The nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court may please the far right, who see themselves as holding the line on morality in society, but the short-sighted victory may have exactly the opposite effect. Alito believes a husband has dominion over his wife and that an abortion should require his permission, whether or not it is his child. If such a practice were put in place, my solution would be simple: don't get married. Live together.
Marriage has to give equal benefits to each partner or it is not a partnership, it is ownership. Would the wife have to be consulted before the mistress could abort? Can you imagine a fully responsible adult having to go before a judge and PROVE that the spouse would beat her if he found out she was pregnant before being given permission by the judge to abort? And what if the judge said no? Can you imagine how you would feel after humiliating yourself before the court to be sternly and parentally sent back to your husband? These personal issues should be outside the domain of government.
Marriage is part of the legal system because it is seen not just as a personal relationship or a sprititual relationship. It carries property rights with it. And the history of those property rights are from the woman to the man. Only in my lifetime have women had the right to credit in their own names without the signature of a man - any man. Perhaps the real reason the conservatives are against gay marriage is that they see that a marriage between two people of the same sex would destroy the last vestige of this inequality at the root of marriage. There will no longer be an a priori master of the house.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
The End of Marriage
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Forward
The idea of framing puts language foremost in the public debate, and as the NY Times Magazine pointed out a few weeks ago, the Republican core values are summed up in a few words - lower taxes, small government, family values - the Democratic values are difficult to lay out in a full essay.
An Article in the LA Times on Bill Richardson quoted him as saying, "It's basically not center, not left, not right, but basically forward, What works? What helps people? What solves problems?" And this is what liberal politics has been about in my life.
Conservatives look back and want to keep the status quo even if it means wearing blinders or applying a completely inappropriate but comfortable band-aid to a social plague or cutting off whole branches of liberty because they don't like the smell of the blooms even as the fruits nourish the whole population. It is negative and backward looking.
Liberals, or progressives, want to keep working out what can be done with today's population, in today's economy and with today's technology to build a better tomorrow. The "tax and build" liberals gave us the interstate highway sistem, gave us the Medicare and Social Security that the general population recognizes as a basic good, forced upon the conservatives racial integration and women's rights that even the mode backward looking nostalgia conservative would not undo. I can't cound the number of women who work and are proud of the job they do, who would not sit still for a young man they had trained to be promoted over them because "he'll have a family to support someday," to be able to get a home loan or car loan without a male family member to co-sign. I remember those days and I have the good grace to be grateful to the women who made those very real economic shackles on my freedom go away. They were not perfect; the changes were not all ideal. But if we keep moving forward, the parts that don't work will fall by the wayside. Going back won't fix anything. Going forward. Solving problems. Using what works and rethinking what doesn't. These are sound bite values I can live by.
Friday, July 29, 2005
A Democratic Stand
Much has been made of the Democratic Party's lack of message. The successes at holding off the assaults of the neo-con right wing have been good defense, but defenses alone cannot win a war. In this ideological war, the liberals need weapons of their own.
I don't think the problem is that Liberals have no ideas; I think Liberals are afraid their ideas will not be popular. They lack the courage of their convictions, and it shows. Rather than figuring out how to sound more centrist, or how to include more God language into their party, Democrats need to look at how the Right has made their strengths into liabilities. Reclaiming repressed parts of one's political psyche will reduce self-sebotage, will allow for real growth and will provide a real platform for democratic ideals to flourish.
A BUDGET IS A MORAL DOCUMENT
I suggest the Party rehabilitate taxes. The Progressives have been saying "A budget is a moral document." This is a very powerful idea. This reframes taxes outside of the burden/necessary evil dichotomy. Morality is a good thing. A good budget is good morals. The way you spend tells the world who you are. This permits the crusty, common sense thread of American thought to penetrate the jabber about values and to look at how the pigs are feeding. People with any sense will have a way to look at taxes within the frame of their own experience. "You cannot buy the powerboat because the children need to go to college" becomes "you cannot give a tax refund to your friends because the children of your employees need books and computers in their classrooms." "You need to put more money aside because your roof will need to be replaced next year" becomes "you need to put some tax money aside because the roads in your town are falling apart." You know your roof will not pay for itself out of your food budget, but somehow the roads are supposed to pay for themselves out of the Food Stamps Program. If we are talking morality, allows for black and white and shades of grey. Waste is bad, but pork is worse in a way that incompetence is unfortunate, but taking advantage of the weakness of others is repugnant.
