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 | 11 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 »

Unrighteous

February 15th, 2009

“Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed.” Isa 10:1

One of the great things about our democracy is that old friends can have fundamental differences about things like economic policy, and yet the country still moves forward. That’s because every four years we all get to vote.

The last eight years President Bush earned the opportunity to test trillion dollar tax-cuts, unrestrained capitalism, and cowboy foreign policy. The results of that experiment pretty much speak for themselves.

The American voters had a clear choice in November. Republicans didn’t offer many new ideas. Instead they chose to attack the guy I liked. They called him inexperienced, a socialist, a friend of terrorists, a baby killer, and a Muslim. A majority of voters saw through that. Now my guy has earned the opportunity to take us in a different direction.

Because of the problems President Obama inherited, that direction includes massive short-term government spending. In the near future it may also include taking over failing financial institutions (like the infamous socialist Reagan did during the S&L crisis) and restructuring mortgages.

I didn’t like much of what the Bush administration did the last eight years. I suspect those who supported McCain and Bush won’t find much they like in the Obama administration.

The facts, however, are hard to avoid. The Bush administration added $5T to the national debt, started two wars, and left the country in the worst financial condition since Herbert Hoover. But when Democrats propose $800B to accelerate the recovery, Republicans call it “generational theft” and followed that up with a proposal for a $2.5T tax cut.

Rather than ideas, Republicans only have tired rhetoric – “tax-cuts are good” and “liberal/socialist spending is bad”. Their only plan for success requires President Obama to fail. Given the serious challenges facing this country that is a sad commentary.

Posted in Finance, Politics, Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

House Fire

February 3rd, 2009

“Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste.” Isa 64:11

A number of people in print and on the Internet seem to be in denial about the November election. They seem to feel that if they continue bringing up the same old issues, the American people will somehow change their minds.

Here’s a message to those unhappy 30%.

We get it. You don’t like the current President and you are going to continue to accuse him of killing everything from babies to capitalism. If you are determined to hold your breath until things change, I hope that shade of blue looks good on you.

For everyone else, we’ve got a big problem that is going to require big changes.

Capitalism is broken and the only viable solution is for the government to spend money to get it going again. It may be tough medicine for those who have this ideological view that capitalism is the cure for all evils. The reality is that this is a time when government has to take the lead. It doesn’t matter whether you call it socialism or not. All that matters is getting our capitalist engine started again, because right now it is broken down by the side of the road.

This is not something that can be fixed with tax breaks alone. That’s because tax breaks only help those who have taxable income. They do no good for the person who is out of a job. They do no good for the company that is losing money. In fact one of the better things we can do is to give poor people more money because they are the ones most likely to spend it right away.

This is also not something that increased productivity can fix. The problem is not a lack of productivity. The problem is excess capacity. We have resources in the form of people and infrastructure that are not being used because there isn’t enough demand.

This is also not something that will fix itself. If we do nothing, it will get much worse before it gets better. That’s because we are already in a downward spiral where we are shedding jobs and eroding asset value. Both loses constrict what the economy needs to grow – credit.

Credit is tight because the banks don’t really know what their outstanding loans are worth because they don’t know what the assets backing those loans are worth. What they do know is that every month, the value of those assets DECREASES. So they are holding on for dear life to the cash they have because they are concerned about their own survival.

Every contraction throws more people out of work. Those folks run out of cash, are underwater on their mortgages, and have to declare bankruptcy. Unsold houses put more downward pressure on the real estate market and banks take the hit in terms of defaulted loans and houses they can’t sell.

The government (local, state, and federal) have to spend money quickly and massively to create demand across all sectors of the economy, get people back to work, and stop the deflationary spiral. If we can do that wisely, that’s a plus. But even if we spend foolishly, the sooner those dollars get into the economy the better.

As long as the money stays in this country, it will do good. It is best if it directly creates jobs, but even if some of it ends up in banks or paying down debt, it’s good. This is a massive amount of money. The challenge is going to be spending it fast enough.

The numbers can be challenging for some to comprehend, but in the context of a $1T spend, a $100M expenditure is .0001%. In other words, as bizarre as it sounds, it is not worth arguing about – yet that is what some would want us to do. Republicans want to delay this bill to because of $150M for endangered honeybees (which is a problem), $50M for the arts, $198 million to keep a broken promise to Filipino WWII vets, $15B for college scholarships, and $700M to buy fuel efficient government cars from US car makers. If you add up all of it, it is less than 2% of the total.

This is insanity.

Our home is on fire. Now is not the time to argue about how much water it’s going to take to put out the fire. Now is the time to open the hydrant wide and point the hose in the general direction of the fire. The water will do the rest.

Posted in Finance, Politics | 13 Comments »

Failed

January 18th, 2009

“As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save us.” Lam 4:17

I listened to President Bush’s farewell address last night.

When I distill the speach, it comes down to a simple premise. “I vowed to defend the country against a second terrorist attack. That goal justified all the actions I took. I was successful and history will someday vindicate me because I was willing to make the hard decisions.”

I don’t buy it.

History will document that in eight short years, Bush presided over the decline of America from a pre-eminent unchallenged superpower to a bankrupt debtor nation giving way to China on the world stage.

The only hope for redemption is if a miracle happens and Iraq emerges as a transformative force for democracy and moderation in the Middle East. If that does happen, I would attribute it more to divine intervention.

The more likely scenario is a cautionary tale of how politics, ideology, and religion can create an administration so convinced of their righteous destiny that they were blind to their own shocking incompetence.

What failures he was willing to admit, he defended on the basis of good intentions.

GOOD INTENTIONS?

That reflects remarkable hubris.

His administration behaved as if they knew best how to protect the American people. They insisted that they had access to information that allowed them to make better decisions than anyone else. They claimed that they were willing and able to make the difficult decisions to defend this country that others were unwilling to make. They asked for our trust with the implication that they themselves could be trusted.

But when it comes to being held accountable for the decisions that they made, they abdicate responsibility. They claim that their good intentions should absolve them of any consequences for the inability to execute the actions that they chose.

They can’t be held accountable for the phantom WMD’s because the intelligence community failed to provide good information.

They can’t be held accountable for the death and destruction caused by Katrina because state and local governments didn’t function as well as they should have.

They can’t be held accountable for the financial meltdown because CEO’s behaved irresponsibly in the unregulated market they created.

It is reasonable for the American voter to expect more of their elected officials, and in particular the expectation of competency should have been higher for the Bush administration because they claimed so much MORE unfettered power than previous Presidents.

It is reasonable to expect that Presidents would rigorously question every bit of intelligence, explore every possible alternative, and, once convinced, demand a complete battle plan that addressed the well known risks of instability and insurgency before committing our country to war.

It is reasonable to expect that our government would have good plans in place to deal with known vulnerabilities in our infrastructure (a strong hurricane striking New Orleans) and that those plans would be regularly tested and updated to reflect current capabilities. It is also reasonable to expect that when those plans are actually needed, we have enough experienced people to carry them out. Finally, it is also reasonable to expect that those plans would be sophisticated enough and the people experienced enough to escalate and expand the effort when the full scope of disaster became obvious.

It is reasonable to expect that those who are in charge of managing our financial infrastructure would regularly evaluate the risks that are introduced into that structure through government action (or inaction) regardless of their faith in a particular ideology.

It is also reasonable to expect that in an organization as large as the Federal government, there is sufficient oversight to insure that those tasked with doing a job are in fact doing it. When they are found lacking, it is reasonable to expect that an administration would hold its own accountable.

Mr. Bush and his administration failed this country at every level.

Mr. Bush’s good intentions won’t improve history’s view of his failures any more than they prevented flood waters from inundating the lower 9th ward.

Posted in Politics | 11 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »