The Guardian, always a reliable source for stories that others do not have access to, tells of a letter written to the Pope by the mistresses of Italian priests that discusses the problems and the heartaches of the women who love priests and the frustrations of the priests who make love with the women who are now asking for the Pope to abolish the celibacy rule that requires priests to remain celibate. Priests do not marry, but more times than the hierarchy would like, they are not celibate, apparently having sex of one sort or another.

The bad news is that this may be the tip of another iceberg for the Catholic Church. The good news is that this time the scandal involves women rather than altar boys.

The letter, in requesting reconsideration of the celibacy rule, pointed out that celibacy of priests was not required until late in the Roman Catholic Church’s history, is not required of priests of Eastern Rite (Orthodox) churches, and is not required today of Anglican (Episcopal) priests who are married when they transfer to the Roman Catholic priesthood.

In an earlier article entitled Celibacy is not the Problem, I argued that

“Whatever the reason for having a celibate priesthood in the past, it appears that the Church may need to face up to the fact that celibacy may be the least of the difficulties for Catholics. As for any theological reason to maintain celibacy, that seems strained at best. Women played a significant leadership role in the early church but that role was dismissed as irrelevant by those who at a much later time in church history advocated for celibacy. The point is that there is no theological or practical reason to continue the outmoded and unnecessary practice of celibacy in the Church.”

It will not solve the pedophilia problem. However the possibility of marriage is likely to draw a healthier group of men (from a sexual/mental health standpoint) to the priesthood, and that would be a good thing.

Http://www.christianhumanist.net

After a long hiatus in which neither side seemed interested in negotiating a settlement to their longstanding conflict, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are tentatively feeling their way through indirect talks coordinated by the US representative, former Senator George Mitchell.

Skeptics are probably correct that this is much ado about nothing. We do not expect very much progress toward peace will come from these talks. The primary obstacle to resumption of serious negotiations has been Israel’s policy to build Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory and particularly in East Jerusalem. Israel has agreed to a temporary freeze on new home construction in East Jerusalem but—and this is an important “but”—Israel continues to insist that Jerusalem, all of it, is its “undivided capital” and that the status of Jerusalem is not subject to negotiation. That is a major obstacle. The Palestinians intend that East Jerusalem will be the capital of their new state. The Arab nations agreed reluctantly to support the Palestinians in the indirect talks but before direct talks between the parties they want Israel to stop building settlements in the occupied Palestinian land because the occupied territory is the heart of the proposed Palestinian state. That seems reasonable.

The fact of the matter is that recent actions by the government of Benyamin Netanyahu and his political allies have made peace less likely through a series of draconian measures imposed on the occupied territories [restricted movement, building of new Jewish settlements, constant taking of Palestinian lands and dispossessing its inhabitants, bulldozing Palestinian homes built without Israeli permits, repressive and aggressive military and police actions, restrictions on food, medical supplies, fuel and food brought into the territories, blocking export of trade goods out of the territories, interference with international charitable and social service agencies providing relief services, etc.] using the excuse that they need these repressive and unwarranted actions as part of their “defensive” strategy.

To a non-partisan in this struggle, recent Israeli actions appear to be more vengeful and punitive than defensive and a reasonable person might conclude that they are intended to provoke the Palestinians, making it more difficult for Palestinian leaders to work for peaceful resolution of the conflict, and strengthening the hand of advocates of violent resistance to the peace process among the activists on both sides of the dispute.

Why does Israel seemingly act against their own stated interests by provoking the Palestinians? I think the answer is simple. Retaliatory acts of violence by Palestinians against Israel give Israel’s current extremist leaders cover to justify their repressive tactics while they continue to build and expand settlements in Palestinian territory. Consequently neither side is much interested in serious discussions of peace.

There are both political and “religious” reasons underlying the Israeli intransigence. The current Israeli leadership does not want serious negotiations because they prefer the status quo—the Palestinians are under subjugation and the political extremists (primarily Fatah and Hamas) are not strong enough to create a real threat, giving the Israelis the opportunity to continue building settlements in the occupied territory to establish a foothold that will be difficult to dislodge in any peace negotiations.

The Palestinian leadership is likewise uninterested in serious peace discussions because (a) they do not trust the motives of the Israelis, do not believe the Israelis will negotiate in good faith, and are convinced (apparently with good reason) that the Israelis will continue to stall any final settlement because they want to grab as much Palestinian territory as they can; and (b) given that the more radical elements among the Palestinians still do not concede Israel’s right to exist, the leadership fears loss of political control if they appear too willing to concede basic issues at stake in this conflict.

To put it bluntly, the leaders on both sides have an interest in maintaining the status quo. Both fear loss of power and influence without an “enemy” to unite their constituencies. Both get financial support from outside allies (the Arab community and the UN pay the bills for the Palestinians, and the US and the American Jewish community subsidize Israel). Without conflict to deflect attention from home problems, both would have to set about the mundane business of government and the personalities of the leadership on both sides of this conflict do not fit well with a peace agenda. I do not know whether others agree with my assessment but I believe that neither the current political leaders nor the political activists and extremists really want peace because they profit from the current standoff. The voices of moderation and peace have been muscled out of the political arena.

The Netanyahu government is a loose coalition of conservative and orthodox elements in Israel, controlled by religious extremists who believe that Israel has some inherent historical and biblical right to much of the occupied territories, a position supported by some fundamentalist Christian groups in the United States. It appears that the Israeli tactic is to continue to stall any final settlement while settling increasing numbers of Jews in the occupied territories, thus making it increasingly difficult to abandon the settlements in any “peace for land” swap necessary for a Palestinian state.

In an earlier day there were more reasonable people in control in Israel who seriously wanted peace and were willing to compromise, and until the current government is replaced and there is room for moderates in the government, and until the current government stops its attempts to silence its critics and stops attacking those Israelis and other Jews around the world and in the US who support peace as somehow not Jewish enough, we will not make much progress toward peace. The Israeli leadership continues to shoot itself in the foot by its extremism, which not only makes dealing with its enemies even harder, but also aggravates and disappoints its friends and potential allies.

The politics of the Palestinians is complex, but the extremist parties vie for control of the Palestinians’ allegiance and have a vested interest in conflict to maintain the loyalty of their followers to their extremist position that all of Israel occupies Palestinian land and needs to be driven out as well as to keep the flow of money coming from extremist Arab and Muslim groups outside of Palestinian territory that are driven by ideology and not interested in a settlement with Israel.

Somewhere in the middle, the needs of the Palestinians and the Israelis for a peaceful two state solution must be found, but it will require political will of the moderates to bring about peace. The seeds of peace have been planted but they are being crowded out by the fast-growing weeds of extremism and conflict.

There are non-violent peace movements on both sides that promise hope. On the Palestinian side Peace movements and attempts to resolve the standoff without violence exist on both sides of this conflict although we do not hear much about them in the media. The New York Times carried a story [Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance] recently about new forms of passive resistance: senior Palestinian leaders in the West Bank who are joining unarmed protest marches against Israeli policies, goods produced in Israeli settlements burned in public demonstrations, the Palestinian prime minister entering the West Bank to plant trees and declare the land part of the future state of Palestine, a campaign against buying goods made in the settlements, a prohibition against using Israeli telephone cards. Non-violent resistance is in its beginning, but with support from all sides it has the potential to become a serious movement that could help change public opinion about the Palestinian cause.

There are also serious attempts at a less violent approach to the conflict in Israel and among Israel’s supporters. In the US, there are several activist Israeli-Jewish groups promoting peace, including the Jewish Voice for Peace  and J Street . Within Israel itself there are many supporters of peace and even in the Israeli Defense Force itself there are passive resistors, including officers who have been jailed for refusal to carry out military missions in the Occupied Territories.

There is hope. Those of us who care, and that includes the Progressive community whether based in religious or secular outlook, needs to make its voice heard strongly and repeatedly to counteract those loud voices of aggression that would drown out this conversation about peace with name-calling or attempts to derail the peace movement with irrelevant arguments that question the motives of the peacemakers.

http://www.christianhumanist.net

Some things we learn early in childhood. Tell the truth. Keep your word. Don’t betray your friends. Don’t tell secrets. Sometimes we struggled with telling the truth over the broken window or whether to tell on our brother for some misdeed. For a child, morality is simple and straight-forward.

Then we grew up and moral values such as loyalty and truth, integrity and honesty, reliability and patriotism, became a lot more complicated. It is not always clear that keeping secrets, or loyalty to a friend or an employer, is the right thing to do. It is no longer obvious that keeping silent about a friend’s crime or misconduct, or a government official’s duplicity or conflict of interest, or a corporation’s reckless endangerment, fraud or betrayal of our national values should be protected out of loyalty.

Most people respect the values of honesty, integrity, loyalty, reliability and patriotism. The issue for the ethically mature person is that values are often in conflict in real world situations and we have to work our way through the conflicts to reach the position that best reflects our core moral values. The conflict of these values creates much of the tension surrounding arguments over the right thing to do in particular situations.

That point should be obvious, but it is lost in most discussions amidst loud and angry arguments in which the combatants fail to see the moral complexity of the underlying issues and consequently question the integrity or judgment of the other side. This came clearly into focus for me yesterday when I read an article in the Washington Post about the controversy generated by WikiLeaks, a website on which leaked corporate and government documents are posted anonymously by concerned citizens who are either patriots or traitors depending on your values.

One recent disclosure in particular generated a lot of press coverage—a video from the cockpit gun camera on a US military Apache gunship in Iraq that fired into a group of civilians, killing 12 to 15 Iraqis including two reporters for Reuters and wounding several children. The video seems to show a different version of events than the account released by the Pentagon following the shooting. The point here is not to discuss that event or whether the US covered up an embarrassing incident, but rather the issues related to the fact that WikiLeaks posted the video, which the Defense Department considered “classified” information. Critics of WikiLeaks (mostly in the government) were furious about the leak. Some supporters of the Pentagon went so far as to call releasing the video to the public an act of treason and suggested the CIA shut it down by “black ops” if necessary. Proponents of truth and government in the sunshine lavished praise on WikiLeaks for its patriotic courage in upholding our national values of truth and honor and keeping the public informed about events that the government wanted to conceal.

Moving past the hysterics, the release of that footage was certainly not “treason” (which requires intent to harm the country) and clearly no harm to the nation was intended or resulted. To the contrary, the intent was to tell the truth about the event. The video was embarrassing and made more so by the Pentagon’s attempt to cover up what happened, but no information was released about any vital national interest and the security of the country was not harmed. Some idiot will of course argue that anything that puts the US in an embarrassing situation could lead to spiteful acts of revenge, but that does not come close to the concept of treason. It is hard to make a convincing argument that preventing embarrassment is sufficient grounds to justify a coverup, or to classify information “top secret,” or to pursue those who leak information as if they had done something disloyal. The controversy here is between those who believe that preserving government secrets is more important than disclosure, against those who believe that the real patriotic duty lies in protecting and preserving the honor of the US by telling the truth whether or not it is embarrassing to government officials.

Our government at all levels, Federal, state and local, has a bias toward secrecy and a desire to keep actions of government officials behind closed doors and in locked file cabinets. Attempts to create laws to compel “government in the sunshine” and to provide for “freedom of information” are fought by bureaucrats and legislators. Releasing information to the public that some bureaucrat doesn’t want released is treated as disloyalty and grounds for termination of employment or prosecution for violating disclosure laws. The same is true in corporate America. Corporations conceal vital information that the public needs to know, whether that is safety information or evidence of fraud or contract irregularities involving public funds. The government bureaucrat and the corporate executive attack employees who release information to the public with accusations of disloyalty or of bad motives.

An example of corporate attempts to conceal damaging information from the public occurred while I was writing this article. A CBS news crew attempted to film oil spill damage on a Louisiana beach when they were approached by a boat operated by BP contractors with two Coast Guard officers on board who refused to let them film oil on the beach and ordered them to leave the area under threat of arrest. The Coast Guard said those were BP rules, not theirs. [We will not get into the issue of how BP, a private corporation, can issue rules that prohibit a news crew from filming on a public beach, with enforcement of corporate rules by the Coast Guard. We wish that CBS had pressed the issue to see if the Coast Guard would attempt an arrest on behalf of BP.]

The ethical issue faced now by CBS is whether its journalistic integrity requires making an issue of the public’s “right to know” and its right to film oil damage on a public beach at the risk of angering BP and losing access to information, or whether CBS will quietly let BP get away with using government intimidation to conceal damaging information and thereby preserve its access to whatever news BP is willing to let CBS cover.

There are only three types of information that should not be released to the public: [a] information that would jeopardize specific operations and methods in national security or law enforcement activities, [b] legitimate commercial trade secrets of corporations, and [c] personal information about individuals where that information may be damaging with no redeeming public interest at stake. Most everything else that governments and corporations try to protect are things they don’t want the public to know about, and that is why we need WikiLeaks and other media outlets, why we must protect the press’ right to publish, why we must ensure the public nature of government activities, why we must insist that government operate under the disinfecting qualities of sunshine, and why we must vigilantly guard against government interference in the public’s right to know.

This essay is not about WikiLeaks, at least not directly. It is about the conflict of moral and ethical values that we face daily and a reminder that we need to be careful that we do not get so concerned about one value that we forgot other values that may be in play in any given situation. Our argument with someone else may result from the other party ranking values differently than we do in a particular context. That does not necessarily make them wrong and us right. An argument that one person sees as an issue of loyalty to country may be seen by another as an issue of integrity, and the disagreement arises because the parties rank these issues in different priority order in a given situation, or are not contemplating that there is one than one value in play.

Loyalty, integrity, honor and truth are often competing values in the real situations we face daily. Our job, as ethical human beings, is to work our way through the values that are in conflict in any given situation and make the best judgment we can about what our duty is in that context.

For a broader discussion of ethics and duty, in the context of a Humanist and a Christian, see this discussion.

Anyone who uses email (and that means most of us) is used to getting forwarded emails from people who have nothing better to do that send to their entire contact list whatever email is making the rounds with the request to “forward this to everyone you know.” Below is a substantial rewrite (by me) of a story that arrived by email from the usual unknown sources who send forwarded emails recycled endlessly through the ether. Unless you were lucky or just don’t have many email contacts, you may have seen this story while it was making its rounds through the internet over the past several months. Annoyed by its not too subtle attempt to blame mortgage borrowers (rather than the lenders) for the financial meltdown and curious about its origin, I tried to locate the source from which it had been culled but was able to find only that it was quoted in slightly different versions on several websites all referencing the fact that it had come to that writer by email, so we may never know the original source.

Usually I just use my delete key, but this story intrigued me because it was a modern morality tale (some called it a parable) that provided a deceptively simple explanation of secondary financial markets centered around an implied judgment that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which was developed by the Bush administration, approved by the leadership of both houses of Congress, and is now administered by the Obama administration, was tantamount to rescuing unemployed drunks who foolishly incurred debt they could not afford (a reference to irresponsible mortgage borrowers, apparently) and who therefore were ultimately responsible for the collapse of Wall Street, whose denizens apparently were not bright enough to realize that granting mortgages to people who could not afford them was not good business practice because many of those bad mortgages would go into foreclosure and would lead to serious losses by those still standing when the music stopped. The moral of the tale was that the financial bailout was a mistake and that the financial burden of rectifying this foolish attempt to expand the housing market was placed unfortunately and wrongly on the backs of the hard-working employed who are not responsible for the drunken mess that must now be cleaned up by those innocent remaining responsible members of society who continued to be employed through the downturn and incurred no debt they could not repay.

It’s an interesting story and an obvious ploy to place the blame for the financial fiasco on irresponsible homeowners who obtained mortgages they could not afford (and they were irresponsible and foolish!) rather than on those who promised that real estate values would continue to escalate without limit and whose greed, gaming the system and financial speculation ultimately brought down the house of cards. The real world is a bit more complex than can be told in simplistic morality tales, and while there is lots of blame to spread around to various parties it is somewhat annoying that the story teller wants sympathy as the tragic victim of the tale who must now pay for his foolish neighbor’s folly.

Since I have a different take on responsibility for the financial crisis (which I think is supported by economists and common sense) I thought it was appropriate to take pen in hand and revise the story a bit and put it back into circulation. Be warned that any similarity to the original is quite intentional although we have shifted around the black hats and the white hats a bit to see how it looks with a bit of editorial revision.

Heidi is the proprietor of Heidi’s Bar & Grill in Detroit. She is a small business owner who has been in the restaurant business in Detroit for several year operating a family grill in a suburban neighborhood. Some of her regular customers use credit cards but most use cash. As a smart business woman she is aware that credit card companies make a profit on the cards, so she determined to keep some of that extra income for herself by issuing her own local credit card. Customers charged their meal and drinks and paid off their bills monthly. However beginning several years ago as the auto manufacturing business began to contract many of her regular customers were laid off or underemployed, or were worried about their future and were saving more and spending less. They no longer patronized her bar and grill as regularly as they used to.

It was obvious to Heidi that her business would decline and eventually fail unless she was able to figure out a way to keep her customers coming and maintain her cash flow. She revised her credit plan so that the bill no longer had to be paid in full each month. Terms now allowed the bill to be extended over time. She began to charge interest on unpaid balances, low at first but rising as time went on, and she stretched out payments over many months. The monthly payment was low at first. This eased pressure on her customers and many new customers came to her restaurant because the new monthly payment plan made it easier to eat out regularly, keep their payments well within their budget, and postpone the final reckoning until some time in the future.

The customers were asked to sign a complicated retail financing agreement they did not really understand, but they signed it anyway. No one actually reads all those pages of fine print. Because she provides her customers freedom from immediate payment demands by stretching the balance over many months, Heidi got no resistance when at regular intervals she substantially increased her menu prices. Her business continued to expand and Heidi’s gross sales volume increased substantially.

As time went on Heidi’s customers’ cumulative bills grew, helped along with price increases and interest rate increases. Monthly minimum payments increased to the point where some of her customers were having a difficult time keeping up with them and Heidi became nervous about holding all that debt so she devised another plan. She worked with a young and dynamic vice-president at her local bank and convinced him that these customer debts (“receivables”) constitute assets. She suggested that the bank could make substantial money by purchasing those receivables at a discount and then collecting the full amount (with contingencies, of course, for some bad loans). The bank agreed to give Heidi 88% of the face value of the receivables, keeping a 12% margin for servicing the loans in addition to earning interest on the outstanding balances. She is happy because she has most of the money that was due to her and she no longer has the risk of customer default, which is now the bank’s problem. She continues to expand her business through use of additional credit. The banker is happy because he has assurances from Heidi that her customers were good for the debt, the bank stands to make considerable profit on the discount and on the interest.

The traders at the bank’s corporate headquarters determine that they can make even more money through commissions by converting these customer obligations into bundled securities that they can trade in the bond market. They will continue to service the loans, so that the actual loan payments will be made to the bank which will then forward on the payments to the various bond holders.

So the bank creates DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS with each type of bond made up of different tranches of the underlying receivables broken into groups of loans with varying risk elements and maturity dates, structured in such a way that it makes it very difficult to understand how these bonds work, what the underlying loans represent or their degree of risk to the investor. Fees are paid to friendly and cooperative bond rating agencies, which don’t really understand the investment but are all too happy to earn their fee by assigning a triple-A bond rating. These securities are then sold to individual investors, retirement funds, state pension plans for policemen and firemen, union trust funds, and other brokerage houses.

Investors and fund managers don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of people who do not have the resources to pay down their ever increasing debt. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses, and the commissions from the bond sales earn the traders some hefty year end bonuses.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a nervous risk manager at the bank notices that customers are defaulting on their payments. He worries about the increasing debt incurred by Heidi’s customers, begins to worry about default, and does not want to be caught with debt that he cannot sell to worried bond clients, so he stops buying Heidi’s customers’ obligations, cuts off Heidi’s credit, and demands payment on the outstanding delinquent loans.

Heidi stops extending credit. Customers can no longer afford to eat and drink at Heidi’s Bar and Grill so her business dries up. Heidi does not have the funds to continue to operate her business, so she is forced into bankruptcy. Heidi’s Bar and Grill closes and her eleven employees lose their jobs.

Overnight DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans without new capital, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. Holders of the bonds are now faced with having to write off bad debt and losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, and her restaurant food supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local distribution center and lays off 150 workers.

The collapse of the bank, and the potential cascade of other banks, brokerage houses and other financial institutions that could collapse like financial falling dominos creates near panic in the financial markets and fear of economic recession. The government considers its options. It could let the financial system collapse, let the banks and brokerage houses go out of business, let their investors lose their investment, let states and counties lose their investments, let the retires of the pension funds lose their retirement income, and accept the fact that in business you have to pay for your mistakes and too bad about who it hurts.

Some government advisors believed that the government should stay out of the market, let pure capitalism and its excesses work itself out, and let the market collapse to teach the titans of the financial industry that their practices led to this collapse and they need to learn from their mistakes. They were willing to accept the social consequences of a serious depression in order to preserve capitalist principles, realizing that business will inevitably collapse if credit collapses, and we will suffer massive unemployment comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s, loss of purchasing power, decrease in tax revenues, and the collapse of much of our economy.

Other advisors took a different position and encouraged government intervention in the markets to prevent their collapse and to ensure the continued availability of funds to business, prevent widespread unemployment, and minimize the problem of homelessness and starvation. The government decided to intervene in the market with a multi-billion dollar cash infusion from the U.S. Treasury to large financial institutions and some large corporations and in exchange for those funds to take an ownership in those large institutions as a way of ensuring that the taxpayer interests were protected and the funds paid back. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by issuing Treasury bonds purchased largely by foreign governments including China, and will require new Federal taxes at some point in the near future once the economy has sufficiently recovered. These advisors prevailed, the economy staggered but is beginning to recover, and much of the TARP funds have been repaid.

Some critics blame the persons who ate at Heidi’s Bar and Grill and obtained their meals on credit for the collapse. Others blamed Heidi and her bankers for giving credit too easily and greedily trying to make money by passing along their badly-underwritten debt to others without having to pay the consequences of their greed, ambition and mistakes. In the end we all pay because of the financial integration of our society and our inability to let any segment collapse without bringing down the rest.

We need fundamental financial reform and the breakup of financial institutions and corporations that are “too big to fail,” so that capitalism rather than corporatism guides our market economy.

Now do you understand?

 http://www.christianhumanist.net

The National Day of Prayer is set for Thursday, despite a Federal Court decision that it is unconstitutional, because the judge stayed his order pending appeal.   This morning’s Boston Globe published its lead editorial endorsing in syrupy language the National Day of Prayer, taking a “what’s the big deal” attitude over the Federal Court decision that government sponsorship of that event was unconstitutional. The writer of the editorial did not do his homework before writing that piece, and apparently is ignorant of the background of the lawsuit that led the Federal Court to declare the National Day of Prayer to be unconstitutional. It is not just about whether or not a day of prayer or meditation violates the separation of church and state. It is much more troubling than that.

So a little history. The National Day of Prayer is an evangelical Christian program, funded by a task force led by Shirley Dobson, wife of James Dobson, the founder of the conservative political activist organization, Focus on the Family.

According to its website, the task force is “a privately funded organization whose purpose is to encourage participation on the National Day of Prayer” and “to communicate with every individual the need for personal repentance and prayer… and to mobilize the Christian community to intercede for America’s leaders and its families.” Its origin is traced “to a 1952 rally in Washington by the Rev. Billy Graham, in which he called for a national day of prayer and envisioned a “great spiritual awakening” for the capital with “thousands coming to Jesus Christ.” The bill establishing the National Day of Prayer was introduced in the Senate by Strom Thurmond as a measure against the “corrosive forces of communism which seek simultaneously to destroy our democratic way of life and the faith in an Almighty God on which it is based.”

In short, this is a project of a right wing Christian group to promote their particular take on Christianity and to try to get control of the conversation about religion in American life, including promoting their view that the United States is a Christian nation—which it is not, and has not been since its founding.

See my article on the issue at http://thechristianhumanist.blogspot.com/2010/04/is-united-states-christian-nation-since.html

The Court found that the day served no secular public purpose, and that is why it was ruled to be unconstitutional.

If it were a neutral day for all people, whether or not religious, to meditate on values, maybe it could be found to be lawful, but as it is now structured, it is a project of a narrow Christian evangelical group, and that group is certainly free to pray all it wants, but it should not be a public government sponsored day of religion.

Prayer is fine so long as it is a prelude to action and involves a serious commitment to real Christian values–working toward peace in Afghanistan and the Middle East [becoming peacemakers, bring our troops home], feeding the hungry [support the food bank and food kitchens], sheltering the homeless [supporting the homeless shelter, the abused women's shelter, the children's home], healing the sick [funding CHIP, supporting health care for all], etc…..

Prayer by itself without action is empty and meaningless words — if our world is to become a better place people have to work together to make it happen.

http://www.christianhumanist.net

I live in a Florida city that like most of Florida is filled with grumpy retirees.  Many are early retired from corporations, with large savings accounts, ample pensions and generous medical insurance plans, and there are others retired from blue collar factory jobs from the mid-west and northeast, so it is possible to walk around many neighborhoods in the afternoon without missing a line from Rush Limbaugh on talk radio. Needless to say, it is a pretty hostile climate for progressives.  Tea Partiers thrive in this warm moist climate, most with plenty of time on their hands that they use to write mean and angry postings on the comment page of the local newspaper bashing liberals, socialists, commies, freedom-haters, Obama-lovers and others of questionable loyalty to American values that they imagine are trying to turn the United States into a third-world socialist nation by bankrupting the country with unnecessary taxes, giveaways to the corporations and banks, and a government run healthcare program that will have government bureaucrats dictating what care we can have before we are sent to the end of life death panels that they fear. 

The two things that really set them off are taxes—they are too high—and socialist welfare programs for the poor, the unemployed, the lazy—all those scabs on the backs of true blue-blooded working Americans who have to work hard only to have their just financial rewards stolen from them by the government and redistributed to those who don’t deserve it.  Every news article, editorial, or letter to the editor becomes an occasion for these extremists to vent their increasing anger and frustration at society, at government, and at local and national politicians.

The Tea Party is something of an enigma. It is difficult and may be unwise to attempt to characterize a group that is as diverse and fluid as the Tea Party appears to be, yet there are some things that can be said about them. “They” appear to be a motley assortment of folks, well meaning in their intentions for the most part, gullible enough to be led astray by the right wing buffoons and rabble-rousers of talk radio and Fox News, foolish and naïve in their public displays and rallys, appallingly ignorant about American history and values, unable to make serious practical political judgments (note their fascination with Sarah Palin), and ultimately dangerous because they foster ignorance and mob rule. They do not understand either democracy or the realities of a republic, yet they are powerful enough to create real damage because they are frustrated and angry and they are lashing out at whatever seems to be a good target for their rage.

A recent dialogue illustrates the difficulty of intelligent conversation with a Tea Party supporter who advocates values that he does not really understand.  In response to a newspaper critique of inflammatory rhetoric by speakers at a local rally in which supporters of President Obama were called everything from socialists to traitors, he said (talking about his friends who participated in the rally):

“They just want to be reassured that you’re an American and that you believe in capitalism, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That’s all.” 

I responded to him:

“The vast majority of Americans believe in capitalism, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, including me.  I fear that what you mean is that you want people to believe in your way of understanding these terms, and that is where our disagreement arises. 

 [a]  I believe that capitalism is the best economic system but it needs operating rules, and it needs to get disconnected from corporatism and monopolies, so that there is real and fair competition between equal parties in commercial transactions.  When one party to a financial transaction makes the rules (for instance, the banks), then real and fair competition does not occur and the basic premise of capitalism is defeated.

[b] I believe in Constitutional government, as do most people, including the courts and judges.  The issue is how the Constitution is interpreted.  That is what we argue about.  If you mean that you want judges who make Constitututional decisions the way you want them decided, and I want judges inclined to go along with my read of the Constitution, both of us believe in the Constitution, but we disagree about what it means and how it is to be interpreted.

 [c] I believe in the Bill of Rights.  I believe in freedom of speech.  I think that provision was put into the Constitution to apply specifically to political speech.  No one should be able to muzzle your freedom to express and advocate for your political beliefs.  But I want that strictly interpreted.  Speech is speech.  Actions are not speech.  Money is not speech.  Corporations are not people.  So my take on this is that what the courts have called “symbolic speech” – i.e., flag burning, desecrating public buildings with splattered blood, or disrupting public meetings, etc. is not properly an exercise of “free speech.”  I also maintain that “money” is not free speech and campaign contributions can be limited without any individual being deprived of his right to speak his mind. 

In other words, we do not disagree about the importance of capitalism, or the Constitution, or the Bill  of Rights, but we surely disagree about what they mean.” 

The leadership of the Tea Party movement says that the characterizations and estimates of the Tea Party should not be based on what happens at public demonstrations, what is yelled out, what is written on crude illiterate signs.  It is apparent that the excesses of the Tea Party followers and hangers-on have proven to be an embarrassment to its leaders, who have visions of being taken seriously and having some impact on future political events.  Fox News, in a surprisingly candid article on the Tea Party following its national tour, said that “while organizers have held the tour as a way to stay front-and-center as a political force, the rallies have also attracted the kinds of mistruths, exaggerations and conspiracy theories that make Tea Party leaders cringe. Though the movement is still trying to shore up its credentials as a grassroots power that’s here to stay, the so-called “fringe” and its accompanying antics continue to give critics fodder.”

Adherents of the Tea Party movement are supposedly brighter than the average citizen (a questionable judgment based on the signs they carry and the slogans they shout), but regardless even those identified as its leadership seem strangely deficient in knowledge of history and the meaning of some of the simplest political concepts—socialism, communism, tyranny, fascism, Nazi—which they use in the  most bizarre and uninformed way.  An analysis of this aspect of the Tea Partiers appears in  a recent issue of Slate, in a perceptive article worth the read by Ron Rosenbaum, The Tea Party’s Toxic Take on History.  In his critique of the lack of historical awareness evidenced by the Tea Party Rosenbaum says:

“Most people with a basic grounding in history find Tea Party ignorance something to laugh about, certainly not something to take seriously. But I would argue that history demonstrates that historical ignorance is dangerous and that it can have tragic consequences, however laughable it may initially seem. And thus the media, liberals, and others are misguided in laughing it off. And educated conservatives are irresponsible in staying silent in the face of these distortions…. The muddled Tea Party version of history is more than wrong and fraudulent. It’s offensive. Calling Obama a tyrant, a communist, or a fascist is deeply offensive to all the real victims of tyranny, the real victims of communism and fascism…. The media for the most part has shown itself afraid to challenge the insidious distortions of language and history Tea Partiers promote.”  

It would be nice if the so-called “Tea Party” crowd were actually a new third party instead of what appears to be merely “Republicans with attitude” who talk about change we might believe in but are actually just the same “angry white folks” with the same tired complaints about big government, unbalanced budgets, porous borders, gay marriage, enemies behind every bush, government giveaway programs, and high taxes.   They are Republicans wearing camouflage, and I guess they assume we won’t notice.

When the Tea Party movement first surfaced I had hoped for more.  I really hoped for a third party of fiscal and social moderates that would give some balance to the flaky fringe of the right and the left and might lead to a national conversation about needs and priorities and a willingness (and necessity) to compromise in the interest of accomplishing something useful and workable for our nation and to move us beyond anger and frustration. 

I wanted a party for fiscal moderates, a party that would not engage in unnecessary wars and that if and when a war was necessary for our defense would have the integrity to pay for that war by raising taxes so they could show they were serious and were not just engaging in political rhetoric for short term political gain at long term cost to the next generation of ever increasing debt and ever decreasing quality of life.

I wanted a party that would commit to making lobbying illegal; end campaign donations by corporations, businesses, labor unions, trade associations and political action committees; reform campaign finance laws and amend the “free speech” provisions of the Constitution so that corporations were not deemed to be persons and money was not deemed a proxy for speech; and eliminate the influence of corporatism in our lives.

I wanted a party that would enforce our borders and our immigration laws; end agricultural visas for farmers and technical visas for computer programmers and other professionals unless coupled with enforceable provisions requiring those with temporary work visas to leave when their visas expire; stand up to the Republican Party that wants our immigration laws to be ignored to keep the cost of labor down and ensure a continuous supply of low cost workers to business in order to undermine worker protections and unions; stand up to the Democrats who also want the immigration laws to be ignored so that more poor workers and minorities will increase the potential membership of their party; and change the national conversation about immigration so that there was no implication that open national boundaries are desirable and enforcing our immigration laws was somehow “racist.”

I hoped for a party that would encourage free enterprise to flourish by breaking up the big banks and big corporations that dominate our markets and prevent real competition in price and quality of goods and services; devise regulations to make markets fair and competitive; eliminate manufacturer agreements with retailers that arbitrarily fix prices and penalize retailers who compete on price; remove legal constraints on Medicare so that drug companies would have to bid successfully to get their drugs on an approved list; and enforce trade agreements to prevent dumping and other unfair and anti-competitive practices that undermine our economy and our workers.

I hoped for a party that would recognize that government is separate from religion and would not try to impose sectarian or religious values into the political sphere or try to impose particular religious standards on the rest of society.

 But I am a realist and I do not think this will happen.  I am afraid that the Tea Party is not really a serious political movement that will give us a real choice because we have seen the Tea Party movement co-opted by the Republican Party to try to win unhappy independents. Our choices will still be between Republicans and Democrats.  That is a great disappointment to me, because both parties are firmly in the control of the corporations and despite what they say with their campaign rhetoric, fundamental change will not happen.  The existing political parties are too entrenched in their ways, too entangled with lobbyists, too much under the influence of corporations, PACS and political cronies, too sure they can continue their current ways with no real consequences, too inclined to protect and advantage their friends.  That said, and with considerable reluctance, I will continue to support the Democrats in elections as a moral choice of the lesser of the evils because they tend to be less selfish and more inclined to support programs that benefit people than the Republicans.

http://www.christianhumanist.net

Indirect talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will begin again this week, coordinated by the US representative, former Senator George Mitchell.

Skeptics are probably correct that not much will come of these indirect talks. The primary obstacle to resumption of negotiations has been continued building of settlements in occupied territory, and particularly in East Jerusalem. Israel has agreed to only a temporary freeze on building in occupied East Jerusalem and has asserted regularly that Jerusalem, all of it, is its “undivided capital” and that the status of Jerusalem is not subject to negotiation. The Arab nations have agreed reluctantly to indirect talks and for good reason: they want Israel to stop building settlements in the occupied territory because that territory is the heart of the proposed Palestinian state. Their condition for direct talks is that Israel stop building more Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

The fact of the matter is that the current Israeli government’s actions have made peace less likely through a series of draconian measures imposed on the occupied territories [restricted movement, building of new settlements, constant taking of Palestinian lands and dispossessing its inhabitants, repressive military and police actions, restrictions on food, medical supplies, fuel and food into the territories, blocking of trade and goods out of the territories, etc.] using the excuse that they need these repressive and unwarranted actions as part of their “defensive” strategy. That has provoked the desired response from the Palestinians by aggravating them and giving more influence to advocates of resistance among the Palestinians. Consequently neither side is much interested in serious discussions of peace. The Israelis do not want serious negotiations because they prefer the status quo with Palestinians under subjugation and Israelis constantly enlarging their de facto control. The Palestinians are uninterested because they do not trust the motives of the Israelis, do not believe the Israelis will negotiate in good faith, and believe the Israelis will continue to stall any final peace while they continue to enlarge settlements for Israelis.

The real problem with peace at the moment is the current Israeli government under Netanyahu, which is controlled by extremists who believe that Israel has some inherent historical and biblical right to much of the occupied territories. It appears that the Israeli tactic is to continue to stall any final settlement while settling increasing numbers of Jews in the occupied territories, thus making it increasingly difficult to abandon in any “peace for land” swap necessary for a Palestinian state.

In an earlier day there were more reasonable people in control in Israel who seriously wanted peace and were willing to compromise, and until the current government is replaced and there is room for moderates in the government, and until the current government stops its attempts to silence its critics and stops attacking those Israelis and other Jews around the world and in the US who support peace as somehow not Jewish enough, we will not make much progress toward peace. The Israeli leadership continues to shoot itself in the foot by its extremism, which not only makes dealing with its enemies even harder, but also aggravates and disappoints its friends and potential allies.

See this article on resolving the current tensions between the extremists and those who support peace between Israel and its neighbors: http://thechristianhumanist.blogspot.com/2010/04/liberal-disenchantment-with-israeli.html 

http://www.christianhumanist.net

The AP is reporting this morning, in a story carried by the Boston Globe, that Hezbollah has indicated that it now has the capacity to strike deep into Israeli territory in the event of another overt conflict with Israel. The story reported that Hezbollah may have as many as 30,000 missiles provided by Syria. 

There is something that does not ring true about that story just on common sense basis. Think about 30,000 missiles. That takes up a lot of space. It is a huge transport problem. Missiles would be very visible to planes, to satellites, etc., so I am disinclined to believe it. 

Then, another common sense issue. Israel has planes, rockets, missiles. Most of them are supplied to Israel by a foreign power, the U.S. So if Hezbollah, or the Palestinians, have rockets and missiles, and if they are supplied by a foreign power that supports their cause [Syria], what precisely is the difference between that and Israel’s possession and use of rockets?

In a war between two parties, what sense does it make for the side with the most weapons to complain about the other side getting weapons?  

Israel claims the right to exist, and I will support that right insofar as that right applies to the land that was given to Israel [unfairly I believe] by the UN, but that is a done deal of 60 years ago and we can’t put the that genie back in the bottle. BUT THAT RIGHT ONLY APPLIES TO THE LAND GIVEN TO ISRAEL BY INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT. The lands taken in war are “occupied territory,” [the Palestinian land and East Jerusalem], by international law they cannot be incorporated into Israeli territory, and their status is subject to negotiation in a peace treaty, which for different reasons both sides have been resisting and blaming the other side’s actions and intransigence. 

Israel continues to violate international law, yet complains about Hezbollah violating international law. Isn’t that hypocritical? 

Terrorism is not acceptable, when it means going after civilian targets. But bombs and rockets have always been legitimate weapons against another party in war despite the fact they kill civilians as collateral damage, but the US in every recent war has used them. Israel uses rockets and kills civilians with them and Israel cannot reasonably condemn Hezbollah for using them also. 

Israel is waging economic warfare in the occupied territories. It is depriving citizens of Palestine of food, fuel, medicine, water and building supplies. It is playing the role of military occupier. It is denying Palestinians access to and from their own lands. Israel is acting unreasonably, arbitrarily and tyrannically. 

To a military power, every problem looks as if it has a military solution. This particular problem does not have a military solution and all sides will be better off when they realize they cannot solve this problem by force of arms. Both parties need to come back to the table. Israel needs to give up the Palestinian lands seized by force in exchange for peace. The Palestinians need to give up their claim (legitimate as it is) for lands taken from them and given to Israel after World War 2, and need to be compensated for that land. 

I was glad to see (NYT) that Palestinians are beginning to use peaceful methods and passive resistance as a tactic. The current aggressive Israeli government under Netanyahu is an embarrassment to Israel and an obstacle to peace.  A more civil government is Israel is likely to make better strides toward peace and might gain some sympathy from the rest of the world. 

Israel is an embarrassment to its friends and allies, including its Jewish supporters in the US. For more on this issue, see http://thechristianhumanist.blogspot.com/2010/04/liberal-disenchantment-with-israeli.html