ve clearly understood the particular pitfalls and even evil that can arise when immense power and authority is colored by both fear and self-righteousness.

Self-deception, particularly for those who are unusually powerful and without real accountability, is easy. Rigorous honesty is much more difficult. Those are some of the important and unique insights Christians can contribute to the current public discussion

Unlike Islam and other spiritual traditions, Christianity arose from a 300 year experience of unjust violence and persecution at the hands of an economic and political superpower. Though we’ve lost our way a number of times, and though at times our attitudes have aped the support of the kinds of invasive and dominating violence so characteristic of imperial Rome and imperial Islam, the Church has still—miraculously in my view--had a reasonably consistent witness against pre-emptive and unilateral state violence. That’s very encouraging to me.

And there is no doubt in my mind that the Christian witness against such violence made a big practical difference over the centuries in restraining ill-advised state sponsored violence.

But with the evangelical Christian church largely a captive of the Republican Party right now and desperate to win the “culture wars,” this important and inspiring witness was muted during the run-up to the war on Iraq. I understand that many Christians are looking at a number of important cultural issues and may see the Republicans as their greatest allies, and perhaps felt the need to be loyal to “one of their own.” But I think that kind of “citizenship” is misguided and destructive. When a policy is morally wrong, it is wrong, no matter the president or the party he or she may belong to.

Taking a look at the development of the moral argument for the war in Iraq might be worthwhile at this point.

The Bush Administration’s moral arguments have evolved, to say the least, since the war began.

At first we were told Iraq had weapons of mass destruction they could use within 45 minutes (based on Tony Blair’s striking and totally erroneous contribution to the rhetoric of war) and that they were in bed with Al Queda and other Islamic fundamentalist murderers.

Then, once US forces got inside of Baghdad, we were told that maybe Iraq wasn’t allied with Al Queda. This line of argument was dropped almost immediately since there was little or no evidence for it before or after the war. “Subterranean” Dick Cheney is the lone holdout among current government officials for this point of view. I respect his commitment to what he thinks is best for the U.S. and the world, however dark and pagan and somewhat paranoid it might be.

Then we were told we invaded because Iraq was a center of planning for weapons of mass destruction.

Then, after greater doses of reality and evidence intruded, we were told, in Washington’s characteristic obfuscation-speak, that we invaded because Iraq was the center of a looming and gathering threat of weapons of mass destruction “related activity.” Clearly, by that time the lawyers were loose in Washington, attempting to cut very fine distinctions in order to protect the Administration from the fallout to come. I know they had no desire to be funny, but I thought this particular argument was unintentionally hilarious. Those Bush types are such jokers and characters.

And more recently, after they realized this line of argument was making them the butt of late night humor shows, the argument was paired back to a simple, Iraq was a looming and gathering threat. Whatever that might mean specifically and practically, it does have the virtue of a poetic and mythical touch, which normally goes over well with partisans when facts are slim.

The “looming and gathering threat” rhetoric and argument are all that is left of the once alarming and specific arguments about the immediate and dramatic threat Iraq posed to the U.S. and other nations. So on one level, the Administration deserves credit (outside of “Groundhog” Dick Cheney, the last true believer) for adjusting its moral rhetoric to evidence and reality. Too bad more attention wasn’t paid to evidence and reality before the war.

Within a few months, if trends continue, we may be told through images and music and slogans that the reason we invaded was because Iraq bad, US good.

Along with being short and to the point and also emotionally satisfying on a primitive level of moral reasoning (say, the level children reach at about 5th grade), this final argument could potentially turn out to be the most accurate and honest assessment of the moral sophistication of some of our most powerful leaders.

Of course, I’m being a little facetious in my last comments. But maybe only a little.

From my point of view, the best remaining moral argument for the war has little or nothing to do with the supposed threat Iraq posed to the U.S. or to “civilization.” The strongest argument left for supporters of the war is that the US used its unique power to take out a murderous and evil dictator who oppressed millions of his own people. The hope was that by freeing the Iraqi people the Muslim peoples of Iraq and the many other nations in the region would eventually turn to democracy and free markets and throw off the petty dictatorships and silly theocracies which control them. This is the best of neo-conservative moral position, as much as I can make it out.

This is definitely a moral argument worth considering and taking seriously.

I think that’s especially true because it’s the one moral argument that would have failed miserably from a political point of view. If that had been the main thrust of the run-up to the war only a small percentage of Americans would have supported the war. In my view, that speaks both well and badly of Americans.

We’re a nation that’s inherited the medieval notion of “chivalry” where the Christian “knight” uses his military prowess to rescue the oppressed and downtrodden. How many of our most popular westerns, crime dramas, and even sci-fi movies are based directly on that still potent image and idea? And we’re also heir to the Puritan notion of a “revolution of the saints” where serious Christians use worldly power, including crusading violence, to bring about a more Christian and just world. The Bush folks are clearly in line with a strong theme of “crusading violence” in our national moral fabric and in the moral fabric of the West. I think that’s part of what makes this particular argument so powerful for many.

It’s a powerful argument for me personally. I’m thoroughly delighted that Hussein is out of power and that he’s in custody. I pray he’ll be tried and put away for good, however that might be accomplished.

I’m also very sympathetic to the idea that the Arab and Muslim world is captive, for the most part, to dictators and ignorant religious leaders who are contributing to the gross poverty and ignorance of that vast and remarkable community. On one level, anything that promises to change that situation for the better is very emotionally attractive and is worth considering.

It’s possible that Iraq and the Middle East may emerge better off after our pre-emptive, largely unilateral, and crusading violence. I hope and pray so. Sometimes God’s grace abounds all the more even after unwise and even immoral decisions. Thank God for that. I’m not one of those who believe things in Iraq are hopeless or will turn out disastrously, though I do think the whole occupation has been handled remarkably badly.

But the question at hand is whether pre-emptive and unilateral state sponsored violence, however emotionally satisfying, is a moral alternative for dealing with nations like Iraq or the broader challenges of the Arab and Islamic worlds. I would argue it is not.

I believe that the long-term moral and practical dangers of an unprecedented superpower like the U.S. giving itself the moral leeway to attack nations without direct provocation, and to do it in the face of the strong opposition of the vast majority of the world’s nations and peoples, are too great to justify any short term gains from knocking out a second rate dictator like Hussein and a nation like Iraq which had been devastated by many years of Saddam’s rule and over a decade of brutal sanctions. That’s particularly true when our government commits itself to perpetual American dominance in the world.

Once we discount all the heroic hype and hyperbole, what we actually saw in the most recent war on Iraq was one of the greatest military and economic powers in history smashing a backwards and already devastated regime. It was about as impressive as a tank rolling over a barking dog.

That’s the way that the Islamic world, and the vast majority of the rest of the world, saw things. Is it possible they may see an aspect of the truth?

As I’ve tried to argue in both of these essays, Christian ethics always puts those with the greatest worldly power under the greatest scrutiny. The burden of proof is with the superpower to explain why attacking others without direct provocation should be supported. I don’t believe the facts of the case in Iraq support a new morality of war.

The events of 9/11 were such a shock to every American that I have sympathy for the Bush Administration and its supporters. It’s easy to criticize after the fact, and I’m sensitive to that.

But when an administration decides to argue for a new pre-emptive morality of war, and when it argues for perpetual American dominance in the world (that’s our official and clearly articulated foreign policy now), it invites the strongest possible critiques.

I believe there are a number of better and more moral alternatives to what we’ve seen recently.

We should make every effort to eliminate terrorist groups. When groups like Al Queda clearly commit themselves to mass terrorism they must be stopped in whatever ways may be necessary, including the use of violence. The sword of the state may be wielded legitimately against these types of groups. One of my greatest regrets about the war on Iraq is that it diverted monies, energy, and attention away from breaking the unfortunate rise of the Islamic death cults. The war on Iraq was a side-show in the battle against terrorism. That’s a shame. Sadly, it appears that the war on Iraq has actually emboldened terrorists and created even greater opportunities for them.

Perhaps even more important, we should make every effort to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction. That will take moral persuasion and every diplomatic resource at our disposal, as well as severe sanctions and even military intervention if necessary.

We are the world’s most powerful nation, and perhaps one of the most powerful nations in history. We are the world’s largest supplier of weapons. Since we are neck deep in weapons of mass destruction which we originally created and which give us some of our unprecedented power in the world, our moral leverage in trying to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction is not very impressive.

It’s possible that a diplomatic approach which recognizes the moral ambiguities created by our own immense power rather than ignoring them would be the best way to go in order to achieve the moral ends of defeating terrorism and disarming nations attracted to mass terrorism. This will mean exercising a little patience, showing some measure of humility, and actually listening to our allies and to other nations. Odds are that they are not all immoral idiots, in spite of what some of our present leaders seem to think. Even those stupid and spineless people who aren’t Americans (a.k.a. the U.N. in Bush-speak) might be useful if we decide not to insult them regularly.

States that clearly support and harbor terrorist groups are legitimate military targets from the point of view of millennia of Christian ethics. Afghanistan is a good example of a “terrorist state” which required a military response. The vast majority of the world supported that war because it was clear the U.S was responding to an attack and that it was responding to a terrorist group and a regime which pro-actively supported those terrorists.

Defining “terrorist groups” is best left to a wide consensus of governments and peoples. One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. But I think a broad consensus can be achieved, particularly with nations so aware now of the threat of mass terrorist violence.

Pre-emptive violence against terrorist states may be necessary in those rare instances when long-term and serious attempts to solve the problem non-violently fail, though even in those situations the moral consequences of taking such a step should be made clear and discussed publicly. There must be a very wide agreement of states and peoples, as was the case in Afghanistan. That wasn’t the case in Iraq. That kind of wide agreement is particularly important when the chief instigator for a potential war is hyper-power like the US.

That kind of moral discipline would demonstrate that the U.S. recognizes the moral ambiguity of its situation (armed to the teeth and able to destroy the world many times over, but working to disarm other nations “for their own good”), as well as the dangers inherent in possessing such overwhelming relative power. As I mentioned in my last essay, there has been a lot of knee-jerk anti-Americanism over this whole thing, but I believe firmly that much of the unprecedented opposition and hostility to our present Administration is a result of a failure to demonstrate more clearly that we understand the moral issues that our immense power creates. Most assuredly, most of the world’s peoples and cultures understand those issues very well.

What should we have done in Iraq? I think that U.N.-imposed economic sanctions and enforced isolation devastated Iraq. It was no immediate threat, and therefore did not require the use of immediate, pre-emptive, and unilateral violence. I agree with the Bush Administration that it was a longer term threat as long as Hussein stayed in power. Sanctions should have been tightened and continued. And if eventually the majority of the nations of the world agreed that invasive violence was necessary because Iraq had become a real and imminent threat, a united approach patterned after the first Gulf War might have been considered reasonable and moral, in the tentative way those terms must always be used when dealing with fallen nations and powers and their affairs.

My own guess is that Hussein’s regime would have collapsed within a few years had we been a bit more patient and had we done a better job of working with our natural allies. And had we taken that approach and given ourselves time to create a rational approach to rebuilding Iraq along with our allies afterwards, my guess is we would have seen a much smoother and much more effective occupation of Iraq. Even staunch supporters of the war like the Economist regularly castigate the Bush Administration for its astonishingly poor job of planning and executing the occupation. There was an excellent and fair article a couple of months ago in The Atlantic entitled, “Blind Into Baghdad,” which chronicled this failure in detail. And a better job of occupying, had the situation come to war, would have saved many lives and a lot of suffering, which are not unimportant moral considerations.

And of course, making positive efforts to create greater conditions of justice in the world, and particularly in the Middle East, is critical. I think the present Administration has made some good efforts, such as their AIDS policy in Africa, but it seems to me that for every dollar and minute invested in seeking positive solutions to issues like the Palestinian conflict or the repressive regimes of the Arab world, ten dollars and ten minutes have been spent on violent solutions and on cleaning up the mess in Iraq.

Finally, I’d love to see Christians, and the country as a whole, begin to examine seriously the moral and practical implications of our immense and new-found relative power in the world. It seems to me that the overwhelming majority of thinking and discourse has been to examine the meaning of the rise of radical Islam, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and the rise of rogue nations and regimes. I’m still looking for a reasonably good article in any of the leading Christian or mission periodicals which asks the questions, “How should Christians respond to the overwhelming power the U.S. has in the world?” or “What does it mean for mission and our everyday faith lives that we live in possibly the greatest worldly superpower in history?” or “When does support for U.S. policy begin to become idolatrous?” I would guess folks would draw somewhat different conclusions based on the Christian traditions they come from, but what’s been surprising so far is the silence. Is the evangelical church so captive to U.S. nationalism, and perhaps to a particularly narrow version of Republicanism, that we’ve lost our ability to be prophetic? I hope not, but the response we’ve made so far does make me wonder.

Faith, Culture and Politics--A Voting Guide Fall 04

2005-01-21T23:34:00.000-07:00

Here’s my take on Kerry vs. Bush on an issue by issue basis.

As for my biases:

I consider myself a progressive Christian. I’ve been influenced strongly by the historical Anabaptist and peace church traditions. That means I’m not very enthusiastic about expansive political visions, military crusades (however well meaning) and near-religious forms of nationalism.

I’m committed to what I consider to be a consistent pro-life ethic which includes strong support for practical alternatives to abortion, war, capital punishment, hunger, and poverty.

I tend to favor individual freedom, creativity and innovation which take place within the healthy restraint and support of community contexts. I tend to assume that unusually strong and hierarchical concentrations of power normally hinder individual freedom, creativity, and innovation.

Concentrations of worldly power are a social necessity that can help free people to do what they do best. When those constellations of coercion get too much power, and when they begin to believe they are God’s instruments on earth, well, at that point I think we should all probably start paying more attention to what’s going on.

I’ve voted for both Republicans and Democrats over the years and I’ve decided not to vote too when I felt it was pointless.

Now that I’ve done the obligatory post-modern self-disclosure, on to the issues.

Human Life

Kerry

Opposes abortion from a personal point of view but believes the state shouldn’t dictate that choice for individual women.
Supports stepped up stem cell research
Questions capital punishment, but won’t push for major changes in current laws.

