It is striking that so many conservatives spend so much energy condemning gays.  They don’t just criticize gays; they condemn gays with intense passion.  Nor does this process of moral judgment usually involve any sort of delicate weighing process.  Too often it is a visceral and unrelenting moral harpooning delivered by the likes of Ted Haggard—or, at least, the sort of judgment previously delivered by the then-closeted version of Ted Haggard, whose name is now synonymous with “reaction formation.”

Many of the people who condemn gays on street corners and pulpits remind me of steam boilers on the verge of blowing up.  Anti-gay bigots are rarely if ever attempting to work through the details of any of the three main historical philosophical approaches to morality (consequentialism, deontology or virtue) when they condemn gays.  No, there is nothing much philosophical about the way most people rail against the gays.  They are not driven by any sort of philosophy.  In my experience, they are primarily driven by disgust.

What especially disturbs conservative Christians are images of men kissing men and men having sex with other men.   Such images are so incredibly disgusting to those who hate gays that it has become a favorite insult on the streets and in the military to shout “You’re GAY!”  And when this insult is hurled in the process of casting moral judgment, it is done by people whose faces are contorted with utter disgust.

Because such condemnations of gays are so visceral, this raises the issue of whether disgust is a valid basis for morality. 

My “gut reaction” has been that disgust is a senseless, arbitrary and unworkable basis for a moral system.  There are many reasons. If disgust is a proper foundation for morality, who gets to decide what is disgusting? The conservative Christians of the United States would certainly step up to claim that right and responsibility.  After all, they claim that the U.S. is a “Christian Nation” and that they are especially inspired and guided by the Creator of the Universe.  They are also quite sure that gay sex is immoral. They never seem to tire of making that public pronouncement.  And why stop at homosexuality? Disgust could also serve as the basis for many other “moral” positions.  Therefore, whoever becomes the arbiter of morality-based-on-disgust would also attempt to educate the rest of us as to the evils of nude beaches, public breast-feeding, body piercing, abortion and euthanasia.

All of us should be wary about accepting disgust as a basis for morality, however.  Demographics are shifting and, someday, conservative Christians might be on the receiving end of moral judgment based upon disgust.  How so?  According to the dictates of other cultures American Christians do all kinds of disgusting things.  They should clean up their own act.  Christians do disgusting things like eating pork and wearing leather. Christian women expose their faces and their legs, they talk with men to whom they are not married and sometimes they kiss men in public.  Christian women are sometimes so bold as to appear in public while they are menstruating.  Christians often use their left hands and they commonly wear shoes inside of their homes.  Their homes are filthy because they often live with dogs and cats-some of them sleep with their pet animals.  They drink shameful substances such as alcohol and milk.  These sorts of “disgusting” things could justify lengthy prison sentences in many cultures.  Shame on Christians!

Whoever we choose our arbiter of disgust, then next step is obvious.  Disgust is a favorite excuse for persecuting members of out-groups.  Disgust is thus the unspoken foundation for bigotry.  European Americans have historically characterized people from Africa and China as “dirty” as the basis for depriving them of basic legal rights and human decencies.  The same thing now goes for gays, who conservative Christians commonly characterize as animalistic and unhygienic. How often have you heard this comment: “What’s next, bestiality?”

At this site, I have often argued that “disgusting” things tend to be those things that remind us that humans are animals.  According to many conservative Christians, though, we are not in the same league as animals, as evidenced by our invisible “souls.”  

We are higher than animals, evidenced by the Chain of Being.  This fits in nicely with the up/down metaphor described by Mark Johnson and George Lakoff.  In Metaphors We Live By, Johnson and Lakoff explain that “virtue, goodness and status” are all seen as “up.”  In Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (1993), Mark Johnson explores various metaphors for moral character (page 50).  One of the primary metaphors used for moral character is purity/pollution.

The “moral,” rational self is high, while the “lower” self is associated with the body and bodily functions.  This up/down, high/low orientation comes to be correlated with purity versus impurity.  The body, with its passions and desires, ties us to that which is dirty, polluted and computer.  The mind, as the seat of reason and will, tries to maintain its purity of rising above and trying to control the body. (more…)

[This idea was born as a comment here, but I decided to create a separate post out of it].

What if your mother stood right behind you, and your mother’s mother stood right behind her? Then your great grandma and then your great great grandma. Imagine them all lined up, one foot apart, stretching out into the distance. If a generation is deemed to be 25 years, a line of your ancestors as long as a football field (300 feet) would stretch backwards 7,500 years.  The woman at the end of that 300 foot line would have lived during the time when agriculture just began in ancient Egypt. You’d still recognize each of your ancestors in that 300 foot line to be fully modern humans, biologically speaking. 

Isn’t it amazing to think that you could run along side that entire 300 foot line of your ancestors in only 15 seconds (I’m assuming you’re not an Olympic caliber sprinter) to end up standing next to one of your own ancestors who was alive 7,500 years ago?

Now think even further back.  In An Ancestor’s Tale, Richard Dawkins calculated that 20,000,000 great-grandparents ago, our relatives were small shrew-like animals living at the end of the Cretaceous period. What if you spaced out your relatives one foot apart to extend all the way back to these shrew-like creatures? That line would be 3,787 miles long. That’s about the length of highway running from my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri to Anchorage Alaska. Imagine speeding alongside that line of your relatives at 60 mph, seeing the generations of your relatives whizzing by, more than 5,000 of them every minute.

It wouldn’t take long to reach the last of your relatives who looks like you. In fact, your trip would have barely begun.  Biologically modern humans (those whose bodies are the functional equivalent of our own bodies) came onto the scene between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.  Driving at highway speed parallel to that line of your own relatives, you’d run out of your biologically modern human relatives less than two-minutes after starting your trip. That’s only 4,000 generations.

If you wanted to drive all the way out to see your shrew-like relatives (at 60 mph), you’d need to drive alongside that entire 3,787 mile long line of relatives.  It sounds daunting, but you could do it in only 63 hours.  That’s only 63 hours of driving to get back to your relatives who were literally shrews!

You can’t possibly write a work of fiction that is more amazing than these facts.

We are all survivors. If any one of those ancestors failed to survive long enough to reproduce, you wouldn’t be there to read this post.  For me, that is an extraordinary thought. Just think of how likely it was that you would never exist, which brings me back to the idea of the post from which this post sprang. 

