oh that dirty, scary L-word

Op-Ed Columnist
Hold Your Heads Up

new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/opinion/09herbert.html
if (acm.cc) acm.cc.write();

By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 8, 2008
Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the G.O.P. get away with ridiculing all things liberal?
Troglodytes on the right are no respecters of reality. They say the most absurd things and hardly anyone calls them on it. Evolution? Don’t you believe it. Global warming? A figment of the liberal imagination.
Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.
So there was Hillary Clinton, of all people, sponsoring legislation to ban flag-burning; and Barack Obama, who once opposed the death penalty, morphing into someone who not only supports it, but supports it in cases that don’t even involve a homicide.
Anyway, the Republicans were back at it last week at their convention. Mitt Romney wasn’t content to insist that he personally knows that “liberals don’t have a clue.” He complained loudly that the federal government right now is too liberal.
“We need change, all right,” he said. “Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington.”
Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.
There would be absolutely no chance that a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin could make a credible run for the highest offices in the land. Conservatives would never have allowed it.
Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud.
The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression.
“In the procedural motions that preceded final passage,” wrote historian Jean Edward Smith in his biography, “FDR,” “House Republicans voted almost unanimously against Social Security. But when the final up-or-down vote came on April 19 [1935], fewer than half were prepared to go on record against.”
Liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Medicare and Medicaid. Quick, how many of you (or your loved ones) are benefiting mightily from these programs, even as we speak. The idea that Republicans are proud of Ronald Reagan, who saw Medicare as “the advance wave of socialism,” while Democrats are ashamed of Lyndon Johnson, whose legislative genius made this wonderful, life-saving concept real, is insane.
When Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law in the presence of Harry Truman in 1965, he said: “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.”
Reagan, on the other hand, according to Johnson biographer Robert Dallek, “predicted that Medicare would compel Americans to spend their ‘sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.’ ”
Scary.
Without the many great and noble deeds of liberals over the past six or seven decades, America would hardly be recognizable to today’s young people. Liberals (including liberal Republicans, who have since been mostly drummed out of the party) ended legalized racial segregation and gender discrimination.
Humiliation imposed by custom and enforced by government had been the order of the day for blacks and women before men and women of good will and liberal persuasion stepped up their long (and not yet ended) campaign to change things. Liberals gave this country Head Start and legal services and the food stamp program. They fought for cleaner air (there was a time when you could barely see Los Angeles) and cleaner water (there were rivers in America that actually caught fire).
Liberals. Your food is safer because of them, and so are your children’s clothing and toys. Your workplace is safer. Your ability (or that of your children or grandchildren) to go to college is manifestly easier.
It would take volumes to adequately cover the enhancements to the quality of American lives and the greatness of American society that have been wrought by people whose politics were unabashedly liberal. It is a track record that deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed or scorned.
Self-hatred is a terrible thing. Just ask that arch-conservative Clarence Thomas.
Liberals need to get over it.

ponderings

It's so weird that two people of the same faith, reading the same Bible, even the same translation, can come to two completely opposite conclusions on the same issues. It makes me wonder, and it makes me worried at the same time. And each is so convinced of their position because they have arrived at it by way of careful study, thought, prayer and meditation and discussion. Each is so honest in their approach to God and their openness to his word and his truth, and yet - the conclusions, and the actions following those conclusions, are worlds apart. I just do not get it.

I am less than a month away from an event that will change my world as I've ever known it. I am about to become a MOTHER. Scary, scary thought, man.

Dead On.

"We are not living in an ordinary time, but in an hour of intense and unrelenting pain for many human beings. It is not good enough to favor justice in high literary flourish and to feel compassion for the victims of the very system that sustains our privileged position. We must be able to disown and disavow that privileged position. If we cannot we are not ethical men and women, and do not lead lives worthy of living."
- Jonathan Kozol

"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."
James 2:14-17

Justice for all?

The crowding of children into insufficient, often squalid spaces seems an inexplicable anomaly in the United States. Images of spaciousness and majesty, of endless plains and soaring mountains, fill our folklore and our music and the anthems that our children sing. "This land is your land," they are told; and, in one of the patriotic songs that children truly love because it summons up so well the goodness and optimism of the nation at its best, they sing of "good" and "brotherhood" "from sea to shining sea." It is a betrayal of the best things that we value when poor children are obliged to sing these songs in storerooms and coat closets.