Bush

Opposes abortion and supports federal law and Supreme Court decisions that will severely restrict its practice.
Severely restricted stem cell research by denying American scientists access to adequate stem cell sources.
Enthusiastically supports capital punishment

Summary Comments

In terms of abortion, Bush is clearly the evangelical choice. I think he’s sincerely committed from a spiritual point of view.

Personally, I think abortion is a very substantive issue that has been elevated by many to the status of the only issue.

The Democrats still don’t get it that most Americans dislike abortion. What’s worse is that they won’t admit that many religious people and many political conservatives are sincere and thoughtful in their rejection of abortion. After a century of unique global violence and the introduction of mass murder and industrial killing, it seems clear to me that most people of conscience would want to restrict the taking of potential human life.

On the other hand, I believe evangelicals and Republicans have lost their sense of just proportion in elevating this issue to the level of “defeating slavery.” Maybe an honest discussion about abortion is more complicated than that.

Conservative Christians have felt overwhelmed and discriminated against for so many decades that I truly understand the anger and intensity in their political rhetoric and their relentless and impressive political organization.

But I wonder if some honest self-evaluation is in order. Is the extreme polarization and hostility really of God?

I’d personally prefer to see a more restrictive legal environment for abortion than exists right now. So score one for Bush, though I fear the religious far right will insist on restrictions that will become another failed social experiment like Prohibition.

I prefer Kerry’s position on stem cell research. The potential for remarkable medical breakthroughs through this kind of research is clear, and the cells can be harvested from fetuses that will never become human children. Though I understand and appreciate the caution that religious conservatives want to exercise with this issue, and particularly the nuanced decision made by the Bush Administration to allow existing stem cells lines to be used while restricting new lines, I believe both of their positions are unnecessarily restrictive and cautious. Score one for Kerry.

I’m torn on capital punishment. I do believe there are rare instances when people should be executed because of the nature of their crimes.

On the other hand capital punishment has been doled out in such an unfair way—with the poor and ethnic minorities bearing the brunt of the injustice—that it’s hard to support the policy from a practical point of view.

Kerry seems to be the candidate with the deepest understanding of the complexities.

Bush seems to represent a more unreflective position that isn’t willing to come to grips with the historical and actual injustices in our justice and execution system.

I’d score one for Kerry on this specific issue.

Overall, I’d give Bush a slight nod here because of the importance of the abortion issue, which clearly has a huge direct and practical impact on so many people’s lives, and the lack of widespread impact on most people’s lives of capital punishment and the mostly future impact of stem cell research.

Economic Justice

Kerry

Has a longstanding record of supporting efforts aimed at empowering the poor.
Promises to reverse Bush’s tax cuts to the richest 10% in order to reduce the current budget deficits and use that money for programs that will support efforts for better health insurance for the poor and middle class.
Rejects the conservative idea of relying on consumption taxes and slashing taxes on investment income because this would make taxes fall more heavily on the poor and middle class. Believes in the idea of distributive justice. That means he thinks that those who benefit most from a society and make the biggest bucks should contribute disproportionately in relationship to those who make the small change. It’s a very basic New Testament concept.

Bush

His tax cuts have mostly benefited the richest 10% of Americans and his policies have slanted strikingly toward the rich. He promises to make these cuts permanent.
Believes that by cutting taxes on wealthy peoples investment will increase and “all boats will rise”
Promises an “ownership society” where everybody can own property and control their own retirement accounts. Is committed to significantly cutting taxes on all investment and salary income, but will do it incrementally tax by tax (since doing it all at once would create intense opposition). Is committed to shifting the burden of taxes to consumption taxes (sales taxes, etc.).

Summary Comments

Bush sincerely believe that giving even greater federal policy advantages to the wealthy will result in good things for all. America now has income disparities between the rich and poor that make it more at home among third world economies than among developed nations, and I believe his policies will simply increase that gap.

His repeated public comments that “the rich will figure out a way to avoid taxes anyway” as a justification for cutting their taxes seems so cynical to me that I’m not sure how to respond.

I really like the idea of an ownership society. This is the path out of poverty for hundreds of millions around the world. This concept of an ownership society is closely related to some important biblical teachings and principles, including the ideas of personal responsibility, stewardship, etc.

The problem with Bush—along with almost all economic conservatives--is that his efforts seem to be focused on helping the haves to own even more. I’d love to see some results and not more rhetoric in helping the have-nots own and invest. Bush blows the right kind of hot air on the ownership issue, but I think we’d do better with a political leadership that not only understands the advantages of investment and ownership but also has a true commitment to helping the poor. I’ve seen no clear evidence from Bush or the current Republican Party that they have an honest commitment to do that.

Getting past campaign rhetoric and looking at actual decisions and actions, Bush and the Republicans have eliminated or crippled a number of the most important programs that benefit poor Americans over the past few years, including cutting housing credits for the poor when more and more working poor families can’t afford housing.

The Administration’s most recent innovation is an attempt to exempt the majority of banks from the federal laws governing “redlining.” Basically, these laws have been some of the most successful in our nation’s history in helping minorities get loans to own a home because they effectively restrict banks from denying home loans on the basis of racial and ethnic identification.

But they don’t fit in with conservative ideology, and it appears the new laws are meant to correct what many European-Americans consider to be an unjust prejudice against them over the past few decades.

The logic here seems to be a conservative version of “tough love” where we “encourage” the working poor by making it harder for them to attain home ownership and other basics in order to “inspire” them to greater efforts.

Consumption taxes fall most heavily on the poor and middle class. A 5% sales tax on buying a particular car, for example, would cost the same for both a wealthy person and a poor person. But it would have far less impact on the wealthy person, and require far less contribution to the social good (proportionally speaking) than it would for the poor person.

Income taxes that are higher for the wealthy are based on the idea of economic fairness and distributive justice, where those who benefit most from society pay more in taxes.

It is this idea of distributive justice that Bush and the religious conservatives want to severely limit or even overturn. They believe, in an interesting twist of logic, that everyone will be better off if the investment class (the upper middle class and the wealthy) pays little or no income or investment taxes, and if the burden of taxes falls on the middle class and poor through consumption taxes. Again, what they are really rejecting is the Christian idea of distributive justice, which is based on the idea that the wealth and income of a society should be more fairly distributed in order to help everybody do better.

The deeper logic of distributive justice is rooted in the traditional Christian idea that economic success is a gift from God. The Bible says that the biological and social accidents of high intelligence or marketable talents or family wealth (which is the greatest predictor of economic success) are gifts. What that means is that our own efforts have far less to do with our position in life than we like to believe. That’s a fundamental Christian teaching, and most every other religion teaches the same thing. The idea of life as a gift—or in some cases, a fortuitous accident--is one of the most basic teachings of all religious and spiritual points of view.

The biblical idea of distributive justice claims that those who have been given great and unmerited advantages should invest their gifts for the benefit of the community and do it gladly and gratefully.

The religious conservatives (basically, the evangelical and fundamentalist church) want to replace distributive justice with doctrine of economic opportunity, which they see as an important kind of justice in itself. The conservatives tend to see distributive justice and greater freedom of opportunity in conflict, so if one is going to prosper the other must be sacrificed.

I’ve never understood this tendency to polarize these things. It seems that a balance must be struck between the two, and that there is no reason that much greater economic opportunity for the poor can’t go hand in hand with a fair and equitable tax code that doesn’t put the burden of taxes primarily on the middle class and poor, which is what consumption taxes will do.

The tax cuts for the wealthiest, in my view, must be reversed as a matter of responsible fiscal policy (more on fiscal policy later). And the idea of shifting our tax code, tax by tax, to a system based on consumption taxes must be resisted even more strongly in my view out of moral and economic decency.

The idea that economic justice is served by favoring the rich in the tax code and cutting historically useful social programs for the poor is questionable at best. This is simply more overdone—though probably honestly felt--conservative ideology in my opinion.

As a side comment from a very personal point of view, it’s interesting to me that many of the religious conservatives seem so strangely attracted to social Darwinism. These are some of the same people who want to drive biological Darwinism out of the text books. Life is full of ironies.

All of this makes you wonder if anybody has been teaching the American Christian flock about the economics of the Bible or historical Christian social teaching.

Having said all that, I wish Kerry and the Democrats would be more aggressive in supporting entrepreneurship and ownership for the poor. Their failure to do this more assertively is surprising and telling. They need to wake up and smell the future. This is a very important issue that will legitimately influence many people to vote against the Democratic ticket.

In my mind, Kerry has a decisive edge in this category.

On the other hand, I’d support the Republicans if they decided to support fairer tax policies, and at the same time followed through on their rhetoric about truly committing resources and real political energy toward creating an ownership society for the poor.

Bush is trotting out the same old “compassionate conservative” stuff again. The problem is that almost none of it was enacted or even attempted in his first term, and that so much of it is based on unjust ideologies and bad theology.

Americans like to say, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Another older imperial culture liked to say, “Caveat emptor.” It’s a Roman expression that means, “Let the buyer beware.”

Fiscal Responsibility

Kerry

Must deal with the federal budget situation left by the Bush Administration if he’s elected. To his credit, Kerry hasn’t promised any magic solutions since the numbers are pretty grim.
Promises to eliminate the tax cuts for the wealthiest 10% of Americans in order to help pay down the deficit.
Promises to bring other nations into partnership in Iraq. Claims he can do it in a way Bush can’t because of the hatred and disrespect around the world that the present administration has created. The idea is to dramatically reduce the financial costs of the occupation of Iraq and thus help reduce the deficits.
Wants to spend large amounts of money on health care for the substantial numbers of Americans without adequate health care or insurance. The projected costs of this approach would probably cancel out any savings realized by repealing the tax cuts on the wealthy, so it’s hard to see how the deficit will be significantly reduced if Kerry’s health plan is passed. On the other hand, the health plan is desperately needed, and the pressure on the budget comes primarily from the costs of the war on Iraq which Bush is directly responsible for creating.

Bush

Bush’s idea of doing some deficit spending early in the his term was appropriate in order to help jump start the slumping economy, but he and the Republican Congress quickly got out of control. Because of ideologically driven tax cuts and huge war expenditures we’re now facing one of the largest budget deficits in U.S. history.
Dick Cheney, who clearly has tremendous influence over our current president, remarked that “Reagan proved that deficits don’t mean anything.” Draw you own conclusions. I wonder what the leaders of countries in the developing world, who are severely punished by the World Bank and International Monetary fund for running deficits and being fiscally irresponsible, think about Cheney’s comments. But then again the powerful have always lived by a different set of rules.
Bush has no clear plan for reducing the budget deficit. Even conservative commentators complain that his numbers, given the programs and approaches he is promising for his second term, simply don’t add up, especially since he refuses to consider repealing the tax cuts and actually wants to make them permanent. Bush’s projected budget is nonsense from any sober or practical point of view.
The Bush Administration has consistently and systematically misled the public and even Congress about the costs of its initiatives and programs. During 2002, the Bush Administration didn’t even include the 80 billion cost of the first year of the war on Iraq in its federal budget figures submitted to Congress! Again, I’ve gotten most of my information on these abuses from respected conservative sources (like the Economist and the National Review) who normally support conservative and Republican approaches and politicians. But if you’ve been paying attention, none of this is surprising. The present administration has never produced a budget or cost estimate that has even come close to being accurate.

Summary Comments

Bush will be supported by many millions this November because he supposedly represents the fiscally responsible conservative Republicans.

Most every bi-partisan budget projection looks for unsustainable budget deficits for many years to come under a re-elected Bush administration. .

Maybe we’ll get lucky and there will be another technological revolution that will create a 90’s style market explosion. That’s what took us out of the immense Reagan era deficits.

But maybe not. Maybe monies we could have spent on improving the country and on helping the poor will be drained for years to come because of the irresponsibility of the present administration.

Conservative ideologues in the past have actually argued for running up massive deficits by dramatically increasing defense expenditures in order to restrict new spending on social programs.

The idea is to overspend in an extreme way on tax cuts and things like war so that there’s no money left for Democrats to overspend on social programs. Perhaps that is Bush’s strategy.

I’m not confident that Kerry and the Democrats will deal aggressively with the budget deficit, though I think their ideas hold some promise, especially since they’re not ideologically opposed to rolling back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. And Kerry’s numbers add up better than Bush’s, though neither seem to be willing to face the difficult choices necessary because of the spending binge of the past 4 years.

And neither candidate or party is facing the huge fiscal crisis that the Baby Boom generation retirement will create in ten years. It’s predictable that no one is trying to deal with it. Most Americans don’t want to deal with bad news and will punish any candidate or party that tells them major difficulties are ahead.

All I all, I can’t imagine a Kerry administration being more fiscally irresponsible than our present leadership has been.

I believe this issue is especially important in judging a president and administration since it’s one of the few areas they can truly control, unlike things like the business cycle and local education, etc.

Kerry and the Democrats are the clear choice here on the strength of Bush’s irresponsible fiscal performance over the past 4 years.

Support for Faith Based Social Programs

Kerry

Has made no commitments to support these kinds of programs.

Bush

Has vigorously supported faith-based initiatives by executive order. For the first time in many decades, the federal government delivers social services by awarding monies and contracts to non-governmental organizations without discernable prejudice against Christian or religious groups.

Summary Comments

Bush is clearly the choice in this category. I believe this in one of the best contributions this administration has made to the well-being of the U.S. I hope this effort to remove the favoritism toward secular NGO’s will become a tradition.

On the other hand, Christian social organizations have purposely avoided government funding for many generations in the U.S. because they understood that once they took public monies and began to depend on large infusions of federal cash that they would probably lose their independence and effectiveness. So maybe Bush’s breakthrough on behalf of Christian NGO’s will turn out to be a spiritual Trojan Horse virus. I truly hope not.

The Environment

Kerry

Has one of the best environmental records in Congress
Proposes aggressive measures to cut dependence on fossil fuels
Proposes aggressive measures to develop alternative sources of energy
Will support international agreements on global warming

Bush

Proposes aggressive measures to increase exploration and drilling for fossil fuels
In spite of compelling scientific evidence regarding global warming, rejected the global agreement worked out in Kyoto to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
Has mostly ignored conservation efforts in the U.S.
Has resisted efforts to induce car manufacturers to produce more fuel efficient vehicles.
Has dramatically cut funding for national parks and wilderness areas.

