Posts Tagged ‘politics’

« Older Entries

The Party’s Over?

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

A Party in Danger

Last week, the news was aflutter with Rick Perry’s withdrawal from the presidential race. This week, the big story is Newt Gingrich’s victory in South Carolina. If we are to believe the mainstream media channels and the pundit consensus, we may be in for Round 2 of Obama vs. Anyone-But-Obama.

Round 1 involved our current president’s 2008 showdown with John McCain-Not-Obama. McCain garnered 26.6% of eligible votes (down from 28.5% for Bush in ’04), and Obama received 30.8% (up from 27.1% for Kerry). Independents and 3rd parties accrued 0.9%, while the other 41.7% stayed home. The fact that McCain obtained as many votes as he did was a reflection of serious disdain for Obama, rather than an actual base of support for McCain himself. What I heard from most of my conservative friends was “he’s not perfect, but at least he’s not Obama!”

As we look at a possible Round 2, the media and pundits are spouting that Mitt Romney-Not-Obama is the likely nominee, with Newt Gingrich-Not-Obama as an alternate. Actually, he is better known as Newt Gingrich-Not-Romney-Not-Obama. No one I know is particularly pumped about going to bat for Newt; they simply think he’s a more palatable Not-Obama than Romney.

Either option leaves Republicans holding their collective nose and voting for a decidedly non-conservative candidate. In 2008, Democrat contender Barack Obama actually managed to inspire the Republicans more than any candidate within their own party. He stands to do so again.

As has been observed elsewhere, the failure of a single candidate to rally conservatives reveals the deeply-fractured nature of the party. More importantly, though, it reveals that the relationship between Republican leaders and their constituency is on the rocks. In short, the Republican Party is in trouble.

The Nature of the Game

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a fan of political parties in the first place. At one time, I thought the solution to our two-party mess was to have more parties. More parties equals more choice, right?

Alas, I have come to realize the truth: political parties serve only to limit choice. They do not allow politicians who agree on one issue to cooperate, for fear they’ll be seen as “aiding the enemy.” Parties discourage strong ideological principles in deference to the almighty club membership. Worse than this though, they relegate people to rigid, self-destructive groupthink. The Party encourages members to climb into a box and reject anything beyond those cardboard walls as a possible solution.

From the inception of partisan politics in the U.S., parties served to move our democratic republic away from a nation under the rule of law, guided by the will of the people. We have morphed into a nation under the rule of popular opinion, guided by banks and businesses with close ties to the government.

Let us leave the political world for a moment, and consider a modern professional baseball game. Both teams play by the same rules, and their singular goal is to out-score the opposing team. There is relatively little divergence from one team to another in terms of strategy. Despite all of this, true baseball fans are fiercely loyal to their own teams. No amount of success, roster movement, managerial change, charity involvement, nor any other such factors is going to make a fan of the Boston Red Sox don a Yankees jersey, or vice-versa. In fact, I would wager that these two teams could entirely swap rosters, managers, and owners – so long as they didn’t change the team name and location – and the fan base would remain the same. (I know I’ve just lost some of the baseball people for the rest of this article as they lie on the ground, twitching. No worries, friends – this is all hypothetical!)

While this arrangement is fine for baseball, it has some serious negative consequences when applied to politics. The Republican and Democrat parties as they currently exist are glorified sports teams. The fans are voters, and for far too long, they’ve been very loyal.

The Man Behind the Curtain

During any election cycle, rhetoric abounds about fundamental differences between the parties. If we are to believe politicians, then real ideological differences exist, and the choice for one or the other determines the direction of the nation. For the constituency, this is absolutely true. Some genuinely believe that the government can (and should) help the unfortunate, provide social justice, and keep corporations in line. Others hold that government is incapable of these things, and that the real role of government is to provide a level playing field and to ensure personal liberty.

At the leadership level, this is largely a false dichotomy. Election after election, certain agendas move forward with complete disregard for partisan shifts.

For instance, the debt ceiling almost always increases, regardless of party. The last time the debt ceiling was lowered was almost 50 years ago, in 1963. It was lowered twice that year during the JFK administration, before he was assassinated in November.

Both parties serve to increase the size of government, make military contractors wealthy, pass bailouts recommended by the Federal Reserve, interfere in the politics of other nations, incrementally reduce the freedoms of citizens… it’s a long list.

