Fear Itself

No, no!' said the Queen. 'Sentence first - verdict afterwards.'

Lindsay Graham, et al., would like to move us toward the idea that the Constitution doesn't say what the Constitution plainly says:

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

Note it does not say "U.S. Citizen," it says "person."  Sen. Graham likes to imagine we are now ancient Rome, and Roman citizens have privileges that other residents of the Empire don't enjoy.  But since Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a US citizen, Sen. Graham realizes he's on shaky public ground, so he wants Tsarnaev declared an "enemy combatant" because, well:  ooga booga!

GRAHAM: This man, in my view, should be designated as a potential enemy combatant and we should be allowed to question him for intelligence gathering purposes to find out about future attacks and terrorist organizations that may exist that he has knowledge of, and that evidence cannot be used against him in trial. That evidence is used to protect us as a nation. Any time we question him about his guilt or innocence, he’s entitled to his Miranda rights and a lawyer, but we have the right under our law — I’ve been a military lawyer for 30 years — to gather intelligence from enemy combatants. And a citizen can be an enemy combatant.

He is not eligible for military commission trial. I wrote the military commission in 2009. He cannot go to military commission.

Why can't Tsarnaev go to a "military commission"?  Because he's a US citizen, of course.  Otherwise Sen. Graham would demand he be remanded to Gitmo instanter, lest we all be in danger.

Remind me again how dangerous Tsarnaev is compared to the Unabomber; or Timothy McVeigh; or Adam Lanza, who terrorized every school in the country into putting teachers in classrooms with guns, or wondering if they should; or the Aurora shooter; or....

Was it because Tsarnaev used bombs?  He used guns, too.  He's responsible for killing three people with bombs, one with a gun, and his own brother with a car.  Is he a mass murderer?  Or a terrorist?

And why in the name of all that's Constitutional is he a "potential enemy combatant"?  Because he didn't shoot enough people?  What the hell does "potential" mean?  How does that alter Tsarnaev's status before the 5th Amendment?  After all, his crimes were committed here, not against US troops on a foreign battlefield. If they were committed....

Why, again, is Tsarnaev an "enemy combatant," potential or otherwise?  Because the FBI says so? It says he's a suspect in the bombing.  Perhaps the Boston State Police say he's responsible for the death of an MIT police officer, and Tsarnaev's own brother.  But those are surely criminal acts, not acts of terrorism.  So is it now enough that someone somewhere just says you're suspicious, to make you subject to indefinite detention?

Sen. Graham's claim of being a military lawyer reminds me of the comment of my Criminal Law professor, himself also a former JAG:  "Military law is to law as military music is to music."  Sen. Graham proves my professor was right.  And we don't need to be using "military law" as an excuse to eviscerate Constitutional law.  Unless we get to declare Sen. Graham a "potential enemy combatant" because a person so shrill and such a relentless fear-mongerer is a danger to the national well-being.

Louie Gohmert is a F*cking Idiot, Part Deux

The Honorable Mr. Gohmert:

What hit me this morning when I heard the residents there around Boston and in the area where they thought someone might be were ordered to stay in their homes, businesses were ordered closed, public transportation was ordered closed. Let me ask you, if you’re sitting in your home and you know there are only two possibilities for people coming, one is law enforcement and the other is somebody who has already killed Americans and continues to do so, how many rounds do you want to be limited to in your magazine as you sit in your chair and wait?

It was on live radio yesterday, so I'll never find a link to it on-line, but one resident of Newton, MA reported gunfire near his house that made him move from his chair and crouch in a closet.  Shortly after moving into the closet, he heard a bullet go through his room.

This, of course, is not surprising, except in Hollywood movies:

In the real world, I have converted a sedan into a convertible, quite easily, using bullets. Not even a lot of bullets either. If the other guy is firing anything with greater hitting power than, say, a .32 (Google .32 caliber, .45 caliber, 5.56mm and 7.62mm...I can't do it ALL for you) it will go through things. Metals, woods, sheet-rock? No problem. Your front door will not protect you, at all. Nor will the walls of a normal suburban house, nor the three Sheet-rock walls beyond that. In a car, the only thing that really stops most bullets would be the engine block itself. All the rest of the body of a car, well, basically tin-foil. All those cop movies you remember from the 70s, when they hid behind the opened door of their patrol car and shot at the bad guy? Yea, no. Do not think that works. That is stupid, and nobody but actors in Hollywood actually does that.