- pgs. 159-160 in Savage Inequalities, by Jonathan Kozol

How to stay a Christian in college

I've been thinking. I've recently run across some online and print publications about "How to stay a Christian in college." I think the reason these publications view this as a big issue is because many young, naive Christians go away to public universities which hold "secular" or "liberal" views on religion, science, etc. and are "susceptible" to these new-fangled ideas, and many of these young students have not been given the tools to deal with them. (Did that run-on sentence make any sense?)

I for one almost succumbed to these ideas. But I started out attending a Christian university! What happened to me was the "new-fangled ideas" came at me from external places and I became quite disillusioned with the pat answers given to me at the Christian school, which was, to put it simply, a bubble. It seemed to me that the majority of students there existed for themselves, and the prevailing thought was "as long as you've got your theology straight, you're good with God".

What really bothered me about this school was it's location. Marion, Indiana is a very impoverished city. Ever since the big companies there outsourced and left many, many people jobless, the city has gone downhill. And yet, you may drive through the streets of Marion and come across the university and it's like going into another world: pristine, flawless, blatantly expensive, and suddenly, everyone is white, clean-cut and perfectly dressed. It is true culture shock. Alright, maybe I'm exaggerating, but to any random outsider, there is a very good chance they will get this impression upon arrival.

Okay, it may seem like I've gone off-topic, but never fear, I have not. I only say this to make a point: the reason why so many young Christians stray from or leave the faith in their college years is not because their theology or "world view" isn't screwed on right: it is because they have not been taught how to live like Christ.

My home church tried it's best to prepare us for college. They talked and preached, we met for lunch or coffee with our leaders, went on retreats, the whole shebang. But not once did we participate in any acts of service. Everything was focused on how we thought, how we should view God and sin, and our "feelings." And what happened when I entered college? The same thing. Our units in our dorms had warm and fuzzy meetings to discuss our thoughts and feelings and how God is "captivated by our beauty", we had shopping trips and coffee meetings, but never did we discuss or do anything about "the least of these" - in the world, or even in Marion. My impression of Christianity was reigning in my doubts and gluing my eyes and thoughts in the Bible, but once I walked out of my room, I didn't know how to live. I didn't know how to act, or treat people, except to be nice to them. I didn't even know what social justice meant.

Long story short, I transferred from that school in the middle of my sophomore year for a giant of a public school a couple hours away. And as I left that school, I left the faith. I'll spare you the story of the meantime, but what brought me back to Jesus was not theology or a powerful sermon or a song or a Christian book with a clever title, it was becoming involved with a group of genuine Christians (young and in college) who lived and served and acted as Jesus told us to in the inner-city of Indianapolis. I saw authenticity, I saw Jesus' hands and feet, Jesus' love and compassion in action, and I was drawn to it. And as I learned to BE Jesus, I learned also to think as Jesus - commit to study and understand the Bible, and to live a prayerful life. I think this is what young American Christians are lacking - and the American church in general... we have neglected to teach our young to be Jesus, and to saturate our lives with compassion and action for the least of these, and replaced the life he has called us to live with an obsession of getting our theology straight.

just a tally

22.75 years into my life
11 months into my marriage
6 months into my pregnancy
4 years into college (by way of 3 universities...)
2 jobs
1 car
3 cats
1 puppy
200+ children at my jobs to love
2 weeks till we move into our house
1 1/2 years until I graduate
122 days till Election Day
199 days till Bush's last day
232 years of Empire as of today
38572385732895723859752378 bills to pay
392582395238593295823958329582395823958239583295 thoughts to sift through




Next book to read: Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Rob Sider

Last book read: Red Letter Christians by Tony Campolo

Yes, two weeks until we move from our tiny, tiny apartment on the Southside to our new 3-bedroom house on the Near Eastside. We'll have two bathrooms (no having to hold it anymore!), a huge kitchen, a fenced backyard, an office, a dining room, a basement, a garage, a front porch, a walk to work instead of a half-hour drive, a community, (family members as neighbors - not sure if that's good or bad yet...), room for us to spread out and our pets to roam, a place for our books, hardwood floors, stairs in the house instead of to our door, and finally, a ghetto to live in instead of the suburbs. I am excited.

Dobson and Obama: Who is 'Deliberately Distorting'?

From Sojourner's magazine:

Dobson and Obama: Who is 'Deliberately Distorting'?
by Jim Wallis

James Dobson, of Focus on the Family Action, and his senior vice president of government and public policy, Tom Minnery, used their "Focus on the Family" radio show Tuesday to criticize Barack Obama's understanding of Christian faith. In the show, they describe Obama as "deliberately distorting the Bible," "dragging biblical understanding through the gutter," "willfully trying to confuse people," and having a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."