[After originally publishing this idea, “Ben” wrote this comment]

First and foremost, it would probably only take me 13 seconds to run the football field. That is, if I was not so intrigued by the figures I pass, to stop and have a quick chat. I’m a bit (lot) confused though. My mind can’t seem to get past the first few generations, without straining, then I end up at the end with a rodent. Are the folks (mice) way back at the beginning still my *direct* descendants? Or is there some extinctions or branching out or… okay it is just too hard to comprehend, for me.

Another interesting thing, not that it really matters, but EVERYONE reading this is part “black”.

DNA studies have shown that people shared a common ancestor who lived in Africa between 50,000 to 200,000 years ago. As our ancestors migrated out of Africa into the rest of the world, small changes called mutations occurred in their DNA. As generations passed, each mutation links our ancestor to a specific time and place in history. The mutations that we find in our own DNA tell the story of our own ancestral past.

[My response to Ben]

Ben, after you run past the football field length line, just to get an idea, you may, indeed, come back and chat with some of these folks. 

I would love to see the looks on the faces of so many bigots as they started noticing that the skin color and facial features of their own relatives started to change as they drove past that long line of their relatives. After only one-half mile, only 30 seconds of driving, they would start noticing that they were driving past their ancestors who lived in Africa “only” 60,000 years ago.  They would start noticing their australopithecine ancestors after driving for only 30 minutes.  If those bigots started their hypothetical driving trips from St. Louis, they’d notice their australopithecine Grandmas even before they left the St. Louis area. This makes me wonder . . .  would they get out of their car and hug their hairy naked ancestors or would they vomit? 

Someday I’m going to write a post called “I am African.”  The idea is that it doesn’t matter who you are–you come out of Africa.  Consequently, on the Census form and other forms that ask the meaningless and divisive “race” question, my habit is to check all relevant boxes, including “African,” because that’s where at least some of my ancestors are from. This is a thought that liberates, because it reminds me that we’re not so different from different-looking others after all.

Since my highway drive is a thought experiment–let’s take the thought to an extreme.   Let’s assume that all of your female relatives standing in that line were sexually mature adults. I’d bet you’d think some of those women were fetching.  The incest taboo wouldn’t kick in (no Westermarck effect), because you weren’t raised in the same house with most of them. This might cause you a conundrum. If you can marry a second cousin, can you marry your great great great (X20) grandmother? The shared genetic material you share with that woman would be far less than that of your second cousin. Such a potential, hypothetical conundrum! Not that I’m driving all the way to Alaska and dating a shrew!

If anyone is looking for a Good Book that endorses and promotes human slavery, Ebonmuse has a recommendation for you.

No cheating by skipping around, now.  Just read the passages he presents and then heed the conclusions of Ebonmuse.

Bill Clinton’s Commencement Speech at Harvard - June 6, 2007

The former President explained much societal dysfunction when he asked a simple question:  Should we focus on what human beings have in common or should we obsess about their minor differences? 

The outcome of this simple choice determines innumerable personal and political agendas.  To the extent that we choose incorrectly, the resulting contentious rhetoric has the capacity to mushroom into oppression and violence that can displace, maim and kill millions of people.  It has done so repeatedly.

Many of our political and moral disputes stem from this basic low-level perceptual choice: whether to focus on differences or commonalities.  Here is how Clinton captured the issue:

So if you look around this vast crowd today, at the military caps and the baseball caps and the cowboy hats and the turbans, if you look at all the different colors of skin, all the heights, all the widths, all the everything, it’s all rooted in one-tenth of one percent of our genetic make-up. Don’t you think it’s interesting that not just people you find appalling, but all the rest of us, spend 90 percent of our lives thinking about that one-tenth of one percent?

For at least six years, the air has been thick with violence, bigotry and oppression  because too many people are making the wrong choice up front.  The current Administration excels at choosing badly. The result? A de facto national policy that anyone who is different is suspicious. 

As eloquently stated by Bill Clinton, the alternative would be to focus on the fact that humans are 99+% the same (I’ve written on this sameness in many places, including here and here).  Perhaps it’s tempting to resist this thought in a country where we so often stress individual liberties and where our moral system is so rooted in personal responsibilities.  We aren’t as different as we’d like to believe, however.

I agree with Bill Clinton that to the extent that we fret about minor human differences we can expect massive societal dysfunction.  It’s difficult to turn this all around, though, because focusing on differences sells media ads.   We are currently living in an environment created by media corporations that are spraying out stories involving accusations, threats and paranoia.  What’s more interesting, a news story where people get along or a news story where people threat each other?  Massive societal dysfunction is thus the price we must pay to sell lots of jeans, perfume and cell phone plans.

Bill Clinton commencement address is extraordinary, well worth the 30-minutes it will take you to view it.   I also enjoyed several of the terrific speeches by several Harvard grads, all part of this same video.  If you’d like to go straight to view Bill Clinton’s speech, you can pick it up here (at Andrew Sullivan’s site), then start viewing at about 1:36:00.  You’ll find the transcript of Mr. Clinton’s speech here.  Below, I’m printing my personal “best of” excerpts “below the fold,” based upon this transcript. 

(more…)

I have a confession to make. I’m an ordained minister. I’m not making this up. I was ordained about five years ago by the Universal Life Church.

I got ordained because it was free and it only took a few minutes on-line. I also did it because it allowed me to officiate over a wedding for two friends. Here’s the irony. These two friends selected a wonderful woman to actually perform the ceremony. The woman had graduated from the seminary, receiving extensive theological training. But the Church wouldn’t ordain her because she was a lesbian. Therefore, the woman performed a beautiful ceremony in front of hundreds of people, but it wasn’t “official” according to state law. The next day, I conducted a small private ceremony: “By the power invested in me by the Universal Life Church, I hereby pronounce you husband and wife!” Ta-Daaaahh.  I signed the marriage certificate.  It was quite fun and satisfying to help out.

In sum, the lesbian woman with all the training couldn’t officiate, but I could do it, because I spent five minutes on the Internet. When I was ordained (I assume this is still the case with the ULC), I had to check a box agreeing that 1) people should be kind to each other and 2) people should be free to practice whatever religion they choose.  That’s about it.  No dogmatic beliefs are required.

Prior to the wedding I carefully checked to see whether I could perform this ceremony in the State of Maine (where the wedding was held).  The government official told me that they have about 20 of these ULC weddings performed every year in Maine. This might not work in all states, however, so do your research! ULC provides some legal information on this topic.  It boils down to how they interpret the phrase “ordained minister.”  Maine’s policy is that as long as there is an organization that is willing to say you are an ordained minister (ULC will vouch for you), you’re good to go. 