The Newton resident who left his chair, returned to it after the gunfire had ended, to find a bullet hole through it, and through two walls of the room he was in.

I'm sure owning a gun would have protected him, however.

Gonna have to explain it to me....

Remington 750 semiautomatic hunting rifle. Remington's marketing material promises "super-fast cycling.... Rapid follow-ups are its specialty, but famed Remington one-shot accuracy comes standard."

 
The Boston bombers had guns and gunpowder and homemade bombs.   And lots of ammunition:

After more than 200 rounds were traded over several minutes, some officers were out of ammunition and charged the brothers’ position with their police car. The vehicle was disabled by gunfire from the Mercedes. Kitzenberg said he saw one of the shooters toss a metallic object — possibly a pressure-cooker bomb similar to the ones used in the marathon attack — in the direction of the police line. It rolled a few yards before detonating harmlessly.

Adam Lanza had a home arsenal.

The Aurora shooter was a one man army.  He left guns in his car he couldn't be bothered with carrying into the theater.

Every gun nut in America is convinced it is only their arsenal which keeps them safe from the other gun nuts.  But here's the question for the rest of us:

When are there enough guns that the gun nuts can save us
from the gun nuts?

Love in the time of terrorism

Jonah Goldberg ✔ @JonahNRO
To paraphrase William F. Buckley, I'd be perfectly happy to leave this guy's fate up to the first 2,000 names in the Boston phonebook.

In all this talk about the Boston Marathon bombing, from the catastrophe of CNN's premature announcement of an arrest to the New York Post accusing innocent people of the crime, I am reminded, not for the first time, of a story by Steve Allen from, coincidentally, the year of my birth:  "The Public Hating."

It takes place in an America of the future where they have found that hatred can be focused, can be channeled, can be directed on a human target.  The protagonist (I only remember the story now) enters a stadium which fills with people who are all directed to focus their hate on the convicted prisoner on a platform on the ground below.  He is not much larger than a bug to the main character, and soon he begins to run around the stage trying to evade the torture he is suffering as the announcer exhorts the people in the stands to "hate" him.  Soon he resembles a bug on a hot griddle, as he tries to run from what he cannot escape.  When he finally collapses, twitching and literally burning from the inside out, the protagonist leaves the stadium, nauseated by what he has seen and been a part of.

But most of the people in the stadium, of course, are quite happy with the results.

Digsby worried about something akin to this earlier; and the response of the New York Post to its catastrophic failure to publish news and instead publish slander, indicates Digsby was on to something.  The teenager in that picture is still terrified to be connected to this horrific crime just because he was a spectator; but the New York Post is unrepentant.  The event has prompted the predictable amount of American xenophobia.  But the full scale meltdown of news outlets, the absolute set of lies released in this case, has been stunning.  Even this morning, the moment "Chechnya" was mentioned, reporters on NPR started talking about "Islam."

Because, you know:  terrorism.

And, as I say, it made me think of that story by Steve Allen; and not for the first time.

Does Bedlam have any room left?

Remington 750 semiautomatic hunting rifle. Remington's marketing material promises "super-fast cycling.... Rapid follow-ups are its specialty, but famed Remington one-shot accuracy comes standard."

As I was saying (via Raw Story):

“I have something I want to say to the victims of Newtown, or any other shooting,” Davis said. “I don’t care if it’s here in Minneapolis or anyplace else. Just because a bad thing happened to you doesn’t mean that you get to put a king in charge of my life. I’m sorry that you suffered a tragedy, but you know what? Deal with it, and don’t force me to lose my liberty, which is a greater tragedy than your loss. I’m sick and tired of seeing these victims trotted out, given rides on Air Force One, hauled into the Senate well, and everyone is just afraid — they’re terrified of these victims.”

“I would stand in front of them and tell them, ‘go to hell,’” he added.

And no, his comments did not go unnoticed, and no, he hasn't apologized:

Davis acknowledged on Monday he was “getting some email” about his comments. But he did not offer an apology. Instead, he dismissed his offensive remarks as “an emotional predecessor to a thought which can and will find a more refined expression by me and others in the future.” 