The clear purpose of the show was to attack Barack Obama. On the show, Dobson says of himself, "I'm not a reverend. I'm not a minister. I'm not a theologian. I'm not an evangelist. I'm a psychologist. I have a Ph.D. in child development." Child psychologists don't insert themselves into partisan politics in the regular way that James Dobson does and has over many years as one of the premier leaders of the Religious Right. He has spoken about how often he talked to Republican leaders -- Karl Rove, administration strategists, and even President Bush himself. This year he tried to influence the outcome of the Republican primary by saying he would never vote for John McCain or the Republicans if they nominated him, then reversed himself and said he would vote after all but didn't say for whom. But why should America care about how a child psychologist votes?

James Dobson is insinuating himself into this presidential campaign, and his attacks against his fellow Christian, Barack Obama, should be seriously scrutinized. And because the basis for his attack on Obama is the speech the Illinois senator gave at our Sojourners/Call to Renewal event in 2006 (for the record, we also had Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republicans Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback speak that year), I have decided to respond to Dobson's attacks. In most every case they are themselves clear distortions of what Obama said in that speech. I was there for the speech; Dobson was not.

I haven't endorsed a candidate, but I do defend them when they are attacked in disingenuous ways, and this is one of those cases. You can read Obama's two-year-old speech, [audio link] which was widely publicized at the time, and you can see that Dobson either didn't understand it or is deliberately distorting it. There are two major problems with Dobson's attack on Obama.

First, Dobson and Minnery's language is simply inappropriate for religious leaders to use in an already divisive political campaign. We can agree or disagree on both biblical and political viewpoints, but our language should be respectful and civil, not attacking motives and beliefs.

Second, and perhaps most important, is the role of religion in politics. Dobson alleges that Obama is saying:

I [Dobson] can't seek to pass legislation, for example, that bans partial-birth abortion because there are people in the culture who don't see that as a moral issue. And if I can't get everyone to agree with me, it is undemocratic to try to pass legislation that I find offensive to the Scripture. ... What he's trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.

Contrary to Dobson's charge, Obama strongly defended the right and necessity of people of faith in bringing their moral agenda to the public square, and he was specifically critical of many on the left and in his own Democratic Party for being uncomfortable with religion in politics.

Obama said that religion is and always has been a fundamental and absolutely essential source of morality for the nation, but he also said that "religion has no monopoly on morality," which is a point I often make. The United States is not the Christian theocracy that people like James Dobson seem to think it should be. Political appeals, even if rooted in religious convictions, must be argued on moral grounds rather than as sectarian religious demands -- so that the people (citizens), whether religious or not, may have the capacity to hear and respond. Religious convictions must be translated into moral arguments, which must win the political debate if they are to be implemented. Religious people don't get to win just because they are religious. They, like any other citizens, have to convince their fellow citizens that what they propose is best for the common good -- for all of us, not just for the religious.

Instead of saying that Christians must accept "the lowest common denominator of morality," as Dobson accused Obama of suggesting, or that people of faith shouldn't advocate for the things their convictions suggest, Obama was saying the exact opposite -- that Christians should offer their best moral compass to the nation but then engage in the kind of democratic dialogue that religious pluralism demands. Martin Luther King Jr. perhaps did this best, with his Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other.

One more note. I personally disagree with how both the Democrats and Republicans have treated the moral issue of abortion and am hopeful that the movement toward a serious commitment for dramatic abortion reduction will re-shape both parties' language and positions. But that is the only "bloody notion" that Dobson mentions. What about the horrible bloody war in Iraq that Dobson apparently supports, or the 30,000 children who die each day globally of poverty and disease that Dobson never mentions, or the genocides in Darfur and other places? In making abortion the single life issue in politics and elections, leaders from the Religious Right like Dobson have violated the "consistent ethic of life" that we find, for example, in Catholic social teaching.

Dobson has also fought unsuccessfully to keep the issue of the environment and climate change, which many also now regard as a "life issue," off the evangelical agenda. Older Religious Right leaders are now being passed by a new generation of young evangelicals who believe that poverty, "creation care" of the environment, human trafficking, human rights, pandemic diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and the fundamental issues of war and peace are also "religious" and "moral" issues and now a part of a much wider and deeper agenda. That new evangelical agenda is a deep threat to Dobson and the power wielded by the Religious Right for so long. It puts many evangelical votes in play this election year, especially among a new generation who are no longer captive to the Religious Right. Perhaps that is the real reason for Dobson's attack on Barack Obama.