Liberal to Left Musings: Politics, Religion, Ethics, Justice, Humor

Tuscon and the Bountifulness of Confusion

2011-01-11T12:38:00.016-05:00

The commentariat has become a cornucopia of speculation about why Jared Loughner committed mass murder in Tucson.Two types can be enumerated: (1) monocausal and (2) polycausal.

The monocausal theories come in two extremes: (a) individualistic and (b) social. Some monocausalists claim that it was the act of a solitary individual with a deranged mind. Explanation is to be sought solely in the psychology, life-history, and proclivities of the killer.

Other monocausalists look for social sources. His outrage was the product of the sick political climate of our time. The individualistic theories come mainly from the right side of the political spectrum, the social theories primarily from the left.

No particular individual commentator is likely to fit perfectly into one of these categories as sharply defined, but they do help to locate the vicinity in which he or she can be located.

I have long been fond of polarities and ideal types. But, alas, they are more useful for analysis and than for discovery of truth. But perhaps a beginning can be made.

I am a polycausalist -- along with many others.

To say that there is not a simple, direct causal connection between current social factors or his individual psychology and the the murderous deed is not to say that there is no connection at all. In the last analysis it was the finger of Jared Loughner that pulled the trigger. The fact that he may be schizophrenic, e. g., is not predictive of his outrageous behavior (most mentally ill people do not commit murder), but it may be part of the total ensemble of operative dynamics in his specific case.

The fact that current political rhetoric is excessive and vitriolic does not necessarily imply that it caused him to do what he did, but his mental derangement may be part of the total configuration of factors involved. Causality may be too strong a term from the outset. Perhaps it is better to think of a complex network of dynamic interacting influences with many levels and dimensions become concrete over time in this particular person as a self-determining center of activity expressive of his formed character.

We are dealing with the mysteries and complexities and perhaps contradictions and shifting tendencies that form this individual person as an agent of action. That we do not and perhaps cannot fully understand with the resources available to us. What we can do is remember two of Alfred North Whitehead's dicta:

"Seek simplicity--and distrust it."

"Philosophy may not ignore the multifariousness of the world--the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to a cross."

In Reference to the Two Posts to Follow

2011-01-10T16:46:00.017-05:00

"The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence. This narrowness arises from the idiosyncrasies and timidities of particular authors, of particular social groups, of particular schools of thought, of particular epochs in the history of civilization. The evidence relied upon is arbitrarily biased by the temperaments of individuals, by the provincialities of groups, and by the limitations of schemes of thought. . . . Philosophy may not neglect the multifariousness of the world—the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross." Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 337-338.

Happy Thoughts on a Bright Day

2011-01-10T16:34:00.003-05:00

Millions of people got up this morning, ate a nourishing breakfast, had a productive day at work with congenial colleagues, and were greeted by adoring children who stay active, work hard at school, and have ambitions to make a positive contribution to society. Uncountable acts of spontaneous kindness occurred all over the country. Bystanders spring into action to disarm a mass killer. Volunteers showed up at a myriad of organizations designed to help people in need. Name a good cause that benefits people or animals, and organizations galore are active in working on them. In the far flung places of the globe, some of them dangerous and violent, professional groups sponsored by gifts give aid to the hungry, the sick, the homeless, the helpless, and the afflicted of every sort imaginable. Members of churches, synagogues, and mosques every day are at work doing good deeds to relieve human misery and to make things better. Conscientious public servants do their best within the constraints of bureaucracy to render service in the name of local, state, and federal governments. Even elected officials frequently do things because they are right and promote the general good, independently of whether it helps them politically or not.

And so the list could grow much longer reciting deeds of love, justice, mercy, compassion by every day folks, celebrities, and all sorts of people who turn good intentions into helpful acts reducing suffering in people and animals. Duties are done routinely without regard for reward or attention but because they need to be done to keep life going and for the good order of families, communities, and societies. Children are loved, husbands are responsible, and wives are busy earning money and keeping the family sane. Thus does the world go round and round, and the sun rises and sets on people doing the best they can with what they have to make the best of life and are content with what they have and generous in sharing it with others while being helpful to friend and stranger along the way.

Thoroughly Acerbic Comments on a Gloomy Day

2011-01-04T14:23:00.014-05:00

We are rearing a fat and lazy generation whose members have been assured since birth that they are "awesome," who have absorbed the notion that anything that requires effort should be fun or one can opt out, who have little capacity for delayed gratification and self-denial, whose educational achievements (not totally the fault of their schools) are meager compared to the Chinese (and many others) whose Confucian values have important similarities with the largely defunct Protestant ethic in a society transformed by globalization and communication technologies that leave those with little or the wrong kind of education and few marketable skills with low-paying jobs or none at all, especially if they are young, male, and black or otherwise handicapped by region or ethnicity in a society that lives complacently in a plutocracy that has gamed the system (consider, e. g., the health care bill) to serve the interests of the wealthy (though a large percentage of the wealthy and super-wealthy vote Democratic these days) who benefit from a compliant Congress, resulting in obscene economic inequalities (from many causes) and lack of opportunity that corrupt democracy, whose economy is too-much sustained by consumption and too little by productive investment, whose citizens by and large want greater government benefits, lower taxes, and deficit reduction hardly realizing that we can have any two of these but not all three, who accept a situation in which presidents can fight wars not paid for with volunteers who do the suffering and dying leaving the rest of us--if we have jobs--free to buy fancy cars, big houses, and all the consumer goods voracious corporations seduce us into buying by reassuring us that we are awesome and deserving of everything our money and credit cards will temporarily sustain while corporations invest abroad reducing jobs for Americans as our old and decaying infrastructure threatens our safety while terrorists plot our destruction in a world in which hundreds of millions go hungry, suffer from curable diseases, and live in fear of violence from blood-thirsty, power-hungry agents of darkness who care not for justice and are undeterred by the suffering they cause, while storms, earthquakes, and floods add more misery to helpless parents, children, and families the world over.

Otherwise, except for all the other things that are wrong or out of joint, things are great as another year begins in which large sections of the world are cursed with anti-humane and cruel religious and cultural practices right out of the dark ages that especially hurt women and children as we continue to pay culturally backward Saudi Arabia for oil with funds borrowed from the Chinese in order to sustain our idolatrous love affair with the automobile whose wastes poison the atmosphere and warm the global climate.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Companion Volume to Born into the Wrong World Published

2010-11-05T10:49:00.008-04:00

https://tsw.createspace.com/title/3498756

The Beauty of Ordinary Lives is a 42 page tribute to my parents, a companion volume and supplement to my autobiography Born into the Wrong World. It is available at Lulu.com and at

https://www.createspace.com/3498756

http://www.createspace.com/3490587

Buy at Lulu.com:

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kencatfrontiernetdotnet

From the Preface:

       I was fortunate in that I chose my parents well. John Wilfred Cauthen and Nancy Beulah Harris Cauthen were ordinary folks from rural Georgia. They taught me what unconditional love was by their words and actions. I will be forever grateful to these wonderful people who demonstrated the beauty of ordinary lives. This little booklet is a loving tribute to them. I focus on their last years as they confronted the necessity of giving up the home they loved and moving to a nursing home to spend the rest of their days.
Excerpt:
        Suitcases in the car, it was time. Mother held the kitty and said a long, sad, lingering farewell to her "Baby." My Dad gave me a big, tight hug, flung wide his long, skinny arms, and exclaimed with passionate resignation, "Goodbye, old house." I led one and then the other to the car, put the old, ugly wheelchair that had been Rosalie's in the trunk, and got in beside them. We all took one last look at their home place and drove off. When we arrived, Mother remembered something Rosalie had said when she came to make this her home years before. "This is the place where you come to wait to die."
    Some time ago my Mother told me about a couple several years ago stopping in their driveway and coming to the door. They asked directions to the nursing home where we now sat. In the back seat of that car sitting very still and drawn up was a sad, unsmiling old grey-haired woman looking very scared and downcast. It took little imagination to figure out what was going on. Now I sat at the door of this same unwanted but needed refuge, somewhere to live that was not and could not be home, a place both forbidding and welcoming, a sanctuary that promised care and safety without ceasing to be dreaded as the place you go when nowhere else will do, where you don't want to go but go anyway because you have to, the place where you come to wait to die.

2010-11-03T11:36:00.001-04:00

Announcing the Publication of the Revised Standard Version of My Autobiography

The revised standard version of my autobiography is available now at Lulu.com and at CreateSpace.com

https://www.createspace.com/3490587

If you buy from CreateSpace please enter discount code

6XQY8WZW

at checkout (worth $3)

The Lulu version is described below:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/born-into-the-wrong-world/13394968

Born into the Wrong World

By Kenneth Cauthen

Paperback, 240 pages

$11.58 You Save: 20%

List Price: $14.48

The life and thought of Kenneth Cauthen. Born in the rural South in 1930, he was a pastor, professor of theology, and author of twenty books. Cauthen describes his life in the context of the times from the Great Depression to the current Age of Terror. He describes his personal life, marriage, divorce, remarriage, life in a rural Baptist Church, and Professor in a theological seminary.

Add to Cart

The author has lived through momentous times. Born in 1930, his life covers a span from the Great Depression to the Age of Terror. Born into the Wrong World tells the story of a country boy from the segregated South who grew up among farmers and mill workers and spent his life trying to make sense of life and its mysteries, wondering why there is so much suffering and injustice and why so few share the conviction that something radical needs to be done about it.

All is here – his life experiences, his inner struggles, suffering, early sexual trauma, his career as pastor who almost got thrown out over the race issue and as professor of theology, his marriage, episodes of depression, and devastating divorce, his theological development and mature thought, his ambivalence about the church, his social and political views – everything.

The author says, “I wanted to end the story with an account of my funeral, but I was not willing to meet the publisher’s deadline.
Kenneth Cauthen

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

What's Wrong with this Country Anyway?

2010-11-02T12:17:00.001-04:00

Let's get one thing straight: By and large, generally speaking, for the most part, what the American people want is increased governmental benefits, lower taxes, and deficit reduction. You might be able to get two out of three, but nobody knows how to achieve all three. This helps explains the contradictions, absurdities, and confusion seen so widely today.

Some rave and rant about the deficit and want a smaller government that spends less. But when asked what they would cut, they are short of specifics that would make a significant difference. Well, of course, there is always the tried and true waste, fraud, and abuse, and there may be inefficiencies in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, etc.

But the big bucks are elsewhere. We could cut Social Security Benefits.

Oh no, either we or our parents or grandparents depend on that.

What about Medicare? No, of course not, for the same reason that we can't deeply touch Social Security?

Medicaid? Well, no, too many poor people depend on that.

Ah, then, you want to cut the mammoth defense budge?

Hell, no, are you crazy?

OK, you want to reduce the deficit but don't want big cuts in either of the Big Four -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense. Your only alternative is to raise taxes!

Now you are getting crazy even weird. Taxes are too high now.

So it goes, The swingers who have voted against the ins in the last two elections and put Democrats are poised in 2010 it appears to turn out the ins once again. Independents and others in this class apparently have no defined ideology so they go back and forth between parties and persons apparently based on how the world is treating them at the moment, gut feelings, self-centered sentiments --presentism and selfishness, I call it. Because Obama came in promising change, hope, and a politics transcending party in the midst of the greatest depression since the 1930's not of his own making and did not make us all prosperous in two years, these fickle, confused, gut-driver party switchers want to be rid of the President and a Democratic Congress.

They can't get what they want--smaller government with lower taxes, greater benefits, and deficit reduction--so they act out of anger, rage, full of contradictions, confusion, ignorance, and incompatible demands.

As the most colorful New York gubernatorial candidate summarized his platform, "Rent is too damn high." That's about as good as it gets in 2010 as I prepare to vote shortly.

Hooray for American democracy!

Quasi-acerbic Comment for the Day

2010-11-02T11:08:00.001-04:00

A certain segment of the Republican party appears not to accept the moral and political legitimacy of Democrats, especially Barack Obama, to govern. It is contrary to the grain of the universe, a cosmic mistake. In their eyes Republicans clearly represent the powers, principles, and people that should be in charge. All this gives intensity, even rage, to the very fact that a Democratic President and Congress are presently in office.

Theological Question of the Day: Was Jesus saved?

2010-11-02T11:01:00.000-04:00

Is there any New Testament evidence that Jesus ever accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior?

Obama's Folly

2010-09-27T15:38:00.000-04:00

President Obama seems determined to do what many others over the centuries have failed to do: win in Afghanistan.

The obstacles are many and formidable:
an enemy that retreats into sanctuaries in Pakistan;
an offense limited to stealth drone attacks in these sanctuaries;
a Pakistani military that is unable or unwilling to destroy them;
a Pakistani government that is obsessed with India, unstable, and
     limited in what in can do to attack fellow Muslims without risking
     overthrown by militant extremists;
an American public that is tired of the endless conflicts with Muslim
   nations and losing confidence in our ability to restore peace, order,
     and justice in that troubled, complex land;
billions spent in these wars in Muslim nations that badly needed
     at home;
a partner in Karzai who is corrupt and surrounded by corruption---we   could go on.

The larger context is that we fight these wars with volunteers and deficit financing, a situation that costs the rest of us very little at the moment. But I worry about a situation in which presidents can wage wars which are personally costly for a few but with little or no personal burden for the rest of us.

My impression of the military is that for the most part their standard line is the same as it was in Vietnam--give us more troops, a clear definition of our mission, and a little more time.

We face a cruel dilemma. On the one hand, our leaving might result in another Taliban and disaster for the masses of Afghan people, especially women and children. On the other hand, we face the prospect of staying there indefinitely with no assurance that we can ever make things right.

There is no good solution, only bad, worse, and catastrophic options. But which is which? If we knew, would the political situation allow its implementation?

Is this a glimmer of hope?
http://www.salon.com/news/afghanistan/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/09/27/afghan_taliban_talks

Or is it like all those false hopes when Israel has talks with Palestinians?

Obama: Intellect Over Feeling, Being Cool Over Being Passionate

2010-09-24T15:33:00.001-04:00

Consensus: When Clinton said he felt our pain, he appeared to be really hurting. When Obama says it, we don't doubt his truthfulness, but he does not come across as feeling it deeply in his heart. This jibes with my frequent criticism that he sounds too much like a professor and not enough like a politician. I don't expect him to be a prophet. That is another vocation.

I wonder sometimes if deep in his heart he is an idealist who wants everybody just to get along, despite his schooling in and sometimes practice of "Chicago politics." He does not want to offend anybody-- Republicans, big business--remember FDR who said they hate me; I welcome their hatred. He wants everybody to like him--generals, bankers, school kids, dogs, and canaries. Now cooperation in ventures that promote the national interest and the common good is a wonderful thing. But sometimes one has to get nasty in the spirit of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove to be successful.

Would it help if we saw more of the latter in Obama's pragmatic political practice? I wonder.

What's Wrong With These People Anyway?

2010-09-22T15:37:00.002-04:00

Johnny came home with a black eye, a bloody nose, and a few loose teeth. His Mother was horrified, but Johnny said, grinning from ear to ear, "Yeah, Mom, but you should see the other guy!"