In fact, he went a bit further in "refining" his "expression":

 It's critical that people who have suffered a tragedy are able to speak and it's understandable that they would wanna, you know, dedicate their lives to the memory of their children. But it's also critical that our constitutional rights are protected. And here's the point in this: What's really at stake is the insecurity because of the loss of natural rights to defend ourselves from criminals as well as the encroaching power of the state. And it's important to look at the broad ramifications that this legislation might have on liberty and security and refrain from pushing it through by parading around victims or overestimating their credibility in policy preferences just because they're victims. Victims should not be exploited, it does not help them grieve, it does not help us grieve, and it does not advance the cause of liberty. But they are, and so they become public personalities and part of the political arena and so be it and we'll leave it at that.

To take his "argument" seriously, apparently the "cause of liberty" means we have to let people who aren't Bob Davis die, so Bob Davis can be at liberty to own guns.  I wonder if he feels the same way about the liberty to use bombs or otherwise kill people in "terrorist" acts, and if not, why not?

The chart speaks for itself.  We have, in 20 years, lost 300 times as many people to gun violence as we have lost to terrorism in 30 years. And yet, as Chris Hayes pointed out last night, when  the cause of death is terrorism, no cost should be spared to prevent any further deaths, no stone unturned to capture and punish the perpetrators.  But for gun violence?  Well, that's the cost we pay for being a "free society."  Even when that cost is 30,000 times as many fatalities in 43 years.  But Bob Davis thinks we have to pay that price in order to have liberty.

What kind of liberty is this, and is Bob Davis willing to pay it with his family members?

Claire McCaskill gets it:  the only difference between Boston and Sandy Hook is the choice of weapon.  One is a weapon of mass terror; the other simply a weapon of mass death.  We cannot accept bombers at public events who kill 3 people and wound hundreds.  We have to accept a madman who slaughters a school full of children.  We can't even let the families of those children have any impact on the discussion of our public policy.

I'm tempted to say that people who have no real empathy for the suffering of others have no place in society, either.  But that would display a lack of empathy on my part; and what I really mean is, such people have no role to play in our policy making.

Unfortunately, the US Senate yesterday proved me wrong on that, too.

First rule of holes

Stop digging.

"That was misreported," [Rand] Paul said. "I asked them, 'Do you know?' and I didn't know the answer. This is my first time to go to a historically black college."

"People say, 'Well, you should know the answer.' Well, that was part of the reason for going there, was I didn't know the answer," he said. "I said, 'Did they all know that the NAACP was founded by Republicans?' And in retrospect it sounds like it is a dumb question, but it's like, Republicans haven't been going to Howard for 20 years, so maybe by me going there I did learn something. And I did learn that everybody there knows, and I left there knowing that: Everybody there knows."

 D'ya think if I were a U.S. Senator and went to a Jewish school (or someplace where I could expect highly knowledgeable people) and asked if they all knew Jesus was Jewish (as was Mary.  I had a professor in seminary who told the story of being a tour guide while a graduate student at Notre Dame.  When visiting families would ask who the figure was atop the main building, he'd reply:  "Oh, a nice Jewish girl."), that people would expect me to know they would know that?

Would they be right to think it was mighty condescending of me to assume that this was secret knowledge I was about to spring on them?

"It's unfair what the media tries to do to me on this," Paul added, according to the report. "I'm a little sensitive to some of it."

I'm sure you are.  You have my sympathies.  Now get off the public stage.  You clearly don't belong there.

Fifty Years On

The scene is the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, established in 1932 by a student of Reinhold Niebuhr's. It was a "communist training school" because it was teaching about race relations and was a center for training civil rights activists. As you can tell from the tenor of the questions of Dr. King, it's pretty clear this is a subversive place: blacks and whites, men and women, are sitting together as equals.

MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:

While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine goodwill and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Dr. King's letter.  It bears reading in its entirety.  Today is also the day Pat Buchanan wrote this:

When Martin Luther King Jr. called on the nation to “live up to the meaning of its creed,” he heard an echo from a thousand pulpits. Treating black folks decently was consistent with what Christians had been taught. Dr. King was pushing against an open door.