On display for voters is the narrative that Democrats and Republicans are locked in an epic struggle for control of the political ideology that will steer our nation. Behind the curtain is the ugly truth: This country is being steered in a single direction, regardless of who is at the helm. The only struggle in question is who will be paid to rubber-stamp the heading as Captain, and who will get to dole out the very lucrative contracts associated with maintaining the ship. In the end, the leadership of both parties will be living it up with their friends in First Class. The rest of us toil below decks and argue about which group of aristocrats has our best interest at heart.

Thus, the man behind Oz’s curtain is revealed. The danger is not that wealthy people are in charge, nor that wealth is divided unevenly among the citizenry. The real danger is two-fold: 1) We drones working and living in the common areas are never permitted to leave, to find another ship, nor to influence the direction of the one we’re on. 2) Most of us are completely unaware of our situation and the true nature of the game being played at the top.

The party elite (their “elite-ness” is derived only from connection to the party) truly do not care which group is in charge. They will get their money either way. Goldman-Sachs has no party affiliation. They will dole out contributions to either party as they see fit. Halliburton will continue to get contracts no matter who is in charge. The mainstream media will continue to shape the debate and then profit from the narrative they have created. The impetus to increase the size of government, to increase our military intervention overseas, and to continually inflate the monetary supply is not remotely threatened by any nominal conflict in congress nor any change in the executive branch.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Once the farcical narrative of partisan conflict has been exposed, it becomes much easier to understand the continual changes in Washington, to focus on what’s important, and to predict what is to come next.

We started with the observation that the Republicans are currently facing a scenario much like the one they did in 2008: voting for a candidate they disdain in order to avoid one they truly despise. In a case of it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren’t-so-sad, the Democrats are facing a very similar challenge this time around. Barack Obama has alienated much of his base by falling through on many of his promises. He did not draw back our military forces from the Middle East in a timely fashion. He has not closed the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He has not increased transparency in legislation, nor fought for civil liberties, nor made choices faithful to the Constitution. Amid continued economic disaster, all of this should spell defeat for any incumbent. However, if Republicans can only offer a repeat of their last nominee, they face annihilation.

Herein is demonstrated the political genius of the party elites. They are offering a choice between two candidates, neither of which is well-liked by either party. Yet, voters will get in line behind one or the other, depending on which team jersey they like best. Either way, the political leadership will get what it wants – they win. Either way, the people will be delivered something they don’t want – they lose.

The real contest is not between Democrats and Republicans, but rather between the Political Elite and the Citizen. Indeed, the Elite do their best to deny this fact and to propagate the idea that the partisan contest is real. Thus far, the Elite have been playing excellent chess. The Citizen has lost pieces all over the board and is facing an inevitable checkmate. Worse, he remains largely ignorant of his opponent’s identity. Despite the grim outlook, all is not lost.

One advantage remains to the Citizen that the Elite can never supplant. Party leaders have always known about this, and they fear it above all else. They make every effort to hide it from the Citizen, to keep it out of discussion, and to direct attention elsewhere. Nonetheless, in order to claim victory, the Citizen need only stand up — and walk away from the board.

More and more, people are realizing that the current party system is not serving their needs. Occupy-minded Democrats and Tea Party-thinking Republicans are finding common ground in their opposition to bailouts for rich bankers and well-connected corporations. Adversaries of big government on the right and civil rights activists on the left are finding reason to unite over Federal encroachments on personal liberties.

The most recent evidence of this is displayed in the success of the Ron Paul campaign. Even within the Republican party, his Constitutional views on government are gaining support in the 10 – 15% margin. When you add independents into the mix, that number jumps past 20%. These supporters reject the monopoly claimed by party leaders over the political process. Though the leadership rejects him and his message, they are unable to squelch his influence. So long as party leadership continues to fail as a supplier of legitimate political ideology, it will also fail as a reflection of the people’s will.

Invasive Surgery

Yes, the Republican party is dying from the tumor growing on its heart; major surgery is needed. Any patient knows this news is difficult to bear, but for the party leadership, it is a death sentence. For too long, the leadership has been a cancerous growth feeding from and ultimately destroying healthy tissue. If you ask the tumor, it will never opt for removal. It will remain, draining resources and life until the patient is completely beyond recovery.

Right now there is only one doctor offering the proper surgery, and the tumor is in panic mode. It is doing everything in its power to intimidate, bribe, persuade, and otherwise coerce the patient to allow it quarter. Dr. Ron Paul has the scalpel in hand and over 30 years of experience with this exact form of cancer. He guarantees that the surgery will be painful and scary for a short time, but also that the chances of full recovery are excellent.

The Republican party has to ask itself whether it is ready to embrace this doctor and the life-saving surgery he offers. Otherwise, the tumor will stay, and the party will be on its own.

Tags:,
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Campaign Issues, Vol. I: Ron Paul and bin Laden

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

On May 11, Ron Paul gave an interview with WHO Newsradio 1040 in which he stated that he would not have ordered the bin Laden raid to occur “the way it took place in Pakistan“:

This is a problem for a lot of people; it leaves them with the idea that Paul would prefer bin Laden not face consequences for his purported role in multiple terror attacks over the last two decades. This is not Paul’s position at all, but it bears some scrutiny.

First, it’s worth mentioning that Paul called this one as far back as October 2003:

His analysis of our relationship with Pakistan hasn’t changed since that time, and it’s clear that he was ahead of the game early on. Paul didn’t have some secret information that lead him to be correct in 2003 — he simply used his understanding of our foreign policy in the Middle East and applied it to what he was seeing.

He was against spending billions of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was against risking thousands of military lives and those of countless foreign civilians to go after a terrorist who was in neither country. He was against attacking and occupying a sovereign nation without a declaration of war.

He was not against finding Osama bin Laden and bringing him to justice.

In November 2001, Paul introduced H.R. 3076, aka. the Marque and Reprisal act of 2001. He listed Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda by name as the targets of the proposed letters. These specifically grant the President authority to hire “privately armed and equipped persons and entities” to go outside U.S. boarders to seize bin Laden and any co-conspirators. The Constitution (Article I, Section 8) provides for Congress to grant letters of Marque and Reprisal to the executive branch as a response to threats against our national security.

The main idea behind this is that a relatively surgical force would be used to apprehend Osama bin Laden and any of his co-conspirators rather than an occupation force. Incidentally, it is a surgical force like this which actually achieved the goal of eliminating Osama in the end (of course, they were military rather than private).

So, given these facts, what is Ron Paul’s beef with the way things went down?

  1. Osama never stood trial nor had the chance to provide us with intelligence.

    2. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al Qaeda operative accused of masterminding the 9/11 attacks, was apprehended in Pakistan in 2003 by Pakistani intelligence forces. He is being held at Guantanamo Bay and is set to be tried by a military tribunal for the crimes of which he is accused. If he is convicted, he will almost certainly face the death penalty.

    Paul’s argument here is that if bin Laden was a higher-priority target than Mohammed, we would ostensibly want to gain intelligence from him and have him face trial as well. The current version of the raid holds that bin Laden was unarmed. He could have been captured alive. He almost certainly would have been executed after trial. It makes little sense to me that we would not want to gain intelligence from him nor want to see him tried.

    Incidentally, not everyone in Paul’s non-intervention camp agrees on this issue. Michael Scheuer is the former head of the CIA’s unit on bin Laden, and has sided with Paul on Afghanistan, Iraq, and blowback. He recently posted, “The death of Osama bin Laden is great news for the United States, and it is much better that he was killed rather than captured.”

  2. We used our military to invade a sovereign nation without permission.

    3. This is hardly a concern for most Americans — we’ve been doing that for a long time without regard for the Constitution. Some would argue that we’re entitled to go wherever we want with impunity to avenge 9/11, but I disagree strongly. My most concise argument is to reverse roles:

    Imagine that a private citizen of the U.S. has planned a successful attack on civilians in Pakistan. Our government is either incapable or unwilling to apprehend this citizen, and the Pakistanis want justice. Would they be entitled to enter our airspace and carry out a military operation without our permission? How would we react in that situation?

    The real question is whether we’re entitled to disregard the sovereignty of another nation just because we have superior military force.

In summary, Ron Paul was not opposed to capturing Osama bin Laden, nor to having him face justice. His concern is that we make our foreign policy and national security choices in a way that follows the Constitution and makes us safer in the long run.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

How to create an Insurgent

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

Anyone remember these scenes from The Patriot? (A warning for the faint of stomach, such as myself: this is pretty graphic.)