Summary Comments

Bush’s environmental record is very poor.

I’ve gotten to know a number of geologists, rangers, and lawyers who work for the Department of the Interior and the National Parks Service here in Colorado, and many of them are contemplating leaving those agencies if Bush is re-elected. Many of these folks are more conservative by lifestyle and inclination. They say morale is at an all-time low and people within the agencies are shocked by the hostility that the present administration has shown toward traditional environmental concerns.

I’ve tried to understand Bush’s environmental policies from a sympathetic point of view. I’m still trying.

Their latest adventure is an attempt to eliminate federal requirements for power companies to clean up old plants and equipment, even though the rock solid scientific evidence is that such dirty power plants contribute the majority of the air pollution in many parts of the country.

Their argument is that these requirements are cumbersome and burdensome for business. But that’s always their relentless and inflexible point of view, no matter what the situation might be. At times it seems there isn’t a single environmental regulation that they wouldn’t like cripple or get rid of.

Kerry gets the clear decision here.

The Economy

I’m not sure how to rank either candidate in this category because I’m not sure how much control federal governments have over the performance of the economy. I think federal governments can influence the economy and markets, but they don’t have real power to direct markets in the same way they can control things like federal budgets and foreign policy.

Generally speaking, political instability and unpredictability effect markets negatively. From the point of view of the past 30 years, the economy did its best under Clinton and the Democrats’ stewardship. The economy is mediocre right now and Bush has the worst record since the Depression in terms of creating jobs.

But I think most of this is due to global economic trends. America is going to lose lots of jobs in the years to come because we now have some real competition around the world. Neither candidate can honestly address this issue with the broader public because Americans usually punish—in the short run--any political leader who is honest and describes things the way they are.

I do think the government can affect and influence the economy through its policies on international trade. Basically, every government has to choose how much it will support free trade and how much it will seek to “protect” its own economy through tariffs on foreign goods and subsidies for its own industries and businesses.

My own take is that everybody is philosophically a free trader today, but that everyone has to deal with political realities too. For example, American government subsidies for American farmers distort free trade around the world and hurt farmers in the developing world. Poor farmers in Africa, who can grow and sell crops much more cheaply because of their low production and labor costs, are in fact cut out of world markets because American and western governments subsidize their own farmers and enforce high trade tariffs on African agricultural goods. These kinds of western subsidies and tariffs in a number of industries help keep very poor countries very poor because they assure that those countries can’t take advantage of their lower production and labor costs in the global market.

From a moral and economic point of view, I think that kind of protectionism is indefensible. The most important thing the west could do to help the economies of Africa—and help the poorest of the poor--would be to open agricultural markets and stop these kinds of dubious subsidies.

But that would be very costly politically since American farmers--and the folks in other industries who get subsidies--would be up in arms.

Bush and the conservatives talk big on free trade but often act like protectionists. Bush has supported and even increased subsidies for many American industries, including agriculture. The Democrats tend to give more lip service to protecting American industries and jobs, but in fact they strongly support most free trade policies. Kerry certainly has and does.

Who you favor over this issue depends on how you want government trade rhetoric to sound—both are going to do pretty much the same thing. In fact, Clinton’s government was one of the most oriented toward free trade in our history. Stereotypes are usually nothing but, well, stereotypes.

Foreign Policy

Kerry

Has been unclear on what he thinks of the war on Iraq. Sometimes he seems to believe the war was a mistake from the start. Other times he thinks the invasion was understandable and just given the knowledge at the time but that the occupation has been botched big time. In either case, he’s very clear in the belief that Bush has handled the whole thing exceptionally poorly.
Will aggressively attempt to repair the immense damage to our international relationships and to our image around the world that Bush has created. Believes that a new start and new leadership will make it much easier for foreign governments to cooperate with the US—even in helping rebuild Iraq--since virtually all of their populations, and most of their leaders, are very negative and even hostile to the Bush administration. Believes his election would given many foreign governments and people the political flexibility to become our partners again.
Is committed to a relentless war against Islamic terrorism, but wants to focus that war on terrorist organizations rather than on national governments who have no demonstrable connection to terrorism. Believes the US is engaged in a war on terror, but believes the terrorists are motivated primarily out of specific grievances against the US and the West (primarily their hostility over US incursions in Muslim lands and the unquestioning support the US gives to Israel and the complete lack of any serious attempts on the part of the Bush administration to deal with the Palestinian situation).
Believes that the war in Iraq has diverted the US from a real war on terrorism and has wasted vast resources that could have been used to deal with real threats like Al Queda, Iran and North Korea. Believes that because the US is now tied down in Iraq for many years to come that our political flexibility and military resources are so limited that we will have a hard time dealing with the real threats we’re going to face, and is committed to doing everything he can to extract us from Iraq as quickly as possible without creating chaos.
Believes the Bush administration has been remarkably incompetent in handling the occupation, that virtually every assumption the administration made about the post invasion situation in Iraq has proven to be false, and that the situation is grim because of a long litany of mistakes and miscalculations.
Believes in building and maintaining alliances around the world and using those as a basis of projecting American power and influence.
Rejects most of the ideas of neo-conservatism, which has been the basis of Bush’s foreign policy The neo-conservatives—who in fact have little to do with real conservatism--argue that America should feel free to pro-actively compel the world to change for the better at gunpoint wherever and whenever it is feasible to do so and whenever “soft power” approaches don’t seem to be working. Believes that using American military might more sparingly and relying primarily on American economic, diplomatic, and political pressure in the context of strong alliances and partnerships is a wiser, less destructive, and less risky approach.
Believes that supporting reasonable international treaties and participating in the world community as a supportive member will produce better results than rejecting international treaties and acting in a hostile and overtly arrogant manner that humiliates other nations.
Believes that dealing with nuclear proliferation is the most important practical way to deal with terrorism

Bush

Is very clear on what he thinks about Iraq. Believes that America is now engaged in an epic war against terror in which America has a call from God to rid the world of evildoers who hate America and the west for our freedom and goodness. Doesn’t believe the terrorists are primarily motivated by the continuing injustice in Palestine or by other U.S. and western policies in the Arab world. In effect, he believes the overwhelming opposition to his policies and the growing number of terrorists in the Islamic world are due primarily to their hostility to modernity and their fundamental hatred of freedom and democracy. Or in short, they’re bad people.
Embraces neo-conservative thinking and wants to lead a global revolution. Wants to break the power of Islamic fundamentalism by speaking loudly and carrying a very big stick. Has announced a new and unprecedented policy of ‘pre-emptive war’ in which the U.S. will strike first at any perceived potential enemy when such an action is politically feasible in the U.S and militarily practical, whether or not our allies or friends are supportive. Believes in projecting American military violence in a pro-active way in order to force the people of other countries to do the political will of the U.S.
Has announced a new doctrine of perpetual American global dominance in the world. Basically, he’s extended out the old Monroe Doctrine in which the U.S. claimed supremacy in the Western Hemisphere and threatened the European powers with war and violence if they messed around in “our backyard.” President Monroe staked that more local claim to dominance about 200 years ago. For Bush, the whole world is now our backyard, and he’s willing to do everything it takes to defeat all attempts to usurp American supremacy.
Believes Iraq is the main front against terrorism. Led the US into the war by claiming that Iraq was intimately tied to terrorism and that it was bristling with weapons of mass destruction. Both claims turned out to be false. Also argued that Hussein was an evil ruler with great potential to do harm to the US. The evil part was very accurate, but the other part has turned out to be dubious at best.
Invaded Iraq and broke the power of Hussein.
Invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban regime which clearly had ties to Al Queda and to global terrorism.
Sincerely believed he was doing God’s work in freeing the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq from vicious dictatorships
Continues to insist that the situation in Iraq is getting better and that Afghanistan is not falling back into the power of warlords and drug dealers, in spite of strong evidence and recent intelligence and Defense Department reports to the contrary. Decided that invading both countries with relatively small numbers of soldiers and doing nation building on the cheap would work. That strategy turned out to be a major miscalculation.
Continues to repeat that he will be tough on nuclear proliferation, but has done very little in actual fact to reduce that threat since the government’s attention has been focused almost exclusively on Iraq.

Summary Comments

I think the facts speak for themselves in many respects. I don’t want to oversimplify, but if you believe that we’re in an epic war against irrational evildoers and that aggressive military projection of American power, guided by the doctrines of unchallenged American global supremacy and of pre-emptive war against any perceived threats and enemies is the way to go, you know who’s foreign policy you support. If you believe that we’re battling a hostile but rational enemy who can best be influenced by a more judicious use of American military power and a greater reliance on partnerships and America’s immense economic, diplomatic, and cultural power, you also know who you tend to support.

Bush made bold, and I believe very well intentioned, decisions to crush the cruel and repressive regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Millions of people who were living under vicious regimes no longer fear those governments.

Yet it has to be said that very few people in either nation asked to be liberated. That may be part of the reason they seem so strangely ungrateful for our military intervention and the resulting tens of thousands of civilian deaths among their fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers.

I visit a lot of nations around the world. Lots of ‘em are ruled by bad and oppressive types.

The question for American foreign policy is whether we should engage in serial conquest so we can kill their rulers (and huge numbers of their civilians) and “liberate” their people and introduce democracy at the edge of the sword?

In my view, that’s the kind of crusade that makes sense to folks like Napoleon and neo-conservatives, but I think there are at least some people who recognize the fatal long term weaknesses in this approach. It’s naïve, unrealistic, mostly destructive, and profoundly unchristian.

I believe Bush has done more damage than good to U.S. security and to the prospects of world stability and true change in the Islamic world. That’s the trouble with naïve and semi-religious military crusades. They sacrifice the long term good in favor of satisfying short term change and the adolescent allure of “cleansing” violence.

The future of both Afghanistan and Iraq are very much in doubt. Will they be better off for the imposition of American will and violence? Biblical teaching suggests they may not be, and that even if there are some important and true gains in those places, the cycle of violence and arrogance and dominance that plagues the relationship between nations and between the peoples within nations has simply been re-affirmed.

I wish the world weren’t fallen and I’d like it if things were simple and clear. But they’re not.

Can you help liberate oppressed people but do it in such an arrogant, incompetent and naïve way that you do more harm than good? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. I think some people will recognize the truth in what I’m talking about.

Personally, I believe the twin doctrines of perpetual U.S. global dominance and the pro-active and pre-emptive projection of American violence that support it are dangerous, politically unwise, and even immoral from a biblical point of view. I’ve gone into great detail in past messages and essays showing why the ideas of American neo-imperial pre-eminence and pre-emptive war are immoral and unacceptable from an historical and Christian viewpoint, so I won’t go back over that ground again.

But beyond those issues of basic principles, I’d argue that the Bush administration has been incompetent even by it’s own standards. The author of a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly interviewed a very wide range of national security experts of both parties, and their consensus is that the Bush administration’s practical policies and on-the-ground decisions in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been a “disaster” for the security of the United States.

Thomas Friedman, the brilliant columnist for the New York Times who wrote “The Lexus and the Olive Tree,” and who has consistently supported the war in Iraq, wrote just a few days ago about his change of mind and the very difficult task ahead in Iraq: “But here is the cold, hard truth. This war has been hugely mismanaged by this administration in the face of clear advice to the contrary at every stage…. I don’t know what is salvageable there anymore.”

We’ve done very little to slow nuclear proliferation and are now without real options in Iran and North Korea because our resources are tied up in Iraq and because we’ve lost most of our credibility around the world. No Iraqi WMD and no evidence of ties to Al Queda convinced most of those irrational and cowardly people in the rest of the world that they should think twice before trusting our government again.

George Will, who has got to be the most consistently conservative Republican commentator in America, recently asked in an article in Newsweek, “Does anyone really believe there are fewer terrorists today than there were before the invasion of Iraq?” He actually took John Kerry to task for not exposing the Bush Administration’s naïve and incompetent foreign policy more forcefully. Wow. You don’t see that kind of thing every day.

Bush is the most unpopular U.S. president overseas in the history of our country, and our standing in world opinion is at an all time low by far. Again, that isn’t Democratic spin. It’s cold fact.

Most of the conservative types seem to think this doesn’t make any difference.

From the standpoint of someone working in an international mission, I can assure our dramatic loss of support in the rest of the world makes a major difference. People around the world are very hostile to America right now. This does great damage to Christian mission in the world, particularly among Muslims, and it severely restricts our political options. As a “for instance,” we can’t get other countries to contribute to helping secure Iraq for the planned, upcoming elections, even though this would seem to be the most obvious thing these countries could do. Why? Because their people are overwhelmingly opposed to our current Administration.

Their politicians would run major political risks if they supported American policy in a straightforward way. Is this really the kind of relationship with the rest of the world that we want? When the U.S. becomes politically “radioactive” around the globe, it does make you wonder about the wisdom of the foreign policy that created that situation, or whether that foreign policy is rooted in any kind of biblical understanding.

I believe foreign policy is the key moral and practical issue in this election. From my point of view, Bush’s foreign policy vision is naïve and immoral, and his performance has been incompetent and embarrassing.

Ethnic Relations

Kerry

He’s made no clear proposal or shown a personal commitment to advancing the cause of ethnic minorities. The Democrats believe they are the party of struggling ethnic minorities but they haven’t offered anything significant in this area recently.

Bush

Appointed two African-Americans to critical positions in his administration. Past administrations filled posts like Postmaster General or Treasury Secretary with ethnic minorities—they’ve gotten to choose how stamps look and to put their signatures on dollar bills. I’m very disappointed in Condaleeza Rice’s performance in office and I feel very sorry for Colin Powell, but it’s kind of nice to have strong opinions about ethnic minorities who truly influence federal policy. That’s a new experience. Powell has served (mostly) obediently in an administration of people that I believe would do well to sit at his feet and learn a few ethical and political lessons. Yet I’ve haven’t heard a single word of spin or boasting from the Republicans about their ethnically integrated national leadership team. That’s remarkable, especially given the unprecedented level of spin and manipulation on the part of this administration regarding almost every other topic. I’m impressed with their restraint in that area.