Priests and pastors marched for civil rights. Others preached for civil rights. But if the gay rights agenda is imposed, we could have priests and pastors preaching not acceptance but principled rejection.

Prelates could be declaring from pulpits everywhere that the triumph of gay rights is a defeat for God’s Country, and the new laws are immoral and need neither be respected nor obeyed.

Something akin to this could be in the cards if the homosexual rights movement is victorious – a public rejection of the new laws by millions and a refusal by many to respect or obey them.

The culture war in America today may be seen as squabbles in a day-care center compared to what is coming. A new era of civil disobedience may be at hand.

Dr. King said this in his letter about civil disobedience:

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action.....

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants--for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise....

We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?"...
.
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. 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 law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

I would really like to hear Pat Buchanan explain how laws recognizing gays as human beings are "unjust laws" equivalent to those Dr. King opposed with his words and his body.  I would appreciate seeing him lead a movement of civil disobedience with acts of purification and preparation and intense questions of "are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?"  But I really want to know how equal legal treatment for gays and lesbians inflicts on the minority of people who bother to read WorldNet Daily a burden that is not binding on the rest of the country that doesn't bother with such dribble.  And then he can compare his sufferings to those Dr. King outlines above.  I hope he can be just as specific.

In God We Trust. All others pay cash.

I have my problems with Christian salvation, and so with most theories of soteriology.  Some of my thoughts on this subject are quite technical and almost systematic; some, less so.

Take, for example, the simple statement "Jesus Saves."  What does it mean?  If it's a sign posted by a bank; one thing.  In the picture above, another.  I even saw a picture on Google of Jesus pulling a man out of the water by the man's wrist.  Is that what the statement means?  Is that even a good metaphor for what the statement means, a better visual representation of the "correct meaning" than the picture above?

No, probably not.

Usually we mean something like this:

Which begs the question still: what does this sentence mean?

Usually, salvation from damnation; from an eternity in hell, in the burning flames of Hades, in the sulfurous tides of the land where those who enter must abandon all hope.

What a Chick tract means, in other words.  I've never been a fan of Chick tracts, but then Hitler liked dogs, too, so Chick tracts are not reason enough to set aside the traditional doctrines of Christianity.

Well, not Chick tracts alone; but the whole idea of salvation has, by and large, been a club Christians have used to beat up either other non-Christians, or other Christians they deemed insufficiently "Christian" enough for the holy tribute of salvation.  Soteriology is what led to Calvin's bizarre and ultimately perverse doctrine of the elect, and a soteriology his followers used to turn Christianity inside out.  I am thinking particularly of TULIP (which, no, is not Calvinism; except it is, once the doctrines move far enough away from Calvin's Institutes.  I am not blaming Calvin for the state of Christianity today; but I am blaming soteriology, which too many Christians think is the be-all and end-all of Christianity.).  TULIP is nothing more than a cudgel to be used against to motivate people to act as we would wish them to (and as we are sure God would wish them to).  Indeed, making people behave has become the primary purpose of soteriology.

We use it to make people join "our" church, to make people think as we do, or just to make people be civilized.  The root of the fear that the "death of God" would undermine society (and the modern day attack on Christianity, that morality can only come from a deity) was that, absent a fear of damnation (God is dead), what would keep the great unwashed on the straight and narrow?  That it had never kept the leadership in line was beside the point; but directly to the point of the purpose of soteriology (which is, after all, a human doctrine.  I don't remember Christ espousing one in the gospels.)

So how about the sheer damage proponents of "traditional" Christian soteriology do?  I've yet to meet a person whose theology emphasized individual salvation who didn't use that emphasis to deny comfort and succor to others.  Oh, they make nice noises about helping the destitute, but as far as really doing it, not much happens.  Individual salvation means you are individually responsible for the state of your immortal soul.  And if you are individually responsible for the state of your soul, you are individually responsible for the state of your life.  In this understanding, the community doesn't exist to take you in, it exists to set you straight, to straighten you out, to determine whether or not you are worthy of admission to the company of the Blessed.  Any help is short term and blunted, and meant to get you back to being responsible for yourself again, the way God intended!  Living as the widow who fed Elijah is simply not on:

After a while the stream dried up, for there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him: “Go now to Zarephath, a village of Sidon, and stay there; I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’ He went off to Zarephath, and when he reached the entrance to the village, he saw a widow gathering sticks. He called to her, ‘Please bring me a little water in a pitcher to drink.’ As she went to fetch it, he called after her, ‘Bring me, please, a piece of bread as well.’ But she answered, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no food baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a flask. I am just gathering two or three sticks to go and cook it for my son and myself before we die.’ ‘Have no fear,’ Elijah said, ‘go and do as you have said. But first make me a small cake from what you have and bring it out to me, and after that make something for your son and yourself. For this is the word of the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of flour will not give out, nor the flask of oil fail, until the Lord sends rain on the land.’ She went and did as Elijah had said, and there was food for him and for her family for a long time. The jar of flour did not give out, nor did the flask of oil, as the word of the Lord foretold through Elijah. 1 Kings 17:7-16 (REB)

There are nuances, of course; variations.  Not everyone who believes in individual salvation as the central doctrine of Christianity agrees with Baroness Thatcher:

They stem not from the social but from the spiritual side of our lives, and personally, I would identify three beliefs in particular:

First, that from the beginning man has been endowed by God with the fundamental right to choose between good and evil. And second, that we were made in God's own image and, therefore, we are expected to use all our own power of thought and judgement in exercising that choice; and further, that if we open our hearts to God, He has promised to work within us. And third, that Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, when faced with His terrible choice and lonely vigil chose to lay down His life that our sins may be forgiven. I remember very well a sermon on an Armistice Sunday when our Preacher said, "No one took away the life of Jesus , He chose to lay it down".

Thatcher carefully distinguishes "spiritual" from "social," and makes it clear throughout that her emphasis is on the individual, that, as she famously said elsewhere, "Society does not exist."  "Man," in that first sentence, is clearly an individual:  only individuals choose good or evil.  And it is up to us, as individuals, "to use all our own (!) power of thought and judgment in exercising that choice."  And it is only after we have done so that we can "open our hearts [not the seat of thought and judgment] to God," who has "promised to work within us."  Because, after all, that's what Jesus did.

Which is one of the weirder theories of the crucifixion I think I've ever heard.  It's supported, to some degree, by John's gospel; but everybody agrees John's Jesus is the least human of the four representations in the canon.

Anyway....

The third is the oddest also because it doesn't connect to the acts of thought and judgement of the individual, or even of God entering your heart and working within you.  What it does connect with, is that even God has to make individual choices.  What it tells me is that even God is all alone.

Which is a very chilling place to put the emphasis (and not at all what the author of John's Gospel meant).  If Thatcher means to use it to make God "one of us," then it's even worse.  But it does explain the complete lack of Christian humility in Thatcher's speech.  Why be humble when you are equal to God?

Follow that reasoning very far, or even take it up at all, and you wind up at Mars Hill Presbyterian Church, which is not a place I want to be:

Mars Hill has not entirely dispensed with megachurch marketing tactics. Its success in one of the most liberal and least-churched cities in America depends on being sensitive to the body-pierced and latte-drinking seekers of Seattle. Ultimately, however, Driscoll's theology means that his congregants' salvation is not in his hands. It's not in their own hands, either — this is the heart of Calvinism. Ultimately, however, Driscoll's theology means that his congregants' salvation is not in his hands. It's not in their own hands, either — this is the heart of Calvinism.

Human beings are totally corrupted by original sin and predestined for heaven or hell, no matter their earthly conduct. We all deserve eternal damnation, but God, in his inscrutable mercy, has granted the grace of salvation to an elect few. While John Calvin's 16th-century doctrines have deep roots in Christian tradition, they strike many modern evangelicals as nonsensical and even un-Christian. If predestination is true, they argue, then there is no point in missions to the unsaved or in leading a godly life. And some babies who die in infancy — if God placed them among the reprobate — go straight to hell with the rest of the damned, to "glorify his name by their own destruction," as Calvin wrote. Since the early 19th century, most evangelicals have preferred a theology that stresses the believer's free decision to accept God's grace. To be born again is a choice God wants you to make; if you so choose, Jesus will be your personal friend.