DEMOCRACY REQUIRES ACCOMODATION
Anybody who lives in a family knows you don't always get your way. You don't even get to demand a happy compromise sometimes. But you stay in your family because you get enough of what you need that it is worth the frustration. Likewise in society, other people use the world you share with them in ways that make you crazy. Including people means solutions will be at best a compromise, and that nobody gets to be comfortable all or even most of the time. Living with others means living outside your comfort zone, but also means living a richer life, learning to love the future, and finding that you are happier when you're not always right.
So what is right or wrong with people forming groups that demand a share of the pie? Unions demand shares of the pie from their bosses, and often go to the government for support of their right to do so. If unions went to the goverment to demand laws that limited who a business owner could marry or do anything else outside the business world, that would be wrong. Churches form groups to worship, and if they go to the government for their support to do so, that is great. If they go to the government so that it will conduct the business of this country in alignment with their values no matter how others live outside of the halls of worship, then that is wrong.
THE FUTURE WILL NOT LOOK LIKE THE PAST
A powerful tool of consevatives is nostalgia, but nostalgia is essentially pessimistic and bitter. "The present is all ruined. The future is not hopeful. Let us return to the good old life of the past." This is negativity incarnate, and nostalgia is for losers. Liberals are forward looking and optimistic, believing like in the joke about a room full of shit that "there must be a pony in here somewhere."
Part of it is the goal. The game of our society is not a game that can be won, any more than the game of language can be won or the game of fetch with a dog can be won. It a game that is played for the pleasure of playing. Let us remind ourselves and our fellow Americans that America is a game that must be played with everyone and the purpose of the game is to keep it going with all of us into the future. This is why the phrase "love it or leave it" is so wrong for the game we are living. "Love us and play with us" would be better, because America is us.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Blame the Victim Christianity
Complaining about the lack of traditional values in others is part of a traditional pastime that employs a whipping boy to release pent up negativity. Often people laying blame are deeply unhappy and have discovered that if they discharge their existential discomfort onto others, using projection as their primary tool of inner peace, their lives suddenly blossom with value and purpose. These traditionalists go to war, figuratively and literally, with their neighbors just to maintain their own inner equilibrium. The equation is simple: I am uncomfortable or unhappy and it is all your fault. Then there is an implied coda: Not only is it your fault, but you must change your behavior to match what I think is appropriate. Missing in this equation is any reasonable argument about why the "other" should accept this burden, and so God must be brought in. God can not only make unreasonable demands, but God can kill you without proportional cause. And though God's permission, they can kill you, again both figuratively and literally, if you don't do what they want.
This sacrifice of the other to preserve one's self-image is Scott Peck's (The Road Less Traveled, The People of the Lie) definition of evil. Changing oneself is painful and difficult, whereas harming someone else turns out to be relatively easy on the ego. Behavioral studies consistently show that when one human hurts another, the one causing the harm begins a mental process that ends with a rationalization of how the victim somehow either deserved or brought on the harm done. The a priori assumption by the first person is that he or she is good, and since a good person never harms an innocent person, reasons must be found to strip the victim of innocence. "Blame the victim" is a refrain throughout history that continues to be sung today. The irony, for those who enjoy bitter laughter, is that the song is sung the loudest by those who claim the mantle of righteousness. It is not surprising that as our government and culture take a more self-proclaimed "moral" stand, that they would create and then blame whole new classes of people.
Take the 'culture of life" contradictions of the folks who are both anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. Take the consumer credit situation, where people with bad credit are charged 30% interest because they are least likely to pay and most likely to file bankruptcy, often causing them to be unable to pay and to file for bankruptcy. Take the war in Iraq, where the people fighting foreigners occupying their own country are called "insurgents" and the foreigners, who just happen to be us, we call "liberators." Take the efforts at "tort reform" where the victims are labeled greedy and the corporations that harm them in the name of the bottom line are spoken of as innocents by government officials who, when not in office, work for those very companies. Take the diatribes against gays for "destroying marriage" by the people most likely to marry early and divorce often. Take any of these issues and you will see the inherent contradictions and rationalizations of righteous anger.
We are living in a "blame the victim" world and if something bad happens to you in these times, God help you, because if you complain at all, your fellow man will rally round the "poor" person or company against whom you are tying to make a claim of injustice. The worst offenders in this "crying wolf" are the Fundamentalists, whose faith-based St. Paul the racist-bigot-homophobe views have gained ascendancy today They may be in the majority but they whine like the worst of their own parodies of minority victim-speak. College professors who expect you to defend your opinions with logical arguments are part of a liberal conspiracy against religion. The people who object to religious symbols on official state property or documents are denying the Christian origins of the Founding Fathers who thought they were creating a country where freedom of religion meant being able to follow whatever Christian religion you wanted. Prayer is a universal good and those who see otherwise are asking for God's wrath.
The Paulist Christians say that only God can do good, that it is not in works but in faith that we live a righteous life. So the Catholic Church does not approve of condom use even in Africa, even though it means innocents such as wives and rape victims will be infected with AIDS by more promiscuous men. Paulist doctrine says racial problems today are a result of Brown vs. The Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement, because the changes wrought by secular activists MUST go awry. St. Paul would approve of every oppressive and repressive act of government because it helps teach the poor to be meek and submissive and thus more likely to attain heaven in the afterlife.
Progressive ideals are anathema. Pity is okay, so long as you pray for the victims and don't actually try to fix anything. Moral authority though prayer should bring us into harmony and love, but when it doesn't, that just means God has a different plan. Submit to his plan. Don't complain about your treatment by authorities any more than you would complain about God's authority. Remember Job. Accept your cancer from pollution. Accept that your boss raided your pension. Accept that you were raped and now carry the child of your rapist. This is God's will.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Virtues Not Values
I'm tired of all the talk about 'values' because that's all it is - talk. Values are principles, which according to my dictionary, are rules of behavior, laws from which other laws are derived, theoretical and fundamental ideas about right and wrong. They can be all talk and no action, except the action of telling others what to do by means of law and lecture. The actual venality, hypocricy, and double-standard mentality of televangelists, of right-wing Representatives and Senators, and of Joe Righteous himself are beside the point because we are all sinners at birth thanks to Adam and Eve. Blaming his split of word and deed on the Fall allows them to believe they are on the side of good simply because they spout holier-than-the-rest rhetoric.
An example is Jim West, the Mayor of Spokane, Washington. He has a history of being rabidly anti-gay. Then he got caught offering a city internship over the interenet to someone he thought was a young gay man and who turned out to be a reporter. Then West whined he was losing his job because he was gay. He ignored the uncomfortable detail that offering jobs for sex is not something any mayor, gay or straight, was supposed to do.
Values plus the doctrine of Original Sin means that 'uncomfortable details' in behavior can be ignored.
West is not an anomaly. I remember living in Maryland when State Representative Bauman, a staunch foe of homosexualty, was caught soliciting a male prostitute in Washington, DC. These guys and others reveal what I think is really behind all the values laden language of the far-right. Like serial killers who leaves messages pleading to be caught and punished, these folks hate something about themselves that they cannot pray away, so they try to blame it away. They make laws to punish the behavior they themselves wish they could stop but cannot, and hope the sacrifice of others will burn away their own self-loathing. Their targets are folks who do the same things as they, but do not feel guilty. This hatred of those free enough to have no shame when they themselves burn with it is the root of their enraged and vicious hypocricy.
Language being what it is, you can say one thing and do another. So I am interested in values only to see if a person's words and actions are aligned or not. When they diverge, I feel their actions speak louder, and lose respect for the speaker. This is why integrity is a primary value of mine.
Whether it is also a virtue of mine can be seen in my behavior. You cannot really challenge my values, but you can call into question my virtue if my actions fall short of my ideals. Virtue is the practice of a value. But the right has waged an attack on virtues, since what they want is the easing of their concience in scape-goating without actually having to change their own behavior. So tolerance they have labeled homosexual. Honor they have labeled judicial activism. Fairness they have labeled partisan politics. Charity they have labeled treason.
Monday, May 16, 2005
Bored of Education
As a pluralist, I'm okay with a school board adding things to the curriculum. As a writer, I'm not at all happy with a school board taking it upon itself to redefine a whole field of study because they don't like its conclusions.
I may be a secular humanist myself, but I know science doesn't have all the answers, and many of the answers it does have are not the final answer. I still remember my 7th grade geography teacher scoffing at the idea that the shapes of Africa and South America made it look like they had broken and drifted apart once upon a time. When it turned out that satellite data revealed continental drift, I knew that contemptuous scoffers can be proven wrong.
But it is this being able to be proved wrong that keeps science's feet to the fire. If we eliminate that from the definition of science, we get a new idea of science.
The new science of Kansas lets you teach things that sound good and never have to be corrected because they cannot be proven false. The existence of God? No way to prove false so it could be true. But the law doesn't simply add teaching "God's plan" to the neo-scientific mix. It says any "systematic method of continuing investigation," The way I read it, this would include ghosts. Witchcraft. Astrology. Tarot fortunetelling.
So I say to the teachers of Kansas, start looking for fun stuff to teach that used to be relegated to the backwater of superstition. Wicca incantations will probably become a big hit given the popularity of Harry Potter. Whole sophomore classes could learn Transcendental Meditation and then visualize world peace for credit. Poltergeists and boggarts could become the new thing to look for instead of quarks and superstrings.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Religion on Campus
Fundamentalism and education have always been at odds. Fundamentalism, by definition, takes one perspective and filters all other ideas through that single lens. The Nazis or the Taliban, the Khmer Rouge or the Christian Coalition, they take a single-minded narcissistic vision of the world and use it as a tool of domination to unite their followers in unthinking self-congratulation while projecting all their inner conflicts outward against straw-man enemies.
The real enemy of these cults is education. Education is considered an absolute good in most of the world, but not in fundamentalist states. You could not claim life in the Soviet Union was better and richer than that in other countries unless you either had no information about other countries, or only visited them with blinders and filters on your eyes and ears. Fundamentalists believe 'education' is the application of these filters and blinders.
Often the beginning of a true education is the uncomfortable disillusioning of infantile fantasies about the world and one's central position in it. Education broadens one's perspective to include other points of view even as it encourages one to question for oneself all received knowledge. This is unsettling to the individual, which is why colleges and universities are isolated from the world a little like a sanitorium.
It's one thing for an eighteen-year-old to think his father has his head up his ass about the way the world works, and quite another for his college professor to teach things that prove it. The normal response is to want to kill the messenger. This is frowned upon in academia and elsewhere, (except in the chambers of the Supreme Court where Clarence Thomas had a poster about striking a blow for freedom by bombing Yale- he said it was just a joke- ha, ha.)
A student with such a feeling has two choices: leave the college where he or she is trying to get a liberal education (yes, liberal - hence the term Liberal Arts degree), or learn to use the thinking tools of academia, tools that students will be unskilled at using at first while their professors will be experts, and so their professors' ideas will dominate the discourse well into graduate school. This is a proper running of the system.
Unfortunately for Fundamentalists, their sons and daughters quickly learn skills of logic in college that knock over the one-legged stool their faith perches on. The solution is to attack the institutions of higher learning and pass bills making it illegal to suggest a more stable stool might have two, three, even four legs. My office chair rolls on six casters. Very stable. I can roll in any direction I want. This is anathema to the Christian Coalition, so they are innoculating their young against college. Check out the logic-busting indoctination at probe.org where there is a Student Mind Games Conference. A recent attendee lauds the program because:
"I had no idea what to expect except from what Jerry Solomon had portrayed for the juniors and seniors at my high school. He acted as a professor from a large university who was adamant about his dislike for Christianity. The professor allowed no one to ask him questions because he was the one asking the questions. "
Mind games, indeed.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
High Noon at the UN Corral
"We like the idea that he'll represent U.S. interests to the U.N., rather than act as a U.N. spokesman to this country," said Howard Kaloogian, chairman of Move America Forward. "We like the idea that he'll speak truth to power."
The report on John Bolton's nomination presented the above conservative opinion quote in Thursday's LA Times article, "Democrats Set to Reject Pick for U.N." as a legitimate contrary position equal to the Democrats'. But it was a cynical, chauvinist statement to make, underserving of equal airing. Cynical because it co-opts the language of those truly oppressed. And chavinistic because it assumes that when an ambassador supports ideas of the UN, he or she is abdicating his responsibility to the US.
The Democratic objections pointed to facts in the public record as the grounds of their concerns. Move America Forward used innuendo to turn the argument from the nominee to the evils of both Bolton's detractors on the one hand to and the institution of the UN on the other. The pigs of Orwell's Animal Farm would be proud of this Squealer's success at teaching the sheep to chant "US good, UN baaaad."
We admire those who "speak truth to power" because they do in the face of 'power' coming back and destroying them for standing against the behemoth. Is he saying poor David United States is going to stand up to Goliath United Nations? Ridiculous. But what makes it even worse that such comments are reported in the paper without ridicule. The Fourth Estate should be more than a Xerox manchine.
"Speak truth to power" is the motto of the American Friends or Quakers who are, among other things, radically pacifist. Think Grace Kelly in "High Noon." Quakers have endured ridicule because they have opposed war under every circumstance, and would stand with the UN and its preference for negotiation rather than confrontation at every turn.
The neocon/Radical Right/Move America/Bolton folks must mean something very different when they say 'truth' and 'power' than what the dictionary says. If their specialized lingo were translated into common usage language where words are used to clarify rather than obfuscate meaning, Mr. Hooligan's (sic) message is that John Bolton is going to " speak Power to Truth" and speak with all our six-shooters blazing.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
40% Credit Interest and Climbing
A friend of mine got a cash advance from her bank card. When she got the bill, her interest rate was a whopping 40%. She was in financial straits, which was why she borrowed. This 40% interest pushed her over the edge rather than saved her.
The new Abu Ghraib mentality toward unsuspecting borrowers will drive many into financial ruin, a thing you'd think the banks and credit companies wouldn't want. If their customers go bust, how would they collect? The answer is the legislation laughably called the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. This piece of legislation would end the traditional protection that goes back thousands of years to forgive a debt after seven years. Outrage against usury burying people in unrecoverable debt goes back at least as far as Jesus casting the money lenders out of the temple. But that is a part of the Bible that Bible thumpers prefer to think of as quaint and outdated.
Credit card companies were some of the largest Repugnican contributors. They have been posting record profits while pushing Congress for legislation to guarantee them their pound of flesh even as they aggressively pursue poor-risk borrowers from whom they can flay unlimited penalties and fees.
This new Republican Bankruptcy Profiteering and Consumer Predation Act ( a better name in my opinion) that passed the Senate and is expected to pass the House refused to add Democratic amendments to cap interest at 30% or to raise the minimum wage by even one dollar. The other aspects of the bill as explained to my friend by her bankruptcy attorney would make it impossible for her to escape the payments and penalties for the rest of her life. She wondered how this could have come to pass and why she hadn't heard about it before. She is conservative in her views and so does not read the NYTimes. I, on the other hand, had been following the bill's course throught he Senate because I do read the Times, both LA and NY.
When I called the authors of this Senate bill before passage, their offices scolded me for believing the liberal press, and that this bill would not affect anyone but a small percentage of scammers. The man in Senator Grassley's office pooh-poohed my concerns as distortions and confidently told me I had been misled by the liberal hysterics.
$40% interest is not hysterics. It is not some wild exaggeration by the "left." It is here.
I want you to do three things. I want you to call your Congressman or Congresswoman about this. Capital switchboard: 202-225-3121. (You can find your Representative's name if you don't know it at House.gov) Tell them how terrible you think the Bankruptcy legislation is. Keep it to one issue. If you have another issue, make a separate call.
Second, I want you to call your State level politicians and explain that although you know they don't vote in Washington, you want them to use their position to bring it up with the state's representatives in Congress. They do talk, and this was suggested to me by my own Congresswoman's office as an effective way to bring pressure to Washington.
Third, I want you to forward this to all your friends, liberal and conservative, especially those who live in conservative states, and ask them to do the same.
If anybody says the Democrats are just the same, don't let it pass. Look below at the amendments they tried to add and that got swept aside. The votes were almost exclusively along party lines and the Dems who voted against are mostly from Heartlessland states like Nebraska and South Dakota.
40% interest. No forgiveness of debt no matter what the cause: illness, failure to receive child support, military service (see the failed amendments below.)
DEMOCRATIC AMENDMENTS THAT FAILED:
S.AMDT.16 Amendment SA 16 proposed by Senator Durbin. To protect servicemembers and veterans from means testing in bankruptcy, to disallow certain claims by lenders charging usurious interest rates to servicemembers, and to allow servicemembers to exempt property based on the law of the State of their premilitary residence.
3/1/2005: Amendment SA 16 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 38 - 58. Record Vote Number: 13.
3 Dems voted against, 0 Reps voted for.
S.AMDT.17 Amendment SA 17 proposed by Senator Feingold. To provide a homestead floor for the elderly.
3/2/2005: Amendment SA 17 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 40 - 59. Record Vote Number: 14.
3 Dems voted against, 0 Reps voted for
S.AMDT.15 Amendment SA 15 proposed by Senator Akaka. To require enhanced disclosure to consumers regarding the consequences of making only minimum required payments in the repayment of credit card debt, and for other purposes.
3/2/2005: Amendment SA 15 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 40 - 59. Record Vote Number: 15.
4 Dems voted against, 1 Rep voted for
S.AMDT.28 Amendment SA 28 proposed by Senator Kennedy. To exempt debtors whose financial problems were caused by serious medical problems from means testing.
3/2/2005:Amendment SA 28 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 39 - 58. Record Vote Number: 16.
S.AMDT.29 Amendment SA 29 proposed by Senator Kennedy. To provide protection for medical debt homeowners.
3/2/2005:Amendment SA 29 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 39 - 58. Record Vote Number: 17.
S.AMDT.32 Amendment SA 32 proposed by Senator Corzine. To preserve existing bankruptcy protections for individuals experiencing economic distress as caregivers to ill or disabled family members.
3/2/2005: Amendment SA 32 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 37 - 60. Record Vote Number: 18.
S.AMDT.31 Amendment SA 31 proposed by Senator Dayton. To limit the amount of interest that can be charged on any extension of credit to 30 percent.
3/3/2005:Amendment SA 31 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 24 - 74. Record Vote Number: 20.
S.AMDT.37 Amendment SA 37 proposed by Senator Nelson FL. To exempt debtors from means testing if their financial problems were caused by identity theft.
3/3/2005:Amendment SA 37 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 37 - 61. Record Vote Number: 21.
S.AMDT.42 Amendment SA 42 proposed by Senator Schumer. To limit the exemption for asset protection trusts. ( a way for rich people to protect their property from banruptcy liquidation )
3/3/2005: Amendment SA 42 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 39 - 56. Record Vote Number: 23.
S.AMDT.70 Amendment SA 70 proposed by Senator Dodd for Senator Kennedy. To exempt debtors whose financial problems were caused by failure to receive alimony or child support, or both, from means testing.
3/10/2005:Amendment SA 70 not agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 41 - 58. Record Vote Number: 36.
S.AMDT.119 Amendment SA 119 proposed by Senator Dodd for Senator Kennedy. To amend section 502(b) of title 11, United States code, to limit usurious claims in bankruptcy.
(withdrawn for lack of support)
The list goes on and on. Check it out yourself at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN00256:@@@S
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Holy Hypocrites
Either Tom DeLay, the House Majority Leader and Republican darling from Texas, committed an "act of barbarism" on his own father or he has been using the poor Schiavo family as a bit of lighter fluid on the flames of the emotional barbecue called Republicans-Uber-Alles.
He himself coined the impassioned phrase, "an act of barbarism," to describe the removal of the feeding tube that was keeping Terri Schiavo alive. But he, along with his family in 1988, agreed to remove his own father from life-support according to the LA Times today. What, oh what could have made him commit such an evil act on his own father?
Did he love or hate his father? If we say that love was his motiviation in his decision about his father, it implies an opposite motivation in his opposite position about Terri Schiavo. But surely he doesn't hate her. Yet hate is there, as sure as love figured with his dad.
I think hate is a strong word. Yet the viciousness of the Republican assault on one hundred years of growing freedom and equality are being shut down on a single President's watch. The Republican Hate Machine has had such success fanning emotional issues into flashpoint absolutes that they don't know where to stop.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson is up for reelection and Terri Schiavo looked like a good way to start another blaze. Pour some gasoline on the poor girl's suffering and let the President light the match with a stroke of a pen. I wonder what Mr. DeLay's would have felt if the Congress and President had told him he could not relieve his father's suffering.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Judgment vs. Compassion
I look at the parents and the husband of Terri Schiavo and I see a microcosm of the cancer eating at the core of our society. They cannot come to an agreement, even for the sake of one they love. Meanwhile, all the rest of us are so sure 'our side' of this tragic drama is not only right, but that the other side is evil. This issue, the election, the social and political landscape, the world and our place in it. We are good and the other side is evil. How did this happen?
The parents of this girl seem evil to me. She was bulimic, an eating disorder that is a girl's way of exercising control over her life. The parents' behavior in the name of "love" over the last fifteen years, their intransigent absolutism, their willingness to spin the tale any way to make themselves seem right, their passionate embrace of their vegetative daughter who can no longer disagree makes my skin crawl. I imagine the horror of a daughter with such parents if she were trapped in a non-responsive body but still able to take the world in. I can imagine her inwardly howling with despair at the thought of being at their mercy for the rest of her life and having no way to escape. It is a hell that is much more believable to me than the fire and brimstone of the evangelists.
Then I read in the New York Times about two women whose children had been in the same state as Terri Schiavo. One mother had finally come to the decision that keeping her son alive was hurting him and another who brought her daughter home and has been caring for her for almost thirty years. Both women were still clear that their choice was the right one for them, and neither was willing to judge either the parents or the husband in the Schiavo case.
I felt then a bit of healthy shame. If these women can find it in their hearts to remain non-judgemental, who am I, having never experienced this kind of choice, to take sides.
Oh, a part of my brain will always yammer about the bulimia and its probable cause. But that is unknowable, and needs to be treated as fiction. The reality is the parties in this public parade are in pain. Whether they brought it on themselves or fell into this abyss through no fault of their own has nothing to do with me. My emotional response to them, judgement or compassion, has everything to do with who I am and what my county is as well.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
The Liberal Garden
I would like to rehabilitate the word 'liberal.' Liberal, according to my dictionary, means generous; noble-minded; broad-minded; not bound by tradiitional authority or orthodoxy; candid; free from restraint; looking to the general or broad sense rather than the literal. These are all beautiful ideas. Only one of the last definitions, free from restraint, could possibly be given a negative spin. It is this last and least meaning that has the conservative (tending to support the preservation of established views, customs, institutions, etc.; opposed to change) knickers in a twist. (Knickers being ultra-conservative)
Freedom from restraint means people can behave any way they like within the law. Social codes are broken right and left. I lose control over my children, my spouse. My neighbor doesn't cut his lawn. HIs dog pees on my petunias. The music on the radio hurts my ears. All the doctors at the hospital are foreign and they don't treat me right. Asian women should not be given drivers licenses. Hatred of difference blossoms in my heart. I don't want to face my own ugliness. It must be something wrong with THEM.
If we are liberal, we try to find ways to thrive that allow others the room to thrive as well. Tolerance is not easy, but it is very poor soil for hatred. Instead of seeing society throught he lens of the family, which presupposes adults knowing what's best and laying out rules for the children, liberals view it more as a garden, where hierarchy is irrelevant. In a garden, different plants require different soil, and changing the ph of the dirt is not moral relativism but sensible realism. In a garden, it would never do to allow one plant to grow like kudzu over the entire plot. The Christian Coalition is the kudzu of the American social garden.
Monday, March 21, 2005
The GOP Paradox
The GOP Leaders want it both ways. They want to save the Terri Schiavo's of the world whose costly care would be impossible without Medicaid, but they want to slash Medicaid. It's not okay for her husband to remove her feeding tube, but it's okay for them to remove funding for it.
Likewise, the part of Terri's care that was paid for by her husband came from a million dollar settlement against the doctors, a settlement that the GOP would like to make impossible in their plan to cap runaway malpractice settlements. Yeah, that settlement was ridiculous alright, ridiculously small given cost of her care for fifteen years.
Cynical Politics of "Life"
All the high-minded rhetoric about poor Terri Schiavo in the mouths of Republican legislators would be heartwarming if those ideas found their way into other issues. The reason that the Republican Machine has jumped on this issue is revealed in an eyes-only memo for GOP senators that described it as a "great political issue" because it played to the Christian conservative movement, which makes up much of the Republican base.
The GOP Bulldozer sees an opportunity to unseat Senator Nelson, a Democrat from Florida who has stood by the courts and due process in this tragedy rather than going apocalyptic about it. The GOP Bulldozer has such good control over its members that all, even the President, can be called in to play their part in the machinery. One more seat means that much more leeway in dismantling the Middle Class.
And once they have dismantled the Middle Class, there will be only Workers and Rulers, a cozy arrangement that has worked for millennia, except for that pesky 20th Century anomaly. In the 20th Century, the arrival of labor unions signaled a rise from Working Poor to Middle Class. The unions didn't come about because of liberal politicians. The unions came about because working conditions were unfit for animals, let alone humans, and pay was often not enough to live without debt. Listen to Johnny Cash's old songs. If trickle-down had worked at even a trickle, the unions would never have been born. But the rich don't believe in sharing the wealth.
The Middle Class, however, demanded the same quality of life as the Ruling Class. Having risen from the Working Poor, they also expected the same chance for others to move up as they have. For a few years, the distance between the richest and the poorest in America was such that a person could imagine we were all one people. Yet since Reagan, wages have dropped for wage earners, dropping many back down from Middle Class to Working Poor, while the wealthiest Americans have seen their income multiply a hundred-fold.
How can this be? Because the Ruling Class understood that the once-Working-Poor still felt more comfortable with the old ways and pandered to it. Somewhere in their hearts, the Poor accept their second-class socio-econominc status so long as they can have first-class spiritual status. This is why Bush can lie to the public but Clinton couldn't. The Bushes can pander to his rich buddies and chum with the Saudis so long as they foist the prole moral code on the rest of us.
Which brings us back to Schiavo. Righteous indignation, the tool of these Modern Pharisees, galvanizes forces even as is blinds them. They are shouting morality all the way to the bank.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
The Modern Pharisees
I am tired of the self-styled "Moral Majority." They are merely selectively moral and only superficially devoted to the democratic idea of majority rule. When the majority opinion agrees with theirs, they tout it with zeal. But when the majority opinion on an issue disagrees with theirs, they deny the majority voice for that Majority-of-One called God. Happily, God always agrees with them. And when he doesn't, well, secular humanists weren't the ones who lobbied for the crucifixion of Christ. It was the political zealots of his own religion who didn't like the message. Too liberal. Too permissive. We don't like what he's saying so we'll vilify him and destroy him. Truth be damned in the service of a higher good.
Fundamentalists use the so-called "Word of God" as a weapon to get their way with the rest of us. Scripture is the modern guillotine, clean, swift and cruel.
Yet, even the most literal adherents to the Word in the Bible find their lives at odds with the text. Take divorce. The Bible considers a divorced person who marries another to be an adulterer. It is very clear. Of course, the Fundamentalists condemn divorce and they do so loudly. Meanwhile, they enjoy the highest divorce rate in the nation. The distance between the beliefs they profess and the actions they live widens every day. So whom do they blame for their failings? Liberals and their moral relativism!
These people's hatred of moral relativism does not come from an understanding of what the phrase really means. It comes from self-hatred. Their own hypocricy must find a target outside themselves to attack and scapegoat. Self-reflection is lost in the frenzy of war on (you fill in the blank). This proved successful in Judea 2000 years ago. It proved successful in Germany in the 1930s. It proved successful with American McCarthyism in the 1950s. It is proving successful for the Christian Coalition.
Make no mistake. Liberals are not destroying America and everything we stand for. The Christian Coalition is.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
The Ethical Pluralist
The Ethical Plurality, as opposed to the so-called "Moral Majority," recognizes that there are other people in the world beside oneself. A pluralist stands by the saying, "There is a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and the wrong way is to try to get everybody else to do things the 'right' way.
