Forgiveness

June 21st, 2009

Ok I have to weigh in on this Sarah Palin/Dave Letterman controversy.

The only reason why is that it appears to be over, so I wanted to go through a little “lessons learned”.

The first lesson is a question. Do any of you think that this was an accident? Those of you who think it was an accident can stop reading because you are also likely to learn that there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny.

This was a manufactured crisis which served the purposes of both people.

It served Letterman’s purpose because his main ratings competitor, The Tonight Show, was changing hosts. There was an opportunity to steal the spotlight and some ratings points. It worked.

It served Palin’s purpose because she had just come off a badly fumbled Republican speaking engagement. This is the one where she was invited to speak, declined because the group was unwilling to make concessions, then when Newt Gingrich agreed to speak in her place, decided to show up after all and make an awkward cameo appearance. It put her back in the limelight in the role of an outraged mother fiercely defending her child in particular and women young and old in general. It worked.

When both parties determined that they had squeezed about as much publicity out of the stunt as they could, they both agreed to end it.

The second lesson is a little more subtle. It was a litmus test of political correctness on the right and left. What it proved is that when the right feels as though one of its own have been the victim of “hate speech”, they fall right in line saying all of the same things as the left does when it feels that one of its own has been treated unfairly. So at the end of the day, you have the curious juxtaposition of Fox News commending Sarah Palin for her gracious acceptance of David Letterman’s apology for “inciting men to rape underage girls”, while at the same time defending itself for inciting murder by calling Dr. Tiller a “baby killer”.

The last lesson is a word to the wise. The human can only aspire to the divine, it can never duplicate it. As a result, nothing is completely black or white. Those who describe it as such have another purpose for doing so. They have another agenda that you may or may not be aware of. You have passed the first test for wisdom when you hold your favorite sources of information up to the same scrutiny that they bring to bear on the those they disagree with.

Posted in Politics | 5 Comments »

Healthcare

June 6th, 2009

“Physician health thyself” Luke 4:23

For all of those out there who have cried socialism at the prospect of healthcare reform, here’s a little more information on how the current free market system is serving Americans.

The American Journal of Medicine recently published a study which documents that 62% of ALL the bankruptcies in 2007 were attributed to medical problems. Not job loss. Not home foreclosure. Not irresponsible speculation or drug addiction. These were people who got sick, needed care, in most cases had insurance, and still couldn’t pay the bills.

Also the rate of bankruptcies due to medical costs rose 50% during the Bush administration.

This is all the more disturbing because the data came from a period before the current financial collapse.

This wasn’t just poor people either. These were middle class families who exhausted their life savings trying to pay their bills.

There is something fundamentally wrong with a system where hard working people can’t afford to fall ill.

That’s why the government has to step in to provide at least some baseline level of affordable coverage which doesn’t bankrupt individuals or businesses. You can call it whatever you want, but it is clear that those countries who are making this investment have lower healthcare costs per citizen, healthier populations, more financially secure citizens, and more profitable businesses.

As we’ve seen with the recent financial collapse, the free market system is not the answer in all circumstances. Healthcare is just another example. Kudos to the Obama adminstration for recognizing that the key to our recovery is dramatic change in the way healthcare is delivered in this country.

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

Winning

June 4th, 2009

How do you win the war on terror?

If we are talking about military steps, in the modern era we say it is over and go home.

The Obama administration is already taking those steps in Iraq and making the investments to get Afghanistan to the point where we can do that too.

In a more profound way, though, the way we win the war on terror is to eliminate enemy.

If there is no enemy, there is no terror.

If there is no enemy, there is no war.

The Bush administration wanted us to believe that we could kill all our enemies because we were so much more powerful than they were.

The reality is that we can’t kill them all, and our efforts to do so only made them stronger because two rose up to take the place of every one that we killed.

Instead President Obama is going to unmask our enemy and reveal that they are more like us and we are more like them than either of us would like to admit.

He is doing that by reaching out to the Muslim world to change their perception of the United States. What better person to do that than a brown skinned man with a muslim-sounding name.

The Muslim world won’t trust the United States overnight. They will want to see tangible evidence that the United States is serious about peace in the Middle East and in Iraq.

Obama is, however, laying the groundwork. He intends to treat the Muslim world with the same sort of respect that we would like to see from them. He will follow that with a diplomatic plan to address the issues that represent barriers to peace.

Ultimately, he will succeed and win the war on terror by turning our enemies into our friends.

Some who read this are going to immediately assume that it is naive to assume that one man could have that effect. One group, however, is taking Mr. Obama’s initiative very seriously. That group is Al Qaeda. If their actions are any indication, they are afraid of him. If President Bush was their greatest recruiting tool, President Obama may be their greatest enemy. I believe he is their greatest enemy because he knows he can win this war.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Human Will

June 1st, 2009

“I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.” John 5:30

The culture wars have claimed another victim.

I find it very difficult to understand how someone can call themselves a Christian and use that position to justify murder. It is hard enough for me to understand how nations that call themselves Christian can start wars. When an individual takes a gun, points it at another human being, and pulls the trigger, they are not doing God’s will.

It does not matter what the circumstances are.

It does not matter what the person has done.

There are no exception clauses to “thou shalt not kill”.

The nonviolence of the early Christian Church was legendary and ultimately so impressed the Romans that they stopped killing Christians and converted to Christianity themselves.

Jesus came to earth to share a new gospel of love. He came to deepen the understanding of those who saw God as capricious and vengeful. Jesus told us that God is a tender Father, a shepherd, and our guardian.

Those who seek to violently act in His name, are taking His name in vain. They are underestimating God’s power and completely missing His message. They are assuming that because they see sin in the world, that somehow God needs their help.

God doesn’t need their help.

God not only doesn’t ask us to be executioners, He doesn’t even want us to be judges.

He asks us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. He asks us to be peacemakers. He asks us to turn the other cheek and walk with those with whom we disagree until at least we understand them.

Those who demonize their opposition suffer from self-righteousness. They will find out soon enough that God loves everyone, and the simple sinner who humbly repents will find himself closer to God than the righteous man who condemns the unrighteous.

God reserves judgment to Himself and those who seek to usurp that role will discover soon enough how wrong they were.

Posted in Abortion, Religious Conservatism, Terrorism | 10 Comments »

Physicians

May 28th, 2009

“And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague” Mark 5:25-29

I like this story in Mark because it talks about the power of faith. Later in the story Jesus seeks out the woman in the crowd and complements her by saying that it wasn’t Him, but her faith that made her whole.

Faith and healing in modern times, however, is a much touchier subject.

The recent case in Minnesota of a child diagnosed with Hodgekins Disease raises a lot of questions about individual rights versus government rights.

I think it is easiest if you extract religion out of it for a moment and simply discuss what choices an individual has.

So should the government have the right to lock up an individual who has a communicable disease?

In general, I think that the simple answer is yes. People should not be allowed to infect other people. The more complex answer, however, is that in practical terms the government doesn’t have the ability to exercise this right on any sort of a widespread basis. Swine flu and AIDS are only a couple of examples. So, though the government has the right, it has very limited ability to exercise that right.

Backing up from there, should the government have the right to intervene and prescribe care for someone who is unable to declare for themselves the sort of care they need?

This is the Terry Schiavo case. The answer from the courts is no. The next closest relative has the right to determine care (or lack thereof) for an adult who can’t decide for themselves, hasn’t left any instructions for the court, and is otherwise in a persistent vegetative state.

Backing up from there, should the government have the right to prevent an adult from enlisting the aide of someone else in order to end their own life?

The courts here say yes. State governments can prohibit or allow assisted suicide.

Backing up from there, should the government limit the medical choices an individual has?

Here the courts say yes. The government has the responsibility to determine what is effective and what isn’t. As a result, individuals have had to go to other countries to get treatments that are illegal here. Clearly there are a lot of issues here. Acupuncture is just one example of an ancient technique that has only recently been accepted by western medicine as effective.

Finally we get to parents and children. The government has a responsibility to oversee the sort of care children receive. So parental rights can only be exercised to the boundaries that the government has described. If parents or legal guardians step over those boundaries, the state can assume custody of the child in an effort to protect them.

One example is whether or not the government should have the right to require children to be immunized?

Again the courts here are fairly clear. In the interests of public health, the government has mandated that children who associate with other unrelated children (school, athletics, etc.) have to be immunized. The greater good here is to prevent outbreaks of childhood diseases and also take steps to eradicate those diseases. The reality is that there is some risk to the injections and those whose parents opt out of immunization only endanger themselves and any other children who have opted out. So as long and the bulk of the adolescent population is immunized, the risks are small.

The government is in a difficult position because they have an obligation to step in where there is evidence of neglect. The challenge in the MN case is that they law has no way of measuring how much the parents love their child, how much the child loves the spiritual concepts that his parents espouse, and what his ability is to really understand the potential consequences of his actions. The court also has no way of knowing how effective the treatment he has chosen will be, so they can only decide based on the opinions of medical professionals who are only familiar with conventional medicine.

The bottom line is that we are dealing with the challenges of the human patterning the divine. Human laws will never reflect the wisdom of the divine. Human constructs work fine most of the time. It is the exceptions to the commonplace where they fail very badly.

In the case of the MN boy, the physician has intervened and offered to expand his treatment to include some of the methods the parents were seeking as well as the more conventional course of chemotherapy. The boy and his mother returned home agreed to follow the direction of the court.

Posted in Healing | No Comments »

Tea Party Animal

May 9th, 2009

Just a quick note to the tea party advocates and conservative doomsdayers who’ve been in the news lately.

You didn’t vote for President Obama in November because of his platform. Now you are even more upset that he is doing what he promised to do. While I don’t agree with you, I celebrate your right to peacefully protest.

Please, however, don’t suggest that the 70% of Americans who think the President IS doing a good job are being duped by the media, unaware of the risks of the current policies, or in some other way drinking the kool-aide of some Obama cult.

It may be difficult to understand, but a majority of Americans support the President because we LIKE the direction he is taking the country. Conservative Republicans lost their opportunity to govern because of their performance. They started two wars, failed in natural disaster response, were fiscally irresponsible, lied to us, and led the country to the brink of bankruptcy by trusting that markets could regulate themselves.

We are aware of the risks in the current policies, but we are willing to take those risks because we don’t see any better alternatives. People need jobs. The financial community, crippled by the mortgage meltdown, has to regain sufficient strength to resume lending to businesses who will provide those jobs. Until that happens, government is our only alternative to fund projects that will create jobs.

The conservative mantra that the markets should be allowed to sort this out is what created this crisis. So you shouldn’t be surprised that most people don’t trust that the free-market model will manage the recovery any better than it managed the collapse.

As far as whether President Obama has the intellectual capacity to lead, that’s simply silly or worse. You may not agree with his philosophy, but he clearly has the necessary energy, temperament, commitment, and talent to be a great president.

Posted in Politics | 8 Comments »

Golden Age

April 10th, 2009

There is an opinion among some in the religious right that the current troubles in this country can be directly attributed to a departure from some earlier time when we were more moral, responsible, and uniformly Christian. I’ve tried to find when that time was.

The earliest Christian settlement in Jamestown imposed a death penalty for those who “speak impiously of the Trinity… or against the known articles of the Christian faith.”

Jefferson decried the persecution of the Quakers in Virginia and New England in the 1700’s.

The founding fathers created a nation where only land-holding white men could vote, slaves were property, and native Americans were savages.

John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli with Muslim nations in 1797 which stated in part, “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

We fought a civil war to end slavery. It took another fifty years for women to get the vote. It took another fifty years for America to formally recognize that all people were created equal. We are still struggling with how to compensate Native Americans for taking their land and destroying their way of life.

The reality is that there was no God-blessed golden age. The genius of the American experiment is that it is a work in progress. Our struggle isn’t to regain some previous perfect union, but to continue to redefine what a perfect union means.

The wisdom of the founding fathers was their trust in the power of individual conscience. An unlikely coalition of the evangelical Christians (Baptists and Methodists) and Enlightenment-influenced deists (Jefferson and Madison) ratified a Constitution that prohibits any religious test for public office. The right to believe differently made possible every advance in human and civil rights that has come since.

Posted in Religious Conservatism | 6 Comments »

Strife

March 29th, 2009

“He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings. Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself. But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.” I Timothy 6:4-7

The one issue of abortion raised it’s head again in the form of a commencement invitation to President Obama.

There are a lot of things that you can draw from this, but let me take a shot at a couple.

First some background.

The controversy is that the invitation was from Notre Dame – a private Catholic institution. So, the thought goes, the University should pick commencement speakers that reflect the position of the Catholic church. Because President Obama does not support the Catholic Church’s position on abortion and stem cell research, many including South Bend Bishop John D’Arcy have said that they won’t attend.

The curious thing is that President Obama is not the first pro-choice commencement speaker at Notre Dame. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Pierre Trudeau are just a few who have been invited to speak to Notre Dame graduating classes. I wonder if Bishop D’Arcy skipped those too.

It’s also interesting that 54% of Catholics across the country voted for Obama in the most recent election going against the advise of many of their Bishops. The Democrat Obama carried Indiana for the first time in forty years. He also carried St Joseph’s county were Notre Dame is located.

So what’s going on?

One thing for certain is that Catholics as a group appear to have a larger political agenda than just abortion. They may be influenced by the president’s commitment to extending health insurance to children, rectifying imbalances in a tax code neglectful of the working man, and persuading Congress to allocate abundant resources for educational reform. These all coincide strongly with church teaching. The president and the Catholic Church are also both on the same side in their early opposition to the Iraq war, exploitation of immigrants, and global warming.

What else may be going on?

Notre Dame has roots in the Catholic Church, but it is a private institution in the greatest traditions of any University in the country. That means that they embrace diversity and encourage dialog. It was not an accident that they invited Obama or an accident that he accepted. They knew it would cause the controversy that it has, and they welcome it. That’s because it sends the message that issues like abortion SHOULD be discussed if we ever hope to resolve them.

Finally, I think that we are starting to see the seeds of the end of the culture wars. Some have gone as far as to predict the impending collapse of the evangelical movement. The reason is that that people are tired of the politics of division and demonization. They are moving to the center and increasingly rejecting the strident rhetoric of both sides.

If this comes to pass, the polarized positions and the groups that support them will be increasingly regarded as damaging the larger common good. Radicalism will give way to conformity. The old battle lines will disappear and just like the fifties, public policy will reflect our new shared vision of social order rather than an attempt to impose a particular morality. Our kids will resolve the Pro-Life/Pro-Choice debate and wonder why we all wasted so much time and effort on it and ignored so many other more important topics.

Posted in Abortion, Politics | 2 Comments »

Poor

March 10th, 2009

“Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” Matt 19:21

I’ve had some comments lately that I’m spending too much time on looking backward and not enough time looking forward, so I thought I would spend a little time responding.

First, if you read the title of this blog, it is about a progressive point of view.

In other words, I support what the current administration is doing and want it to succeed. I believe that there is a role for government to play. I believe that success can’t come at the expense of another, in other words it can’t be a zero-sum game. It has to be an expanding-pie game. We individually succeed when we collectively succeed. I also believe that the best economic growth comes when those who have the least gain the most.

The best long-term hope for that sort of transformation for the poor comes from education. As I’ve posted before, a college degree virtually erases any economic disadvantage the parents of that graduate may have experienced. The problem is that a child’s educational success is intimately tied to where they live and the ability of their parents to be involved in their education. When those parents are struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, they aren’t often able to be as involved as the need to be.

So how does government help?

Since it is not a level playing field for all members of our society, I believe those who have enjoyed success have responsibility to help those who are struggling. Government does this through a tax policy by taxing people according to their ability to pay.

Some people are poor because they were born to poor parents and never had an opportunity to escape. Some are poor because they are physically or mentally challenged and simply can’t support themselves. Some are poor because they have made bad choices, turned to crime, or became addicted to drugs.

Jesus didn’t distinguish. He said that we give to all poor people because they are our brothers. Jesus was a “needs-based” healer. He didn’t ask how you came to be in need. He didn’t withhold his help from those who were in need because of the bad choices they made. He only asked if you were ready to be healed.

So if we follow the Bible, the next question is how do we use the money to help the poor, because they’re ready!

Well the Bible is helpful here too. We have to make sure that they have something to eat, clothes to wear, and a safe place to sleep. We also are obligated to help them escape from poverty by teaching them how to support themselves.

So how does that translate to today?

A lot of the stimulus package is going to the poor and working poor. Hopefully that will translate into the immediate needs of food, clothing, and shelter. Many economists have said that the fastest way to get money into the economy is to give it to poor people because they will spend it. The challenge with the current package is going to be getting into the hands of those who need it fast enough.

We need more jobs and the stimulus package is designed to do that too, though the majority of the construction jobs are short term. The real transformative jobs will come as energy and healthcare reforms kick in. Something as simple as reversing the stem cell research ban is going to spark our economy here in Michigan with high paying research jobs. Those jobs will allow graduates from our top universities to stay in the state, buy homes, and start businesses and families. It’s this sort of progress on a local and regional level that helps us as a country to climb back out of the hole that we have dug for ourselves.

Finally, we need good schools. That was cut out of the stimulus package, but the current administration has that on their agenda as well.

This is a challenging time, but it is also a time a great promise. What I find interesting is the same people who criticize the Obama administration for too little change on the political front, are apoplectic over the sweeping social and economic changes and the pace with which he is implemeting them. In fact, he isn’t making any of this stuff up. He is doing a great job of keeping the promises that he made to those who elected him.

Posted in Finance, Politics | 6 Comments »

Savonarola

March 3rd, 2009

“But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;” II Peter 2:12

Well it has happened again.

The newly elected head of the Republican part, Michael Steele, took on Rush Limbaugh. He took objection to Rush’s criticism of the President Obama using words like “incendiary” and “ugly”. When asked if Rush was the defacto leader of the Republican Party, Steele replied, “He’s an entertainer” and “I’m the de facto leader of the Republican Party.”

Less than a day later, he was calling Rush to apologize.

So who IS your daddy?

The deeper question of course, is why has Rush Limbaugh become the defacto leader of the Republican party?

My sense is that it has to do with the nature of modern conservatism. It is no longer a political movement. It has become a religion.

Rush is the Republican Savonarola. He is the one filling the power vacuum because he is willing to condemn the unbelievers. He is the one who is willing blame the failures of the past eight years on Bush. According to the gospel of Rush, it was corruption that led the Republicans astray. The conservative policies themselves are still strong and would have worked fine if Rush had been at the helm.

He is the one who is advocating wholesale revolt among the electorate. Rather than simply rail against policies which he doesn’t believe in, he openly supports resistance. In part, I think it is because if President Obama does succeed, it will herald a long period of liberalism and Democratic dominance.

So Rush has gathered his small band of true believers and they will drag the Republican party into the cold dark desert of extremism. They will purge the party of non-believers and those that consort with the enemy. They will marginalize themselves as they self-righteously predict a failure that will never come. If the story plays itself out in classical fashion, at some point Rush’s followers will turn on him and the self-proclaimed leader of the Republican party will meet the same fate as all other bullies and tyrants.

Posted in Politics | 9 Comments »

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