And we all know personal friends are people just like us.  Why be humble when God is your BFF?  Why be a servant when you pal around with the Logos that created the cosmos?  A little of that goes a long way, and it goes a long way in the wrong direction, for my taste.

But are we totally corrupted?  Do we all deserve eternal damnation?  Is that any better than Jesus being my BFF?  And can I set any of this aside without completely re-writing traditional Christian soteriology?

Even Luther runs afoul of his own reasoning on this.  Luther decided it was God's grace that saved us, and that God's grace is wholly unmerited, because there is nothing we can do to merit it.  Yet we must do something.  We must choose to accept that grace.  Apparently if we don't, we're still damned.  Which means we were damned from the beginning, damned before birth, and only the right choice will save us.  Which means the grace is not unmerited; we only merit it if, like the characters given the decision to choose the chalice in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," we choose wisely.  Everyone watching that film knows the Nazi will not choose wisely.  He's the bad guy, they never make wise decisions.  He doesn't deserve grace because he's made too many bad choices.  He deserves only damnation.  But to switch back to Luther, we've all made bad choices, we all deserve damnation.  How is it this one choice determines our salvation?  And if it does, how is grace then unmerited?  Are we left only with the simplistic version of Pascal's wager:  it's better that I choose God than not, just to be safe?  What kind of choice is that?  What kind of soteriology is that?

So eventually grace comes to us because we make the right choice or we think the right thought or we say the right words (whether we mean them or not, even God doesn't know).  What is the point of this tail-chasing?  Historically it's been to establish precisely what Jesus specifically preached against:  a hierarchy where the believers, or at the worst extreme the "elect," get to claim privileges for themselves above all others.  And that is not only a perversion of the most basic Christian teachings, it's reprehensible.  Dare I say, it is the fundamental heresy?

If I profess a soteriology now, it is a soteriology of life, not an after-life.  My sympathies are with the nuns and monks who work especially with the poor, the ones who, as Windhorse noted:

... are concerned with trying to find food and clothing and medicine for the least among us, not lecturing them on sin or hypostatic union. Mother Teresa did not try and "save" Hindus or Muslims or Sikhs, just help them. As a result, she has become a powerful and inspiring example of Christian values while, conversely, the likes of salvationists like Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard and Pat Robertson have done immeasurable [harm] to the Christian message.

I have never been so comfortable with Christianity as I have in those moments when I realized I was trying to help someone in the name of Christ, rather than to "save" them from a fate I don't think anyone is born to deserve.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly....

I gotta wonder what people think "Christian" really is....

"IT IS hard to imagine a prime minister doing such a thing now, and even then it seemed rather surprising."

A Prime Minister, yes; especially given the English experience with Puritanism.  An American politician, even an American President?  Not so hard.

I pick this up via the inestimable Grandmere Mimi, who always gives me another reason to blog on.  The original is here.  Now let's get back to it:

In May 1988 Margaret Thatcher went to the General Assembly of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland and gave what would soon be called the Sermon on the Mound. It was an impassioned statement of a certain form of Christianity. The Conservative leader stressed individual salvation over social reform, the legitimacy of moneymaking when combined with altruism, and the “responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ”.

The responsibility, apparently, to get rich and then lord it over those who didn't because, well, you know; if you aren't rich, God doesn't really approve of you.

It was never hard to see the influence of Methodism, born as a reaction to the complacency and privilege of 18th-century Anglicanism, on Mrs Thatcher. She believed in thrift and hard work, and liked the advice of John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, to earn, save and only then give as much as possible. The acts of generosity listed in the New Testament, from the Good Samaritan’s to that of the woman who anointed Christ’s feet, were possible only because the donors had money, she noted.

Oh, let me start here, and call "bullsgeschicte," the way we used to in seminary (all the best scriptural exegetes are German, you see).  You give only from your abundance?  Let's start with Elijah and the widow, shall we?  And then move on to the widow's mite.  Should we point out the generosity of the father of the Prodigal Son is actually, and especially by Baronness Thatcher's lights, a madman and a dangerous radical?  That the woman who anointed Jesus' feet was either rich (Matthew's version) or a prostitute (Luke's).   I don't mean to offend the Methodists in the room, but if that was Wesley's idea (we can only be charitable from our excess), then Wesley was full of...well, I've already named it, haven't I?