Summary Comments

Bush wins hands down in this area.

In the 20th century, Democrats helped birth almost every important civil rights and economic breakthrough for ethnic minorities against strong Republican opposition. Those are the facts without spin.

But more recently, the Democrats have manipulated the naïve and alienated ethnic vote as skillfully as the Republicans are now manipulating the naïve and alienated conservative Christian vote. Ethnic minorities are somewhat less naïve these days and they’re beginning to wake up and become more skeptical about the Democrats who have delivered very little lately. It will probably take another 10 or 20 years before conservative Christians realize they’re being used too.

The Supreme Court

Kerry

Promises to support moderate and liberal candidates in order to help balance the current conservative court.

Bush

Will attempt to stack the court with even more conservative candidates in order to give the conservative majority unassailable control

Summary Comments

Few people are talking about this issue, but I believe it’s one of the most important factors in the coming election.

I think our federal government does best when there is balance of power between competing ideologies and parties. When a single party becomes too dominant, bad things happen. A victory for Bush could well mean two more very conservative appointments to a Supreme Court that is already oriented in that direction. With an executive and administrative branch in conservative Republican hands, and the Supreme Court becoming a conservative stronghold, we could be in store for major social unrest. That’s because about half the country right now passionately opposes conservative Republicanism.

If half the country’s political aspirations are unduly frustrated by a stacked Supreme Court and a congressional landscape that has been ruthlessly gerrymandered into a permanent Republican majority, I wouldn’t be surprised to see civil violence in the years to come.

Supreme Court justices serve for life. Do we really want to support the creation of an extremist conservative Republican court that will likely copy the ways of the extremist liberal Democratic court that gave us divisive decisions such as Roe v. Wade?

Transparent and Honest Government

Kerry

By all accounts has a collegial and interactive decision-making style which emphasizes caution and looking carefully at all the facts.
Emphasizes that he will speak truthfully to the public and will run an administration that is far more transparent than the present one
Emphasizes that he will run an administration that seeks to cooperate with Congress rather than over-riding it or bullying it.

Bush

The Economist, which regularly supports conservative causes, recently argued that the Bush administration has run the most secretive and “imperial” administration in 30 years. Bush rarely holds news conferences and his administration is well-known (or notorious, depending on your point of view) for the immense control it exercises over information from within the government, and the extraordinary effort if puts into suppressing information and individuals who may cast a negative light on it.
Has demonstrated an individual and intuitive decision making style based on deep personal and ideological convictions that some have labeled ‘rash and unconcerned for facts” but which others admire.
Has developed a communication style which sticks tenaciously to “the message, “ while his administration has been extraordinary in its efforts and effectiveness in spinning the news and events.

Summary Comments

If Kerry becomes president, only time will tell if he keeps his promises about transparency and honesty.

But I think the Bush administration has a poor record in this area. I don’t think it’s unfair to characterize our present leaders as “ruthlessly efficient” at suppressing information that may cast themselves or their policies in a bad light and relentless about stage managing and controlling the message they send out. In many ways, they’ve led with a corporate style of leadership, with little input from anyone outside of a small inner circle. By all accounts—even the president’s interviews on the subject--Bush made the call on Iraq without any serious discussion with his closest advisors about the potential opportunity costs of invading Iraq. So even within the inner circle, information and decision-making is highly centralized and controlled.

I think any administration has to do this to some degree to be effective, and I understand that some of the senior leaders in the administration have a deep felt belief that the powers of the presidency have been eroded over the past decades. They believe they are helping restore a more balanced government in which the president can be a decisive executive leader. I actually agree that the executive branch has lost too much power relative to the courts and Congress.

But the degree to which the administration has gone about suppressing information, serious discussion, and collaboration with other parts of the government is simply inappropriate and dangerous in a democracy. It may be appropriate in certain corporate settings, but it is not when leading a democratic republic. And it’s especially not appropriate when the decisions being made are of the magnitude we’ve seen in the past few years.

Here’s just one quick example among scores. Did anyone else find it deeply disturbing that the administration threw all its considerable weight behind stopping the 9/11 Commission from ever getting off the ground? They resisted it in every way until the political pressure from the victims’ families forced them to relent. That’s simply a single example, but I think it captures very well the tone and tenor our present leaders

Looking at Kerry’s track record of transparency and collegiality, I strongly prefer him to Bush given Bush’s clear track record in office of the suppression of information, discussion, and debate.

Church and State

I’m deeply concerned about the decisive overlap now between the Republican party and the evangelical church. Most polls put the numbers of evangelicals and fundamentalists who are Republican at about 70%. If you look at the number of Euro-Am evangelicals and fundies who are Republican, the numbers go up to about 85%. As recently as 1976 the overall number was 50%. So something really significant has happened in the last 25 years.

This issue—and the Bush administration’s dangerous and morally suspect foreign policy—have motivated me to follow national politics closely and to get involved for the first time in my life.

What has me concerned is the naïve and very intense way many evangelicals have bought into the Republican agenda.

Abortion and a couple of other issues have become, at times, the only issues. Tom Sine wrote a very nice article about all this in the latest edition of Prism. He argues that American evangelicals have become very different from evangelicals in the rest of the world in the extremity and narrowness of their political views. For example, he says that many evangelicals now become enraged when anyone suggests that there are other major human life issues outside of abortion. Twenty years ago the idea that world hunger was a human life issue was commonplace among conservative American Christians. Suggesting that same thing now would create hostile responses among many American evangelicals.

I deeply appreciate that Bush has been willing to be honest and straightforward about his faith commitment.

But I’m very alarmed at the way the Republicans are “using,” to be blunt about it, evangelicalism and fundamentalism for political purposes.

However, the job of a political party is to gain power and then to hold onto it, so I expect that kind of devious and unfortunate thing from both the Republicans and the Democrats. From a Christian perspective, they are both “in the world and of it.”

What’s really sad is how much evangelicals seem to enjoy being used.

I think this trend is dangerous for the country and for the Church. When religious fervor becomes too closely aligned with a particular political agenda bad things almost always happen. This is a fundamental teaching of the New Testament and biblical politics.

Conservative Christians can now organize and mobilize politically with the best of them. But it’s not clear that the Church’s theological sophistication has kept up.

I think current conservative Christian political theology and biblical understanding of politics is mostly immature and misguided. Our grasp of the technology of politics has far outstripped our theological and moral preparation for it. And that’s why you end up with the strange sight of so many Christians fervently—even religiously--supporting so many policies and approaches that have little or nothing to do with biblical faith or a Christian worldview.

When our wisdom and discipline is weak we’re easy pickings for the governments and powers and partisans of this world.

Though I agree with the Bush administration on some important issues, it’s hard to be very supportive of the Republican party from a faith perspective when I believe Christian involvement with that party has become destructive, misguided, and imbalanced.

Balance of Power

I’m convinced that our government works best when there is a practical balance of power between ideologies, parties, branches of government, etc. The founders were deeply skeptical of too much power in anybody’s hands.

Right now the Congressional landscape has been so radically gerrymandered that only about 15 seats in the House of Representatives are actually competitive in any given election. That’s astonishing to me! Both parties have attempted to define districts for the House of Representatives that will guarantee victory for their side.

Right now the Republicans are particularly ruthless and unprincipled (and that’s saying a lot after some of the worst abuses of Democrats in the past) in twisting the definition of congressional districts to lock in a long term Republican majority. Conservative Republicans now decisively control the Executive Branch and the House of Representatives and have effective control of the Senate and very significant influence on the Supreme Court.

Historically speaking, the best policies and the best governance have come out of periods when there was a balance between ideologies and parties. The worst periods--including the fiasco of Vietnam brought to us by the overwhelming influence of the Democrats in the early to mid-60’s, for example—come out of the dominance of one ideology or party.

We’re in danger of setting ourselves up for another “dark period” in our history by putting control of every lever of government into the hands of a narrowly ideological Republican Party.

I believe in the doctrine of original sin, and I also believe in the biblical thinking that power corrupts and too much power leads to destructive ends. Though the founders didn’t base their decisions about balancing power directly on those biblical ideas, they had grasped and understood them by way of observation and experience and by their keen grasp of history. That’s why they tried to create a structural firewall that would resist attempts to put too much power into one group or party’s hands.

In many ways, the founders—though very few of them were Christians--were much more biblical and Christian in their understanding of power than current evangelicals and fundamentalists are. I can only say to conservative Christians, “be careful what you wish for, because it may come true.”

National Security, Civil Liberties and Human Rights

Kerry

Promises to strengthen the Department of Homeland Security
Promises to enthusiastically implement the recommendations of the 9/11 commission
Voted for the Patriot Act but believes some of it’s provisions were an overreaction to 9/11. Promises to repeal it’s worst excesses.
Promises to bring America back into compliance with basic international agreements on human rights and challenge the new laws and the “corporate culture” that have led to the moral and legal embarrassments of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
Promises to invest far more attention and resources to securing America’s ports and infrastructure than Bush has.

Bush

Aggressively and effectively rallied the country after 9/11
Eventually created a Department of Homeland Security, but only after dragging his feet and resisting efforts at reform
Made dramatic changes in airport security
Invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in order to strike a blow against terrorism and initiated what he believes will be a multi-generational war on terror
Strongly resisted the creation of the 9/11 commission and only relented after political pressure became too intense to ignore.
Strongly supported the creation of the Patriot Act

Summary Comments

I believe Bush has the best of intentions in the area of insuring national security and that he’s done the best he could by his own lights to insure the safety of Americans. He skillfully and movingly encouraged Americans immediately after 9/11, and for a brief time, seemed to rise above petty partisanship and actually become the leader of the whole country. I still think that period of time demonstrated something important about the best of George Bush. That’s not to make any excuses for many of his misguided and destructive decisions in the ensuing years, but I think his more basic and better instincts arose at that time in the midst of crisis when things were more fluid and unrehearsed and before the relentless Republican machinery and the dark, dualistic world view of people like Cheney helped spoil his opportunity for real greatness as a leader. What a shame and what a waste. I admit that I may be looking at Bush with rose colored glasses in saying all of this, but from an intuitive standpoint I think it’s true.

I’d say Bush’s record on homeland security, civil liberties and human rights is mixed. He’s helped lead some really important improvements in our national security systems, including increased airport security, increased collaboration between the FBI and the CIA, and the introduction of laws that remove some of the most silly impediments to going after terrorists.

On the other hand, as in so many things with this president and administration, everything is taken to extremes and done in a way that seriously diminishes the positive effect of their good decisions and policies. The Patriot Act is overkill and has reduced the civil liberties of Americans in unnecessary ways. His seemingly arrogant dismissal of international norms and agreements helped lead to the disgraceful and morally disorienting events at Abu Ghraib and the dubious situation of prisoners at Guantanamo. Some will argue that Abu Ghraib was simply about a few bad apples, but most people with common sense and a little bit of savvy about the way human polities and organizations really run understand that when leaders model arrogance and impunity these kinds of outcomes are to be expected.

Bush has also done a poor job of creating a more secure situation at American ports and in the protection of key infrastructure.

As I’ve mentioned above, I think the present administration has done a very poor job of dealing with nuclear proliferation, which I believe is actually the main national security issue.

Kerry appears to support, in general, many of Bush’s moves in the area of national security. He promises to repeal and reform the worst abuses.

In terms of nuclear proliferation, I believe Kerry is offering a different approach that will actually focus on this issue instead of the current administration’s fixation on Iraq.

I also believe Kerry is deeply offended and embarrassed by our loss of moral authority as a nation over these past 4 years. He seems to be genuinely motivated to restore, if possible, our reputation as a country where no one (including presidents or nations) are above the law, and where civil liberties and human rights are deeply respected rather than questioned as “impediments” to winning the war on terror.

But what Kerry will actually do in office if he’s elected is a guess. We do know what Bush has done.

I’d give Kerry a slight edge here. Given the shock of 9/11, I understand why the present government may have gone overboard with some of its policies. The idea may have been, “better safe than sorry.” And they’ve made many significant contributions to strengthening national security.

But I can’t help but think that Kerry will be a more judicious and responsible leader in this area, and that he’ll be less of an embarrassment to us in terms of civil liberties and human rights than our present leaders have been.

Winning “wars” and “national security” in the 21st century is mostly about winning hearts and minds around the world. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo—and the leadership culture that helped produce them--have severely damaged our moral credibility in the world, which means we’ll be much less able to win people over in the future. That’s a very real and concrete blow to our national security.

Conclusion

For Christians, the choices in this election aren’t easy and straightforward. There are some strong reasons to support Bush and the Republicans.

But personally, I strongly prefer Kerry and the Democrats in this particular election. I believe they will be more competent than the present administration and that they will uphold and encourage important biblical principles and teachings in a broader and more comprehensive way than will a second Bush administration.

I think Bush has demonstrated some clear patterns in his leadership and personality that are disturbing to me. In areas of the budget, foreign policy, and transparency, among others, he has shown himself to be given to extremes and to ideology at the expense of experience and facts. While he seems personally an honorable and respectable man in every respect, his administration has been one of the most ruthless in suppressing information and opposition, and frankly, one of the dirtiest in terms of using political dirty tricks and spin. I know I’m supposed to believe that both parties are equally responsible in that latter area, but I don’t believe the facts bear that out at this particular time in our history.

I will speak very personally here, but I can’t believe evangelicals enthusiastically support an administration that utilizes the political methods it does. I can understand them holding their noses and then voting for such an administration if they believe it represents some important values they feel strongly about, but I can’t understand the ‘religious devotion’ and ‘enthusiasm.’

In the end, it comes down to the following

This campaign is, or should be, a referendum on the performance of the Bush administration
I believe Bush’s foreign policy vision is both dangerous and immoral
I believe Bush has shown himself to be incompetent in the execution of both foreign policy and important domestic issues like the budget
I believe the Republicans are strongly encouraging an idolatrous union between conservative Christianity and Republicanism. This union will do significant damage—in fact, it already has done significant damage—to both the nation and the Church.
I believe Kerry’s policies are more reasonable and more rooted, in general, in biblical principles
I believe Kerry will prove to be more competent in both foreign policy and domestic issues

Basic Political Values

I haven’t explicitly discussed my basic political values in any detail. Basically, I believe in what some call “Christian Anarchy.” This is just a more polemical name for the broad political points of view that come out of the Protestant Anabaptist tradition and the historical Peace Churches.

In a nutshell, Christian Anarchy asserts that all governments are fallen and mostly concerned with exalting themselves, justifying themselves, and surviving at all costs. Governments of all kinds (schools, non-profit organizations, businesses, ideologies, religious denominations, etc, etc..) are a social necessity from a Christian anarchist perspective, but nothing more. Sometimes those governments become truly evil, but mostly they are simply human, frail, presumptuous and sometimes silly. At times they can be helpful and at times they can be dangerous and destructive—in fact, they are often these things simultaneously.

They are all caught up in a worldly system of power and dominance and falsehood that often includes violence.

The Church’s job is to avoid becoming partisan and to avoid getting caught up in various ideologies, parties, political philosophies, and intellectual fads, and to speak the truth prophetically to all these powers from a biblical point of view. The Church’s job is not to try to overthrow or reform these powers by means of worldly methods, which means that resorting to partisanship or violence or lies or any of the other normal methods of securing worldly power are acceptable for Christians.

That’s because to engage on the world’s terms is to simply affirm the way of the world and to more deeply entrench its system. In fact, to engage on the world’s terms is to be the world. Christians are to live out the truth in community, to love neighbor practically in a humble and concrete way that is different from the world’s methods, and to leave the humiliation of the powers and their redemption or destruction to God

That doesn’t mean that Christians shouldn’t be able to distinguish between various powers and find some clearly preferable. From a Christian Anarchist perspective, those differences can be practically important. For example, while peaceful and democratic governments may be fallen and weak and human, they may be clearly preferable from a biblical and practical standpoint to totalitarian regimes that rely on terror to retain power.

But overall, Christian Anarchists are very skeptical about the inflated claims and pretensions of all governments, ideologies, etc. People who make too big a deal about capitalism, or race, or whatever, are somewhat suspect from the get go from a Christian Anarchist perspective.

More positively, Christian Anarchy asserts that the Church’s main political job is to focus in the most concrete way on practically serving our neighbors in the here and now. Since Christians are not to use worldly methods and means, that means that Christians will not usually engage in worldly politics or power struggles, except for very brief periods when they believe some practical good can be done or when a power has clearly stepped over moral boundaries in a new and potentially destructive way. Normally, Christians will focus on practical and creative methods to bless their neighbors, while speaking up clearly, humbly, and prophetically on the issues of the day from a biblical perspective.

This is true, from the perspective of divine anarchy, because Jesus directed the Church to be a “counter-society” in which the truth of authentic human existence could be practiced, rather than the violence and lies and self-exaltation of the world and its systems.

Personally, I believe that voting in elections is normally a positive and constructive way to love my neighbor concretely, but I feel no particular ideological commitment to doing so and feel very free not to if I feel this would accomplish nothing practical. I’m more engaged in this election campaign because I believe the Bush administration’s foreign policy ideas are immoral and could set a very destructive historical precedent, and also because I believe the Church is dangerously close to idolatry because of its ever closer union with conservative Republicanism. I believe both of these must be challenged, though my “weapons” are simply my words and my vote. I have no great love for the Democrats and I certainly have no desire to overthrow the American government or our political system.

This description, though I think pretty accurate, is so oversimplified that it would be dangerous to take it at face value.

There are other Christian perspectives too, including Reformed Theology, which has much in common with Christian Anarchy but differs in some very important respects.

Let me encourage you to do some reading of important books then look at your bible to see if these things are so. Talk with fellow believers about it. Maybe this contentious election will help spark Christians to look at these things in a new way.

Here are some suggestions for your reading:

Christian Anarchy by Vernard Eller—Wonderful explanation of Christian Anarchy and a great contribution to Christian political thinking. He takes historical peace church thinking and updates it. His biblical exegesis is particularly striking and convincing.
The Subversion of Christianity by Jacques Ellul—Ellul is one of my heroes, and this book is all about how the church got to the sad state it’s in today. A deep analysis of where the church historically left Anarchical (gospel) principles and the destructive results for both the church and the world. Ellul also wrote a book called “Anarchy and Christianity,” but I’d start with Eller. Reading almost anything by Ellul is well worth the time, especially if you want to understand an Anarchist viewpoint.
Facing the Powers by Thomas McAlpine—A short and deep description of the various ways Christians have historically thought about politics and the powers. It’s very fair, and it covers both Christian Anarchy and Reformed thinking, as well as other options. He comes from a Reformed perspective, but generally he’s scrupulously fair.

You can get all three of these books at Amazon. Definitely read Eller and McAlpine. If you want to go deeper (and you should), you’ll find suggestions for further reading in both of them.

Around Town Denver Winter 04

2005-01-21T23:25:00.000-07:00

Thought it might be a good time for an update on life here on the Front Range. I’ve tacked on a couple of reviews on books about globalization at the end too.

Bill Clinton’s Journey

Jan and I lived for many years among inner-city folks in LA. In So Cal the decisive majority of poor people are African and Latin (dash) Americans. Or blacks and browns for those of you accustomed to old-timey racial categories and clear English.

But here in Denver many of the poor are euro-am types. They’re the trailer people, though that’s the more generous term people use when they’re in a good mood.

Janet teaches in a public school for very low income families. Some are from immigrant Latino families, but many are from very poor euro-am families. Janet’s never taught that population before.

We’ve learned that these kids certainly don’t suffer from social inhibitions as Janet gets an ear full about her students’ lives almost every day. It’s a little like the scholastic version of the Jerry Springer show. We laugh—often nervously--at some of the most outlandish stories than I can remember in a long time.

As an example, about a month ago an officer from the Lakewood police addressed Jan’s class and showed the kids some of his police equipment. One of the little girls saw his handcuffs and launched, very unselfconsciously, into an explanation of how much more she liked the “pink, plastic ‘love-cuffs’ my mommy uses with mommy’s friends.”

Janet stifled her own laughter and sense of shock, thanked the little girl for sharing, and quickly called on another student. But when she got home we cracked up when Jan told the story.

Needless to say, we appreciate the enormity of Bill Clinton’s journey from the trailers in Arkansas to the presidency more with each passing day.

DAM Good Art

Last time I gave you some initial impressions of folk art along the Front Range. During the past few months I’ve had a chance to check out some of the fine arts here in town too.

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) http://www.denverartmuseum.org/
just closed its landmark exhibit, “’El Greco to Picasso.” The G to P show focused on the development of modern western art from El Greco’s http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/greco/
weirdly elongated 15th century subjective realism to the extreme subjectivism and abstraction of the 19th and 20th century “moderns.”

G to P traced the influence of El Greco on all modern art, and the influence more generally of one artist on another, from generation to generation. I’ve rarely seen that kind of thing in an art show. Normally those kinds of influences are left to serious art books and histories. Public shows in the U.S. concentrate on the “individual genius” of artists who seem to create life giving art out of thin air and inspiration.

I enjoyed it even more because it represented a kind of breakthrough for the fine arts in Denver. It was the biggest arts “show” in the history of the city. This kind of very high quality mega-exhibit is standard procedure in places like LA or New York. But it was apparently a relatively new experience here in town. And people packed the place out. During the last couple weeks of the run they opened the show from early morning till late in the evening to accommodate the crowds.

It’s a striking art museum and a lot of fun. They have lots of top notch stuff from the Americas and some wonderful stuff from beyond too in a combo of high level art and architecture combined with the typical local self-deprecation. The t-shirts on sale at DAM capture the feel well. The logo on the back reads “DAM Good Art.”

DAM is in the middle of the national arts major leagues, but it’s about to jump up considerably. The museum is expanding. Daniel Libeskind, the architect who is designing the new World Trade Center in New York, designed the addition to DAM that’s going up right now. From my perspective it’s more interesting and innovative than his WTC design. The new site will be an office-building-sized jumble of geometric titanium, glass and granite wedges offset from each other and aimed in every direction. It will double the size of DAM and allow them to show lots more of their very cool collection http://www.arcspace.com/architects/Libeskind/

Downtown Denver is European in design, with the remarkable city hall and state capitol buildings, DAM, the quirky and attractive Denver Public Library, the Denver History Museum, and the Financial District scrapers all within easy walking distance of each other. The new addition to DAM will make an already impressive downtown even more memorable.

I remember the buzz in my adolescent days about LA becoming a center of culture and even overtaking New York, the loved/hated standard for left coast types at that time. Denver will create its own path toward a leading arts scene at its own pace. Folks here seem less driven by visions of grandeur for their city than the scarily intense visionaries and boosters of earlier LA, but it’s obvious that they’re committed to doing something here that is unique and true to the setting too. It’s fun to see some of their dreams coming to fruition.

I’ve also begun checking out the non-institutional local fine arts scene and artistic community, as well as the smaller institutions and galleries. That’s often where you’ll find some of the most creative and interesting stuff. More on that in future notes.

The Republic of “I’ve got the Check-i-Stan”

Jan and I stopped by the Dushanbe Teahouse (http://www.boulderdushanbeteahouse.com/index.html) in Boulder last week.

Boulder is a sister city to Dushanbe, which is the capital of The Republic of Tajikistan. In case a few of you can’t immediately locate Tajikistan on a map, here’s a hint: it’s just south of Kyrgyzstan and west of the well-known and vast Takla Makan desert. But you knew that….

Anyway, the Tajiks are an Islamic people who suffered under brutal Soviet domination for decades. Before that perverse and silly empire collapsed, the Kremlin forced the Tajiks to call Dushanbe “Stalinabad,” which needed only the additional ending “guy” to elevate it to the highest ranks of truth in advertising.

The Tajiks are undergoing a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism along with much of the rest of the Islamic world, though that hasn’t improved their economic lot much--they continue to be the poorest fragment left over from the shattered Soviet empire.

As a sign of their goodwill to their sister city and in spite of their poverty, the powers-that-be in Dushanbe commissioned many of their best artists to create an authentic Tajik teahouse, shipped it in pieces, and then reconstructed it in the middle of Boulder.

It is a remarkably beautiful and delicate building. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything quite like it before. The basic superstructure is made of large wooden beams, and it’s overlain with stunning ceramic and tile. The patterns and colors are typically Islamic—complex geometric forms suggesting nature and Arabic script rendered in vibrant primaries. And inside, the wood is painted and worked in those same striking patterns and colors. It’s truly a piece of art in and of itself. We spent most of our time inside staring at the wood pillars, beams, and walls.

However, if the building itself is all Tajikistan, the social scene inside is all “Yuppistan.” The place was filled with lots of young and middle aged folks wearing obligatory urban black uniforms or the kind of expensive but dressed down mountain chic that’s popular here. They were joined by a few Boulder mountain neo-hippies too. Everybody gellin’. All in all, it was understated wealth, decaf tea, scones and salads. Very pleasant without a doubt.

On the outside the teahouse is glorious cultural tradition and religious intensity, mullahs and muftis. On the inside it’s a wealthy, secular western enclave. The art of the “outsider” has been appropriated, but the life and spirit and culture have been emptied out and filled with the relaxing and familiar. Perhaps that kind of “globalization” is inevitable, but as much as I enjoyed our time there, there was something faintly strange and a little odd about the whole thing.

But of course, quite a few people here on the Front Range feel that way about Boulder too. It’s the center of the “new” Colorado. More on that in future notes….

Red Vote

To move from the sophisticated to the manure covered, we also had an interesting time at the Denver Western Stock Show and Rodeo a few weeks ago.

“The Denver Western” has been held here for generations, and it’s the largest stock show and rodeo in the world. Though the days when Colorado was primarily a ranching economy are long gone, Denver revels in its inner cow-town once a year when ranchers and cowboys from everywhere around the world descend on the city for a month long party. Of course, since raising and selling livestock has become a sophisticated science and a worldwide industry, pale geneticists and metro-sexual suits join the cowboys these days at the Western. Buffalo Bill Cody, who is buried about ten minutes from our house, is probably rolling over in his grave.

I’ve always loved rodeo, so I know my mixed reactions to this one are related to the times.

I won’t bore you with too many details of the mythic competition we witnessed. The cowboys from the afternoon of the 6th Day of Creation dominated--with great difficulty--the beasts from the the morning of the 6th Day. A small dog was shot from a cannon. Men risked and women cheered. American totem flags waived. We were instructed to “remove cover” (take off our hats) when the anthem was played. A clown was gored. A very overweight young woman in an unintentionally ridiculous outfit fell spectacularly during a bareback exhibition by a local rough riding club, then got back on and fell even more spectacularly a second time. The announcer cracked wise at the expense of “Blue America” and at the expense of any unfortunate Islamic camel jockeys who got in the way of the few and the proud over in “Eye-raq.” Dust and dirt flew and some broken bones ensued. And a great deal of beer was consumed.

It was grotesque and wonderful and American. It reminded me of our current foreign policy, though that unfortunate fiasco is minus the wonderful.

We got a kick out of the stock show as well, once we got past the claustrophobic entry hall with hundreds of cheesy booths selling everything from cowboy trinkets to foot massagers to male enhancement supplements. Apparently more than a few roughriders need a little extra starch in their shirts.

The carefully engineered animals on display were astonishing and huge and super-healthy. Who knows, as genetic engineering of this sort improves and evolves, and as the capabilities of conservative politicians to gerrymander become even more subtle and profound, we could eventually see cattle that tell jokes, worship in bible churches and vote Republican.

Books

Centennial

When we moved here to Denver I was eager to read histories of the city and of Colorado. As it turns out, there is almost no readable non-fiction written about the history of the state and the city. I slogged my way through a deadly dull general Colorado history that is used in high schools and universities here and scanned through some quirky and eccentric “snap shot” books devoted to little slices of historical interest. The best of them is devoted to the whores and saloons of Denver back in the Plains Indian War days, but if you’re looking for a broader story and a more sweeping interpretation you’re out of luck.

How these authors could dull the history of a place like Colorado, and especially Denver, which was one of the wildest cities in the wild west and was the headquarters of America’s Native American “final solution,” and which is now the capital city of the entire Rocky Mountain west, is hard to figure out.