What’s especially cool about this ULC option is that the couple can be married by someone who actually knows them, rather than someone who is officiating simply because he or she has traditional credentials.

That’s my story, then.  Sadly, my story is also about bigotry by a religion.

If you want to get ordained, just visit the ULC site. If you want, you can pay $12.25 for a plastic ID card identifying yourself as an ordained minister (mine says “Reverend Erich Vieth”). ULC has a real physical building in Modesto, California.  You can check to see who is a minister [I just renewed my listing, so it might not be up yet]. It’s not just a 17-year old kid working out of his basement.  ULC is a very inclusive, non-judgmental organization.  Here’s a little blurb from the ULC site:

We make no religious hurdles, no hoops to jump through, no tests of loyalty, no rings to kiss and no fees to pay. Why? The ULC Monastery represents freedom, and to have freedom you can not make demands upon individuals. In the Universal Life Chuch (ULC) Monastery everyone is equal - the same level of greatness is enjoyed by all. We will be your personal minister/consulate and advisor, with your consent at no charge to you. We are here for you each day. There is a scripture which says “there is a friend, which sticketh closer than a brother.” We wish to be that friend for you. We ordain all who ask and welcome you to the Universal Life Church Monastery Ministries.

Checking the site today, I see that ULC now has an official policy recognizing same sex marriage:

All adult persons with love for one another have a religious and constitutional right under the 1st amendment of the United States, to the union of marriage regardless of sex.

Such is invoked under natural, primal, and religious law. Given this understanding, we hold that it is a denial of religious rights by the United States government to restrain our ministers from their constitutional right to perform the ritual of the Sacrament of Marriage to consenting adults, be they any sex.

If you need last rites, let me know . . . or better yet, have any friend quickly get ordained over the Internet to minister to you.

The Washington Post reports on Obama’s willingness to address issues that afflict many African American communities:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is delivering pointed critiques of the African American community as he campaigns for its votes, lamenting that many of his generation are “disenfranchising” themselves because they don’t vote, taking rappers to task for their language, and decrying “anti-intellectualism” in the black community, including black children telling peers who get good grades that they are “acting white.”

As he travels around the country in his effort to become the nation’s first black president, Obama has engaged in an intense competition for black voters — a crucial Democratic Party constituency that accounts for as much as half the electorate in some key primary states such as South Carolina. But the first-term senator, who has sought to present himself as an agent of change eager to challenge political convention, has taken the unusual route of publicly criticizing his own community.

In a brief interview, Obama said he is simply giving broader exposure to the problems that African Americans discuss with great frankness in private. “It’s what we talk about in the barbershops in the South Side of Chicago,” Obama said.

The article makes reference to a 2006 speech Obama gave at a Chicago church after a pair of shootings in a black neighborhood, before his presidential candidacy.

All of us know little shorties, and we see them when they are young. Something is happening to them around age 4 or 5. A darkness comes over them, and you can see the loss of hope in them,” Obama said then. He added: “There is a reason they shoot each other, because they don’t love themselves, and the reason they don’t love themselves is we are not loving them, we’re not paying attention to them, we’re not guiding them, we’re not disciplining them. We’ve got work to do.

If you’d like to know what curse words are the most offensive, Cognitive Daily has the answer for you, based on a recent survey.

There I was, minding my own business, when WHAM! I was damned to hell. Thankfully, my salvation is being actively prayed for, so maybe, just maybe, I still have a chance.

OK, well, perhaps “minding my own business” is a bit of truth-stretch. I was actually stirring a pot, just a little. Not sure why; I guess I found myself momentarily bored with all this academic writing I’m doing in the throes of the end of the semester and thought I’d wander around trolling for an argument. Er, discussion, I mean.

Background: As my profile states, my primary function in life is to be the mother of two daughters, both of whom happen to have been born in China. They are perfect, by the way, just in case anyone wondered. But the oldest is fast approaching her teen years (ACK!) and most of our time is spent butting heads in that proverbial, old-as-time mother-daughter way.

ANYWAY, I have remained a member of our adoption agency’s Yahoo group for years, often serving as a reference for the agency or a “buddy family” for someone traversing the adoption process. I enjoy it, and since we’ve been a family for 11+ years now, I can sometimes offer adoptive parenting advice. That’s the other thing about my oldest - she examines every emotion and every aspect of her life with a microscope and a fine-toothed comb. We’ve had every conceivable adoption/missing birthfamily/looking different conversation known to humankind. So I share. Usually, my thoughts are met with appreciation, or people ignore me. Not so this time.

The agency we used is openly based on Christian principles. This was never discussed during our adoption process other than being noted in the initial information packet. No one ever preached to us. We were extremely satisfied with all aspects of the process. The first time this religion thing became an issue for me personally was just a couple of years ago, long after both of our adoptions were final. A fellow adoptive parent and friend went to work for the agency, and confided in me at one point that she was uncomfortable with all the praying going on at work. They prayed during staff meetings. She was a Christian, but Catholic, which apparently many *other* Christians don’t actually consider Christian. I had no idea.

Regardless, it bothered her and I empathized that it would bother me as well. She went on to tell me that when she had been hired for the job, she was asked to sign a statement of faith. Because she does consider herself a Christian, she signed it, but wasn’t terribly comfortable with it. She left the job soon after, and we both went about our lives.

Over the last couple of days, in some thread of discussion on the group’s message board, this topic of the agency being “faith-based” was mentioned. A former employee and fellow adoptive parent confirmed that it is true, and in her response mentioned the aforementioned statement of faith. Many weighed in - it’s a big deal, it’s not a big deal. It bothers one, doesn’t bother another.

I weighed in on the bothered side, not that they were a faith-based agency but that they would limit their potential employee pool this way. I gave the example of a friend of mine, a social worker, who had expressed interest in applying there for a job awhile back. I told her that she would be phenomenal, but I also warned her of what I’d heard, telling her not to be too disappointed if she was not hired; she is Jewish.

A couple of others were also bothered by this whole employment issue. We all understood that it was certainly the agency’s right to do this, we merely expressed our disappointment that they’d made such a choice. Back and forth we went, around and around again. But the entire discussion, even though there were obviously two diametrically opposed sides, was respectful and unfettered by ugliness. The board moderator posted that currently no one is being asked to sign such a statement, and there are non-Christians working for the agency at this time. Cool.

But a bit of the ugliness crept in when one poster insisted that those of us who felt excluded had no right to feel that way - unless we’d applied for a job there and been turned down.