No, I am not terribly charitable on this particular subject.  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.  Now let's move on.

As I said at Wounded Bird, remind me of the beggars Jesus told to:  "Get a job!"  Remind me of the poor and the destitute Jesus said were unworthy of his attention; that he told to come back when they had a little money, because they weren't worth his time otherwise.  The ptochoi he said were lazy rotters who deserved their state because he didn't have enough in the till at the moment to spare a coin or two, or even the kind word (gotta save those, too, ya know.  Toss 'em around too freely you debase the coinage.)  Don't you remember when Jesus said "Congratulations, you rich!  You've made it to the top!  God is well pleased with you!"

What?  Jesus never said that.  Well, he should have.

And Baroness Thatcher was expressing a "certain form of Christianity"?  Say, rather, that Charles Dickens was expressing a "certain form of Christianity"  in his most famous work, A Christmas Carol.  What Thatcher was expressing was much closer to the ideas of Malthus, who, I remind everyone again, was an economist:

 " A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he does not work upon the compassion of some of her guests."

And, you see, if no one can afford to give you anything well, then, what's to be done for you?  I mean, was Baroness Thatcher her brother's keeper?  What a ridiculous idea!  Especially since everyone knows the great thing is individual salvation and making lots and lots of money, so you can afford to be generous with a bit of it.  But not too much, or you might interfere with the individual's salvation.  Gotta earn that umerited grace, donchaknow?

Because, you know, things were simpler when Jesus was around: 

We must recognise that modern society is infinitely more complex than that of Biblical times and of course new occasions teach new duties. In our generation, the only way we can ensure that no-one is left without sustenance, help or opportunity, is to have laws to provide for health and education, pensions for the elderly, succour for the sick and disabled. 

Which is a) a load of crap, and b) one more reason I find the study of Biblical history so important.  It is far too easy to say "things were different, then," and so slip off any sense of responsibility Christianity may induce in you.  The Romans had as many laws as we do.  What they didn't have was concern for most of the people they ruled over.  Arguing we do that better than the Romans did, is not arguing that we are either a Christian society, or that we've got it all right.  Especially when your next sentence is:

But intervention by the State must never become so great that it effectively removes personal responsibility. The same applies to taxation; for while you and I would work extremely hard whatever the circumstances, there are undoubtedly some who would not unless the incentive was there. And we need their efforts too.

I really don't recall Jesus speaking much about personal responsibility.  Indeed, even his disciples would ask why someone was born blind, or was a beggar, and assume it was the result of someone's sin. Jesus never charged anyone so much as the cost of belief in him (the beating heart of modern soteriology, which is another distinctly Christian problem), yet if we, in his example if not in his name, don't invoke some price for our charity, we run afoul of the great economic terror of "moral hazard."

A hazard that always applies to the poor. but never to the wealthy.  Money is its own morality.


Ms. Thatcher's thesis was that Christianity is about spiritual, not social, redemption.  Let me first say this is the primary reason I no longer value soteriology  I know that's a sweeping statement, but I don't make it lightly.  The emphasis on salvation has, I think, been the single greatest mistake in Christianity.  The famous parable of the sheep and the goats doesn't turn on the purity of intent of the "sheep."  It turns on their behavior, on their willingness to do something for strangers, for the ptochoi, for the sick, for the prisoner.  And God identifies God's self as every one of those persons.  And that identification doesn’t emphasize our life in the afterlife, but our life here and now.  Conveniently the Baroness skips over that inconvenient story.

No surprise there.  The parable from Matthew does nothing to support her thesis: that Christianity is all about the spiritual life, and the spiritual life is all about the individual, and Christianity really has no role in our social life except to make us feel good about being, or wanting to be, wealthy.

Read her whole speech to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; that's what it comes down to.  The idea that spirituality is a communal and social activity, rather than a matter of very personal piety, is not acknowledged.  The idea that spirituality leads one out into the world, that spirituality is the very basis of the basilea tou theou, is never noticed.  And certainly, spirituality is never meant to get in the way of what's really important:

But it is not the creation of wealth that is wrong but love of money for its own sake. The spiritual dimension comes in deciding what one does with the wealth. 

The spiritual dimension, in other words, must mind its place, and offer only counsel; it must never stand in the way of the true purpose of the individual, which is to acquire money.  Social considerations, which can be influenced by spiritual ones, should never get in the way of the individual's pursuit of the individual's interests.  That the individual can't do anything outside a social system, that the individual can't even be born without the social interactions of two people, that money itself is entirely a product of human society, are matters that are never even considered.  That everything we do, we do as social beings, is tacitly disavowed.

Andrew Carnegie would chew her up and spit her out.  That Scotsman understood how he made his wealth was what mattered, and what he did with it did not wipe away the responsibility for how it was earned.

She ends her speech hoping vaguely that the Church will finally teach the world to live in peace; which sounds suspiciously like the Pax Romana, the peace of the powerful free to exploit whomever and whatever suits their accumulation of wealth, which they are then at peace to use for such charitable purposes as they might see fit.  The Church, tacitly, really shouldn't get too involved in that discussion, either.  The Church should just bring us to a state fit to enjoy these comforts without conflict, and then move quietly out of the way, its task performed.  Well done, good and faithful servant;  "I tell you, make use of your ill-gotten gain to make friends for yourselves, so that when the bottom falls out they are there to welcome you into eternal dwelling places."—Luke 16:9 (SV)

Yeah; that's worth applauding.....

"A Father to the fatherless...."

This is really just an excuse to link to this excellent article on day care in America, one that hits home because I knew the story of Jessica Tata and the fire in her day care long before I read this article.

The excuse?  Connect this problem, the problem of day care in America (read the article) with abortion.  You can do it two ways:

1)  the scandal du jour that the national media hasn't covered the case of Kermit Glosnell, because it shows the "ugly side" of abortion.  Bunkum, but if it is true, why wasn't the case of Jessica Tata major news that caused us all to re-examine the national shame of day care?  As the article sensibly points out:

Day care, in other words, has become a permanent reality, although the public conversation barely reflects that fact. The issue of child care is either neglected as a “women’s issue” or obsessed over in mommy-wars debates about the virtues of day care versus stay-at-home moms. Whether out of reluctance to acknowledge a fundamental change in the conception of parenthood—especially motherhood—or out of a fear of expanding the role of government in family life, we still haven’t come to terms with the shift of women from the home to the workplace.

Our national dialogue is dominated by the controversies swirling around abortion.  On the question of what to do with the kids we already have:  crickets.  We aren't squashing the scandal of an abortion butcher who should have been stopped by state authorities much earlier (he's a licensed MD, after all).  We're ignoring the entire question of how we value human beings, by national discussions dominated by ideas, not human beings.  The abortion debate doesn't focus on the children or the mothers; it focuses on the idea of abortion.  Until the same-sex marriage debate started focusing on human beings, on people, it was all about "marriage" and, tacitly, the "ick" factor of gay sex. Most of us have no experience with gay sex, and marriage is such a complex topic we probably never really think much about what it means to us, or our children, our families, our friends.  Far easier to argue the abstract issue than focus on the concrete one.

And that brings me to point no. 2 in why I bring this up:

2) The problem of abortion is, in large part, an economic problem.  From my limited experience, I suspect many women seek abortions because they literally can't afford the child care.  That sounds terribly mercenary unless you, too, have a job making $12 or less an hour (as some of the people who used Jessica Tata's childcare did).  Then it's a very real consideration.  If you can't find childcare, you can't work, and if you can't work, well....

So what do we do in this country to support childcare?  Again:  crickets.  We scream and yell about abortions, we picket clinics, we even kill doctors who perform the procedure.  But is even the Catholic church deeply invested in child care in America?


Honestly, I don't know any church that is.  Perhaps a local congregation offers a "Mother's Day Out," or provides infant care (one did in Austin, when my daughter was an infant).  But those are tiny, local concerns (and God bless them!).  Nationally, who speaks for child care?  Who speaks up for taking care of the children we have?  Who even mentions providing child care as a helpful alternative to abortion?

Crickets.  Noisy things, aren't they?

Read the article.  It really is that good.