Fortunately my quest was rescued by an author who was very popular when I was very young but who has since fallen out of favor. A patient clerk at “Tattered Cover,” the legendary bookstore here in Denver (it reminds me a lot of Powell’s Books in Portland, for those of you lucky enough to have visited that great Northwest bookstore), recommended that I read Centennial, a historical novel about Colorado by James Michener.

I loved Michener when I was in high school but hadn’t read anything by him for at least 20 years. He pioneered the style of beginning a historical novel in pre-history and then following events up until the present day. So in Michener’s classic book, “Hawaii,” he begins with the geological formation of the islands and the prehistoric animals, follows the first Polynesians who paddle there, describes the development of Hawaiian civilization, the first Europeans like Captain Cook, the coming of American missionaries, and finally the development of modern Hawaii. But it’s not dull history by any means. He focuses on individuals and families (or in the prehistoric sections, sometimes a particular dinosaur!) and creates wonderful fictional tales that capture the historical events and trends. He’s a great storyteller whose strengths are his vivid characters and the fine historical detail.

Centennial turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. Michener manages to make the geological formation of the Rockies fascinating, and his section on the pre-historic tribes of Colorado is one of the more moving accounts of Native American life I’ve read. Maybe the best parts of the whole book are his stories of the trappers and mountain men who began the Euro-American conquest of the west. And the sections on the modern Front Range helped me understand much better why Colorado, and in some ways the entire west, is the place it is.

Michener, who lived in Colorado for a time, has two of his modern characters talking about why they live in Centennial (a fictional town just north of Denver) at the very end of the book. Cisco says to his friend Garrett, “I live in Centennial because it’s maybe the best spot in America…could even be the best remaining spot on earth.” Garrett replies, in the final words of the 1000 page novel, “Could be. It damn well could be.”

After reading it I had a bit more sympathy for more current authors who’ve tried to write about the Front Range and Colorado. I’d guess at least a few of them have been intimidated. Michener is a hard act to follow.

Globalization and Its Discontents

I wanted to quickly recommend some books on world affairs. Out of pure intellectual curiosity, but also out of the necessity of the kind of work I do, I’ve been doing a good bit of reading on globalization in the past couple of years. This is a topic that’s been so flogged and dissected by now that it’s becoming a bit tiresome, but I’m convinced that it’s so very important.

Few of the books I’ve looked at are worth your time, but there are three that really stand out.

The first is Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz, an American who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics and ran the World Bank for a number of years. What a book!

Stiglitz explores the question of how successful the tremendously powerful International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have been in helping countries around the world develop their economies and dramatically reduce poverty.

To me, this is the crucial question of globalization. If cultures and nations are going to be willing to undergo the “creative destruction” of a truly market economy, and if they are going to be willing to make changes in even some of the most bedrock elements of their cultures and political systems for the sake of developing economically and technologically, then the economic goods need to be delivered.

And those goods need to be delivered in a way that allows for reasonable social and political stability. In recent years we’ve seen the results of failed cultures and states—the world simply can’t afford to have nations fall apart given the kind of fanaticism and weaponry at hand. There is too much interdependency and too much mutual vulnerability now to make that a realistic option.

To call the book a scathing critique of the World Bank and the IMF, and by extension of the whole international economic system, wouldn’t be entirely accurate. Stiglitz is scrupulously fair and thoughtful and obviously not given to rants. And he firmly believes in market capitalism and in the importance of international institutions that help govern and regulate the world economy.

However, he makes a powerful case that the international economic system, and in particular the IMF, have done as much damage as good to the countries in the developing world. In a nutshell, he shows that the IMF has wreaked havoc on many poorer nations’ economies and political stability by forcing ill advised and radical economic regimens on them. This has had disastrous effects on the hundreds of millions of very poor people living in these places.

He goes into detail in country after country showing how the IMF has hurt the economies and cultures of these poorer nations. In fact, he shows how nations which have largely ignored the IMF (countries like China and many of the South East Asian nations) have faired much better than those who have listened to it carefully.

Stiglitz shows how ignoring the IMF and World Bank is very risky business for the developing world, since those nations that don’t follow IMF dictates are normally punished by being cut off from aid and being denied capital through the IMF’s great power to influence global capital markets.

Why has the current international economic system, and the IMF in particular, been a mixed blessing at best for the developing world? I think it’s fair to say that Stiglitz believes it’s because the IMF, which is dominated by American and western finance ministers and economists, has three striking weaknesses that are keeping it from being the engine of fairness and development it could be.

First, he argues that the IMF is currently run by people who are committed to a narrow and ideological understanding of free market capitalism. They often make their decisions based on ideology rather than on the actual evidence before them. He demonstrates that the IMF is normally tone deaf to issues such as the timing and rhythms in introducing economic changes, and instead normally insists on an all or nothing approach that is often dangerously out of touch with the realities in these nations.

Second, he argues that the IMF is run by people who are often arrogant and who are not willing to listen to economists and governments in the developing world.

And third, and not surprisingly after his second critique, he argues that the IMF is often shockingly ignorant of the nations and cultures it so cavalierly forces drastic changes on.

Two things struck me as I finished the book. First, Stiglitz’s critiques of the IMF, and by extension the international economic order dominated by the US and the west, are really just the critiques many have made for centuries about the western church’s missionary enterprise. Ideological narrowness, cultural arrogance, and ignorance of local cultures and peoples are pitfalls that any self-respecting missionary is well aware of.

Christian missionaries have been living a “globalized” existence for centuries. In many cases they were the vanguard of bringing cultures into interaction with one another, which is part of the essence of globalization. Perhaps the lessons that the Church has learned over the centuries in this regard could be put to prophetic use in helping reform and change the IMF and other aspects of the international economic order that produce injustice and damage to world’s poor.

The second thing that struck me was how easily his critique of the IMF could be applied to the foreign policy of our current administration. If I could summarize my deep misgivings about it, I’d say it is primarily ideologically driven and not especially interested in evidence or experience, often arrogant and unwilling to listen to others no matter how qualified or knowledgeable they may be, and surprisingly ignorant and uncomprehending of the world and it’s cultures.

Those of you who know me recognize that I’m not a particularly partisan or even political person. My normal stance has been to downplay the importance of politics in the overall scheme of life because I believe people often take it too seriously. But I’m revising some of my thinking, at least for the time being, because I’m deeply concerned about what’s happening right now in Washington.

In any case, I think a lot of people would do well to read Globalization and Its Discontents, and in particular, the somewhat ageless critiques he levels at people who have immense power over the lives of others. At a time when America has become a super-dominant nation, arguably one of the most dominant ever, it’s critical in my view that Americans and westerners give careful thought to the ethics of servant leadership and servant power, especially in cross-cultural settings, and though he doesn’t use that language, that’s really what Stiglitz is talking about. I wish a Christian had written this book.

Maybe some believer will write a prophetic work on what it means to be a Christian in neo-imperial America. There’s got to be a little room for something like that amongst all the “Christian Living for Dummies” books that dominate Christian publishing houses and bookstores :^)

The other two books are Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World, which was edited by Peter Berger and Samuel Huntington.

Seems like everybody has read The Lexus and the Olive Tree by now, but if by chance you haven’t, it’s well worth the time and effort. I’m a longtime fan of Thomas Friedman, who’s a journalist for the New York Times and a regular on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS (best interview, news show on TV). The book is not so much an analysis of globalization, but it’s a brilliant description of it. He shows how market capitalism, information technologies, and democratizing trends are rapidly changing the world. The book is funny and interesting and pretty insightful.

Many Globalizations is a collection of essays by intellectuals and writers from around the world who examine, in detail, just what globalization really looks like in many parts of the world. Instead of generalities, they want to explore the specific and strange permutations that globalization takes. Basically, they collectively argue that globalization does exist, and that American and western cultural norms and forms are clearly spreading around the world in deeper ways. But they show, uniquely in the globalization literature I’ve read, that local cultures are alive and very well and that globalization, in most places, means strange new cultural hybrids that are quite different from the traditional cultures in those places and very different from American or western cultures too.

This seems like a critical insight in the globalization discussion. While people like Friedman tend toward broad generalities like the image of the “Olive Tree” to capture traditional culture and nationalism and then explain that these forces are in conflict with the forces of globalization (symbolized by the “Lexus”), Many Globalizations does a much better job of demonstrating that in reality cultures are much more creative and fluid than they are sometimes given credit for, and that the process of globalization is as much a process of specific and local hybridization and unexpected creativity as it is a process of conflict between seemingly irreconcilable values or the simple triumph of American cultural values in the world.

Well, that’s it for this time around. Fairly soon I’ll be sending out an update on my thoughts on the war in Iraq as well as some political musings about the current government, and also some notes on some of the various cities in the developing world I will have visited by the end of winter. And eventually, some more notes on life here in Denver.

Around Town Denver Summer 04

2005-01-21T23:02:00.000-07:00

More notes from where the air is thin and the mountain hippies are thick…

Water, Water Everywhere

I approached the truck in front of my house tentatively. The Lakewood Water and Power guys caught me hose in hand. It was 10:04 A.M. on a Tuesday.

Denver Water District customers with odd numbered addresses like ours can only water freely twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays before 10 A.M. and after 6 P.M. No outdoor use of water of any kind is permitted regardless of address on Mondays.

On other days we can water flowers and vegetables--but no lawns, trees or shrubbery-- before 10 and after 6.

Washing your car is strictly forbidden except on Wednesdays and Saturdays before 10 and after 6. Hosing down your sidewalks and driveway, well, let’s just say decent people here don’t talk about things of that nature.

But I caught a break. The Nozzle Squad was in a generous mood. They decided my use of water on a sick locust tree only warranted a warning.

One of the two officers, a neo-shaver who’d probably seen too many Clint Eastwood movies, told me with a faint hint of a threat in his voice and a narrowing of his eyes that they’d slap me with a $250 fine if they ever caught me hose up and outside of acceptable hours again.

Due to water agreements imposed on the region 80 years ago when about 157 people lived here, Colorado and the rest of the Rocky Mountain states produce and “share” most of the huge volumes of melt water that make cities like LA and Phoenix possible.

We’re in the midst of a severe 6 year drought which has reduced Colorado River reservoirs like Lake Powell to dangerously low levels.

I flew out to LA this past June for work and to see good friends and for the first time in my life I really thought seriously about the irresponsible use of water in Southern California.

A few years ago I met a guy in L.A. who installed a small lap pool so his arthritic dog could get some exercise and presumably participate in doggie water aerobics. Of course, that’s an eccentric situation, but the examples in So Cal of people wasting water are so common that you don’t even notice them after you’ve lived there a while. The fact that a town like Pasadena, which is plopped down on a semi-arid mountainside, looks like a lush forest dotted with pools from the air is really all you need to know about water politics in the west.

It’s interesting how much your perception of the same set of behaviors changes depending on whether you’re part of the group that’s wielding most of the power or whether you’re not.

If the Lower Left Coast adopted the same kind of restrictive water policies we have here along the Front Range it would probably create a statewide temper tantrum. It might even lead to the recall of The Manly-Man and to the election of a 135 pound Girlie-Man with marshmallow buttocks, assuming for a moment that a guy who weighs 135 pounds could ever have marshmallow buttocks.

Some environmentalists and many economists argue that the best way to preserve the environment is to put a realistic market price on environmental resources and charge the consumers of those resources accordingly.

The idea that everything in the created world needs a market price to survive is disturbing to some of us. But many of the brightest men and women—including most Christians—seem to think that way now, so maybe that’s the best choice. It’s certainly the realistic way to go. There’s a lot to be said for making people pay a premium when they insist on using resources with little sense of self-discipline.

I’d welcome it from the standpoint of economic fairness. Water is the most precious natural resource in the western U.S. If the will of God requires punitive lawn militias I’d prefer to see them deployed in the deserts of Phoenix and Las Vegas and the semi-arid desert of LA where they belong, and water dividends that reflect the real economic value of water paid to the economies in the Rockies.

To get off subject for a moment, this may be the first time in recorded history that anybody has uttered the phrase “If the will of God requires punitive lawn militias.” Language is definitely a creative pre-school playground.

Buskerfest

We recently headed down the hill to see the Denver International Buskerfest. Front Range folks try to pack in as many festivals and celebrations as possible during the warm weather months here.

I’ve never run across the term “Buskerfest” before. Even as I type the word, the Microsoft Word program I’m using underlines it with a squiggly red line to show that it’s an unusual word that may threaten balanced living.

According to the sources I’ve checked, “buskers” entertain people on the street with a view to cash contributions placed in their hats, buckets or boxes.

It seems a “Buskerfest” is a celebration of talented beggars who perform according to their gifts and callings in the hope that folks with a more comfortable profit margin will approve by dropping bill and coin.

This sounded a little like fundraising for Christian missionary work, so I thought it would be worth checking out.

I also really like jugglers and magicians and contortionists and I rarely miss an opportunity to see them do that voodoo that they do so well and faithfully.

Denver city officials blocked off about 6 blocks of downtown streets along 16th Street to provide a stage. Over the course of three or four hours we got a chance to see about a half-dozen performers.

Rasta Yoga led off on the corner of Glenarm and 16th.

He was an exceptionally skinny and dreadlocked Jamaican with a gift for Indian yoga. For the conventionally conservative and middle class folks in the crowd, he was exotic and therefore interesting. For the more educated and discerning, he was just another double-jointed product of globalization.

Mr. Yoga passed his entire body through a number of improbably narrow shapes including a tennis racket. He was like a camel that passes through the eye of a needle, or perhaps even more metaphorically, the very rare rich man in Jesus’ teaching that enters the Kingdom of Heaven.

Perhaps many comfortable and religious Americans should hire him as a salvation consultant. Lots of us could probably use the help of a contortionist to help us squeeze through. We could think of the whole thing as hiring a personal trainer.

He climaxed his act by stuffing himself into a very small and transparent plastic box and then closing the lid. I took this as a kind of artistic statement about the way some people choose to live their lives, but after watching him stare out vacantly at the crowd through his tangled body parts I had second thoughts about that interpretation.

The other busker who really stood out was a young man with the stage name “Aidan Orange.”

A few years ago he did a “stupid human tricks” segment on the David Letterman Show, so the buzz commanded us to check him out.

I can only make a guess, but I believe he chose his name so that some people would think of “Agent Orange” and perhaps associate his craziness with the effects of the toxic Vietnam era defoliant, and maybe more importantly, so that everybody would know that he was one of those people who “get it.” I thought he demonstrated his essentially good manners by throwing a bone to those of us in the over 40 demographic.

Aidan wore orange pants. He seemed like somebody with tons of attitude and maybe only pounds of ability. That’s the kind of thing that can lead to the presidency these days, so we all took him seriously.

Mr. Orange rode a 15 foot tall unicycle while trying to juggle knives and play “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones on the harmonica.

He wasn’t as successful as he may have hoped. The unicycle and Stones parts worked fine, but the knives part didn’t go according to plan. Some of the people sitting below him scrambled out of the way as the machetes rained down.

For his next trick he attempted to eat a flaming sword passed all the way down his throat.

Unfortunately, before he could get the blade lit he spilled some of the lighter fluid on the carrying case for the swords and on some of the other props. Somehow he ignited the case and the props and he was soon flailing around wildly trying to put out the fire.

His panic seemed genuine to me. I thought the whole thing was a spontaneous street satire about current international political events.

Others thought this was all part of the act and applauded loudly. Perhaps it was actually an intentional and sophisticated street satire about those same events.

Or maybe a lot of people just enjoy seeing things blow up and burn and go badly.

Sometimes there is no accounting for taste or for the way people can judge the same set of observed facts so differently.

So Political

Some of you have asked why I’ve become so political recently. One old friend even asked me in an email a couple of weeks ago why I’d “waste” my “wonderful soul and gifts thinking too much about politics.” She lovingly wanted to correct me for aligning myself with “tawdry liberal solutions.” American evangelicals can be so sweet when they’re giving you a swift kick in the sitter with the right foot of fellowship.

As a result, I thought it might be good to explain how I view biblical teaching on politics and why I think it’s an especially important time for more reasonable and balanced Christians to be politically involved. I’m not sure I qualify for that club, but maybe it will help some of you who are sorting out your own thoughts and feelings about political involvement.

I’ll put together an explanation of “Christian Anarchy,” which is how I’d identify my political thinking and which I believe is an honest and compelling attempt at grasping the political teaching of the Bible, in an essay in the next month or so. I’ll try to get it out early enough that people can use it before the upcoming elections.

And besides, I’d hate to have anybody label me as a “raving liberal,” though I do admit that the “raving” part is normally pretty accurate.

--Hey, why is it only liberals are said to “rave?”

I guess the nature of the “performances” on right wing television outlets like Fox News and especially conservative radio have yet to catch up in the popular imagination with the memories of some of the worst of 60’s far left lunacy, but from my point of view it’s only a matter of time.

I occasionally watch and listen to these sources, and when I do its always hard to tell whether some of these “balanced and fair” folks act like World Wrestling Federation types simply for ratings or whether they’re serious. When I do watch or listen I’ve rarely come across even a half-hearted attempt at objectivity.

I recently saw Robert Rubin, a respected economist, interviewed on Fox TV News while I was at the gym. It’s the place I do virtually all my TV viewing since you can’t easily hit the off button in the midst of that sweating fellowship.

It’s also the place I do most of my magazine reading in order to distract me from the effort of climbing to nowhere on a stair step machine for the promise of better health and the ability to do the kinds of sports I enjoy.

Anyway, I think the Fox “anchorperson” made three comments for every one he allowed Rubin to make. Makes you wonder why they even bother to bring people in to interview them.

I have a hunch many of the people on these kinds of stations and outlets are reasonable and thoughtful people “in the closet” who offer up transparent manipulation in order to make a nice living. But I like to think the best of people, so who knows.

Flicks

Silver City

I’ve been a big John Sayles fan for many years. He’s written and directed a bag-load of flicks including Lone Star, Passion Fish, City of Hope, Matewan, and Brother from Another Planet. You could do a lot worse than renting and watching them. I’d start with Lone Star, though they’re all thoughtful, visually beautiful, and very entertaining. In a somewhat different world Sayles would be as well known as Steven Spielberg. He’d probably be uncomfortable with that outcome, which may be part of the reason I like his work so much.

I got a chance to see an advanced screening of Silver City, Sayles’ latest movie.

Silver City is set in Colorado. If you do a good job with the cinematography in any movie rooted in the towns, landscapes and skies here you’re going to have something visually remarkable. They did a very good job with the cinematography.

I’d guess they filmed it in autumn when Colorado is all cobalt blue skies and a stunning contrast of a dozen tones of evergreen set against the yellow-gold of the shimmering and turning aspens. They got the landscape spot on. Some of the people who see this film are going to move here.

The townscapes of Denver and especially Leadville, the old mining town at 10,000 ft. where I stay as a base-camp for climbs in the highest parts of the Rockies, look a little bit better than they ever do in real life. But I wouldn’t say the images are exaggerated. Like a shot of botox to the foreheads of the well to do, they’re a pleasant and hardly noticeable enhancement.

Silver City is a murder mystery. It’s also a political satire. Chris Cooper, who I think is one of the best American actors right now (he was the corrupt CIA program director who was assassinated at the end of the “Bourne Identity” and the wonderful sheriff in “Lone Star” among a ton of parts), plays the role of Dickie Pilager, a relatively clueless and inadvertently malevolent candidate who is running for the governorship of Colorado. Though I don’t think Sayles intended it to be so topical, it’s pretty relevant.

It’ll come out in U.S. theaters sometime in September or October and its well worth seeing.

Books

Mountains of the Mind

I’ve been climbing mountains and doing high altitude trekking for about 15 years now, and it’s always been hard for me to explain to anyone else, and maybe even to myself, why I do it. I’ll admit that it’s difficult to justify expending a lot of effort and time in sometimes dangerous and nasty environments, particularly when there is no obvious payoff other than reaching the top of a large mass of rock and ice.

Luckily there are often passionate people with remarkable skills of observation and gifts for language and logic that can help make sense of the things we do.

“Mountains of the Mind” is that kind of book. Once in a while you read something that helps explain yourself to yourself.

But it goes way beyond capturing the wonder and allure of mountains or the psychology of climbers.

It’s really a riveting social history of western culture in the past 400 years, and how geology and science and romanticism and modernism have created not only a cult of the mountains but also the way that current westerners think and feel about the world. It might even be fair to say it’s a look at some of the foundations of modern western spirituality. The leading book reviews in the U.S. and the U.K. gave it uniquely positive support, and I’m not even sure how to describe its genre. It’s sort of a new genre of its own.

Robert Macfarlane, who wrote Mountains of the Mind, is an experienced climber and a verbal wizard with a gift for simile and metaphor and a razor sharp eye for even the smallest and most telling details of high altitude environments. Because of his verbal gifts I’m sure he could have written a remarkable book about bathroom plumbing, but the fact that he focuses his skills on one of his life’s passions—maybe even obsessions—makes it truly worth reading. The book delighted me.

Mountain Bike Like a Champion

None of you should ever read this book.

I took up mountain biking when we moved to Denver. If you’re a serious citizen of Colorado you’re probably a mountain biker. As the Apostle Paul once said, when in Rome, ride a piece of metal with fat rubber wheels down a mountainside.

I’ve spent a good bit of my mountain biking time in the past year falling off the bike and crashing into things, sometimes with other people watching my painful failures from an up close and personal vantage point.

This past couple of weeks I finally rode some challenging intermediate trails clean. In mountain biking lingo, that means you rode the whole length of the trail without falling down or stopping. I can now add not humiliating myself on a mountain bike to a growing personal list of useless and satisfying skills.

The author of Mountain Bike Like a Champion is a guy with the improbable and distressing name of “Ned Overend.” Ned was one of the inexplicable pioneers of mountain biking and a champion mountain biker for 20 years.

The worst thing that can happen to you when you’re flying down a very steep and rocky trail on a mountain bike is to suffer, in mountain biking lingo, an “endo.” That means you brake too hard on the front wheel or hit something immovable so that the front wheel stops dead and the back wheel lifts off the ground and you get thrown over the handle bars. I’m now fairly familiar with this maneuver.

“Endo” is shorthand for “end over end.”

The author of this mountain biking bible has the last name “Overend.” Those who have experienced the results of his teaching first hand might slightly modify his name to “Over End.”

His first name is Ned, which with the quick shift west of a single letter becomes “End.”

I love the idea that the Skill Master of mountain biking, with a little imagination, has the name End Over End. Sometimes satisfying truth is embedded in a name.

Around the World Spring 04

2005-01-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

Hi all. For a few years I’ve written “Around Town” notes about local stuff, mostly in LA but now in Denver. I’ll come back to thoughts on the Front Range next time out.

This time around I wanted to touch on some of my international experiences, my thoughts on writing poetry, and some personal takes on current national and international politics.

World Thumbs

My work with Servant Partners takes me to a lot of places around the world.

I thought you might enjoy some quick thumbnail sketches of a few of the more unusual experiences I’ve had recently on the road.

Mumbai, India

While browsing through a shop in Mumbai I saw a large sign posted on the wall behind the cash register. The content of the sign was more than a little familiar. It read:

Our Motto

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption to our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider to our business. He is the heart of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.” Mahatma Gandhi

I was unaware before visiting that shop that Gandhi had been such a versatile figure. It’s remarkable that a religious giant who helped free India from British imperial rule was also, apparently, a sloganeer with a genius for moving the merchandise.

The quote on the wall might have been only the tip of the iceberg. Other little known sayings of Gandhi posted around India might include “A penny saved is a penny earned,” “The business of India is business,” and “Creating value for our stockholders is the bottom line.”

Actually, I loved the sign and what it may say about Mumbai and about India. The fact that some little known American middle manager wrote the quote only makes the fact that it was hanging in an Indian business even more impressive.

When you’re trying to bring about major changes in the way things are done and trying to introduce valuable ideas from “outsiders,” who isn’t tempted to ascribe “the revolution” to an authority figure that is beyond reproach? The true believers in any society need comfort that the changes occurring are really what the “founding fathers” or important religious figures intended.

Bringing about serious change may mean adopting a kind of eclectic philosophy which isn’t very logical or consistent. Significant and truly valuable change is often nothing more than unintended consequences. Sometimes it’s a matter of throwing together “best practices” from different fields of human interest and different cultures into something that makes intuitive sense and which works. And it never hurts to have a Jesus or a Gandhi on board to help convince those who are unsure.

That’s an approach to change familiar to both Indians and Americans.

And it defines Mumbai (a.k.a. Bombay), a place that gives new meaning to the term “boom town.” Mumbai is the center of the economic revolution that is beginning to transform India.

Mumbai is deeply Indian, but it’s also full of raw entrepreneurial and acquisitive energy in the midst of a country which for many thousands of years believed religiously in the irrelevance of the material world.

Like the U.S., it’s a crazy cacophony of philosophies and convictions. The city is high speed creation and destruction every day.

And the people of Mumbai seem to believe it will work. There are 20 million of them with more arriving every day. Most of them live in the largest network of urban slums in the world.

The slum dwellers are trying to forge a creative synthesis out of many traditional Indian cultures and various versions of global market capitalism.

Who needs fiction or fantasy when real life around the world is so fascinating?

Khartoum, Sudan

During a trip to East Africa this winter I was detained by security forces in Sudan and then sent packing from the country.

I was in Sudan to visit a tribal Christian leader who is leading a church planting/justice ministry in the slums of Khartoum, which is the capitol of the country. About 5 million people live in that great city.

Sudan is a radical Islamic police state. Over the past 25 years the country has been torn apart by a civil war that has killed over 2 million Sudanese. The jihadi regime in the north of the country seeks to impose sharia law and Islamic practice on the whole country. The southern part of the country is controlled by animistic and Christian African tribes and guerilla armies.

The northern government, based in Khartoum, wants to control the immense oil wealth that lays beneath the ground in the south. The southerners, not surprisingly, would like that black gold and “Texas T” for themselves. The result has been a vicious conflict between north and south. As you might expect from the circumstances, Sudan is one of the poorest nations in the world.

What I just laid out is the simple and official version of what’s what in Sudan.

After 25 years of mayhem, what’s really happening on the ground is far more complex and disturbing. As is so often the case in protracted civil wars, violence and greed become ends in their own right, so both sides in the conflict end up ravaging and abusing the local civilian population.

And before long there really isn’t a “both sides.” Soon the conflict spreads and petty warlords and adventurers take advantage of what’s happening. If there was once a “just cause” behind the civil war, eventually that cause is lost in a bull market of killing and profit taking by many groups. Think Guatemala in the 70’s and 80’s times ten.

Sudan was the original home of Al Queda before that movement headed for Afghanistan to fight the Russians. More recently, the evangelical church in the U.S. became interested in Sudan in order to help the southern Sudanese Christians resist the Islamic influence of the northern government. And after 9/11 the U.S. State Department put intense pressure on the technical rulers of the country to demonstrate their willingness to participate in the “war on terror.” So the murderous regime in Khartoum has recently made some efforts to make nice.

They allowed Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s uncomplicated heir, to do an evangelistic crusade in a soccer stadium in Khartoum.

And they’ve allowed American evangelicals to ship relief supplies to communities in the south of the country. Most of those supplies end up in the hands of warlords and local thugs, but the effort is well intended and therefore important and commendable. It also makes for effective evangelical fundraising back home.

The self–professed jihadi government in Sudan decided, in an astute political move, that they no longer support Al Queda.

It’s all very heartwarming. Neo-imperial designs, just like the Cold War strategies before them, create strange bedfellows.

Sudan was recently awarded a seat on the U.N. human rights commission with acquiescence from the west because of their recent conversion to the “war against terror.”
In the meantime the systematic killing and violence in the country continue. In the past year the government of Sudan has devastated Durfar province in the western part of the country, killing tens of thousands and displacing about a million people in the latest version of their creative and multi-pronged ethnic cleansing campaign.

If there was ever a nation that could use a military/humanitarian intervention by a wide consensus of countries, Sudan is that place. Sudan is Rwanda at half-speed but extended over two and a half decades. Unfortunately, there’s no political capital in it and it would take years of long-term, sacrificial nation building, so it’s unlikely it will happen anytime soon.

The story of my time in Sudan is more involved, but the short version is that I spent the night with a group of about 8 Sudanese security agents. They initially threatened me, though they did it in a fairly clumsy way due to their poor grasp of English and to their noticeable lack of commitment to the war against the “American crusaders.”

In spite of the fact that they turned out to be the Barney Fifes of Sudanese security agents, it was still scary for a while since I wasn’t sure what they had in mind and nobody was telling me much of anything at the outset. And unlike Barney, they definitely had more than one bullet each.

**for those of you who live outside the U.S. and who are unfamiliar with some of the details of our pop culture, in a very popular U.S. television show Barney Fife was a bumbling and silly police deputy in a rural small town. He was so untrustworthy that the town’s sheriff gave him only one bullet which he carried in his shirt pocket.

But overall, the experience was so goofy that it’s hard to remember it as particularly dangerous.

They all wore more traditional Sudanese menswear, which looks a little bit like a desert version of 1950’s American men’s pajamas. They accessorized the look with worn out sandals, and in a few cases, snugly fitting knit skull caps. It would be hard to imagine a less threatening outfit, unless you consider taking a nap scary.

And they joked around with each other, and eventually me, in a way that reminded me of messing around in a men’s locker room with a bunch of guys. All we needed was a couple of wet towels to snap each other on the butt and it would have been just like high school back at home.

I’m sure part of the whole atmosphere was due to it being the middle of the night. Finding everything funny and acting like an idiot when you’re exhausted late at night is apparently a universal experience, even among erstwhile Islamic state thugs.

They also had a 26” television and a VCR set up in the room along with lots of American movies from some bootleg version of Blockbuster.

These guys loved Arnold Schwarzenegger flicks. We watched “Predator” and two parts of the “Terminator” series during the long hours of the security graveyard shift.

The movies were in the original English with Arabic subtitles. Arnold’s movies—like his governing role in California—seem to appeal more to the primitive brain than to parts of the brain that have evolved over the past few million years, so they definitely have a more universal visual and emotional appeal.

Two of my captor/companions spoke a little bit of broken English. The Muslims I’ve met around the world are very hospitable and kind people, so I think the two of them felt an urgency to make me feel at home after they’d finished with the obligatory threats and the corporate sales pitch.

One of them kept repeating “America good country. George Boosh idiot.” I laughed out loud every time he said it, which seemed to amuse all the guys sitting around me, though I know most of them were responding only to my laughter since they had no idea what their English speaking co-worker was saying.

At about 7 am, a Kenya Airlines administrator came into the detention room and broke up the pajama party. She told me I was going to be deported back to Nairobi, which was my original point of departure before flying to Sudan.

About an hour later the security guys put me into a security vehicle and drove me to my plane at the airport. When I got back on the plane they finally gave me my passport and I was on my way back to Kenya. Of course, I got stuck with the bill for the flight to Nairobi.

Cairo, Egypt

I eventually got to Cairo, which was my intended destination after Khartoum. While I was there I had a chance to visit the mosque that’s the intellectual center of Islam and is the oldest university in the world. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to visit.

One of our Servant Partners missos lives in Cairo, and he and I ended up hanging out with a bunch of his 20-something Muslim friends after we had prayed in the great mosque.

These guys were living in the slum which surrounds the mosque and were studying at the Islamic university there. Two were Egyptians, but the other two were radical Islamists from Pakistan who grew up in England.

All four of them spoke good English, so I had a chance to talk with these guys about just about everything that’s in the news now.

They challenged me with very direct questions about Americans and Christians during our conversation. They contributed astute and moving insights on the one hand and scary ignorance and misinformation on the other.

They were definitely fully enlisted in a struggle against the west.

Some of their commitment to the battle seemed to be rooted in religious blindness and ignorance.

But they also struck me as very bright and passionate young men with a commitment to the best of their faith and to a desire to change things for the better, as misguided as some of their ideas and convictions might have been. And they were lively and warm, which always covers a multitude of sins.

We ended up having dinner and then smoking sheesha together. One of the most enduring of Arabic and Islamic customs is a group of men sitting together in a café and smoking sweet tobacco through a large water pipe. It’s a way to bond socially and to talk about everything. So that’s what we did.

I told them I never smoke and that the one time I tried in high school I fell on the ground in a coughing fit. My only real experience with bongs (the more familiar name for a water pipe) was in college when one of my roommates and his friends smoked pot in a collection of oddly colored bongs while we all played backgammon for cash. Since I was the only one not smoking, and therefore the only sober player in the game, I made a nice sum on a weekly basis.

Smoking sheesha turned out to be very pleasant. They all got a kick out of my tentative first puffs. After watching them do it for a while I finally got the hang of it. By the end of the time I was even blowing smoke, with some measure of style in my own inexperienced estimation, out of my nose.

I felt sad when we said goodbye to these young men. I pray they won’t give themselves to hatred and violence. I hope I have a chance to see them again in future trips to Cairo in better circumstances.

The Moon in June

A few years back I was writing poetry seriously for publication and for friends too, and folks ask me from time to time why I stopped. That short burst of creative activity lasted about 4 years and then ended 3 years ago.

I wrote regularly in my twenties as well, so that more recent period was a return to poetry for me.

Probably the simplest answer for why I stopped writing poetry is that hardly anyone reads poetry anymore. I’d guess more people belong to the “”Amish Women’s Mud-Wrestling League” than subscribe to your average poetry rag. Perhaps that’s an example of poetic license and overstatement :^), but maybe not by much. In the end I decided that writing poetry was atavistic.

I’ve often been struck by the stone carvers who worked so hard to sculpt the gargoyles that sit on top of medieval cathedrals. No one ever really saw their work, but they were motivated by the thought that God looked down on their efforts and approved. It was the artisan’s equivalent of the idea that character is what you do when no one but God can see.

Well, I’ve discovered that I would’ve never cut it as a cathedral stonemason, at least in terms of writing poetry.

I had the good fortune and blessing to be published a number of times during my more recent poetry writing jag. The publications were a mix of respectable secular and Christian outlets with reasonable—by poetry standards—readership.

I say good fortune and blessing because getting a poem published is difficult. Writing something beyond the standard “Moon/June/High Above/So in Love” poem is tough. And even if you write something decent, there are so few outlets controlled by so few editors that you’re dealing with a real long-shot before you start clicking at the keyboard.

There is a definite satisfaction in capturing your own thoughts and perceptions in the language of poetry, but at some point it just seems crazy to expend that kind of effort with such a small potential audience.

I’m not sure I fully understand why written poetry has fallen so far out of favor, though the “experts” usually site the loss of reading skills and the lack of patience on the part of educated people who expect to be entertained immediately and who aren’t interested in the hard work that’s necessary to read poetry. It seems to me that most people look at art of all kinds as a diversion + inexpressible added value.

That’s not necessarily an entirely bad thing given the often overblown status given to art in the past couple of centuries, but it’s hard not to think that something significant may have been lost in the transition. I can only think of a single contemporary poet, the wonderful Billy Collins, who is known among a significant subset of educated folks in the U.S http://www.bigsnap.com/billy.html

The real shame of it is that a lot of excellent poetry is being written right now. It’s the artistic equivalent of a major inventory problem and a modern American recession: lots of great product and very little demand.

One of the only places where poetry still lives is in “poetry slams” where lots of poets and would-be poets gather in front of an audience and perform their poems. I’ve done poems at a number of them and attended even more, and the energy and passion of the poetry comes through much more strongly for most people when they can see it done live rather than just reading it on a page.

Most of it’s a mixed bag. But when the stuff is good a single individual can move people in an immediate way I haven’t seen very often with other kinds of art. And there is something very exciting about watching people step out with no props and no backup and do their own stuff with little sense of how the audience will respond. If you haven’t had a chance to check one out you should give it a try.

Some people believe that hip-hop music is the new poetry. Hmmm…. In response I can only quote the old New England expression; “Uh, maybe….uh, maybe not.” You have to drag out the two “Uhs,” make an elongated pause after “maybe,” and highlight the “not” to get the full feeling of this old piece of Yankee wisdom.

Not Curious George

In the “Curious George” series of children’s books, a silly monkey who is too curious and inquisitive creates big messes which are forgiven because he’s sincere and because the Man in the Yellow Hat loves him.

Now we’re in a time when an even sillier monkey who doesn’t seem to be curious or inquisitive at all, Not Curious George, creates really big messes. He may be forgiven because he’s sincere and because the People in the Red States love him.

Not Curious George doesn’t admit to making mistakes, though that monkey, along with the “fiscally conservative” Republican Congress, created one of the largest budget deficits in US history.

And Not Curious George led the country into a war in Iraq on false pretenses mostly to show the world that America is a big old guerilla who shouldn’t be messed with. Conquering Afghanistan and hunting down Al Queda wasn’t enough for Not Curious George.

What a mess Not Curious George created in Iraq! Seems his other simian friends in the administration really didn’t have a practical and tactical plan for what to do when they threw out the Man in the Black Hat.

Not Curious George ran his campaign in 2000 with a promise that he would carry out a humble foreign policy that respected other nations. But that mischievous monkey has alienated most of the world. America is hated and disrespected around the world in an unprecedented way, much of it because Not Curious George and his playmates like to beat their chests and humiliate other kids on the playground.

What makes that even more remarkable is that America enjoyed some of its greatest support ever after 9/11 and had overwhelming support for the war in Afghanistan.

Not Curious George talks a lot about being the first president who leads like the CEO of a major corporation. Maybe he’s forgotten what happens to CEO’s who severely damage their corporate “brand name” and who run massive deficits. I say let’s judge Not Curious George by his own standards.

I’ll be working hard in a national political campaign, for the first time in my life, to send Not Curious George back to Texas next fall. I hope he’ll have a chance to live once again among those who would vote for him no matter what he does, simply because he’s a Born Again Monkey and because he tries hard to seem like a Regular Chimp.

O.K. I’ve had my satirical rant.

The Bushies have done some good things. No question about it. Sometimes you need a simple and direct leader in a time of apparent crisis. I think Bush’s most effective contribution has been as a cheerleader in bolstering the country when we were shocked by 9/11. He was a male cheerleader in college and he stepped up to help folks at a time when lots of people were disheartened.

I also thought he acted vigorously to go after groups like Al Queda and their despicable offspring. I wish he had been even more vigorous and focused. The war in Iraq wasted precious resources and destroyed our reputation in much of the world, but I think Bush was well-intentioned in going after the Islamic death cults.

Beyond that, I’m not clear on other truly valuable contributions. I don’t mean that comment to devalue what he has contributed, because I think those contributions are important.

Still, I think it would help the country and our relationships around the world if he retired to the ranch in Crawford. From the point of view of policies and governance, I think the present leadership of the U.S. is a failure on the whole.

Who knows if it’s realistic to believe Bush can be defeated. He just spent 60 million dollars in March and April alone attacking Kerry relentlessly.

I saw quite a few of the ads and it’s mostly spin and falsehoods, but with that kind of money and with the level of awareness many Americans seem to have, it does work.

It’s also helpful when people are religiously committed to voting for you regardless of what you do.

An idolatrous belief in the rightness of perpetual American dominance in the world (that’s the Bush administration’s clearly and publicly stated policy), dismissive arrogance to both friends and foes, and pre-emptive violence in a war that was optional are--taken together—a very recent addition to the American experience.

No one ever seems responsible in this administration. Loyalty, which I believe is the lowest of virtues, seems to be the greatest of virtues for George Bush.

Along those lines, I’ll quote parts of a commentary from this past week by Fareed Zakaria, the senior editor of Time Magazine’s International Edition. Over the past 4 or 5 years I’ve enjoyed and respected his writings, even though he’s been a staunch supporter of the Bush administration and the invasion of Iraq. He’s changed him mind about the present rulers of the U.S. over the past half year based on the evidence.

After the greatest terrorist attack against America, no one was asked to resign, and the White House didn’t even want to launch a serious investigation into it. The 9/11 Commission was created after some of the victim’s families pursued it aggressively and simply didn’t give up.

After the fiasco over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, not one person was ever fired or reassigned. The only people who have been fired or cashiered in this administration are men like Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O’Neill and Larry Lindsey, who spoke inconvenient truths.

...Since 9/11, a handful of officials at the top of the Defense Department and the vice president’s office have commandeered American foreign and defense policy. In the name of fighting terror they have systematically weakened the traditional restraints that have made the U.S. respected around the world. Alliances, international institutions, norms and ethical conventions have all been deemed expensive indulgences at a time of crisis.

The basic attitude taken by Rumsfeld, Cheney and their top aides has been “We’re at war; all these niceties will have to wait.” As a result, we’ve waged pre-emptive war unilaterally, spurned international cooperation, rejected United Nations participation, humiliated allies, discounted the need for local support in Iraq and incurred massive costs in blood and treasure.

…The results are plain. On almost every issue involving post-war Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Sistani—Washington’s assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has…had the effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.

Whether he wins or loses in November, George W. Bush’s legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe. I’m sure he takes full responsibility.

The majority of American evangelical Christians are supporting all of this. That’s worth a minute or two of reflection.

And besides lots of money and misguided co-religionists, Bush also has Ralph Nader in his corner. Nader threw the last election to Bush and may do so again.

The most remarkable thing is that the Democrats seem to want to self-destruct. If they had run a candidate who wasn’t a cardboard cutout in the last election they would have won fairly easily. The same thing may turn out to be true in this election too.

Kerry, at this point in the campaign, reminds me of the President Lincoln robot in the old “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” ride at Disneyland. I hope he’ll make more of a human connection in the coming months.

Many people thought President Clinton was lucky in his opponents. Maybe Bush is on the same sort of roll. I truly hope not.

Good Flicks

Go see “Touching the Void”

Two English mountaineers try to climb a peak in Peru that no one has ever summited before. They almost die trying.

I don’t know if it will still be in theatres, but I’m sure you can rent it soon. It’s a well done documentary/drama about the Greek myth of Sisyphus and the mystery of human endurance.

It has a “happy” ending. What makes it so compelling is, after watching it, you wonder whether that’s good or bad.