I responded by saying that telling anyone how to feel was presumptious if not outright rude, and that all I was saying was “it hurts my heart to know that wonderful people would not be allowed to work there because they will not sign a statement of faith in Jesus. As if non-Christians are not capable of doing the job in an ethical, caring manner. That, to me, is very disappointing.”

Another poster added, “it saddens me to think that there are probably some extremely qualified, equally wonderful people who would be assets to *** and its families who won’t get that chance. And the families won’t get a chance to benefit from a truly diverse staff and their valuable perspectives.”

We both reiterated how appreciative we were of this agency that created our families, and how we still believe they are one of the best agencies in existence.

When suddenly, out of lurk-mode, a waiting parent sped by and shot this onto the board:

“it saddens me to think that there are probably some extremely qualified, equally wonderful people who would be assets to HEAVEN and the kingdom who won’t get that chance. And the kingdom family won’t get a chance to benefit from a truly diverse and valuable perspectives. There is only one way y’all. I pray for the salvation of every lost person.
In God’s love-
S*****
Christians-we can do more good praying then typing! Let’s commit to that, how about it?
Read Matt. 7:6 (ya know what i mean?)”

OUCH! That one stung. Several of us pointed out that comments like that are exactly what make non-Christians wary of anything that openly professes to be Christian. Nothing like being told your soul is lost. We also told her not to waste her prayers on heathens like us who don’t desire salvation.

I predict she will be another one whapping her son in the head one day for not believing in God. Oh, wait, it’s Jesus she’ll be ranting about. Sorry. Gotta keep the story straight. You have to excuse me, I’m still shaken from the impact.

I wrote a paper for one of my Master’s classes a couple of weeks ago, integrating what I’d absorbed from two textbooks into pages of my actual life.   Shortly after I got it back from my professor, a friend and I were discussing this very blog, which led to a discussion of philosophizing in general.   He lamented how lately, he’s seen an awfully lot of writing overwrought with words at the expense of actual ideas.   This guy is an intellectual himself, a prolific writer and thinker, so his comment gave me pause. 

As I’ve read for this particular graduate Communication class, I’ve worried more than once that some in my degree program seem to overstate the obvious.  I love taking a fragment of seemingly mundane human interaction, analyzing its details and its place in our lives to parse from it a deeper understanding of our connectedness, yet I can’t shake the underlying fear that many would meet our research with a big, “So what?”

I thought I’d share some thoughts from this particular paper here, and ask for the feedback of the ‘blog’s readership.  Based on responses I’ve received to previous pieces and the responses I’ve read here to the writing of others, I believe this audience falls toward the thinking end of the spectrum.  There.  I’ve laid out a blanket compliment.  Be nice when you pick me apart, then, please??

Here goes:

Drama unfolds around us continually, though the mundane events of daily life often blur into methodical sameness until boredom becomes the norm.  The drama goes unnoticed; only when an exception jolts us awake do we take notice of the richness, the texture, the complexity of all that which is life, the human interactions swirling and bending, enveloping us as minute events create our world.

Mikhail Bakhtin believed in the importance of the minutiae.  His complex views of human interaction, as chronicled by Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson in Mikhail Bakhtin, The Creation of a Prosaics, boiled human interaction down to the details.  He did so in his fight to hold the novel up as a viable art form; through his career as a teacher and philosopher in Russia, Bakhtin fought for it the status previously reserved only for poetry. He marveled at how novels created conversations with the readers and by doing so, advanced our human connectedness.

Prosaics are the antithesis, as it were, of poetics.  One might define poetics as the big moments, the artful compilation of emotion into a large event in life, a planned celebration, perhaps.  Prosaics, instead, happen around us all the time, and each interaction weaves into the next to define our constantly shifting identities and world.  This constant shifting gives way to the concept of unfinalizability in Bakhtin’s work.  We are never finalized in this messy, open world, and for Bakhtin, this is imperative to life and freedom.  Unfinalizability invokes potential, innovation, surprise and a rich creativity.  Every utterance moves us to a new place in thought, perched closer to the next “aha” moment that will take us racing joyfully in a new direction.  Our trick, I believe Bakhtin tells us, is to remain open to the possibilities, to live our lives in a state of heightened awareness of the rich nuances all around us instead of giving in to some perceived monotony.  He tells us there is no sameness, but we have to pay attention. He asks us, in a way, to embrace awe, just as Einstein did.

Another concept in Bakhtin’s work is his definition of a “superaddressee” in conversation.  He posits that each of us, when we communicate, has an imagined audience beyond the actual person or group to whom we are speaking.  This “superaddressee” is the imagined perfect audience, that one who would understand most fully and justly what we are trying to say, or the one whose opinion matters most.   Each of us uses one, according to Bakhtin, and they invoke the hope of being perfectly understood and appreciated.  Some consider this “superaddressee” an internal voice, a separate version of self.  Others describe it in ideological terms, calling it God or absolute truth, but Bakhtin did not define it as such, and his biographers caution against containing it in any one box.

I pondered a class discussion in which we discussed empathy and our obvious inability to experience each and every human alternative existence.  I began to wonder how the understanding and acknowledgement of the “superaddressee” concept, if combined with the purposeful creation of a “superother” in our minds, might further positive relations between differing cultures and races.  One class member lamented not our inability to fully walk in the shoes of another, but that our culture seems to toss us a proverbial double-edged sword.  We are told we can never understand the other’s point of view because we’d have to live it to really grasp it in full.  We are expected, simultaneously though, to understand divergent points of view, cultures other than our own, and perspectives we do not share, all in the name of diversity, education and tolerance. 

While I personally despise that particular word in this case–tolerance–I hope we come to a point in human history where we embrace and celebrate diversity rather than merely tolerate those different from ourselves – I do see that cultural expectations play out regularly.  The end result is often a feeling of failure on the part of those who have tried to understand, only to be told that no, they simply cannot understand after all.  (more…)

1. Consider the following statement:

“some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them….”
Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 2004 W.W. Norton & Co. (p. 53)

This statement is:

a. Completely true and self-evident. The sooner we can make a list of these dangerous propositions, and start killing people for believing them, the better.

b. Perhaps true, but completely irresponsible, given the reality of who is in charge of the largest stockpile of weapons in the world today.

c. Completely counter to the principles of the Enlightenment and the concept of freedom of conscience enshrined in our Constitution.

d. Ethics aside, it begs the question whether killing individuals for holding certain beliefs is a good way to rid the world of those beliefs.

d2. Not really representative of Harris’s views; there’s a lot of other stuff in the book that is very uplifting and inspiring.

e. A kind of weird zen koan, because it is a mirror image of the type of proposition Harris believes it may be ethical to kill people for believing.

f. A statement that is superficially provocative, yet reflective of conventional wisdom (when applied to Islam). Guaranteed to ensure lots of book sales, talk show appearances and speaker gigs

g. Any combination of the above.

h. None of the above.

Give a brief statement in support of your conclusion.

2. Compare and contrast Harris’ statement with this one:

“Some people are so dangerous that it is definitely unethical to sell them weapons. “

-me

What are the implications for US policy?

Note: Participation in the quiz is voluntary and will not affect your final grade.

I just found out about Conservapedia, an online service started to combat the educated, generally well-researched, illuminating, and therefore Left-wing, Liberal postings at Wikipedia.

Read about what a Democrat really is, in a way that even Fox News wouldn’t claim.
Read about Evolution, which begins with the chapter “Lack of Any Credible Transitional Forms”

Big Bang contains this dominant section: “Creationist and Theistic Evolutionary Views”. Just what every scientific theory needs.

It’s always good to keep an eye on the opposition when trying to educate the public.

Former President George H.W. Bush, on his recent collapse from dehydration:

Bush spoke about the incident that sent him to the hospital on Sunday, telling the audience that he became tired after playing golf in high temperatures.

“The next thing I remember … I fainted and I was on the floor,” he told the crowd.

He joked: “The ugliest part was my dear friend from Las Vegas (a male friend) was giving me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. We had about six beautiful girls there and there was (my friend) doing his part.”

Am I experiencing aftershocks from Ann Coulter’s recent display bigotry, or is this yet more evidence of a deep and institutionalized bigotry among conservatives?  It all-too-often starts with a “joke.” 

A sorority at De Pauw University booted out a bunch of its pledges and it made the news.  Here is the link to the story.

Before I continue, I wish to make my own sentiments perfectly clear.  I detest the notion of fraternities and sororities.  They are, to me, childish things which people belong to out of some desire to be special without having to rely on their own abilities–special by association.  Pass the initiation, become accepted as a member, and you then can “borrow” the prestige of the group.

Or be tainted by it, as with, say, the John Birch Society or the KKK. 

This is not to say I see no reason for many of these associations to exist–unions are a very loose form of such things, and I would argue that they serve a positive purpose, although they share the same capacity for abuse of the individual as any large organization, corporate, religious, or social.  They are, to put it in as simple terms as I can, a necessary evil.

My prejudice in this regard stems from one of the more persistent myths underlying American culture–that of the coherent and independent individual.  I say myth because it is patently untrue–likely an impossibility–and yet we struggle collectively toward instantiating the model through our laws, our national ethos, and our image of ourselves as individuals.

Which makes joing a fraternity or a sorority a particularly perplexing contradiction.

One joins such organizations for numerous reasons all of which center or potential benefits from the association.  Anyone who remembers the 2000 election will be aware of the brief flurry of press about Bush’s membership in a Yale fraternity of some notoriety, the Skulls.  His dad was a member, as were many other politicians.  The implication was that membership bestowed an undeserved leg up in life. 

Well, frankly, that is the whole point of such clubs.  Masonry is the model.  Part of the benefit derives from their exclusivity, which is portrayed by opponents of the Greek system as anti-democratic.

But this, too, is based on a misapprehension of the nature of democracy. 

I refer now to the fact of it, not the ideal, which has become something wholly other than its origins.  In his excellent book about the Greek myths, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso writes:

Equality only comes into being through initiation.  It does not exist in nature, and society wouldn’t be able to conceive of the idea if it weren’t structured and articulated by initiation.  Later, there comes a moment when equality is geared into history and thence marches on and on until the unsuspecting theorists of democracy imagine they had discovered it–and set it against initiation, as though it were its opposite.

There’s a lot in that paragraph and it is illuminating to look at the 20th century through the lens it provides.  Everyone, it seems, wants to be part of the club called democracy.  They see the benefits of the club.  Benefits obvious only because it is a club apart from other clubs.  They want to belong to it in such numbers that eventually it will no longer be a club, but simply the state in which we all “naturally” exist.

But it’s an implausible ideal, because in order to belong to the club one has to change from one state to another.  And the benefits, frankly, one expects cease to be benefits once so many people share them that there is no distinction between people. 

This is a paradox, and such things as fraternities and sororities point up the paradox eloquently and make us generally uncomfortable. 

In microcosm, the initiation rites of such organizations imitate the citizenship pledges we expect of new citizens, who do in fact go through an initiation to become part of the club.  There are laws they must abide by.  I think, honestly, the nature of the requirements are less important than that there are requirements.  We have changed them over time, but still, you must speak the language, understand the history of the country, and be willing to take an oath.

There is nothing natural about this.  And the bestowal of benefits upon completion of these requirements is an aritfice.  That doesn’t make these benefits false or unreal, but we need to understand that so-called Rights are constructs.  They do not exist in nature. 

But we wish to pretend they do.  Because Americans are born into a club (more…)

Dick Cheney and other conservatives constantly warn us of the “China threat.”  Check out these headlines and articles:

• Chinese bid for Unocal, Pentagon worries over military spending lead to fresh discussion of Chinese ‘threat’. 
• Revving Up the China Threat 
• US exaggerates China defense - report
• Cheney, the Neocons and China 

This belligerent U.S. attitude that insists that China will inevitably ripen into our next big enemy concerns me for two reasons.

First, why can’t the U.S. work toward an upcoming era of cooperation with China, rather than assuming that we must eventually go to war because China is an emerging superpower?  This preference for aggression rather than cooperation is a xenophobic tactic that Neocons have previously used to make “enemies” out of many other countries with whom we should be working to develop strong relationships.  What is China’s sin, by the way?  China is doing the same things the United States does.  For instance, China competing economically with vigor.  China is accruing wealth.  China is testing sophisticated weapons. China is expanding its influence into parts of the world where petroleum can be found in the ground.  Yet the U.S. is paranoid about China.    If our frustration is that the Chinese practically own us (along with Japan), that is our own fault that we can’t control our own profligate government spending.  I’m not advocating being naive. Perhaps China will someday threaten American interests.  I’m suggesting that we should save harsh rhetoric if that happens. 

Second, I have a personal stake in this rhetoric.  I have two Chinese daughters (they are both adopted) and many Chinese friends and acquaintances.  I am concerned that Americans, led by our government and media, will morph into a people who will once again view Chinese people with disdain.  Don’t laugh.  Look how Americans now view people of Middle Eastern descent.  Our dysfunctional government and simplistic mainstream media are quite capable of developing similar derogatory racial attitudes toward Chinese people, including the Chinese people already living in the United States.  I don’t want to live in an America that is any more xenophobic than it already is.

But why do I say “once again,” as though the Chinese have previously been the victims of horrible racism in the U.S.?  Because the Chinese have, indeed, been victims of widespread racism for most of their existence in the United States.  A detailed work on this subject is Iris Chang’s The Chinese in America (2003).  In that work, she showed, among other things, the damage that can be caused when media and government conspire to denigrate people whose only crime was to be of a certain ethnicity or culture. [The quotes in this article are from The Chinese in America].

Chang was a Chinese American freelance historian who died at the age of 36 after a nervous breakdown following an episode of depression.  She was a fascinating person. In addition to The Chinese in America, Chang left another literary gem, The Rape of Nanking.

It was through Chang’s writings that I learned much of what I know about the Chinese in America.  More than 100,000 Chinese laborers came to America to make their fortunes during the gold rush.  They came to America because it was not easy to survive in China, especially in rural China. 

In the typical rural village, people slept on mats on dirt floors, their heads resting on bamboo pillows or wooden stools.  . .. An arm load of fuel warmed and fed a dozen people . . . most lived and died without gaining more than a dim comprehension of the world beyond their own village … the promise of gold electrified the imaginations of the impoverished Chinese.  It ignited hopes among poor people … They borrowed money from their friends and relatives, sold off their water buffalo or jewelry or signed up with a labor agency that would front of them the money for passage in exchange for a share of their future earnings in America.

In America, however, the Chinese faced different sort of challenges.  Nonwhites could not become naturalized US citizens under a 1790 statute.  Many of the Chinese didn’t actually make it to America.  Three quarters of a million Chinese men were decoyed into slavery in what was known as the “coolie” trade.  Many of them were locked into filthy receiving stations.  Chang estimates that between 15 and 45% of the “coolies” died in transit to the final work destinations.  Cuba was one of these destinations, where the coolies were made to work on sugar plantations 21 out of 24 hours each day.  Suicide was common.

But many of the Chinese workers did make it to San Francisco.  Between 1848 and 1850, San Francisco, previously a desolate area of sand dunes and hills, suddenly grew to a population of 30,000.  It was a “roaring frontier town.”  92% of California were men, and “violence was the rule.”  During the 1850s, 85% of the Chinese in California were engaged in mining.  Mark Twain wrote that the Chinese “are quiet, peaceable, tractable, free from drunkenness . . . a disorderly China man is rare, and a lazy one does not exist.”

The Chinese worked so hard (and successfully) at mining that, in 1852, legislators proposed that Chinese migrants be prohibited from mining.  (more…)

There is a risk to knowing more than a little history (or religion or politics).  Learning more than the popularized cartoon version of traditional history lessons has a way of contaminating comforting myths.   See here and here.

Take, for example, the story of William Clark of Lewis and Clark.  Everyone knows about the 1803 expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory.  That journey makes those intrepid explorers heroes, right?  Clark is also presented as an early multi-culturalist, in that the expedition was joined by Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman who served as their interpreter.
 
My 8-year old daughter is currently studying Lewis and Clark at school.   She mentioned that the explorers were not in good spirits when they reached Fort Clatsop (a fort they built in Oregon, along the Columbia River).  I wondered out loud if they were glum because they were utterly exhausted and missing their families.  My daughter then mentioned that one of the men never made it home to see his family.

His name was “York.”

York was forced to go on the expedition because he was William Clark’s slave, having been inherited from Clark’s father.  He was the same age as Clark.  The journals present York as a “large, strong man, who carried a gun and shared the duties and risks of the expedition in full.”

And when the wildly successful expedition returned, York was given his fair share of the spoils, right?  Well, not exactly.  This, from Wikipedia:

After the Corps returned, York apparently asked Clark for his freedom based upon his good services during the expedition. Clark refused, claiming financial difficulties. York, who was married to a woman owned by a different master, pleaded with Clark to be allowed to return to the Louisville area where his wife’s owner lived. Clark’s letters to his brother reveal increasing irritation with York. Feeling that York was being disobedient, Clark threatened to hire him out to a severe master; he also “gave him a Severe trouncing”, and even had York jailed briefly. York was finally sent to Louisville and hired out to a demanding master for at least two years.

Clark may have set York free sometime after 1816 and set him up in a freight business in Tennessee and Kentucky which later failed; he then tried to rejoin Clark in St. Louis, but died of cholera on the way. There are, however, some doubts about this story; he may simply have been hired out to the owner of a freight business. At least one later account suggests he may have escaped to live on the frontier.

Reading this passage made me wince.  It made me embarrassed that I’ve been carrying around such a simplistic version of the Lewis and Clark story.  But I’m also relieved that my second-grade daughter is learning more about Lewis and Clark than I ever learned in school.  Her teachers aren’t avoiding history’s pimples.  For that, I am grateful. 

Does the story of York lessen Clark’s great accomplishments as an explorer?  Not clear.  After all, when we honor Clark, aren’t we honoring him as both an explorer and as a person?  Isn’t character an implied part of honoring one for his or her accomplishments?

In the end, York is a tragic figure, as tragic as any you’ll ever read about in an Shakespearean tale.  Small consolation that York has been honored with a statute near Louisville. 

This is how the Lorraine Hotel looked last night (January 13, 2007) at 9 pm.  

I had never been to Memphis until this weekend, so I had never before visited the Lorraine (it is now a preserved historical site).  It was eerily quiet last night, not at all the way it was at the moment the Lorraine became famous.  It was here that Martin Luther King was gunned down on April 4, 1968.  King’s second-floor room is marked with a large wreath.

The Lorraine reminded me of my visit to the site of JFK’s assassination in Dallas a few years ago.  Both sites seem too small and ordinary to be as significant as they both are.

Here are some of my favorite quotes of Martin Luther King:

• Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
• All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
• Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
• In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
• Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.
• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
• Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
• I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
• Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
• I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
• All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.

Martin Luther King Day never meant that much to me. I grew up in a school district where I was a minority. I was an (epithet for white), I was a (epithet for Polish descent). I was a (epithet for German descent). I was a (epithet for culturally Jewish). I was an Atheist (apparently an epithet unto itself). I was a dumb boy (the minority gender). I was the smallest kid in my class until I was 16, and started to top some of the girls (in the vertical sense, you dirty-minded rurals). As a small, blond, blue-eyed, unathletic teenager, I was typically also mislabeled as (multiple epithets for homosexual). It seemed natural to be picked on because of my minority standing.

When I was attacked, I passively resisted. They usually got tired of hitting someone who didn’t fight back, or even teasing someone who separated words from meanings. Inaccurate descriptors didn’t hurt me because they didn’t stick. Accurate ones I accepted with dignity, if not necessarily honor.But my most memorable MLK day was over two decades ago, and had little to do with race or politics. I was practically grown up, less than a year out of college with the proverbial couple of fancy college degrees, and was working feverishly to install a robotics system in a rural factory. Literally with a fever. I’d been working alternately all-nighters and short-nighters for a week. When a security guard had spotted me napping on a roller conveyor, word spread. Everyone knew how tired one had to be to find that surface acceptable! The entire factory was shut down for the first two weeks of January to let us install the system we designed.

At dawn on MLK day, the assembly line started to roll, our new system began to run, and the problems started to flow. I literally had no voice left, and had to give many people instructions. I hung a sign around my neck reading:

To my surprise, no one in the factory was even aware that it was Martin Luther King day! There were many mothers of grade school children working the line, but apparently recognition of this holiday was mostly an urban thing.

Fortunately, my brother was working with me. This robotics company was small enough that nepotism was simply a way to get help fast. Our sibling relationship is stormy, but we have a near-telepathic ability to communicate. I had no voice, but I could whistle and point. We quickly worked out codes so he could assist me. Things like, “Check the voltage” and “Pull the cable” and “Stop the assembly line, now!”

Aside: This latter one got me in hot water, but it prevented injuries and damage. I was eventually forgiven by the VP in charge of letting our company do the job. But this individual screamed at me till he was red in the face several times that day. I think he couldn’t get over my not hollering back, even with the sign on my chest. No one in authority had ever screamed at me before, but I had developed a thick skin over the years. I did threaten to quit (in writing) and walked away the third time he exploded. Then he calmed down, or maybe just expended his wrath elsewhere.

Anyway one whistle code for my brother became “Please come and explain MLK day to yet another person.” I no longer remember the code, but that day is inexorably tied to Martin Luther King Day in my memory.

In my quest to better understand basic principles of group behavior, I reviewed Intergroup Relations, by Maryland B. Brewer and Norman Miller (1996) [this work appears to be out of print].  The stated focus this book is to better understand “the causes and consequences of the distinctions between ingroups (those groups to which an individual belongs) and outgroups (social groups that do not include the individual as a member).  At the outset, the authors note “the apparently universal propensity to differentiate the social world into ‘us’ and ‘them.’”  (Page xiii).

It was my suspicion that basic principles of social psychology would give me a deeper context for understanding many modern conflicts.   I was not disappointed.  By the way, these same principles appear in all basic social psychology books.  Nothing I mention here is tentative or controversial among social scientists.

According to Sherif (1966) “whenever individuals belonging to one group interact, collectively or individually, with another group or its members in terms of their group identification, we have an instance of Intergroup behavior.”  (Page 2)   Such social categories “tend to be less rational than other categorizations in that the beliefs we hold about social groupings often do not rest on firm evidence of actual Intergroup differences.”  (Page 6)  Once we establish categories, “we are biased toward information that enhances the differences between categories and less attentive to information about similarities between members of different categories.”  (Page 7).

We live in a pluralistic society.  Therefore, individuals are simultaneously members in multiple social categories.  It is not always clear how ingroup-outgroup differentiations are perceived in such situations.  Sometimes there are canceling effects and other times there are additive effects.  (Page 9).

The “fundamental attribution error”: seeing behavior as a product of characteristics or traits of a person, underestimating the influence of situational factors in causing action.  (Page 11).  Good outcomes for our ingroup are explained by stable internal attributions–good things happen to us because we are of good character.   We explain bad outcomes for our ingroup by reference to situational factors (bad luck, bad circumstances).  By contrast, good outcomes for outgroups are explained by situational factors or by unstable internal factors (e.g. effort or luck).  We sanctimoniously explain bad outcomes for outgroups by reference to stable internal factors (bad character).  In short, outgroups get blame, but not credit.  Ingroups get credit but not blame. Pettigrew (1979) termed this pattern of intergroup attributions the “ultimate attribution error.”

What is the advantage of painting an outgroup as “bad” (using the ultimate attribution error)?  “If we attribute a negative action to evil intent or aggression dispositions, we are much more likely to respond with retaliatory violence than if we attribute the same act to a temporary situation.”  (Page 13)  Those fundamentally bad outgroupers have it coming!  Let’s go get our guns! (more…)

In a post entitiled “Canada Makes the Baby Jesus Cry,” Ed Brayton had this to say about the Canadian Parliament’s recent refusal to reconsider last year’s approval of gay marriage throughout Canada: 

Now, of course, Canada’s entire culture will collapse, people will stop marrying one another and loving their kids, and dogs and cats will start living together.

Here’s the story.  But, of course, it is more important to get rid of gay military translators than to communicate with residents of Iraq.

A couple of summers ago, my husband and I attended a wedding that took place just outside Missoula, Montana, where one of our sons lives.  The groom is an incredibly nice man whose family is from India.  He and his family are Christian, not Hindu.  His uncle, who participated in the wedding ceremony, is a minister in the Pentecostal Church.

During the ceremony, it became obvious there is a philosophical and theological divide in the groom’s family.  His generation, born in the United States, has rejected the values and beliefs, though not the religion, of the older generation.  The women of the older generation are diffident, speaking only when spoken to, wearing only traditional Indian dress.  The women of the younger generation are liberated American females.  The “best man” at the wedding, in fact, was actually the groom’s sister.  There were covert smiles passed amongst the younger generation, males and females, at the words of their uncle, who preached subservience and obedience for the bride, dominence for the groom.  It was clear, while the younger generation respects its elders in that family and holds very closely to its Christian beliefs, it does not accept its old, rigid patriarchal mores.

It wasn’t clear to me until after the wedding just how rigid those patriarchal mores are.  Because my father was a pastor in South Africa, and because the Indian preacher had also been a pastor in South Africa, I thought it quite appropriate to talk to him about our connection, but, to my surprise, his answers to me were very curt and he would not look at me when I spoke to him or when he answered me.  At first, I was disconcerted, then bemused when I finally understood what was happening.  As a woman, I was not supposed to be talking to him.  It would have been acceptable for me to have offered to serve him as long as my eyes had been downcast, but I was talking to him as though we were equals, my life as important as his.  Partly, of course, this was the arrogance of a certain type of preacher, but even more it was the arrogance of the patriarchal true believer, someone who has sanctified his fear of women and his misogyny through his religion.

I have never before personally experienced misogyny so intense, but it’s clear, from what we hear on the news and from what we read in books like Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Bookseller of Kabul it not only exists but is far more brutal than I experienced that day, and is making a vengeful comeback after briefly loosening its hold in many parts of the world.  The subjugation of women in some Middle Eastern countries and in Africa and India and Pakistan is brutal beyond belief.  Stories coming out of Afghanistan, telling of the Taliban’s barbaric treatment of women, seem to have come out of the Dark Ages rather than the 20th and 21st centuries.

But, of course, discrimination in more subtle forms exists almost universally.  As a woman, and a small one, I feel as though I have been struggling, all my life, to be taken seriously.  It wasn’t until after my mother’s death, when I was thirty and my father actually had to talk to me, he realized I was something more than “just a girl.”  And even after he had recognized my abilities, he held to the belief my goal in life should be to serve in the background rather than shine in the foreground unless I shone in the foreground in such demure womanly arts as cooking, sewing, singing, raising children.  Many women in our western world have struggled against the same tyranny of attitude, fighting not simply to gain equal pay for equal work, but to be recognized according to their abilities, not their gender.  They have fought against sexual objectification that reduces them to symbols rather than individuals.  They still fight against those male politicians and clergymen who seem to believe they must control women’s sexuality and their reproductive lives.  I believe there is a bizarre male element in the Right to Life faction that is more concerned with this control than with saving fetuses from abortion.  These men, it seems to me, are kindred spirits to the Moslem males who enforce female genital mutilation in Africa and other parts of the world in an attempt to control women’s sexuality.

But the older I get, the more I come to believe there is more going on here than simply some males’ need to believe in gender superiority.  I think it is a need to believe in the sanctity of power that drives these ills, and not simply these ills.  Surely, all the wars, all the ethnic cleansing, all the arrogance of blind patriotism, all the religious strife we see is the tragic result of this blind devotion to and lust for power.  And I wonder about the fear behind this instinct.

Recently,  my husband and I found ourselves driving our car behind someone who turned on the light bulb for me.  This man was riding a motorcycle, an extremely noisy Harley Davidson.  He made his presence felt through the growl of his vehicle and by his physical appearance.  He was a giant of a man, not just overweight, but large, and dressed, of course, in black leather.  He wore heavy boots and a shiny black helmet reminiscent of a Nazi soldier’s.  The most telling detail of all, though, was the Confederate flag attached to the back of his bike, his true declaration of individualistic menace.  My husband said, “There he is, the reason America is hated in the world, the perfect example of an American who believes he can impose himself on everyone else’s reality,” or words to that effect.  And the insight that came to me for the first time was here was someone who believes if he does not demonstrate he is superior in whatever way passes as superiority for him, he will simply not exist. If he cannot believe he is all powerful, he has no reason to live. He is the quintessential ugly, brutish American, a man so insecure, so afraid he is worth nothing, he has to believe he can “take” the world, or he will fade into oblivion.  He is deathly afraid.

It reminds me of what Doris Lessing describes in her second memoir, Walking in the Shade, about the bewildering loyalty to and worship of the power of God, king and country displayed by some of the British working class men she met in London after the Second World War.  In Africa, during the war, she had been a member of the communist party, an affiliation she she continued briefly in England until the reality of communism’s abuses of power became clear.  She and her fellow communists in Africa were attracted to the philosophy because of their idealism and belief in equality, their passionate desire to free black men and women from the yoke of colonialism.  They were also passionate about improving the lot of the British working class, a class which had been as exploited, as abused as the black people in the British colonies.  Most of her friends were British upper class, and their experiences in two world wars had brought them into contact with working men.  They had become ashamed of their empire and its values.  (Lessing points out the average working class people they encountered were a good foot shorter than the average upper class Britons, the result not of inferior genes, but of malnutrition.)  But the point is, Lessing and her cohorts met almost universal and sometimes violent resistence to their ideas.  (more…)

I saw a bumper sticker the other day. “Caution: Christian On Board”

I thought, yeah, I’ll be careful. These days christians can be dangerous.

What follows may be a bit on the intolerant side, but I’m sometimes convinced our condemnation of intolerance makes us too unwilling to be simply impatient.  We “tolerate” a lot of nonsense because we don’t want to be accused of intolerance. 

Rumsfeld is gone now, and I’ve been thinking about unanswered questions, assumptions made on our behalf which led to a holy mess.  I remember when Abu Ghraib broke.  I’m thinking about the obscenities from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. People expressed shock, outrage. The president, Rumsfeld, the generals, they were all duly unhinged. They did not approve this. They did not order it or condone it. Congress has them answering questions now as to how such things could happen.

Frankly, the wrong questions were and are being asked. Senators wanted to know who to blame for either condoning it or for “allowing it to happen”–a phrase I find ludicrous in practical terms. It’s like the phrase you hear lawyers and legislators use, you know the one “You failed to do such and such.” Every time I hear that phrase I think “No he didn’t. He didn’t fail. To fail implies that at some point an attempt was made to do something. The attempt failed. He didn’t fail to tell the truth–he simply didn’t do it. He succeeded in not doing it. Failure was entirely part of getting caught. He failed to keep it secret.” Same goes for “allowing it to happen.” It implies a conscious choice. There was none. At least, most of the time–and if there was a conscious choice, then “allow” is the wrong word–”cause” would be the right word.

I was not surprised at Abu Ghraib. Shocked, sure, but that was a visceral reaction to ugliness. I’d been waiting for something like that to happen. And maybe in that respect, “allow” becomes more relevant. Maybe if Senator Kennedy et al asked Rumsfeld and the others “Didn’t you expect something like this given the culture of this administration?” then they would have been on the right track.

What has been “allowed” to happen, though, is something a bit deeper, a bit more insidious, and has profound historical roots.

In his superb history of Catholicism and anti-semitism, James Carroll writes in Constantine’s Sword: the Church and the Jews: “…Since the end of World War II, there have been the theological revolution of Vatican II, with its rejection of the deicide charge and its affirmation of God’s ongoing covenant with the Jewish people; the remarkable grass-roots flourishing of Jewish-Catholic dialogue; and the serious effort of the Polish pope to confront the legacy of Catholic anti-semitism, But there remain rigid lines drawn around beliefs that may not be changed and around questions that may not be asked. Already we have seen the deeply problematic legacy of Jew hatred in foundational Christian texts, in the implicitly anti-Jewish Christia