I remember watching this movie for the first time, and it was pretty disturbing.

One might say that I simply have a weak stomach or that I’m unable to deal with reality. To the contrary, I believe there’s an extent to which the reality of war should disturb us. Something is fundamentally wrong when one human is responsible for the death of another. If I am in a car accident in which another driver is killed — even if I’m not responsible — I don’t shrug it off as bad luck; it’s a life-changing event. If someone is sentenced to death, it is usually because they have caused the death of another. Killing (voluntary or involuntary) is an action that we have no power to reverse. We take it seriously.

This reality does not disappear in war. Combatants do not enter into lethal engagements lightly. If they do, it is viewed as particularly heinous, even among soldiers.

So what does any of this have to do with insurgency?

Motivations

Mel Gibson’s character, Benjamin Martin, is hesitant to become involved in any conflict with the British at the beginning of the film. He has seen his share of violence in the French and Indian War. He knows how brutal things can be, and has himself committed atrocities. He does not want to expose his seven children to that kind of existence. Nothing the British have done in terms of disrespect, oppression, or even violence elsewhere in the Colonies is enough to rouse him. Neither freedom nor liberty are sufficient to inspire him. One single issue drives his hatred and willingness to die fighting, and that is the indiscriminate killing of his civilian son. From that point on, he becomes a member of the armed resistance. In modern terms, he would certainly be categorized as an insurgent.

Of course, we know that The Patriot is a fictional story loosely very loosely situated in historical context. What is not fictional, however, is the psychology behind Martin’s reaction. We humans will endure significant abuse and oppression before involving ourselves in armed resistance against a government force. No one wants to become a target, and we’ll usually try to evoke change via means that don’t get us shot.

All of that changes if you start killing our children. If that line is crossed, all bets are off.

Nearly a decade has passed since the September 11 attacks of 2001, during which time much has been made of an existential threat posed to our nation by Islamic extremists. According to Bush 43, our resultant war on terror will not stop until “every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” Furthermore, he claims terrorists “hate us” because we have a “democratically-elected government”, and because we have “freedom of speech.” Assuming it were possible to defeat every terrorist cell around the world, the argument is that we could commence with being free and secure once again.

This understanding of terrorist motivations has been accepted and repeated by our mainstream media outlets. It has been the party (both parties?) line ever since. Nearly a decade later, we remain in Afghanistan (to say nothing of our other entanglements) with no apparent intent to leave. It would appear that we have been incapable of achieving our stated goals thus far, and do not expect to achieve them in the near or foreseeable future.

Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, has an alternate understanding of why terrorists are willing to attack the United States. He argues that the reason we’re attacked is not because we’re free or because of cultural issues, but rather due to our policies in the middle east. He bases that belief on Al Qaeda’s explicit claims: “Vote for whoever you want: Bush or Kerry or the devil himself. This does not concern us. Our concern is to purify our countries from aggressors and to stand up to whoever attacks us.”

Perspectives

Of course, there will always be anomalies like bin Laden or Zawahiri who are willing to fight for regime change. They are displeased with the oppressive leadership of Saudi Arabia, and with Israel’s policies in Palestine. These governments (and others) would lose significant influence without the United States, and he’s willing to fight to degrade that influence. However, your average Afghan resident has no direct interest in these issues. Many of these people have never even heard of the 9/11 attacks. They are doing well to feed themselves.

So why would they get involved with a group like Al Quaeda? — for the same exact reason as our fictional Benjamin Martin: because their loved ones are dying.

A few days ago, 9 Afghan children were killed in an operation when they were misidentified as insurgents. As disillusioned as I am, I have a hard time believing that NATO troops would intentionally kill children in reprisal to an attack. Regardless, this is by no means an isolated incident. In fact, Gen. Stanley McChrystal made the following comments about our early involvement in Afghanistan:

“We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force… [none of the cases in which] we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it.”

With that kind of admission from a General, it’s not hard to see why the likes of bin Laden would find recruiting much easier. Consider this reaction by Mohammed Bismil, adult brother of two of the young boys who were killed last week: “The only option I have is to pick up a Kalashnikov, RPG or a suicide vest to fight.” Another quote comes from a relative of injured civilians in a May 2010 attack: “If the military keeps doing this, the people will go into the mountains to fight them. When I saw my daughter injured, all I could think about was putting on a suicide jacket.” (see video below at the 36:50 mark for the interview)



Conclusions

I recall my sense of queasiness being mingled with some level of satisfaction as I watched Mel Gibson unleash his holy wrath on a platoon of British soldiers with the expertise and stealth of a ninja. (It was like seeing the Punisher and Batman rolled into one.) His son had just been killed needlessly. He had a right to revenge. He had a mission to save his oldest son. He was achieving an honorable goal and making aggressors pay.

Of course that is an easy position for me to take. I’m an American white man; I can identify with this guy on a cultural level. I would be devastated if a child or a brother were murdered by an outside military force. I could almost see myself taking that kind of retribution, given the chance. It should be easy to understand the motivations of someone who has seen their loved ones killed by foreign forces, someone who has not been inundated with messages about the evils of the Taliban and Al Quaeda. We may see the man with an RPG or suicide jacket as an insurgent — a terrorist — but he sees himself protecting the family he has left and pursuing a righteous vengeance. Perhaps it would behoove us to consider how impossible it would be to see things any differently in those shoes, and to direct our policies accordingly.

One thing is clear: if we continue to kill civilians, we also deliver fiercely-dedicated recruits to Al Quaeda and its allies. Our long list of failures in this regard leaves no doubt that our declared enemy has grown stronger and that we have become less secure as a direct result of our presence in Afghanistan.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

pollice verso

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

I still remember my first experience with a horror movie. I think I was six, and we had a vhs claymation movie about prehistoric times. Triceratops and a T-Rex got into it with one another. T-Rex took a chomp out of Triceratops, but Triceratops came back by goring T-Rex’s stomach. There was clay blood. It was scary.

I never really liked watching that movie, and I always closed my eyes at the scary part. It wasn’t graphic at all by today’s standards, but at the time it was terrifying for me. I don’t think the death itself really bothered me, though. It’s just that it was so calculated, so protracted, and so inevitable. Even though T-Rex started the fight, I still felt badly for him as he was disemboweled. Of course, this type of thing happens among animals every day, from insects in my backyard to lions and antelope on the Serengeti. You gotta eat, and in the animal world, for many species that entails chasing something down and defeating it in battle. I always identified with Wilbur from Charlotte’s web. He understood cruel reality, but he never quite got over the fact that Charlotte had to kill her trapped insects. If he could change things, he would.

He couldn’t, though.

Charlotte still sucked the blood of her victims. Bambi’s mom still caught a bullet. Even king Mufasa was run down by a stampede of wildebeest.

So when I think about the harsh reality of death in the animal kingdom, I’m supremely glad to be a human. In most scenarios, I won’t have to face off against a predator. It’s very unlikely that I will be hunted down for food. In fact, I do not have to hunt my own food either. I don’t have to kill if I would rather not. I can even choose to be a vegetarian if the idea of animals dying for my sustenance bothers me.

Cartoons aside, real animals do not have the ability to plot out a murder in malice. Most certainly, they do not have the wherewithal to torture a victim. Of course, some animals have it worse than others. Cats play with their food all the time, and sometimes the prey dies slowly. However, no animal inflicts pain or distress on another for the purpose of seeing it suffer.

This is where I’m not quite as glad to be a human… because while we don’t have so much to worry about from the animal kingdom, we have a lot to be concerned about from one another.

I was reminded of this recently when I saw a trailer for the new Saw movie. I’ve never watched the series, but from what I understand, the antagonist traps victims and puts them in scenarios where they must gore, maim, or otherwise torture themselves to live. While it’s true that I have a particularly weak stomach, I’ve never been able to understand how anyone who values human life could enjoy watching torture. It is so abhorrent to me that I refuse to watch anything to do with it. The thought of a person causing fear and pain like that on purpose angers me. Last year, I went to see a movie with some friends. Within the first two minutes, it was evident that it would be focusing on torture. I asked the girls I was with if we could leave and watch something else, and they were kind enough to agree (I don’t think it bothered them like it did me).

I’ve asked friends what they enjoy about this type of entertainment in the past. I’ve never been able to understand how someone who values human life could enjoy watching torture. Some have defended the Saw series by explaining that it actually extolls the value of human life. Apparently, it teaches us how far we should be willing to go to protect it.

Seriously?

I cannot see how watching multiple gruesome scenes does anything but lower the value of human life in our eyes. Of course, I am not saying that everyone who watches these movies is in support of torturing and maiming people. In fact, many people who seem to enjoy watching Saw movies are the same ones who call for swift justice upon hearing news stories where someone is kidnapped and tortured. So apparently, while a situation is horrid and vile in reality, it is… entertaining when posed as fiction?

Politically, I hold libertarian views, so I’m not calling for government censorship of these types of movies. What I am asking is for those of us who are Christians to think about what we consume. Some will tell me to get off my high horse and recognize that there is a difference between fiction and reality. Truly, there is. Why not use that argument with pornography? Sexually immoral behavior in real life: sinful. As entertainment? OK. I think we have bought into too much of our culture’s assertions about fantasy. Namely, that what occurs in the heart is not as important as what occurs through our bodies. Jesus taught that what comes out of the mouth reflects what is in the heart, and that what is in the heart makes someone “unclean”. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” Similarly, when it comes to physical sins like murder or adultery, Jesus taught that entertaining the act in one’s heart amounts to the same thing as committing it.

I believe our culture is beginning to face the consequences of that truth now. We have continued to expand the outer limits of what is considered acceptable in terms of violence and sexual deviance. Of course, we are not the only culture to have done this. Toward the very end of Rome’s existence as a Republic, gladiatorial games came into mainstream use as a form of entertainment. POWs, slaves, and sometimes volunteers fought to the death for the entertainment of the populace and at the behest of political leaders. It is telling that only animals and second or third class citizens acted in this capacity. Legally speaking, citizens were forbidden from acting as gladiators because it would endanger their lives (this was not always enforced). In other words, the Romans respected life for some groups, but not others.

The patron of the games (or the crowd, in many instances) could determine whether an obviously defeated gladiator would live. The preference would be indicated by pollice verso, or “with a turned thumb”. It’s not clear whether this gesture is the same “thumbs up” (or down) with which we’re familiar today, but either way, the defeated gladiator was at the mercy of the audience. Now, we’re talking about people who were entertained by watching a fight to the death. Unless the defeated was popular, he had a very good chance of dying for his loss.

When I look at my culture, I see a people who is increasingly bloodthirsty. I see a people who requires more and more suffering to be satiated. I see the beginnings of barbarism creeping into mainstream acceptance.

I can think of no time in our country’s history in which we have more closely identified with the Romans. For many decades now, our legislature has eschewed the values of a republic and moved towards the perceived virtues of empire. If we are to repeat history, this change will continue to our own demise. Whether the decline of the state instigates the moral failure of the people, or whether the reverse is true, we would do well not to ignore the symptoms of this move. The devaluing of human life combined with the thirst for suffering can only lead to disaster.

An early Christian writer, Tertullian, commented on his culture’s ambivalence toward the gladiators:

On the one and the same account they glorify them and they degrade and diminish them; yes, further, they openly condemn them to disgrace and civil degradation; they keep them religiously excluded from council chamber, rostrum, senate, knighthood, and every other kind of office and a good many distinctions. The perversity of it! They love whom they lower; they despise whom they approve; the art they glorify, the artist they disgrace.

Could we not say the same of ourselves? If we patronize faithfully an art that glorifies torture, how can we condemn those who practice it in earnest? We have already done this in the sexual arena. If, in private, we are sexually immoral or consume pornography to no end, how do we then look down on prostitutes and use words like slut in our vitriol? Indeed we have fallen prey to the same attitude Tertullian condemned, and we are accelerating down that path even still.

The Roman empire which provided such excesses of cruelty in entertainment did not avoid it in public practice. It adopted the form of execution, which, even by its own standards was excessively cruel. This “ultimate penalty” is what Jesus of Nazareth suffered under the orders of Pontius Pilate.

I do not write this to condemn those who have chosen to patronize movies like Saw, most particularly if they do not consider themselves followers of Jesus. Certainly, it is not the place of Christians to judge those who do not believe. I do, however, want those of us who are Christians to consider what we are approving. Perhaps more importantly, we should ask ourselves where we are headed. After all, the cruelty of the arena was ultimately extended to Christians under Nero, Domitian, and even the relatively benign Marcus Aurelius.

It would be a shame to find ourselves giving the thumbs up to our own demise.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Clinton on Economics, Part Two

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

In part one, we discussed Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s initial plan to bail out failing banks, former President Bill Clinton’s suggestion to place a moratorium on foreclosures until they can be manually reviewed, and finally, what foreclosure really means for banks and for the economy. Now, let’s watch the second half of Clinton’s interview:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Bill Clinton Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Healthcare Protests

This section of the interview is occupied with the upcoming election rather than the financial crisis at hand. Nonetheless, I’d like to focus on a couple of statements before we move on. Clinton pointed out that many voters will support the candidate with whom they most identify. Staunch supporters are not really the audience here, but rather those who are either not committed or not voting at all. He was so right when he said that those people will “love” Obama if they think he loves them. I could write a sermon here, but I’ll save it for Sunday. Suffice it to say that Clinton has successfully described what motivates most humans to love, including Christians (and it’s not necessarily a bad thing).

Around the 2:00 mark, Stewart pointed out that our nation is divided culturally, with the “left demonizing the right for being narrow-minded and the right demonizing the left for elitism.” I’m seeing a fair amount of this, to some degree or another, even among the religious blogging community. You’ve got Obama viewed as a socialist and a proponent of abortion from the right, and McCain viewed as a harbinger of totalitarianism and a warmonger from the left. My only point here is that Stewart is right: we are a severely divided nation, ideologically. Unfortunately, neither of these candidates is addressing the important issues when it comes to power structures in our nation and fiscal policy. All the left/right debate is serving as a supreme distraction from these essential problems.

Last time, I promised we’d discuss how Congress is involved with the bailout situation. If you’ve been reading this blog recently, then you know that a bailout bill was negotiated between the Democrats and the Republicans and placed before the House of Representatives for a vote. It was expected, at least by President Bush, that this measure would pass. Amazingly, it ended up being blocked by a narrow margin. At this point a modified bill is being presented to the Senate for a vote today. At the moment, it seems the biggest change is to increase the FDIC insurance from $100K to $250K. I can’t seem to figure out what difference that makes in terms of the bill itself. I might be wrong, but do any of you have over $100K stored in a bank account somewhere that you’re really concerned about? I certainly don’t. No, friends, this is just smoke and mirrors — a sad attempt to divert attention from the American public’s massive opposition to this bill.

Just so we understand the role of Congress here, all they are doing is determining whether the U.S. Government will take financial responsibility for defaulted or risky debt in order to allow commercial banks to lend us more money. What Congress is unable to do, at the moment, is to keep the Federal Reserve from pumping more credit into the system on their own through pure inflation and international borrowing. Indeed, they have already done so to the tune of $630 billion and continue to do so on a regular basis. Let’s remember, the Federal Reserve IS NOT a branch of the U.S. Government, and they have no oversight whatsoever in terms of their own activities. The only reason Congress is voting is to determine whether these private banks that comprise the Federal Reserve will be on their own on this one, or whether Uncle Sam will underwrite the bill.

President Bush is convinced of the necessity for strong government intervention to “save” our ailing economy and the banks that are failing as a result. He was none too happy when the bailout bill failed in the House on Monday. It is my personal opinion that the Federal Reserve and those who benefit from it have fed him the notion that our economy will fail without this measure. They might even believe it themselves. Obviously, stock market investors do, because the NASDAQ dropped over 700 points in a single day as a result. That is the largest numerical drop (though not the largest percentage drop by a long shot). Even now, with the Senate poised to vote on a version of this bill today, informal polls are not indicating strong support by the public:

As you may have discerned by now, I disagree strongly that government intervention is necessary or wise in this case. Many intelligent friends (and others around the country) have been asking what we do in lieu of this bill, and how we can survive if something is not done. Most people recognize that there is a problem, but few know what we can do to ameliorate it. Even now, with the Senate poised to vote on a version of this bill today, informal polls are not indicating strong support by the public.

fox pollcnn poll

I am prepared to propose an alternative solution, and I plan to have it up later on today. Stay tuned, and as always, I’m looking forward to your comments and questions.

Tags:,
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

« Older Entries