That appears to be what the Democratic message gets boiled down to this fall. "If you think we are bad, the other party is worse." Although it convinces me, that is not an inspiring slogan. But will it work for independents and swing voters?

Please explain to me why these coveted voters swing back and forth tossed about by "every wind of doctrine." (1) Why would folks who voted for Obama and Democrats in 2006 and 2008 say they plan to vote Republican this November?

I have voted for one Republican in my entire life beginning with 1948 until now. I preferred Republican Russell Peterson to be governor of Delaware in 1968. He was by far the most progressive candidate, whose like are totally extinct today. Every other time the Democratic candidates were more in line with my ideology and values, although sometimes I have had to hold my nose while pulling the lever.

I suppose that many people are less ideologically oriented than I am or have an outlook that is more in the middle, since admittedly I am well toward the left and got paid while I was articulating a point of view in some detail. Folks in the middle could more easily than I tilt between parties as circumstances and issues change.

I suspect however that a lot of swingers react on the basis of what is happening to them at the moment, what they feel in the gut. The "in party" must be responsible if I can't find a job, pay my mortgage, or send my kids to college. So I will vote them out. If unemployment were at 4.8% and their incomes were rising, and times were good all around, presumably they would reward the party in power. So a president and his majority party are in large measure victims or beneficiaries of fate but with limited control over what is going on in the world during their tenure.

So despite all the good things Democrats have done, the times have not been kind to them, and they may get punished come election day.

"Yeah, I know, but I have seen the other guy."

_______________________________________________

(1). . . so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Ephesians 4:14. (RSV)

Average Americans and America's Problems

2010-09-17T17:09:00.005-04:00

Decades ago a prominent historian noted that we have contradictory attitudes about the great mass of the American people. On the one hand, we think of them as gifted with common sense, full of practical wisdom, fair-minded, and of sound character, who--given all the facts and sufficient time-- usually make reasonable political decisions. On the other hand, we see them as driven by emotion, short on knowledge, subject to demagogic appeals, and capable of great mischief in the voting booth. I confess that both of these conceptions are resident within me.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that at the moment the latter, less flattering posture dominates. Tea Party success is only the beginning. Voters are angry with incumbents, the government, the direction the country is going, and are in an ugly, rebellious mood. However, this outlook is generating something less than a rational, effective political response. Folks don't know, don't believe, or have forgotten that the consensus of economic experts and knowledgeable analysts was that, while the bailout of banks was regrettable and distasteful, it was necessary to rescue the economy from disaster. It was done primarily not because the elite bankers were worthy but in order to save the rest of us as well. The hole was in their end of the boat, but all of us would have drowned if the ship had gone down. But the outrage in the guts of the masses--for good reasons from a limited perspective (theirs)--expresses the feeling that we had a bailout for Wall Street but not for Main Street.

The deficit is widely decried, but it may be impossible to rescind the Bush tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich and super-rich, although their continuation would would greatly increase the deficit over time and would not generate the kind of economic growth defenders claim.

Have people forgotten that under Bush two wars were started and put on a credit card? The same was true of the prescription drug bill for seniors. All these contributed mightily to the deficit Republicans now scream about.

Voters prefer Democrats and their economic policies to Republicans and their economic policies but say they they will vote for Republican candidates this fall.

An article in a political journal today warns us not to underestimate the vote-getting power of Christine O'Donnell because she comes across as an "average American!"

An Illinois Senator years ago said that his constituents want lower taxes and greater benefits. So far as I know, this is still true of voters.

We could go with this listing of examples that do not commend the rationality and virtue of the masses in our present context, but let us move on.

Apparently voters think that if the players are replaced, things will get better. Depending on the replacements, there may be a grain of truth in this. But the deeper, more intractable reality is that the political system is tainted with corruption. Wealthy corporations and the rich generally have far too much influence. Out of necessity for reelection purposes, members of Congress lust for money and prostitute themselves to get it. Powerful lobbies, often representing parochial interests inimical to the common good, e. g., the NRA, shape legislation, inordinately charm regulatory agencies into furthering their interests, and threaten and cajole legislators into doing their bidding. Yet the great masses show no inclination to support the fundamental transformation of the political system that justice and their own economic interests require. People rightly vote their values too, but some of them--like the attitude toward gay and transgendered people--are reactionary and stubbornly resistant to progressive change.

Witness the fact that although presidents since the time of Teddy Roosevelt have advocated universal health insurance, only this year was this goal nearly accomplished and only in a deeply flawed manner at that.

A one-payer system--some kind of Medicare for all that would be the most efficient and effective way to assure coverage for all--is nowhere in sight.

Oh practical, fair-minded, wise, reasonable, virtuous masses, where are you when you are so badly needed.

Do Religious Nut Cases Deserve Global Attention?

2010-09-08T11:46:00.002-04:00

So, an extremist pastor of a congregation of 50 is going to burn copies of the Koran on 9/11, what is the big deal? Why is he being interviewed? Why is this world-wide news? OK, profit-driven, audience-seeking, sensationalist-loving media know that this is a good way to arouse emotions, get viewers, and attract advertisers. OK, it is a bad, bigoted, foolish thing to do, but why give this fanatic a global audience with interviews, pictures, and repeated exposure day and night.

Do we not remember that in the early 1950's when the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was published, burning parties were held by fundamentalists all around whose allegiance was to the REAL Bible, the King James Version, which transliterated the original term as baptism instead of rendering its English meaning as immerse, to dip -- a clear instance of theological bias Baptists tolerated without protest.

A Duke professor who was on the translating committee called this Bible burning progress because in the old days they burned the translators! Holy Book burners, flag burners, bra burners, and the like are--like the poor--always with us. Such folks are generally a small minority whose historical and social influence is minimal.

So how should we deal with the Koran burners? Condemn them but give them no more press than is absolutely necessarily. Now if 10,000 churches and synagogues, the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, the President of the United States, and other such notables around the world should preside over mass burnings of the Koran, then that is news, big news, bad news. But one pastor of half a hundred or less in Florida? Let's have some sense of proportion about all this.

Drugs, Drug Czars, and Bad Policy

2010-08-26T17:43:00.003-04:00

Bob Bennett was the first Drug Czar. Yesterday on TV he said that he (the first) and all subsequent Drug Czars were opposed to the legalization of marijuana. Stronger forms are now, he reported, and concluded that use would increase if it were legally available. OK, but I would like to know by his logic why alcohol and cigarettes should not be made illegal too. They both do far more social harm than pot ever did or ever will, yet they are legal.

The reason that pot is illegal and alcohol and tobacco are legal is that the latter two are socially accepted, while marijuana is not.

We tried outlawing alcohol and found that it spawned widespread flaunting of the law by otherwise decent citizens and a crime wave run by underworld gangs who got rich. We abandoned the experiment because it did not work and kept only timid or unusually scrupulous folks from consuming the forbidden fruit.

The logic and experimental evidence are clear. But social and political readiness lag behind. Maybe one day we will get rational about all this, but don't hold your breath.

A more extensive case is made at:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/drugpolicy.htm
This essay was written about ten years ago, but the arguments remain essentially the same today.

To All WHo Think the Free Market is Self-Regulating.

2010-08-21T10:26:00.000-04:00

OK, if all the bad medicine being sold, all the products being recalled, including cars, eggs, baby cribs -- all with potential to injure or kill were not enough to justify government intervention to protect people from greedy or careless capitalists, here is another reason why laissez faire capitalism is dangerous.

The fact that so many medical instruments used in hospitals look alike and are interchangeable leads to errors that can and has killed patients or made them much sicker. Efforts to force manufacturers to design tubes, e. g., for a distinctive purpose -- feeding or introducing fluids in veins, etc. are being resisted because it might affect their profit margins.

Advocates in California got legislation passed in 2008 that would have mandated that feeding tubes no longer be compatible with tubes that go into the skin or veins by 2011. But in 2009, AdvaMed, the manufacturers’ trade association, successfully pushed legislation to delay the bill’s effects until 2013 and 2014 or until the international standards group reaches a decision.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/health/policy/21tubes.html?hp

Three cheers for an interventionist government to protect life, health, and to promote the common good.

Phooey on you, Milton Friedman, and all your kind.

Is Obama a Muslim? Cultural Idiocy Running Wild

2010-08-20T21:48:00.001-04:00

That perhaps one in five Americans believes that Obama is a Muslim boggles the mind. It ia monument to prejudice, unscrupulous political opportunism, willing ignorance of the invincible sort, downright lying, and deliberate deceit.

Have the professors and perpetrators of this nefarious falsehood forgotten that two summers ago Obama was being excoriated for belonging to the Christian church pastored by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright?

He is not a Muslim, but what if he were? The Constitution forbids a religious test for office. Thank goodness the Constitution was written when it was. Such a marvelous document would never be accepted today.

Prudence might suggest that the President join a church, not that that would quell the idiocy abroad, but it might help a little. As Mark Shields said tonight on the PBS News Hour, Americans want their president to belong to a church but to wear their religion lightly.

Senseless Furor over Building a House of Worship

2010-08-20T12:38:00.004-04:00

Even more exasperating than the media frenzy every summer about what Bret Favre will do (I don't give a %$@!) is the near hysteria in some quarters over the building of a mosque near the site of the 9/11 attack. The objections have no basis whatsoever unless one assumes the identity of the Muslims who attacked with Islam as a whole. Many critics who protest that they do no such thing end up doing it anyway de facto, or else their objections are groundless and silly.

A compromise is that they they have a right to build, but it is unwise and insensitive to do so. Why? There are mosques all over New York City that nobody objects to them. Yet some, including the governor of the state, seem to think that just placing the house of worship a little further away would honor both the First Amendment and the sensitivities of those who are offended. Perhaps in sheer pragmatic terms that is the best way to resolve the issue, but it ignores principle in favor of feelings and misguided conceptions.

Some of the analogies are just plain dumb as well as committing at least one logical fallacy. The notion, e. g., that it would be like building a memorial to the Nazis next to Treblinka or Auschwitz is paraded by politicians more interested in political effect that rational soundness. But Nazis were evil as a whole, while Islam as a whole is not identical with a few radical extremists whose interpretation of the Koran is generally regarded by scholars as an insult to a great religion. Would we accept the identity of the Ku Klux Klan, whose symbol was a cross, with Christianity?

President George W. Bush took a sensible view and called Islam a religion of peace that could not be identified with a terrorism. I wish the former president would emerge and say a strong and healing word to the protesters, among whom are many Republicans.

By the way have we forgotten that the US has been killing Muslims on a regular basis in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003, amounting to hundreds of thousands of combat troops and civilians. Leaving aside Afghanistan for the moment, every person killed in Iraq by Americans is a horrible and unnecessary tragedy completely unjustified by either moral principle or national self-interest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/10/iraq.iraqtimeline

Opinion Research and "the Fallacy of Misplaced Concretion"

2010-08-18T15:35:00.002-04:00

Twice in recent days I have been called and asked to participate in an opinion survey. The first time I agreed, and soon I was being asked things like "Do you think the country is going in the right direction?" At first I protested that my opinion was more complicated than that but soon learned that the caller would accept only the answers on the survey. We proceeded a while until I finally asked how many more questions there were. She answered that she would read faster! In exasperation I said I did not intend to answer any more question. What is wrong here?

By insisting that all answers be of the yes or no type or at best a multiple choice option, the fullness of the whole is distorted. Reality (or at least my opinion about it) does not conform to these categories. The assumption behind them commits what A. N. Whitehead called "the fallacy of misplaced concretion (FMC), to wit, an abstraction is made from a totality and the abstraction is identified with the whole concrete reality in all its complexity and with all its ambiguities, paradoxes, and contradictions (a paradox is a contradiction when used by a theologian).

My refusal to answer in the simplistic terms offered annoyed me and frustrated the questioner, who was only doing what she was told.

The second time I just said no and ended the matter.

Is the country going in the right direction? Yes, in my opinion, in some respects, e. g., the changing attitudes toward gays and lesbians. In other respects, in my view, we are going in the wrong direction, e. g., toward a more dysfunctional politics and a meaner less civil society. A mere yes or no will not suffice, unless we are willing to commit the dreaded fallacy. In letters to the editor, radio talk shows, TV punditry, sermons, and daily conversations, the FMC is committed a lot!

The best these surveys can do is to assess a general mood regarding what the respondents feel is the most important factor to them at the moment, a sort of universalized gut feeling about things.

The next time I am called, I think I will say just say no and refer them to my blog site.

Big Corporations are Unpatriotic

2010-08-09T13:02:00.002-04:00

Large corporations are sitting on huge sums of cash but do not invest them because of their uncertainty about the future, e. g., government regulations and the like. Meanwhile, profits are high and are staying high because of labor saving efficiencies and by shipping investments and jobs overseas. All this is occurring while unemployment in this country is high and no prospect of anything but slow change for the better for workers.

Hence, I conclude that big corporations are unpatriotic. They love the country only to the extent that it provides a location and opportunity to make money. The goal is a high return on investment. The means are providing goods and services in return. If that were widely and fully understood, we might do better in trying to channel their efforts into ways that serve the good of the country and not simply the interests of shareholders.

And while we are at it, should we laugh or cry at the complaint of conservatives that government cannot do anything right? They point with glee to every blunder, inefficiency, and failure of government while neglecting to mention such things as the BP oil spill, the constant recall of faulty products, including baby cribs that kill infants, drugs that do more harm than good, and other such inconveniences.

Irrational Non-exuberance

2010-07-26T12:56:00.002-04:00

We do not sufficiently appreciate, I fear, the dilemmas that prevent rational decision-making to solve problems in ways that promote the common good.

The rational solution for health care would be to provide Medicare for all. This would be more efficient and provide good services at lower costs, especially if people were forced to pay for expensive treatments that have not shown to be sufficiently effective to merit public subsidy. But such a solution is not politically possible.

It seems clear that gifts to doctors from drug companies lead to more prescriptions for expensive brand-name drugs rather than much cheaper but equally effective generics. But so far no legislation has been passed to accomplish that. My experience has been that some doctors don't take cost of drugs into account but out of habit prescribe what they are most familiar with or what they have been bribed to do. I have educated a few doctors myself on this score.

The best way to reduce oil consumption would be a carbon tax on producers and a tax on gasoline on consumers. This would reflect the true (full) costs of consumption and make energy alternatives attractive to investors. But the rational solutions are not politically possible because of the power of oil companies and the love affair of Americans with cars and cheap gas.

If we want to reduce obesity, we could make unhealthful foods more expensive by eliminating corn subsidies and taxing obesity-producing foods. But this is not politically possible.

We could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives if we had begun decades ago to make tobacco an illegal product and enable a transition for growers and give producers of cigarettes time to find alternatives. But political exuberance for that rational solution was lacking. Rates of smoking now vary by class and education -- the higher the less use of cigarettes, whereas puffing away was a standard feature of movies decades ago, associating it with sophistication.

Ideally, we would treat Palestinian interests equal to those of Israel, but don't because of conservative Christian religion and the power of the Israeli lobbies. Sensible gun control is impossible because of a persisting frontier and rural mentality, aided and abetted by the political power of the National Rifle Association.

More politically feasible are measures that provide more information but are less effective in inducing behavioral changes. Information on labels and restaurant menus about calorie and fat content is good but relatively ineffective in changing what people eat. Public information campaigns on the merits of conservation and healthy eating habits presuppose that facts about what is good and bad for health will persuade people to change their habits cannot be bad. But how effective are they?

In short, in many cases what is effective and good for most is politically impossible because of the powerful self-interests of short-sighted citizens and the rich and powerful -- especially large corporations and well-organized special interests like the National Rifle Association, the Israeli lobbies, and regional Cuban voting power. On the other hand, what is politically possible is relatively ineffective in promoting justice and the common good.

Wouldn't it be refreshing to see some rational exuberance for what is both effective and in the common interest? Tomorrow I will tell you about some other utopian dreams.

Selah!

See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/opinion/15loewenstein.html?_r=1&hpl
l

Working Class Whites Discriminated Against

2010-07-20T08:35:00.001-04:00

Our elite universities and colleges practice discrimination in their admission habits, not against blacks or women but against working class and poor whites, especially if they are Christians. Check it out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/opinion/19douthat.html?_r=1&hp

It's Jobs or Lack of them that is Obama's Problem. Forget the Sophisticated Punditry

2010-07-20T08:20:00.005-04:00

Generally speaking, presidents are judged by how well the economy is doing, especially how voters themselves are doing. They tend to generalize from their own situation and pronounce presidents worthy of reelection on that basis, unless some some overriding international crisis (like the Iranian hostage mess) or a hated war takes precedence. Never mind the passage of health care, financial reform, and the like. How I am doing in terms of my own economic welfare is the chief determinant of voting habits.

So forget all that ephemeral day to day stuff the TV and newspaper pundits suffocate us with. Look at the employment numbers, wages, and income for the masses. It's stupid not to recognize that it is, has been, and likely will be the economy as it plays itself out in the body of citizens who express their own level of economic satisfaction in the voting booth.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/opinion/19krugman.html?hp

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/19/zelizer.obama.midterm/index.html?iref=obinsite

Risks, Reason, and Reality

2010-06-11T10:56:00.002-04:00

We, the American people, need to get real about risks in these modern times. Lately, we hear that we have to find out why the BP oil spill happened and take steps to see that it never happens again. Nonsense! Every human activity from walking, driving buggies, riding in automobiles at high speeds on crowded highways, flying over oceans in jet planes on up to sending astronauts to the moon is fraught with the possibility of mishap. This becomes ever more true as we move toward more complex, large-scale technological systems, e. g., drilling for oil a mile deep into the ocean.

Risks are reducible, and we ought to have the most effective kind of stern and intelligent oversight and regulation that human wisdom can devise. The safety systems should operate with integrity and not at the bidding of those whose profits might be reduced. But under the best possible conditions we humans can manage, accidents and devastation will be occasional features of human life.

Politicians and pundits and citizens take note. We could, of course, try living in caves as hermits, but then there are bears, bats, and bugs, not to mention snakes, and other inconveniences.

Does Israel Have a Right to Exist?

2010-06-07T18:25:00.023-04:00

Hamas is condemned because it refuses to accept the right of Israel to exist. A good case can be made for Hamas on historical and moral grounds. It may have been a mistake to establish the state of Israel in 1947 by bringing in thousands of mostly European Jews to a land largely populated by hostile Arabs and where few Jews had lived until well into the 19th century. Jewish possession of the land had been lost for more than a thousand years.

The result has been constant hostility, hatred, wars, and violent conflict with no end in sight. It is the source of Muslim hatred of Europe and America, constant turmoil, and a threat to peace in the entire region. The notion that Palestine belongs to the Jews on the basis of a divine promise three thousand years ago is plausible only to those who find it plausible, including Jewish and Christian fundamentalists. Granted, some solution was needed for the constant persecution of Jews in many lands including Europe and America, but in my opinion the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine was probably not it.

A distinction needs to be made between accepting the moral right of Israel to exist and the full acceptance of the fact that Israel does exist, will exist, and must be dealt with accordingly with all the implications thereunto appertaining.

For practical reasons Hamas needs to come to terms with Israel as a reality, no matter how much they despise the fact. But pragmatism does not flourish in the presence of deeply rooted ideology and hostility toward Jews. The refusal of Hamas to accept this inexorable reality practically, if not theoretically and morally, is fraught with dire consequence for Jews and Arabs. To contest the full implications of the actuality of Israel as a Jewish state is futile and will be the source of continuing bloodshed and hateful agitation on and on. Sending missiles to explode in the cities of Israel solves nothing and perpetuates hatred and retaliation.

On the other hand Israel needs to stop the settlements and withdraw to their 1967 borders. This swap of land for peace needs to be accompanied by some plan, probably internationally mediated, for compensating Palestinian refugees for loss of their homes and livelihood because of their expulsion from Israel in the years following Jewish statehood. Israel needs to start treating Arabs in their territory with decency, and full respect and guarantee them all civil and personal rights that Jews have.

This is not likely to happen on either side. This, after all, is the Middle East where too few are willing to say with Yitzhak Rabin “enough of blood and tears.” So "two communities of suffering" (Edward Said) will continue to suffer and bleed and hate until reason or sheer exhaustion leads to a resolution tolerable to both if not loved or welcomed by either.

News Channels Have too Much Time to Fill

2010-05-27T19:21:00.111-04:00

Having so many full-time news networks is not necessarily a good thing. To fill all this time, they focus on "breaking news" with reporters on the spot to follow events as they happen. The result is that frequently trivial occurrences are noted with a solemnity that far exceeds newsworthiness.

When a catastrophe occurs, every boo-boo is captured, every failure noted. The current oil spill is a good example.

The assumption of journalists seems to be that immediately upon a catastrophe, all relevant institutions should be so perfectly prepared and organized that all the right things begin to happen at once without any gaps and proceed without error until everything issue is resolved. Unfortunately, the world does not operate like that. Institutions are imperfect, and leadership is fallible and sometimes incompetent and often negligent. Having this pointed out twenty fours hours a day does not necessarily serve the public good, given the excesses that so much time allows.

Commentators demand explanation for every perceived failure and often seem to know infallibly what ought to be happening and what everybody should be doing to correct things. No mercy is shown and the recognition that some problems are complex and difficult to resolve is almost totally absent. Journalists appear to lack any comprehension of their own fallibility and ignorance.

The gaps in time between "breaking news" events are filled with commentary from an innumerable host of folks who presumably but frequently do not have something worthwhile to say. Political critics are omnipresent, though they are as often wrong as right and are sometimes silly. Gov. Jindal of Louisiana who thinks we have too much government and too many regulations is getting air time to criticize Obama for not doing enough.

Some of the critics sound as if they think Obama should be out there on the rig shouting orders to engineer and executives and directing every move. They seem deaf to the rejoinder that the government does not have the know how or the equipment to stop the oil flow. The only sense I can make of all this is that they want him to be louder and angrier.

The larger context is that too much attention is paid to ephemeral events that pass quickly into the trivia of history. The worst example is when all else is dropped to focus attention on a police chase in California followed by helicopters for an hour until the culprit is stopped, runs out of gas, or crashes.

Maybe the news channels should be forced to show Bugs Bunny cartoons half the time. The world would be no worse off and might even get along better. It certainly would be more high-class entertainment and much less boring than a constant diet of "breaking news."

Private Splendor, Public Squalor

2010-05-25T15:07:00.005-04:00

Roger Cohen's column today noted that there are more "cellphones in India than toilets. Almost half the Indian population, 563.7 million people, is hooked up to modern communications, while just 366 million have access to modern sanitation, according to a United Nations study."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25iht-edcohen.html

This reminded me of John Kenneth Galbraith's 1958 book The Affluent Society. He pointed out that post-World War II America had become rich in private goods but poor in public goods. This describes precisely the nature of present-day politics and cultural values. We value clever private cell phones more than child care support for working-class parents with low incomes. Our roads, bridges, and infrastructure generally crumble while ever more advanced cell phones are put in the hands of kids as soon as they can push the buttons and lift the device to their ears.

We have the latest electronic technology, splendid cars and television sets, the most advanced medical care and an abundance of private consumer goods without end available for those who have money but no universal health care to which every citizen is entitled from birth regardless of economic circumstances.

Is there something wrong here?

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Babel, Pentecost, and Politics

2010-05-23T13:53:00.001-04:00

I have always been struck by the contrast between Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) and Pentecost (Acts 2:1-11). In the former, all people spoke one language but ended up in confusion, unable to understand one another. In the latter, diverse people who spoke in different ways all could make sense of what the others were saying.

Which is the current state of American politics most like? Problem: How can we make political speech more like Pentecost and less like Babel?

Mail your answers on a postcard attached to a 2010 Lexus. Winner will be given a free meal at Cracker Barrel.

Exegesis Follows Belief, Although Exegesis Is an Important Determinant of Belief

2010-05-17T10:14:00.001-04:00

The recent election of an openly lesbian candidate, The Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool of Baltimore, as bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Los Angeles is the latest chapter in Anglican turmoil.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, denounced anti-gay prejudice but said the Anglican Communion was not in a position to approve same-sex marriages. "Changing the Anglican theological position on homosexuality would have to be based on the most painstaking biblical exegesis and on a wide acceptance of the results within the Communion," he wrote.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-monroe/lesbian-priest-re-ignites_b_384382.html

What the Archbishop neglects is that people do the exegesis. Exegesis most often follows from what the people doing the exegeting believe, not the other way around, although the latter is not inconceivable or without real examples. When people accept same-sex love as legitimate, exegesis will provide the biblical foundation for it.

The problem is not fundamentally exegetical but that many Christians believe that homosexuality is wrong. Otherwise, they would deal with the issue the same they do with the Scriptural approval of slavery, the stoning of male children, killing men engaging in sex with men, and the subservience of women -- to mention a few examples where clear textual evidence is present.

The text matters, of course, but other things matter more. Supremely what matters is the whole set or theological and moral beliefs Christians have come to have at a given point, for whatever reasons, the text of Scripture being among the most important of such reasons.

What Christians who approve of same-sex love need most is not more and better exegesis but to find non-exegetical ways to change hearts and minds. When that happens, the foundational and sustaining exegesis will be forthcoming. Selah!

Hint: The best, but not unfailing, way to change minds is to demonstrate the deep and immense suffering caused by the church's traditional attitude.

For the assumptions underlying these claims, see:

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/herm.htm

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/bibint.htm

Why Churchill Ordered an Attack on the French Navy in WW2

2010-05-13T11:58:00.003-04:00

Nothing illustrates the ironies, complexities, ambiguities, tragedies, paradoxes, and contradictions of history than a little known episode of World War II. Noteworthy also are the uncertainties that accompany many momentous decisions in the life of individuals and nations. Cf: Søren Kierkegaard and Reinhold Niebuhr.

After France signed an armistice with the Nazis in 1940 and agreed to call their Navy to French ports, Churchill was afraid that eventually all these ships would fall into Nazi hands and used against Britain, insuring victory for the Germans against them. Commander of the French fleet Admiral Darlan assured Churchill that he would scuttle all this ships rather than let the Germans have them, but Churchill doubted that he would actually do it, and he needed certainty. Some evidence indicates that Admiral Darlan would have done what he promised.

Meanwhile, Churchill's pleas to Roosevelt for 50 old warships went unheeded because Roosevelt thought that Britain and the American ships would fall to the Nazis. Churchill demanded that French ships be put under British control or sailed away to safe Allied ports. When a deal could not be worked out, Churchill ordered an attack on French vessels at a naval base in the French-Algiers port of Mers-el-Kebir. destroying a number of French ships and killing 1,300 French sailors—more than the number of French soldiers killed by the Germans at that point in the war. The British public approved; the French were outraged, and Germany used the event for propaganda purposes. Roosevelt was now convinced of British resolve and capacity and sent the ships and other military supplies to aid Britain.

The uncertainties, ironies, complexities, ambiguities, tragedies, paradoxes, and contradictions of history: they are all there.

See: Secrets of the Dead: Churchill’s Deadly Decision, PBS, May 12, 2010

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/episodes/churchills-deadly-decision-preview-this-episode/548/

Absolutism: Gun Rights and Terrorists

2010-05-06T10:58:00.002-04:00

Absolutism is a position that holds under any and all conditions, allows no exceptions for any reasons, circumstances, or possibilities. An absolutist is one who holds such positions.

Should known or suspected terrorists be permitted to fly on airplanes?

Should known or suspected terrorists be permitted to buy guns?

Reasonable people would say no to both questions.

There are folks in Congress who answer no to the first question but yes to the second. Absurd? Yes. But it illustrates the nature of absolutism.

The National Rifle Association and those in Congress it has bought or sufficiently intimidated are absolutists, along with any who might be absolutists by conscience or conviction.

Beware of absolutists in politics -- and religion.

For a delightful look at terrorists and their right to buy guns, see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/opinion/06gcollins.html?hp

or Toles' cartoon in the Washington Post:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/tomtoles/?hpid=opinionsbox1

Insufficient Information and Bad Thinking

2010-05-03T15:51:00.000-04:00

Suppose 87% of the people in Strange county jail are people with bright fuchsia eyes though they constitute only 2% of the population. Seems like something is wrong here. But suppose that 87% of the crimes in the county are committed by people with bright fuchsia eyes. As my Dad would say, "That brings on more talk." Doesn't seem so wrong, unjust, or unexpected now does it?

We need all relevant information to avoid confusion and bad thinking.

Profiling and Clear Thinking

2010-05-02T19:49:00.002-04:00

Suppose than in Banktown, 90% of the bank robberies are committed by white men 80 and older with beards. (For the record I fit that description.) Would it make sense for police to pay close attention to people who fit that profile hanging around banks? But wouldn't that be race, age, and beard profiling? The question illustrates the confusion surrounding the current discussion. We are supposed to be against all sorts of profiling, right?

Perhaps a relevant distinction (than which nothing is more useful) would be helpful. If profiling means focusing suspicion (stopping, questioning, detaining, etc.) on people merely because they fit a particular profile and for no reason relevant to the crime or other offense at issue, that is prejudice, is wrong. and should be prohibited, as in "driving while black."

If, however, the profile is relevant to the crime as suggested in the example given, profiling would be sensible policing and should be commended and promoted. If would be foolish to ignore white men 80 and over with beards when they are in or near a bank in Banktown.

Sometimes a relevant distinction can clear things up beautifully.

Confederate History Month and Yankee Bias Against White Southerners

2010-04-18T18:21:00.004-04:00

If Yankees would get off this Confederate thing, I would be happy to let it alone. But Frank Rich prompts me to say something more. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/18rich.html?hp

I think the reason they go on about it so is that they equate the essence of the Confederacy with pure evil, allowing no room for anything good anywhere on anybody's part, whereas America is regarded as at worst ambiguous, i. e., containing both good and evil and at best Edenic. I am inclined to all view all history as ambiguous with some situations being much worse or much better than others. Southerners historically have had a greater sense that all history is marked by tragedy and evil based on their own experience of poverty, defeat, devastation, suffering, and the moral burden of having sponsored and defended slavery.

What Yankees often don't recognize is that the very effort of Southerners to find some glory in the Lost Cause, to focus attention on states rights and the Constitution, along with the ruses to justify secession, etc. often have been and are an effort to escape the memory and guilt of slavery. Such disguises are rationalizations which themselves acknowledge by implication that slavery was morally reprehensible and indefensible. It is the South working through its own hurting conscience, to expiate its sins through evasion instead of through contrition, confession, and "fruits meet unto repentance." This is how Confederate History Month should be celebrated.

Southern experience has been more like that of the rest of the world in contrast to the sense of American (Yankee) exceptionalism (not as prevalent since Vietnam and Iraq) which had viewed America as that new thing in history, free, innocent, and sponsoring high ideals in its founding documents. In this scenario the South has been the exception to American exceptionalism, the other and inferior America, those odd people down there with the funny accent. It has been America's perennial problem because of its cultural backwardness, poverty, and as the primary locus of slavery and racism. As I like to say, prejudice against white Southerners is the only bias white northern liberals allow themselves without guilt, it being in their estimation not a slanted view but a recognition of plain facts.

In the current ranting I see a failure to distinguish between slavery and racism. Racism is pervasive north and south, east and west, even if it is more easily exploited especially in small towns and rural Dixie. Nobody today defends slavery, but racism though widespread is more subtle and often expressed in code and nearly everywhere and always denied by the accused.

As a southerner I pledge that every time the Confederacy is mentioned, I will at once fall on my knees, look heavenward, and wholeheartedly denounce slavery as ugly and evil if every time Yankees mention America they will denounce the near genocide of Native Americans, the internment of the Japanese in WWII, the witch trials in Salem, the denial of the vote to women until 1922, and the exploitation of wage labor in the industrialized states and the violence against unions. All Jews must likewise at the mention of Israel denounce the forced expulsion of Palestinians in 1947-48, the occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967, the apartheid it continues to practice, and the building of settlements in Palestinian territory. A full confession would include repentance for the appropriation of ancient Canaan and the Jewish jihad of Esther 9.

But I forgot that all other history is morally ambiguous; only the Confederacy is pure evil with no redeeming features.

PS Southerners will get an extra star in heaven for putting up with Yankee self-righteousness and condescension. We are--white and black--often not expected to be very bright. I have had more than one Northern white woman confess to me later that the first day in class when she heard my southern accent, she was not sure I could be smart enough to teach her anything. With pride Augustine would appreciate, I can confidently say that it took only three or four days to demolish that illusion.

Redemption from Sin

2010-04-16T11:24:00.000-04:00

In a weak moment I bought a package of Oreo cookies. It was a bad thing to do, I admit, but now that I have them, what should I do?

1. Take them back for a refund.

No, that would just make them available for someone else to buy and gain weight, take up my time and the time of grocery clerks, use gas going there, etc.

2. Give them to the food cupboard.

No! That would just lead others into temptation. I should take only good, nourishing items to the food depot, like broccoli.

3. Throw them in the garbage.

No. My Mother told me never to waste food.

4. Let them stay in the cookie jar until they spoil.

No, see 3.

5. Eat them myself.

Yes. That way I will be punished for my sin by gaining weight and getting my arteries clogged. Otherwise, they will just be there tempting me. Eating them is the only way to get rid of this temptation.

Wow! I am glad I reasoned my way through this. It has been bothering me.

Barbour is right! In the End the Flap Over Confederate History Month Does Not Amount to "Diddly"

2010-04-14T11:59:00.058-04:00

In these prickly times in which sensitivities are all on steroids, one--especially a white southerner--hesitates to say anything about the Civil War and the Confederacy lest it offend somebody. Nevertheless, in fear and trepidation I assert that the Governor of Mississippi Haley Barbour has a point in asserting that the furor over Virginia Gov. McConnell's call for the observance of Confederate History Month in the final analysis does not add up to "diddly."

Actually, the Virginia Proclamation as amended is not so bad. See:

http://www.governor.virginia.gov/OurCommonwealth/Proclamations/2010/ConfederateHistoryMonth.cfm

Numerous other southern states have had similar proclamations and observances over the years, including my native state of Georgia. As a child I marched down the streets of Griffin in observance of Confederate Memorial Day for reasons I neither understood nor thought much about.

There are so many facts, facets, aspects, dimensions, complexities, paradoxes, contradictions, ambiguities, and the like regarding the Civil War era that it is probably impossible for anyone to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the matter. Conversely, most any reasonable statement is likely to contain at least a partial truth. So here goes.

In the Washington Post Eugene Robinson--a journalist I deeply admire and usually wholeheartedly agree with--wants a "reason to 'honor' soldiers who fought to perpetuate a system that could never have functioned without constant, deliberate, unflinching cruelty."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/12/AR2010041203297.html

One of my Great, Great Grandfathers and two Great Grandfathers were Confederate soldiers. One --Cash Clay--died in an Illinois prison of smallpox. They owned no slaves, but like many other poor white southerners were recruited to fight a war for an institution they had no personal stake in. I don't know what their views on slavery were. Nor do I know what their attitudes were about women voting. I am pretty certain that my moral, political, and religious views would be in deep conflict with many of their own. Were all Union soldiers paragons of virtue and void of abhorrent views on race, women, and slavery? All understanding of history must begin with the proposition that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God," although certainly some have sinned more grievously and some sins are far worse than others.

What attitude would Robinson have me take toward my ancestors? While condemning slavery, would it be inappropriate for me to honor or at least remember their bravery, their sacrifice -- which is what most Proclamations I have read call for? They also call for understanding the past, seeking reconciliation, and the like. One can certainly deal with slavery during Confederate History Month. Here is McConnell's statement in this year's Proclamation:

WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights and all Virginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders, and the study of this time period should reflect upon and learn from this painful part of our history;

OK, that was added after an uproar about its omission, but did anyone suspect he was shaky on the subject?

It just seems to me that a special burden is put on southerners to disavow slavery every time they mention the Confederacy, as if there might be some doubt. If I speak of Jefferson and Washington (whose birthdays the nation celebrates), am I obligated to say that they owned slaves, and I think slavery is really evil. If I speak of Colonial Massachusetts, must I disavow the stoning and hanging of alleged witches or think it was wrong that Roger Williams was driven out. Granted the Confederacy had slavery at its center and that is an important distinction, but which of us is still suspect on the slavery question?

If you asked my ancestor soldiers what they were fighting for, I have no idea what they would say. They might agree with the Confederate Shelby Foote quoted who responded to a Yankee's similar question by answering, "Because you are down here," i. e., you are in my territory with guns trying to kill me.

My forebears--like we all often are--were caught up in a maelstrom of events profoundly tragic over which they had little or no control and about which they doubtless had a limited understanding. The speeches of Abraham Lincoln probably come as close as is humanly possible to a comprehensive and profound understanding of the meaning of it all.

Slavery may be America's "Original Sin," as Robinson claims, but the atrocious treatment of Native Americans is right up there as a mighty contender for the dishonor and began about as early.

I was born in rural Georgia in 1930. I have never heard anyone I knew as a child or now or indeed in all America in my generation offer a defense of slavery or greet it with approbation. How many times must we say that it was horrible, cruel, evil, and despicable? Apparently every time the Confederacy is mentioned.

I don't care for Confederate History Month. Much of the rhetoric I hear from its most ardent supporters is distasteful to me. But is there no place in our discussion for relativity, proportion, and even a little tolerance for what we don't like?

The immediate situation needs to be put in a larger historical context to gain a deeper understanding. The 20th century saw the development of American exceptionalism. In this vision, the South is the "other America," those people "down there" who are different (read: inferior) to us. The North is the primary location of a distinct sense of being innocent, free, successful, democratic, and devoted to high principles -- not like those older countries from which we came and the rest of the world. The South has been the regional exception to this exceptionalism. Indeed, the South, unlike the North (the real America) has known poverty, defeat, and shame over slavery and has sought for some way to find solace in the alleged values of an agricultural society with its devotion to tradition, religion, virtue, and honor. The North in a long-enduring southern counter-myth, by contrast, was materialistic, greedy, and ruled by a frenetic capitalism that left the laboring classes at the mercy of the rich, the powerful, and the destructive forces of the impersonal market. Vietnam and now Iraq have taken some steam out of the most ambitious versions of the American exceptionalist myth, but it is still around, even if in a weakened and chastened form.

So perhaps what we see in the current devotion to Confederate History Month is a way for the South to seek some meaning in the "Lost Cause" in the bravery, sacrifice, and honor of their soldiers and leaders. When northern liberals denounce the whole business with shouts of racism, we see remnants of the old American notion of exceptionalism and its feeling of superiority to that "other America" -- the exception to the real America while forgetting the racial and other sins of its own, including its participation the destruction of Native Americans and the appropriation of their land.

So a little humility on both sides would help as we come to understand that neither region is yet free from the stained heritage and myths of the past. North and South still have stuff to work out in their own psyches. Whites and blacks, liberals and conservatives, northerners and southerners perchance need to come to a deep internal recognition that those realities--the Confederacy, slavery, the Civil War--lie 150 years or more in the past and have decreasing efficacy in the stream of real life today, except as magnified by imagination and unresolved feelings. Perhaps we might then turn our attention to the real threats, destructive forces, and constructive opportunities of the moment.

Meanwhile, until we all are more fully redeemed, let the Confederates have their history month . I assure you no one will defend slavery or segregation and no politician will advocate racial discrimination. In the larger scheme of things April will soon pass and, the whole thing will not amount to "diddly."

PS The literature on these topics is vast. I will suggest only one book:

The Burden of Southern History

C. Vann Woodward, 3rd ed.(Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2008).

For an interesting review see: http://cwmemory.com/2010/02/27/the-burden-of-southern-history/

A Short Lesson in Metaphysics

2010-04-12T14:16:00.015-04:00

Everything that exists can be divided into two classes: peanut butter and not peanut butter.

Peanut butter comes in two forms: creamy and crunchy and is either natural (ground up roasted peanuts only) or processed (salt and/or sugar or other ingredients added).

Everything else is not peanut butter.

Any questions?

Aesthetics, Realism, Symbolism, Ethics, and the Morphology of the Spirit

2010-04-01T18:20:00.008-04:00

OK, I am just showing I still know how to speak professor-ese, by which it is possible to parade obscurantism as profundity. Here is what I have in mind:

In the front of my church is a beautiful stained glass Apostles cross in vivid colors. It gets the morning sun which makes it brilliant. Aesthetically, it is splendid. The symbolism is clear. But realism is absent. The actual historical cross was probably ugly, dirty, rough-hewn, and splintery. A replica would probably not be chosen for exhibition in that choice spot, visible at all times to worshipers.

What is going on here? How do aesthetics, symbolism, and realism relate to the enhancement of piety and the promotion of faith and good works?

Guernica is a Picasso classic. Paul Tillich says it exhibits the estrangement manifest in all forms of modern life. The painting depicts the 1937 bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by German bombers, who were supporting the Nationalist forces of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Interpretations vary and are many in number, generally having to do with the tragedy and suffering of war.

Now imagine that instead of this painting we had a professional-quality vivid color photograph of a battle scene or a bombed out area with bodies, brains, blood, guts, and limbs in horrible, grotesque display. Would it or could it have the same moral and spiritual power of Picasso's great work? Would we hang it in our living room? Would any museum want it?

Is it missing the point badly to suggest that a realistic picture of the horrors of an actual battlefield might convey more powerfully the estrangement in modern life and the awfulness of war? Does a painting like Guernica perform a kind of aesthetic cleansing without loss of symbolic power that makes it acceptable to display in living rooms and other places great art can be admiringly shown without tasteless offense?

No picture or painting has much meaning apart from some background knowledge of its historical and cultural setting. The more we know, e. g., about the context of Guernica and its forms and elements, the more significance it has and the more interpretations it generates. Can only a work of art like this create all these possibilities while a literal depiction cannot? How do aesthetics, realism, symbolism, and ethics relate to the human spirit in terms of power to inform, elevate, and transform our grasp of meaning, purpose, and duty?

I suspect I have raised more questions and provoke more interpretations than my capacities can handle. But it is interesting to think about it, n'est-ce pas?

http://terresdefemmes.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/guernica.jpg

http://www.leopoldsegedin.com/essay_detail_picasso.cfm

One And A Half Cheers for the Health Care Reform Bill

2010-03-29T16:29:00.004-04:00

The recently passed health care bill has much that is good in it, which readers will know about without being reminded here. But compared to the ideal, it is pretty bad. But it is probably the best possible under present political conditions, which are themselves pretty bad.

Hence, I am prepared to give not three cheers but one and a half to celebrate its passage. A one-payer, Medicare for all would be simpler, more efficient, and would guarantee every citizen health care.

The employer-based system was a war-time exigency that allowed employers to give benefits instead of raising wages, which was prohibited under war time rules. It is complex, inefficient, clumsy, generates many inequities, and leaves millions uncovered . Additionally, it proves that the free market is not appropriate for providing health care, for reasons any economics textbook will enumerate when stating market limitations.

But it continues out of inertia and because of the political power of those who benefit from it, e. g., health insurance and drug companies and many individuals and families who have good coverage and are fearful of change. (Mine is free, except for co-payments under the generous spousal provisions of my wife's former employer-- The University of Rochester.)

I wanted the present measure to pass and watched every vote in detail on C-Span2, the principle being that when the ideal is impossible, the best presently achievable is usually better than nothing.

So, here we go: CHEER, cheer!

See:http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/is-employer-based-health-insurance-worth-saving/

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/a-medicare-like-plan-for-the-non-elderly/

Do We Have Rights, And How Do We Know?

2010-03-20T21:53:00.007-04:00

A letter to the editor in my local paper argued that health care should not be considered a right. Her reasoning was that such a right is nowhere specified in the founding documents. This is a great advance over the mere assertion that this or that is a right. To make such conversations meaningful, we need a definition of what a right is and on what basis it is to be affirmed. Otherwise, we have a mere exchange of opinions but not much light thrown on the matter.

Unfortunately, the usual situation is that anything that anyone strongly believes the government should provide is asserted to be a right. This is not helpful. My proposal is that instead we should claim that something, e. g., health care is a need and that all have a just claim on available resources. I speak here of rights to specific goods and services not the more fundamental rights, e. g., human rights, civil rights, legal rights, etc., discussed next.

This would not, course, automatically resolve all the issues. We would still still have to establish what a need is, whether health care is one, and whether the need should be met by private or public (governmental) means and so on. But it would provide a basis and process for debate that would not be as empty as the mere assertion that something is a right.

We can responsibly speak of rights. I would suggest two types: natural rights and constitutional. The former are those that belong to us by virtue of our being human. Since they are based on reason, they are controversial and open to doubt and dispute. But if we are to make claims based on nature, I suggest they be kept to a minimum, such as those mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, i. e., "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I would add equality and justice and leave it at that.

Constitutional rights are those specified in the American Constitution or implied therein as determined by judicial review and ultimately by the Supreme Court. On this basis rights can be established by legislation and court decisions, e. g., the Miranda rights. Interestingly, those legislated and enforced are the most knowable, certain, and specific but most likely to be mistaken, whereas natural rights are less knowable, have less concrete specificity, and the least guaranteed enforcement as such but have the greatest universal validity.

There are also, of course, rights by recommendation and adoption, such as the United Nations' Declaration of Universal Rights. Earlier were Roosevelt's Four Freedoms and other proposals for the recognition of rights. These tends to function more as ideals to be attained not claims guaranteed by some authoritative body with power to do so.

The issues regarding are more complicated than this, but perhaps this suggests the beginning of a ways to approach the overuse of the term for anything anybody feels strongly about.

Quasi-Acerbic Comments for the Day

2010-03-19T20:52:00.002-04:00

Politicians should be forbidden to speak of "the American people." The assumption is that Americans are of one mind, i. e., hold opinions on the issue in question identical with those of the politicians speaking. The truth is that Americans hold many different opinions about almost any policy question you can name.

Why Can't We Take Effective Steps to Conquer the Superbugs?

2010-03-07T10:57:00.000-05:00

We all know that superbugs are emerging that available antibiotics cannot kill. The overuse of antibiotics spurs evolutionary adaptation and the production of newer versions of bugs more resistant to treatment. Doctors overprescribe antibiotics, sometimes at the insistence of patients who demand them despite the futility of their use.

What is not so well known is that most antibiotics are used on animals.

A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that in the United States, 70 percent of antibiotics are used to feed healthy livestock, with 14 percent more used to treat sick livestock. Only about 16 percent are used to treat humans and their pets, the study found.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/opinion/07kristof.html?hp

Why doesn't Congress do something about this? Apparently because the agribusiness lobby is too powerful. The Obama administration has not shown any determination to take them on.

Just one more sign of our dysfunctional democracy.

We Have Met the Enemy -- US! (Pogo)

2010-03-02T11:39:00.003-05:00

Of course, the Senate is in gridlock, bound by partisanship and meanness of spirit. Of course, Senators are beholden to special interests who provide them money and to groups who guarantee votes. Of course, the Senate is strapped by arcane, anti-democratic rules. And, of course. the whole system is shot through with corrupting influences of money, quest for power, and self-preservation.

But behind that is we the people who are self-centered and selfish, thinking primarily of how law and policy will affect us. Most people have health insurance they like and are only weakly concerned about the millions who have none at all, especially if providing it to them will exact a cost from them in taxes or premiums. We are good at rationalizing our views in ways that mask our egocentric thinking and demands and making us look like good, patriotic, right-thinking folks.

Missing or weak in all the actors who shape our laws is a concern for the common good, what benefits society as a whole, promotes opportunity, justice, and equality for all. That is a matter values, of morals -- the province of religion and culture. As Daniel Moynihan reminded us, it is culture that finally rules not politics.

Churches, are you listening? Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others whose faith mandates compassion, mercy,and justice, especially for the poor and down and out, are you listening?

For Discriminating Tennis Fans Only

2010-02-28T17:11:00.003-05:00

It is time to announce this year's Sporadic Arbitrary, Gratuitous, Eccentric Tennis Awards dealing with panty issues. The first award goes to Caroline Wozniacki for Full Disclosure, to wit;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Whs6UGKB0

The co-winner is Jelena Jankovic for Most Daring Changeover, to wit;
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/763538/

Could He Have Avoided This?

2010-02-17T11:49:00.005-05:00

A CNN /Opinion Research Corporation poll released yesterday shows that a majority of Americans wouldn't vote to reelect President Obama. 44% of those surveyed said they would vote to reelect the President, while 52% said they would back someone else.

Could Obama have avoided this disenchantment with his presidency? Hard to know, but if he had been more passionate, less professorial, not so cool and detached, and had had more plain language conversations with ordinary folks in which he admitted that we were in a big mess, not much of which was his fault at the beginning, that no good solutions were available, and that Republicans were making it worse by their total oppositional stance, that we were in for tough times in which the people themselves had to recognize that you can't reduce spending without pain for all, calling the bluff of those who want spending reduced by asking them to propose specific reductions in defense, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid or shut up or at least admit they are willing to hurt poor people but not willing to approve any cuts that reduce their own benefits or raise their taxes, and so on -- maybe that would have helped. He would protest that he did make those points, but I am suggesting he should have made them in Harry Truman, give'm hell fashion.

Obama also has hurt himself by his identification with and protection of banks, insurance and drug companies (see many of my previous blogs for details) and hence is deserving of some of the wrath against Wall Street that people rightly feel.

I suspect, however, that the deeper problem is that too many people are just mad at incumbents because times are tough but want painless solutions without seeing the contradictions in their own thinking and just generally reacting emotionally with rage without reason, and wanting relief without pain, success without sacrifice, and higher benefits with lower taxes. Hence, we are in for the politics of bombast without specific realistic proposals that are honest about costs and benefits in the style of George Wallis and Sarah Palin.

Palin was right that this "hop'ey, chang'ey stuff" is not working out so well for us. But neither she nor any other Republican has anything better to offer. But they hope to win on anger that wants those who are in to be out and to replace them with more "hope'y, change'y stuff that has neither the diagnosis nor the prescription to make us well.

Politics is part destiny. He came along at the right time to get elected but became president of a country in tough times, a country whose political apparatus is sadly dysfunctional, corrupted by money and self-interest, a country that is barely governable, driven by angry partisanship.

I suspect that no one could have done much better on the whole than Obama. Even if he had been perfect, it was his destiny to be president during tough times.

And nobody is available -- Republican or Democrat -- who would be likely to do better next time around.

It is not a good time for our country. Short of a profound revolution in the structural deficiencies created by greed and self-interest, the future promises nothing much better.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Richard Dawkins and His Theological Kindergarten

2010-01-26T12:30:00.003-05:00

Dawkins is at it again with his naive assumptions about THE religous mind, followed by my response.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/richard_dawkins/2010/01/haiti_and_the_hypocrisy_of_christian_theology.html?hpid=talkbox1

Mr. Dawkins, you would not do your scientific work in conversation with its worst examplars, so why do you engage with the worst examplars of religion as expressing THE religious mind? In the index of one of your books, I found not one reference to theologians I assigned to my classes. Why not engage the best theological minds? Have you ever read Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, or David Tracy -- all of whom gave the Gifford Lectures? You will not find in them what you take to be THE religious mind, but they were/are Christians who are your intellectual equals. Until then you only irritate me with your theological kindergarten. I hate bad religion as much as you do. But you equate the worst with its normative substance. Bad thinking!

God and the Haiti Earthquake

2010-01-13T16:39:00.000-05:00

Could God have prevented the Haiti earthquake? I conclude that if God could have, God would have. I know all the answers of the orthodox in trying to justify such acts of God, (having studied them for years and taught a course on the subject) but all are weak and unconvincing (to me). See my article:

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/theodicy.htm

Anyway, it is a good test if you take the orthodox view, i. e., of all the places where an earthquake could occur, why would God permit or cause one in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere still suffering from hurricane damage?

What Obama Believes

2010-01-09T15:02:00.001-05:00

1. Change but not too much. It might rock the boat.

2. Do not antagonize the big bankers or the drug and insurance companies.

3. Do not show any more emotion than is absolutely necessary.

This may not be where his idealistic heart is, but it appears to be where his pragmatic head is. Question remains: Is he doing the best that can be done under the terrible circumstances that he inherited and daily faces? Or is he not the one we thought we voted for? Is the larger problem the systemic corruption of the political system by money and parochial interests where countervailing forces working in favor of average people is lacking? I am not sure, but I am working on it.

What Obama Said About the Airplane Incident

2010-01-07T22:28:00.003-05:00

There was no smoking gun but we dropped the ball, failed to put the pieces of the puzzle together, did not connect the dots. Stuff fell through the cracks. There will be no finger-pointing; the buck stops here. We must get our act together, put our house in order, line our ducks up in a row, and keep our eye on the ball.

Should I Be Disillusioned with Obama?

2009-12-04T10:49:00.009-05:00

Either Obama is doing the best that can be done under the circumstances, as David Brooks hints at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/opinion/04brooks.html?_r=1&hp ), or I am sadly disillusioned with him because:

1. He took the advice of his generals rather than that of his Vice-President on Afghanistan.

2. He is much too friendly with the Wall Street bankers who provided him with so much of his money. I think he could have gotten a better deal with the powerful financial interests for the country when they were hanging by their fingernails. I have never trusted Timothy Geithner and am not confident in Larry Summers.

3. He is all too calm, cool, and analytical on the unemployment crisis, and when he speaks he thinks his feeling but gives little evidence that he feels the pain of the jobless. Sometimes I want to see more preacher and less professor.

4. He sold out to the drug and insurance companies on health reform, making a back room deal that enabled them to get the most important things they wanted for a promise to pretend to support reform and to mute opposition. The result has no public option and no importation of cheaper drugs. Obama got what the wanted, the drug and health insurance industries got something they could live with and a promise of millions of new customers-- guaranteeing them huge profits, some of who would be subsidized by the government, and liberal Democrats got royally screwed in the deal.

5. He seems to exhibit the triumph of hope over facts and experience regarding the transcendence of partisan politics. The current Republicans, with few exceptions, are obstructionists, dogmatic ideologues who do not hesitate to engage in demagoguery and distortion of the facts, and would rather defeat Obama than cooperate in enacting constructive legislation that does not meet their obstinate orthodoxy.

6. Although I appreciate his coolness under pressure, I would on occasion like to see him get really excited about something other than his wife, children, and family dog, you know, show some deep passion about something.

But maybe he is doing the best that can be done for a progressive agenda given the mess he inherited and the lack of good options on the major issues facing him and the nation.

So, I will give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment with my head but in my heart I cannot escape disillusionment. Heck, I am just plain mad with him. Final answer forthcoming when I hear from my liver.

What Produces Islamic Extremism?

2009-11-16T14:57:00.003-05:00

In other words, the very policies the U.S. has been pursuing in the name of combating Terrorism -- invading, occupying, and bombing Muslim countries; locking them up without trials; torturing them; violating the values we've been preaching to the world -- have been the most potent instruments for fueling Islamic radicalism and terrorism. By contrast, those who have been continuously accused of being "soft on Terrorism" and even being allied with the Terrorists -- those who opposes our various wars, who demanded and provided basic human rights protections and equal liberties to Muslims, who objected to their own governments' oppressive and belligerent policies -- have done more to diffuse and impede Muslim radicalism than virtually anyone else in the world.

This is the thesis of an article every American ought to read and heed:

http://www.salon.com/news/terrorism/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2009/11/16/terrorism

The article is based on interviews with ex-extremists who have changed expressing why they became radical enemies of the United States.

The Tragedy and Futility of Afghanistan

2009-11-13T14:29:00.099-05:00

The more I learn about Afghanistan, the more hopeless our cause seems. The latest shock is that we are paying the Taliban through intermediaries to let our supply trucks though. We are funding both sides of the war. See:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091130/roston

Karzai and company are utterly corrupt are not likely to change much. The loss of life, the suffering, and the expense are not worth the meager goals we might achieve by staying.

Along with a growing number, I think we should devise achievable goals while we get out. The consequences might be severe, of course, and we would have to live with that. I dread especially what it might mean for the children, especially the girls who could be denied an education or liberation from the despicably oppressive rule of men whose ethics are rooted in centuries-old brutal traditions.

What is our goal anyway? I have no better answer than Peter Berger: Try to get Afghanistan back to where it was in the 70's. See:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/08/19/afghan.untold/index.html

Maybe this is unrealistic romanticism not relevant to present conditions. But one move that is relevant would be to persuade the local warlords and chieftains by appropriate financial and other inducements that they would be better off to oppose the Taliban and support the American cause. The local authorities, not Kabul, are the ruling powers. They don't want the Americans and other foreign troops there, but they do want a better life for their people. Make that possible. It would be cheaper that continued military occupation.

In any case, Pakistan is the heart of the problem. Berger maintains that the Taliban would never have been successful without the intelligence and military forces of Pakistan. Hence,we should say to Pakistan: Either you deal with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in your country with our aerial and financial assistance, or ____(fill in with the strongest alternatives that would be effective without destabilizing the country or letting it fall into the hands of the extremists with their fingers on the nuclear button). In addition tell them that we will do all we can to insure that India does them no harm while they deal with our mutual enemies within your borders.

Bottom line: there are no good solutions. Let us hope that Obama comes up with the least bad option. I trust him more than any of the certaintists, who know exactly what we should in the absolute confidence that the consequences will be a predicted.

The younger Bush left us with unsolvable ensemble of problems by neglecting Afghanistan to overthrow Saddam Hussein -- a tragic mistake. Suppose the US had reinstalled King Mohammed Zahir Shah instead of supporting the present disgrace Hamid Karzai.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Zahir_Shah

Of course, we cannot make or remake history to our liking. It is supremely important to recognize the limits of power and do what is prudently doable in the pursuit of national security and international peace and justice.

Others have made more powerfully and in detail the case I am making, a fact likely to be be familiar to anyone who chances to read this. I merely join them in suggesting we get out as quickly as possible and in a manner consonant with achievable modest goals.

Then we tell Israel and the Palestinians to make a just peace, or they are on their own -- no money or military assistance to either side. This, of course, is what ought to be done, but political realities in this country make it impossible given the power of Christians and Jews to prevent it or anything else that would effectively lead to peace and justice in that area.

Next time: what to do about Iraq and Iran, global warming, world poverty, and the delay or the Parousia.

The Healthcare Debacle: Contrary Wants and Unyielding Facts

2009-10-26T16:56:00.001-04:00

Would strict regulation of doctors, hospitals and patients under a single-payer system provide control? Or would genuine competition among health plans over price and quality work better? That's the debate we need, but in truth, doctors, hospitals and patients don't want to be limited,

So says Robert J. Samuelson in today's (10-26) Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/25/AR2009102502041.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

I mostly disagree with his conservative take on things, but I think he is right about this.

Most people want lower health care costs and greater or unlimited access to health, care just like they want lower taxes and greater government services. Doctors and hospitals want their payments increased, and citizens don't want their taxes raised. Insurance companies want greater profits by raising premiums and refusing service.

Obama has promised lower costs and no raise in taxes for anyone but the super rich. So how will it all turn out? Well, there is always the national credit card from China, Inc. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, criminals are defrauding Medicare of billions and billions, and when asked about it, officials have plenty of excuses but express no outrage and resolute determination to stop it. Pelosi, Reid, and Obama, are you listening?

Down at the Graveyard: Light Thoughts about Grave Matters

2009-10-22T21:45:00.004-04:00

OK. let's just collect all the clinches, puns, etc. about graveyards and bury them once and for all.

I was talking to the Superintendent at the cemetery:

How's business? I said.

Oh, just great. In fact, people are dying to get in.

Is that so?

Yeah, besides that there are people dying today who never died before.

No kidding! You do a good job here, I bet.

Yeah, well, we've never had any complaints for any of our tenants. Nobody has ever tried to get out.

What's it like working in a cemetery?

Well, its' awfully quiet. No loud music. No wild parties, Late at night, it's pretty dead around here.

What do you do if a prospective customer complains about a plot?

Oh, we'd start digging into it and not stop till we got to the bottom of it.

But aren't a lot more people getting cremated these days? Does that hurt business here?

Well, you know, more people are thinking outside the box, and that is a grave problem for us.

Do you have any worries at all?

Oh yes, I do have a few worries, but I think about them for a while and then just bury them.

You like working here, on the whole?

Oh yeah. And undertakers are wonderful people, very loyal and trustworthy. I can assure you they will be the last to let you down.

Myths of Capitalist Apologists: Now and Then

2009-10-22T16:41:00.002-04:00

At a conference in London, a Goldman Sachs international adviser, Brian Griffiths, praised inequality. As his company was putting aside $16.7 billion for compensation and benefits in the first nine months of 2009, up 46 percent from a year earlier, Griffiths told us not to worry. "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all," he said. (Robert Reich)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-wall-street-reform-is_b_330105.html

Oh Yeah, well in the old days his ancestral myth makers said that the lower classes needed the goad of starvation to make them work, thus justifying subsistence wages.

I have never understood that last claim, since the same myth makers insist that the rich need the goad of greater income and wealth to persuade them to work, invest, and create jobs.

Could it be that the lure of higher wages might also make the poor work and work harder? Or are we common folks a different form of humanity who need different incentives?

These capitalist myths are all crap and baloney, I

think.

Signs of Plutocracy

2009-10-21T13:58:00.006-04:00

On every front: derivatives regulation, the proposed Consumer Financial Product Agency, new limits on commodities trading, the administration's initial proposals have encountered overwhelming opposition from lobbyists and been eviscerated as they inch through Congress.

ttp://www.salon.com/tech/htww/?last_story=/tech/htww/2009/10/21/the_break_up_the_banks_delusion/

This agrees every other analysis I have seen. Obama and Geithner bark but so far have not bitten except in mostly harmless ways. Congressional leaders express outrage. Congress roars as if in childbirth with an elephant but seems to be bringing forth a relatively harmless mouse.

You want a reason why the bills to regulate banks are being gutted? Just look at the money the financial institutions give Democrats. Check out how much Goldman Sachs and the like have given Obama.

Was it Will Rogers who said he was tired of people criticizing Congress. Why, he said, we have the best Congress money can buy!

OK, I suppose this condemnation has to be qualified a little given the announcement just made that severe pay cuts have been ordered for some big banks -- but not Goldman Sachs and J. P. Morgan Chase, who have repaid their direct TARP funds. But they benefit from other government programs and guarantees that enable them to make big profits with little risk. So, I insist that the plutocracy is still largely intact and capable of great mischief to the masses of us average folks.

No Moral Equivalency Between Israel and the Palestinians

2009-10-20T12:00:00.006-04:00

Once again today a defender of Israel assumed Israel's right of defense against Hamas attacks. Of course, but only if you assume initially a moral equality between the two at the present moment.

I reject that assumption because of the events of 1948, when Israel forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and 1967, when Israel considerably expanded its borders. Granted, enough guilt is real on both sides since Israel became a state in 1947. But the fact remains that Israel today occupies territory not originally given them and has been an oppressor of the weaker Palestinians for all these decades.

While all Palestinian violence against Israel is futile and to be deplored, no way can the two be considered as being on initially equal terms at the present, so that any attack by Hamas or other Palestinians is a justification for severe retribution in the name of self-defense.

Yet that is the unquestioned assumption we see over and over in this country. It must be challenged in the name of justice.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Today's Crisis

2009-10-15T19:23:00.000-04:00

Oh my, Oh my, Barbie's ankles are too fat! What to do? Let her take Furosemide. That's what I do.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/10/14/joy.behar.carter.intv.hln

Corn Subsidies: The Multifarious Complexities and Ambiguities of Life

2009-10-15T10:30:00.001-04:00

The Law of the Infinite Cornucopia: No shortage exists of reasons to bolster whatever theory anyone wants to believe. (Leszek Kolakowski)

The Law of Universal Self Interest: We are all driven by self-interests, meaning not only selfishness but what the self is interested in. (Ken Cauthen)

Given the Law of the Infinite Cornucopia and the Law of Universal Self-Interest, this essay is undertaken boldly but with humility and in light of Whitehead's observation that sometimes it is more important that something be interesting than true.

My understanding is that the huge subsidies given to American corn farmers Under NAFTA have been disastrous for Mexican corn farmers, leading to immigration from the farms to Mexican cities and the United States.

I propose that the government subsidies, which totaled $56.2 billion from 1995-2006, should be reduced by 10% each year and the savings used to sponsor illegal immigrants willing to return to Mexico and grow corn or take other jobs, with added assistance from the Mexican government.

Will it work? I have no idea. Will it happen? Absolutely not.

But it is an awfully interesting subject. If you google the terms, you will soon get into economic theory regarding free trade (may produce gain for the many, pain for the few), the loss of Amazon forests, ethanol controversies, a lot of interpretation to suit the predilections of the interpreters, American political realities, e.g., power of farm lobbies (Obama voted for the subsidies, McCain against, etc.), corn products and obesity, how rich nations can help overcome poverty in poor and developing countries, economic adaptation to changing conditions, and a lot of other stuff illustrating my favorite terms -- complexity and ambiguity.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Plutocracy Rules. Who Will Save Us?

2009-10-14T10:53:00.000-04:00

Surely President Obama knows that we live in a plutocracy or something far too close to one. Surely he does not approve. Granted these two premises, I can only conclude that he thinks he is powerless to do much about it.

The financial industry has been dealt with tenderly, despite some brave words to the contrary. Tim Geithner's ties to Wall Street are cause for alarm. He is too much in the mold of Henry Paulson. Larry Summers provides no comfort.

Congressional Committees seeking to provide stiffer regulation are having tough going. "Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is none too thrilled by the watering-down he has been compelled to accept by the New Democrats -- chiefly Democrats from affluent, suburban swing districts -- on his committee," says Harold Myerson in The Washington Post, (October 14, 2009).

Does anyone know how we can elect a Congress with Ralph Nader's ideas on this subject and a President who will suppport their legislation?

Quasi-Acerbic Reflections for Today

2009-10-09T21:50:00.000-04:00

Am I the only one who wonders if we should be spending money we must borrow bombing the moon when 35,000 showed up for 3500 stimulus awards to help with mortgage foreclosures in Detroit? Detroit this summer had an unemployment rate of 28.9%.

Am I the only one who thinks that if Charlie Rangel is not sternly disciplined by House Democrats, Speaker Pelosi's brave words about cleaning up the place will become testimonies to cowardice?

Republicans Unpatriotic?

2009-10-09T21:38:00.002-04:00

When President Obama went to Copenhagen and failed to get the Olympics for Chicago, some Republicans cheered, especially the extremist nut cases -- they who are usually so patriotic, even jingoistic.

When President Obama won the Nobel Prize for Peace, some of the same crowd deplored this award to an American.

Let us admit that the Nobel Peace Prize is something of a Rorschach test that evokes our own predilections and preferences. What about Henry Kissinger? Yasir Arafat? Norwegians have their own as well.

They key to this bizarre behavior is not to be found in reason and logic, but apparently is grounded in the premise that if Obama is involved, it must be wrong, even if the country must be disparaged in the process.

Strange, but these are some of the same people who think that passing a health care bill in the reconciliation maneuver would be awful now, but was OK when President Bush the Younger used it to pass his atrocious tax bill to benefit multimillionaires and billionaires.

We must look to St. Paul, Augustine, Calvin, and Reinhold Niebuhr for the clue to this behavior and ours as well, i. e., the natural tendency of individuals and groups (the nation state being the supreme example) to prefer self-interest--affirmed, encouraged, and sometimes magnified by choice -- though at times moderated by concern and compassion for others, more so in individuals and small groups than by larger collectives. (Long sentence but the details get a little messy and complicated, full of ambiguities, contradictions, and the like.)

Who are the Republicans?

2009-09-24T12:13:00.001-04:00

Republicans fall mostly into three groups and those in the vicinity: One segment has a moral imagination limited mainly to matters involving sex.

A second group either wants to grant big business as much power to run the country as possible or is willing to aid and abet or at least not hinder this effort.

Finally, there are a few more moderate folks who just want change to go slow and not upset things much in a short time.

By the time you combine these allow for those in the vicinity of these three subdivisions and for some exceptions to any rules, you have included nearly all of them. But start with the three main groups and add as necessary.

You could also start with history, region, and culture and arrive basically at the same trio of barriers to what I would prefer in the way of a country worthy to elicit pride.

Mail me a letter attached to a 2010 Prius, and I will provide political science and journalistic labels for these denominations of barriers to progress.

Why Does Obama Have to Deny the Truth?

2009-09-18T10:39:00.000-04:00

Obama sometimes appears so pragmatic and politically motivated that it forces him to deny the obvious. President Carter, I think, overstated the case when he said that race was the major factor in the recent protests. Race is not the only ingredient, but it is surely one important one. Yet the Obama Administration is falling all over itself, trying to deny that race enters at all. Why?

Remember when he was so naive in his campaign in so stressing our unity at Americans that he obscured the real differences that divide us by race, class, region, self-interest, and ideology.

He knows better in his heart. Too bad his head tells him that truth is not politically advantageous in some cases.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Why Universal Health Care is so Hard to Achieve.

2009-09-16T11:26:00.003-04:00

Many reasons can be cited to explain why it has been so hard in this country to get health insurance for every citizen, an idea proposed as long ago as Harry Truman. One is surely the powerful individualism that may have been more fitted to the early centuries of our history but ruinous today. This contributes to the lack of a strong socialist tradition characteristic of advanced European nations.

Another that needs more attention is the fact that white people do not want to be taxed for benefits that go to people of color, in the past meaning mainly black folks and today Latinos as well. This too has a long history. See: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/15/race/

Add to this the unwillingness of Americans to support benefits that help others if it costs them something. Finally, add the political influence of huge insurance and drug companies that can use money, if not to buy. at least strongly influence legislation that preserves and increases their financial interests.

Doubtless other factors enter, but the ones mentioned are sufficient to explain why it will be like moving mountains with a shovel to get universal health care that is efficient and affordable.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Americans, Get Healthier, and Costs Will Go Down

2009-09-14T11:02:00.002-04:00

Everybody knows that we spend much more than other countries on health care with worse outcomes. What is not so often noted is that we have more unhealthy people to begin with. Our kids and adults eat too much sugar, made cheap by huge subsidies to corn farmers. We suffer from obesity, sedentary habits, and eat too much fat and fast foods, producing a growing epidemic of type two diabetes.

If we want to have lower health care costs, then we as a population need to get healthier by preventing illness through better diets, more exercise, good health habits -- and no smoking and less alcohol.

When will the politicians tell us this simple truth we don't want to hear? I don't mean with euphemistic-tending, weak language like more preventive care. I mean direct talk like this: "Look, as a nation we are fat, eat too much sugar and bad fats, don't exercise enough, smoke too much and, generally don't take care of ourselves very well. We can either shape up and get fit or pay more for health care, live with chronic conditions, and die early."

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

On Outlasting the Bastards

2009-09-14T10:42:00.001-04:00

At the celebration of Pete Seeger's 90th birthday, Bruce Springstein spoke of the election of Barack Obama in the context of Seeger's decades long fight against bigotry, violence, and injustice. Then he said, "Pete, you outlasted the bastards."

So come on, all you who long for peace, you who despise prejudice against any human being, you who long for an end to hate and violence, you who work for justice,we have to outlast the bastards.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Nobody Has Seen the Whole Elephant

2009-09-07T13:27:00.009-04:00

A familiar story circulating in various religious versions has four blind men touching an elephant and saying what it is. One touches the side and says wall, another grabs the tail and says rope, another takes hold of the trunk and says hose, a final one grabs a leg and says pillar. Sometimes the argument rages until the men get violent, or some wise person will resolve the issue by telling them the truth, e. g., all of them are partially right but each has identified only a part while the truth lies in the whole.

Now this story has right and wrong interpretations. The wrong one is that all religions have part of the truth, but none has the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

This view holds only if the wise person has seen the whole elephant and can identify partial views in relation to the whole.

I maintain that if we are talking about God, then nobody has seen the whole elephant and nothing but the elephant -- though many claim they have. More precisely, we can't be sure that anyone has, although many do so claim.

Hence, we can only testify to what we believe based on what is non-deniable and persuasive to us in light of convincing sources as tested by norms compelling from our vantage point in history and, culture, given our particular life stories, reasoning , and interpreted experience.

But nobody can be sure of having seen, touched, felt, heard, and smelled the elephant, the whole elephant, and nothing but the elephant. Or at least, that is what I believe as of this moment.

For more, see my article: http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/truth2.html

Advice for the Day: The Importance of Definitions

2009-09-04T14:37:00.002-04:00

My students over the decades knew that I was high on definitions (not that kind of "high" but taking to an elevated degree of emphasis).

Often I would take a statement or question offered and say, "Imagine that you cannot use that term and then tell me what you mean using other words." It was helpful either in revealing that the students really did not know what they meant or in clarifying for the rest of us what we were talking about.

I still am high on definitions. The reason is simple.
Some issues cannot be discussed intelligently unless the crucial terms are made plain so that conversation can continue on the basis of shared understandings.
Some examples:

Is it safe to fly?

Are we safer now from terrorist strikes than before 9/11?

Is the recession over?

The list could be made very long.

Unless we know what those who pose the question or those who answer mean by "safe," "safer," and "recession," the exercise is of little value beyond expressing the beliefs or feelings of those asked. To the extent that perception is tantamount to reality, opinions polls can be useful. But they contribute little to understanding beyond that.

Hence, I find opinion polls on these subjects that do not define the terms or have the respondents do so merely evoke my life-long demand for definitions.

Advice for the day: Try asking for definitions next time when it is not clear what questions and answers mean. It will annoy the heck out of people, but you will feel good about it.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Complaint and Advice to Journalists

2009-09-01T11:57:00.014-04:00

Physician, Heal Thyself. (Luke 4:23)
Know Thyself. (Temple of Apollo)
We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us (Pogo)

I am deaf to the complaint that one should not blame the messenger, since in this case, the messenger has a great deal to do with what actually gets printed or broadcast.

Imagine two scenarios at a town meeting on health care legislation:

1. A penetrating question is quietly asked by a knowledgeable citizen and given a reasonable answer by a member of Congress to light applause.

2. A loud, cliche-ridden question revealing mostly ignorance is raised by a fist-shaking voter to the cheers of a raucous crowd shouting and displaying all the ugly slogans so prevalent.

Which will get the most attention by journalists?

Why? Because selection of stories is not necessarily based on newsworthiness or general significance but on what will improve ratings or readership. High ratings mean ad revenue which means high profits -- the driving force. It's the American way! Hooray for free market capitalism.

This analysis is confirmed by E. J. Dionne in The Washington Post of September 3:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/02/AR2009090202858.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Weeping for Ted Kennedy

2009-08-29T12:03:00.005-04:00

The Gospel text for Ted Kennedy's funeral was the story of the Last Judgment, in which Jesus states that the requirement for entering the Kingdom is whether you served the sick, the poor, the hungry, the prisoner, and the stranger. For me this is the most important reason, not the only significant one, for being so immensely grateful for the life and work of Edward Kennedy.

I had the privilege of being in his office one day in 1979. I was with a group returning with a report and recommendations from a Citizens Committee sponsored by the International Rescue Committee to

investigate the "boat people" escaping from South Vietnam. We were warmly greeted with appreciation by his staff and by the Senator. We also gave the report to Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Carter and testified before a House Subcomittee. But in Washington it was the pleasure of meeting and being greeted by the Kennedy I most admired that I treasure beyond all others.

My appreciation and affection for him grows as I learn more about him-- his many personal kindnesses to so many people in places high and low. His humor, hope, his political skills as passionate crusader for peace and justice combined with his ability to respect and cultivate deep personal friendships with his foes, and for so many other things.

I weep as I watch younger members of his family offer prayers highlighting his life-long passion for improving the lives of the left out and the left behind. I thank God for his life.

Even the heavens wept as family stood outside waiting to go in the church.

Teddy, Oh Teddy, how we will miss you, Oh how we will miss you.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi: Repugnant or a Manifestation of Biblical Mercy?

2009-08-21T10:52:00.011-04:00

Hardly any American voices have been raised in support of the Scottish decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted for the Lockerbie bombing. Political response from the White House through the Secretary of State and politicians galore have deplored the decision. Yet many of them are Jews and Christians who surely know of the biblical injunction to be merciful. That the man is terminally ill and expected to live only a short time did not seem mitigate any of the righteous indignation that greeted his release.

Not only is Abdelbaset al-Megrahi near death with cancer, there is serious doubt about his guilt. Knowledgeable and responsible persons in Great Britain have called his conviction a great miscarriage of justice.

Given all this, surely the mercy shown him can be commended by Christians and Jews, as well as other morally sensitive people.

For doubts about his guilt see:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/almegrahi-questions-answered-20090821-etu7.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdelbaset_Ali_Mohmed_Al_Megrahi

PS:
Have we forgotten this news item?

Sunday July 3, 1988
The USA shot down an Iranian civil aircraft with the loss of 290 passengers and crew, including 66 children.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a070388vincennes

Scripture and Culture: Same-Sex Love

2009-08-20T10:56:00.005-04:00

We are asked to affirm a description of sexuality based on a reality that's shaped not by Scripture but by today's culture.

This is the comment of a disappointed delegate to a church convention regarding his denomination's new open stance toward homosexuality. Unfortunately for this point of view, Scripture and culture cannot be dichotomized sharply in this fashion. The Bible was written in a cultural context and is interpreted in a cultural context. The culture of the time influences both text and interpretation, not only in form but also in substance.

There is more biblical support for slavery than condemnation of homosexuality. So why is the latter binding on us today but not the former?

If Deuteronomy 21:18-21 is not a moral imperative for us today, why is Leviticus 20:13?

I Timothy 2:11-12 is not authoritative for us today, why is Romans 1:26-27?

No, it is not a simple matter of obeying Scripture or culture, it is much more complicated than that. Sometimes enlightened culture is right against time-bound Scripture, e. g. in rejecting slavery and granting equality to women.

As I used to say to my students about the Bible-culture problem:

Some things abide, some things change. Which is which, and how do we know?

Prescient Me: Obama as Post-Partisan

2009-08-19T22:17:00.003-04:00

On January 28, 2008, I wrote in a blog to Obama as a post-partisan candidate:

"You are inspiring, idealistic, and hopeful, and your message of partisan-transcending politics sure makes for a good speech and may even be a good strategy to get elected, but you are naive if you think the Republicans are suddenly going to play nice if you are elected president."

Selah!

Letter to President Obama on Health Care

2009-08-01T21:29:00.005-04:00

Mr President:

I read in the in "The Wall Street Journal"* that the big drug companies are getting most of what they want in the health care bill. This alarms me. I fear that in order to get some kind of a bill, there will be a sellout to the insurance companies, Big Pharma, and other corporate interests and maybe to the Republicans for the sake of bipartisanship.

I know the enemies of reform are rich and powerful, but I hope you and the Democratic Party will do everything possible to fight the lies, distortions, misrepresentations, and all the other scare tactics of the combined forces of Republican and corporate opposition.

Republicans have fought every piece of progressive legislation from Social Security and Medicare right down to the present.
.
It is extremely important that Medicare be authorized to negotiate with drug companies on drug prices. The original bill was essentially written by the drug companies.

We need genuine and substantial reform, not the mere appearance of it.

I have confidence in you. Do not permit a sellout to corporate interests and reactionary ideology.

Thank you very much from an enthusiastic supporter.

Ken Cauthen

*See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124779006528954995.html

Tempest in a Teapot: Boston Cop-Harvard Professor Drollery

2009-07-31T10:27:00.014-04:00

Modern technology--24-7 news channels and the electronic gadgets that facilitate instant messages-- has contributed to the gigantic blowing up of a minor misunderstanding into a national incident of purported major significance.

A little perspective and a sense of humor all around could have had both policeman and professor laughing at a comedy of errors initiated by the good intentions of all involved -- the 9-11 caller, the cop doing his duty, and the professor getting through a recalcitrant door in his own home.

What followed is typical. Framed only by the barest of facts, people everywhere brought to bear interpretive patterns springing from their general world-views regarding race and cops and knew instantly what it all meant. From one side, "racial profiling," from the other defense of police doing their duty, often in the face of danger and amid insults from loud-mouthed offenders. Even our calm, cool, collected President blew off before all the facts blew in and spoke of police "stupidity," necessitating a retraction and a quickly planned beer party to save his own behind and to remedy a situation that threatened to get out of hand.

Of course, we need a serious dialogue about race, and this was perhaps a teachable moment. But what we usually get is two monologues in which each party recites its own preformed narrative non-stop without ever listening to the other and with no inclination to test habitual prejudices. Two monologues do not add up to one dialogue. Thank goodness for the few sane voices, e. g., Colin Powell, who urged us to enter into a willing suspension of preformed interpretive schemes and attend patiently to the all the particular details of this specific situation before drawing any conclusions.

Was "racial profiling" involved here or a conscientious cop doing his duty in response to an emergency call? Was the professor being done an injustice in his own home by a prejudiced policeman, or did he subject the officer to verbal abuse by his words, demeanor, and tone of voice beyond reasonable endurance? Or something simpler or more complex? We all should have keep quiet until all was known in full context with some sense of proportion.

I tentatively conclude at the moment subject to change that it was most likely a farce, a comedy of errors apparently precipitated by initially innocent parties doing what was reasonable under the circumstances, but both by not grasping quickly enough and fully enough exactly what was happening seemingly let it get out of hand, resulting in an unnecessary arrest provoked by perhaps too much gratuitous, incessant, persistent verbal noise from the arrestee and ending with the whole nation subjected to it for days on end without relief or surcease of repetition and with hardly any recognition of the drollery it actually was.

This headline in the August 3 Washington Post illustrates my point well:

"Gates Says He Can Joke about Arrest"

Hey, "Kip." if you and the cop could have had a sense of humor that night, you would not have been arrested. The cop would not have overreacted, and the two of you could have had a beer without Presidential assistance.

PS: My son Paul suggests this alternative title: "Brew-Ha-Ha in a Beer Mug"

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

What I Hate About Commercial TV

2009-07-29T16:47:00.004-04:00

I hate TV for:

1. The shameless advertising of nutrition poor, sugar rich cereals like Lucky Charms, Fruit Loops, etc. on kid's programs, while claiming they are sooo good for you.

2, Contributing to the decline of manners and civility by introducing the yell and scream genre of sarcastic family interactions featuring Don Rickles type insults as seen in programs like All in the Family, Roseanne, Married with Children, and many more. Thank you, Norman Lear.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

All You Need to Know About American Public Opinion: The Facts

2009-07-22T10:11:00.007-04:00

1. Americans want to expand health coverage for all, but it must not cost them anything or affect their own coverage negatively.

2. They want to reduce the deficit but such fiscal constraint must not reduce any of their cherished benefits or raise their taxes.

3. They want the unvarnished truth, but they do not want to hear any arguments, facts, or reasons that challenge any of their cherished beliefs.

4. They want to understand issues, but they do not want to spend any time seriously investigating all sides of the issues with open minds.

5. They want bipartisanship as long as that means both parties will accept their own preferred doctrines.

6. Congress stinks, but their own representatives are great as long as they bring federal dollars, jobs, public works, and other goodies to their own area.

7. They are against unnecessary military spending unless the obsolete or unneeded weapon or parts of it are made in their own state or district, in which case it is essential to national security.

8. Wasteful spending is bad, but any benefits that accrue to them are necessary for their survival and well-being and justly deserved.

9. They believe that government is bad except when they want something from it.

10. Above all, they want lower taxes and increased benefits.

11. They are against unnecessary medical treatments, improving efficiency, reducing overall costs, but they want unlimited access for themselves.

12. They want a full understanding, but don't bother them will any hints of complexities, ambiguities, trade-offs regarding public policy, but they know full well that their own personal lives are full of complexities, ambiguities, and trade-offs.

Now you know, so forget about all those public opinion polls.

Canonizing Walter Cronkite

2009-07-22T10:02:00.003-04:00

Walter Cronkite was a great journalist. Doubtless he deserves all the tributes he has been given. But, just for once, wouldn't you like to hear about an instance in which he blew it, lost his cool, got the facts all wrong, gave misleading information, and just royally screwed up? Enough of hagiography already!

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Unfortunately, You Will Never Hear This on TV

2009-07-20T15:54:00.005-04:00

If I were a member of the Obama Administrating being interviewed, here is what I would say:

Before we begin, I understand our roles as follows: You the interviewer will stress the negative, listing objections to Obama policy, roadblocks, difficulties, Republican criticism, likelihood of failure, unfavorable polls, critical assessments from alleged authorities, and so on.

My role is to deflect, refute, and ignore all that, to "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, and not mess with Mr. In Between." Now what is your first question?

Since it is an unwritten rule understood by all parties that sustained substantive discussion with any depth of sophistication and analytical acumen recognizing complexity, ambiguities, and trade-offs will be avoided in favor of cliches, slogans, and nifty or colorful comments with gentle bite, the process can continue without further ado.

Sotomayor Once More and Finally

2009-07-20T15:27:00.002-04:00

The Sotomayor hearings were tales told by partisans, full of boredom and trivia, and signifying nothing beyond the determination of the nominee to get confirmed by whatever means necessary, means canonized since the Bork defeat because he dared engage in serious intellectual debate.

The Myth of Unconditioned Rationality: "Wise Latino" Errors

2009-07-16T10:36:00.004-04:00

Republicans are trying to make political capital out of Sotomayor's unfortunate "wise Latino" remark. They are creating or implying or giving aid and comfort to the fallacious notion of a pure universal rationality that is uninfluenced by the specifics of individual life history and background. The unconditioned mind so envisioned functions like a computer programmed with sophisticated software that enables the brain to apply strict rules to facts in light of the text of the Constitution and its court-sanctioned interpretation over the years. Thus unbiased conclusions that yield original intent or the real meaning of the historic document are enabled. The underlying assumption appears to be that this capacity is uniquely and superbly present in white Republican males.

The notion of an unconditioned judicial rationality will not bear up under even cursory scrutiny. The perpetrators of this politically-convenient myth know or should know better when not politically motivated to make grandstanding points for their relevant constituencies back home.

The fact is that our mental framework is shaped by numerous factors beginning with genetic endowment, including gender, and continuing with historically contingent specifics of race, class, religion, region, time, place, and culture, plus the details of family and individual life history and experience as interpreted by our available and appropriated conceptual categories, knowledge, moral norms passions, commitments, aims, and--yes-empathy.

To state or imply or assume otherwise is to embrace a notion of ahistorical reason so fatuous and indefensible that only those can deny it who are so invincibly ignorant and blind to what most people instinctively know when it is not convenient to avoid. Can anyone with minimal intelligence and discernment be that impervious to plain truth? Nah!

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Breaking News: Sotomayor Questions Senators

2009-07-15T10:55:00.002-04:00

In my vision Judge Sotomayor gets to question Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee, not about the finer details of Constitutional law or the technicalities of specific cases but about judicial hermeneutics, i. e., principles of Constitutional interpretation.

This would take place after she was given a potion making her the baddest bitch in town.

What a fun day that would be!

On Getting Sick Enough to Vomit: The Discipline of a Good Depression

2009-07-14T20:16:00.002-04:00

Sometimes a blog is so timely that it needs to be repeated periodically, especially when it seems equally as relevant today as it was last September.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

We all know that you feel better after you vomit, but nobody wants to get that sick.

It is horrible to think about it, and I feel guilty for even letting the idea surface. But I will proceed anyway. Would a serious economic depression be good for us in the long run? It might.

Could a good depression revive the prudence, discipline, and caution that the Great Depression reinforced in the generation represented by my parents and grandparents.? If so, America might be the better for it.

In recent decades we have developed some toxic cultural habits--runaway consumerism, an unrestrained self-indulgent hedonism promoted by corporate advertising, disdain for delayed gratification, greed for bigger houses, cars, and the latest gadgets, a pattern of living beyond our means, a careless attitude toward debt aided and abetted by the easy availability of credit and credit cards, failure to consider the consequences of our reckless extravagance, and the like.

To revive an old phrase, the "Protestant ethic" has died. Even many of the churches that are growing rapidly are preaching a gospel of prosperity that a shocked Calvin would have abhorred. Paradoxically, it was the disciplined style of life that valued work and thrift as a divinely-approved virtues that helped generate the widespread prosperity subsequent generations enjoyed. In capitalism individual self-interest was supposed to produce universal welfare. Sadly we find in the current generation a bastardized form of culture that lacks the self-restraint and prudence of the stringent ethic of the past and retains only the desire and expectation of the unlimited possession of material goods in a life of self-indulgent gratification.

No, I don't wish another Great Depression on myself, my children, and grandchildren along with the whole lot of us. I just wish that we could recover the ethic strengthened by it for a generation badly in need of repentance and newness of life.

But sometimes we need to get very sick before we can vomit and feel better.

Posted by Kenneth Cauthen at 10:28 AM

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Difference between Obama and the Pope?

2009-07-14T16:46:00.003-04:00

The Pope is infallible only when he speaks ex cathedra.

PS. Obama apparently also has the power to pass his ad judicium perfectum on to others, e. g., Timothy Geithner also seems to possess it when he is sitting down, i. e., in the chair (cathedra).

Why We Can't Have a Really Good Democracy

2009-07-13T10:33:00.017-04:00

Monarchy is the best form of government,
if you can find a good King. Aristotle

The capacity of justice makes democracy
possible, the tendency toward injustice,
makes it necessary. Reinhold Niebuhr

Democracy is the worst form of government
except for all those others that have been tried.
Winston Churchhill

It is impossible to have a good democracy in the United States, i. e., one that is prosperous, well-ordered with liberty, equality, and justice for all, fully protective of minority rights, and that serves all appropriately.

The country is too large, too diverse racially, religiously, ethnically, regionally, economically, and ideologically to be a melting pot in which an informed moral commitment to the most noble values determines policy by way of a political process appropriately organized to achieve them.

It might be sufficient simply to quote Churchill, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." But I will proceed.

The worst corruption of democracy is that intensely focused parochial interests are able to distort the process to achieve narrow ends offensive to justice and the welfare of all, especially the poor and powerless. They may be regional (agricultural subsidies), ideological (reactionary religion), topical (NRA), or economic (well-funded corporate lobbyists). Since Congressional politicians are elected regionally, their views are frequently shaped by interests and perspectives peculiar to that constituency rather than the welfare of the whole.

Consider, for example, how the narrow interests represented by the gun lobby (NRA) are fanatically devoted to a specific issue, whose operatives watch every political move in detail searching of even the slightest deviation from their absolutist dogma. They are armed sufficiently with money and backed by enough members and regional ideological preferences to enable them to influence legislation in disproportionate fashion. Pharmaceutical and drug companies, the Chamber of Commerce, the Israeli lobby, the military-industrial-university complex, and others illustrate the principle that intensely focused restricted interests with money and organization can be victorious over much larger constituencies whose concerns are broadly distributed but lacking concentrated focus on these specific ones, especially when this is joined with general apathy and ignorance of issues and political processes in general that do not concern them directly.

At this moment Congressional factions are threatening to defy recommendations of the military, the Secretary of Defense, and the President that the F22 fighter is not needed and should not be funded. Why? Because the defense industries have seen to it that the manufacturers and suppliers are scattered around the country, enabling regional interests to supercede national interest. The same folks will condemn deficit spending and a bloated federal budget. Alas, alas! Hooray for American democracy.

Added to this is the dismal state of political dialogue in this country-aided and abetted by talk-show radio, mass instant electronic communication, and 24-hour news channels--that reduces debate to simplistic talking points that have emotional attractiveness for the unwary or analytically unskilled. These appeals are carefully designed with professional public relations assistance, sometimes spiced with deliberate lies or distortions crafted to exploit ignorance and bias. All this is made possible by the fact that multitudes people are too apathetic, too lazy, understandably so bogged down in immediate personal struggles, or so easily duped by their own uncritical, never questioned, base of inherited misinformation, bias, or subtle perfidy.

Let us not forget that in the Electoral College and the Senate, small states have power all out of proportion to the citizens represented in an increasingly urban population. In the Senate, e. g., at the moment this is bad news for health care reform since some of the most powerful Senators are from small states with interests different from where the vast majority of people live. For example, "The 21 smallest states together hold fewer people than California's 36.7 million -- which means there are 42 senators who together represent fewer constituents than Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein." For details see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080702045.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Pervading all this is a persisting individualism shaped by the early history of the country with its expanding frontier and the necessity of self-reliance, partially explaining why socialism never came to America -- that old standard question.

Countervailing trends are created by changes in cultural consciousness, e. g., on civil rights or gay rights, as well as by crises which do concentrate the attention of large constituencies. Such situations when skillfully organized can potentially exploit kairotic moments ripe and ready for transformative change when sufficiently informed by liberating visions that excite enthusiasm enabled by political mobilization and charismatic leaders and geared to achieve more ideal ends.

Of course, if we all loved justice, freedom, equality, prosperity, and well being for all as much as we loved ourselves, we might be inspired to try and smart enough to succeed in creating the institutions and processes that would produce an ideal democracy. Darn that original sin!

To spell all this out would require a book. My aim has been to make some initial suggestions hinting at why an ideal democracy is impossible under current conditions.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

The Folly of Republicans

2009-07-13T10:19:00.007-04:00

The reasoning of most Republicans these days on matters of politics and policy is as limp as an overcooked noodle without Viagra.

What really bothers Republicans about Sotomayor's "wise Latino" remark is the suggestion that anyone could be as wise as a white Republican male whose judgment is fully rational and not at all influenced by family history or social context.

Republicans think that interpreting the Constitution is like looking at Mt. Rushmore on a clear day and deciding which is Washington and which is Jefferson.

Never mind how many 5-4 decisions with each faction consisting of the same cluster of Justices, Republicans think Constitutional interpretation can be free of the background and outlook of the interpreters. So shockingly naive is such a view that only a politician or a fundamentalist theologian or a citizen oblivious to the obvious would admit to having it.

Republicans are distrustful of government to do anything right except when it is acting in secret or funneling money to their preferred beneficiaries.

Originalists, including many Republicans, assume there is one settled meaning of the Constitution built in from the beginning, whereas historians know that the Founding Fathers intended to begin an argument which must continue, they being well aware of disagreements among themselves and the many ambiguities, complexities, trade-offs, and the like generated in the concrete realities of life and history.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

The Ignorance of Jeb Bush

2009-07-09T21:46:00.004-04:00

Jeb Bush: 'I don't know' if Obama is a socialist. CNN headline.

Jeb's ignorance, however vast, should not take precedence over the knowledge of others, however small.

Demented American Values and Illegal Drugs

2009-07-09T09:52:00.009-04:00

How many times does it have to be said? The fundamental drug problem is not marijuana or heroin or cocaine, as troublesome and damaging as they are.

The far more harmful drugs are 1. tobacco and 2. alcohol. Tobacco kills at least 400,000 every year in this country. Alcohol kills at least 100,000. Add to this the health and other costs, and you will see that the usual suspects are minor in comparison. We have spent billions of dollars and incarcerated thousands, especially poor African Americans and have barely made a dent in the devastation wrought by illegal drugs.

The difference is that tobacco and alcohol are socially acceptable drugs, while marijuana, heroin, and cocaine are not. I do not mean to trivialize the harm done to people and the costs incurred to the nation by the illegal drugs, but we need a sense of proportion.

The illegal drugs are perils with no good solution, but the best approach is to take the profit--the money gain--out of them and deal with them as a public health concern, i. e., prevention and treatment, and not as a criminal justice matter.

Would there be major tribulations associated with the decriminalization of the the currently illegal drugs? Certainly, but I defy anyone to make a convincing case that the situation would be worse than it is now.

The root problem is the distorted, puzzling set of values we have in this country. We are astonishingly tolerant of guns and violence and still both puritanical and obsessed in regard to sex, and totally irrational when it comes to the drugs now classified as illegal.

See a more lengthy treatment of all this at:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/drugs.htm

Quasi-Acerbic Reflections: Pundits

2009-07-07T16:51:00.011-04:00

The punditry should be abolished. Were it not for the all-news channels their population would be less of a menace, but given the necessity to fill 24 hours a day by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, daily they egregiously violate Occam's razor -- do not multiply entities beyond necessity-- ad nauseam. The worst are the Democratic and Republican political strategists, whose vacuity and predictability are astounding and who never increase understanding of anything.

While sometimes a pundit may shed light on an issue, generally they are a superfluity. Anyone who reads a couple of good newspapers and a serious journal of current events will know as much as 93.34% of the experts whose breezy interjections could provide electricity for a small town if harnessed to wind generators.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

If You Are Over 60, You Don't Exist in the Media

2009-07-07T16:11:00.008-04:00

Or you might as well not exist for the attention you get. The CNN web site asked, "How are you honoring Michael Jackson?" Not do you plan to honor MJ, if so, how? I am sorry he died so young, but honor him?

His music and dancing were boring to me. The few seconds of Thriller I saw were not thrilling. He was two generations too late for me. Elvis Presley was only one behind me, but with few exceptions, his performances were not entertaining either in my book. But the general assumption in the media is that your musical and other tastes were formed after I was already married and a father.

Now there are some minor exceptions -- some PBS programs, C-Span, and and a few others recognize that some people are in or are approaching Medicare. The national evening network news broadcasts perhaps recognize us most clearly. Advertisements are the evidence -- constipation, upset stomach, leaky bladder, ED, dementia, pain, and other typical later in life ailments are subjects of interests and revenue for them.

But we know we exist. Nat King Cole or the Mills Brothers anyone?

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Michael Jackson and American Excess

2009-07-01T16:29:00.003-04:00

Too much has already been said about Michael Jackson, the woman man, white black, child adult -- he of odd, bizarre behavior, that sad, tragic idol who always wanted the approval of his abusing father, who thought if ever he were ordinary, people would not love him, who in the midst of the adulation of crowds was lonely, in whom there lived a kind, gentle child who never had a childhood, and who required tranquilizing drugs to relieve his pain.

But that is not my text today. I wonder if the attention worthy of a President given him in death bespeaks of a celebrity-intoxicated culture whose excesses approach pathology. He offered, say some, moments of transcendence and good will that united followers with humanity, but in my view was exhibitive of a quasi-religion whose "yoke is easy, whose burden is light," that makes no moral demands, judges no behavior, and whose exalted moments are shallow and ephemeral.

That is my text for today.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Hooray for American Support of Democracy

2009-06-22T10:32:00.012-04:00

Republicans in Congress are getting more and more irksome, tiresome, and downright repugnant.

They condemn Obama for not taking a stronger stand against the Iranian regime. We have always stood for democracy, they say. You mean like in Iran when Republican President Eisenhower approved the engineering of the overthrow in 1953 of Mohammed Mossaddeq, the democratically elected leader of Iran who had nationalized the oil companies. We restored the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlev, who allowed the British and American oil companies to get their lips back on the nipples of the pipelines so oil wealth could flow Westward? In passing we might observe that Democrat Harry Truman had refused to approve the coup. By the way, the Shah was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, whose current Supreme Leader is shooting protesters in Tehran. Hooray for the American support of democracy in 1953.

Then there were those decades when American policy toward Latin America was designed to suit the interests of the United Fruit Company without regard to whether the favored regimes were democracies or not.

Wasn't that all in the past? Not quite considering that we have been in bed with Saudi Arabia for a long time. They don't have democracy, but they have lots of oil.

Republicans constantly raise the specter of government bureaucrats making decisions about health care for citizens. Apparently, they prefer bureaucrats in big corporations to make those decisions, corporations motivated by increasing profits by limiting medical care to subscribers. There is no sustainable system that will allow any and every form of medical care to everybody.

Is there any good reason why Republicans should exist at all?

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Middle East: New Beginnings Needed

2009-06-18T17:03:00.011-04:00

The best thing I have seen on the Palestinian-Israeli problem is Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, "Obama and the Middle East" (The New York Review of Books, June 11, 2009).

In brief, they say the old slogans and terms -- two-state solution, land for peace -- are impotent and should be abandoned. In the past both parties have felt they were provided solutions from third parties and asked to accept or negotiate them.

A new beginning should be made by a process that elicits anew what the essential interests of the relevant parties are--the Palestinians, including both Fatah and Hamas, and the Israelis, including the settlers. This might leads toward a two-state solution, or it might not get anywhere. What is clear, they think, is that merely polishing up the old terms, proposals, and solutions will not work.

I found it provocative and maybe even correct. See:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22731

Totally Acerbic Observations

2009-06-12T08:16:00.005-04:00

Have you noticed that the folks who do the network morning shows appear to be abnormally happy -- smiling and laughing beyond what the situation merits?

Items it is usually futile to talk to your doctor about include the following: nausea, sleep issues not related to apnea, and and abdominal distress unless caused by ulcers or cancer.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

What's Wrong with the World?

2009-06-09T11:01:00.008-04:00

Two fundamental things are essential to figuring out what is wrong with the world--original sin and universal suffering. Original sin is the natural, built-in tendency to prefer our own good--as individuals, societies, institutions, nations, etc.--to the good of others. Universal suffering means that all have known some form of human affliction--pain, accident, circumstances, disease, sorrow, failure, oppression, etc.--that take away in various degrees our joy and happiness. Suffering results from causes arising out the nature of things -- natural evil, and out of the harm we do to each other -- moral evil.

What is the solution? We have to recognize that that all --we and others--are afflicted with both egotism and suffering. This must be accompanied by the desire for understanding that leads to compassion for others.

To focus on moral evil, the typical dialogue between individuals and groups about our conflicts is that each has its own narrative and an explanation of its own suffering and injustice, which is not a dialogue but two monologues in which each party yells out its own story and does not hear or care to hear the story of others. Consider: abortion, same-sex marriage, the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, the US and North Korea, Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, Venezuela, and on and on and on.

The problem: nobody listens to the other. The solution: genuine listening, which leads to a sharing of the truth and suffering of the other, which can ideally lead to understanding, which produces compassion, followed by repentance, which can result in good faith efforts to resolve issues in a way that enlarges the truth shared by all and the suffering endured by all.

My text has been: Repent and believe the Gospel, which being translated means. Come to terms with the fact that we have all screwed up, some more badly than others, repent in sorrow, and therefore become open to the possibility of hearing the good news that a better future for all is waiting to be born if we are willing to receive it in faith, hope, and love.

Now I have diagnosed the problem and offered the solution. It is up to others to begin working this out in practical ways. Meanwhile, I have to write another blog resolving other pressing issues. Global warming is next on my list. Good luck.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

What They Learn in Journalism School

2009-06-05T08:14:00.004-04:00

Based on years of watching TV news reports, I can imagine the day in Universal School of Journalism when they dealt with "How to End Your TV Report."

The cardinal rule, never to be violated, is: Do not end on a positive note, never. Several options are available:
1. Suggest that something awful could still go wrong.
2. Suggest a countervailing trend.
3. Raise a question that qualifies any optimistic developments in your piece.
4. Use your imagination to suggest that somehow the future is still in doubt, so viewers should tune in next time.
5. Say anything just as long as it is negative in some way.

That appears to be the one thing that all the students learned well.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Quasi-Acerbic Oddities for Today

2009-06-02T16:53:00.006-04:00

Senator McConnell said he did not want a judge on the Supreme Court who let subjective preferences and personal ideology affect their rulings. You mean you do not want judges like Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Scalito?

Somebody should instruct Senators that all people have ideologies, personal background experiences, and identities that affect their rulings. I did not say determine, I said affect, i. e., influence.

Cheney is to the left of Obama on gay marriage. He favors it if the decision is made by the states, while the President has so far only indicated support for civil unions.

Senator Greg Judd says he does not want government bureaucrats making decisions about our personal health care. Apparently, he prefers to have them made by corporate bureaucrats working for companies who want to maximize their profits by limiting services.

Strange.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

The Woman in my GPS

2009-05-24T19:25:00.003-04:00

I didn't believe there was a real person in my GPS either until recently when we were on a newly opened section of US 15 that we know about but Hildegarde (Geography Genius) Himmelwassen didn't. She recalculated repeatedly trying to get us back on the right road, assuming that we were driving 60 MPH over farmland. After frequent recalculations, she finally had enough: "I don't know why I bother with you stupid idiots. You never take my advice anyway. I have had it with you. I'm outta here. You are on your own, since you think you know more than I do anyway. So long, suckers."

Yep, there's a real person in there.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Obama is a Radical, An Extremist

2009-05-18T09:19:00.005-04:00

According to a headline in the morning paper, President Obama stood before the graduating class at Notre Dame and urged us to have (gasp!) "open minds on abortion." The American people open minded on abortion? Come on, Mr. President, get real, this is planet earth, this is America.

The next thing you know he will be suggesting that we be reasonable about gun control!

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml