Turning Points

I usually agree with Jim Wallis, though I often wish that he would go further in his critique of the current order. But, as he says in the following article, he is a conservative Christian (and I am not). As a nation, is it too much to hope that we may be approaching a new perspective on the systemic crisis that we are facing when conservative Christians start questioning the culture of greed that has marked this country for the last 30 years? Greed that rips apart the social fabric that unites this country? Greed that enriches the few and impoverishes the masses? Greed that skews the moral compass of this country? Greed that worships multi-million dollar athletic contracts and punishes the homeless for not working hard enough to afford a home? The list is endless. Read this article and reflect on it today, Sunday, February 14. Reflect also on the larger meaning of Valentine’s Day and don’t get caught up in the corporate celebration of the day. Instead, reflect on the true meaning of love, which Jim Wallis points to in this essay. His interview of Elizabeth Warren will appear in the April issue of Sojourner’s magazine.

Elizabeth Warren and Goliath

By Jim Wallis

I had a most instructive conversation this week with Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard economist who is also the Chair of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel. Warren has a way of cutting through the jargon and confusion of many economists and of this economic crisis — right to the moral core of the issues at stake. I knew her for her keen insights, but I didn’t know she was from, as she puts it, a “mixed marriage from Oklahoma” — Baptist and Methodist — and that she is a former Methodist Sunday school teacher. In the interview I did with her for Sojourners, her moral and even theological comments were as impressive as her economic analysis of our present crisis. She said the battle for financial regulatory reform is like the battle between David and Goliath.
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I recently had occasion to painfully recall the line, “Especially, do not feign affection”, from the well-known poem Desiderata, which was very popular in the late 1960s and which achieved even more popularity when the talk-show host, Les Crane, recorded it in 1971. I couldn’t find a video of it that I liked enough to post, so if you would like to listen to Les Crane’s recording of it, follow the link. When I was in college in the late 1960s, the origins of the poem, allegedly written in 1692, puzzled everyone. Thank goodness for the Internet! It was written by Max Ehrmann in 1927.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be careful.
Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.

Leonard Cohen’s famous song, Anthem, has the oft-quoted line, “There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” We would all benefit if we took his words to heart.

For your enlightenment, Ellen Goodman interviews Alex Gibney, director of the movie, Casino Jack and the United States of Money at the headquarters of the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah:

It appears to this cantankerous contrarian that the American people might just be starting to wake up, courtesy of the five radicals on the Supreme Court who ruled that corporations can spend freely on political campaigns because corporations have First Amendment rights. That got people’s attention, alright, across the political spectrum. This isn’t a right-wing or left-wing issue; it is an issue that threatens the future of this country and people are finally starting to add 2 and 2 and coming up with 4. Public Citizen, Voter Action, Change.org, Change Congress and the Campaign to Legalize Democracy (!!) are ramping up campaigns to introduce an Amendment to the United States Constitution to strip corporations of their “personhood” and thus, their rights of free speech. The name of that last organization is stunning. Imagine that! In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, we have a Campaign to Legalize Democracy?? Wow! All I can say, is, it is about time! I urge you to visit these web pages or any others that are pursuing this issue and contribute your time or money (or both) to getting this Amendment passed by Congress so that the states can vote on it.

As evidence of the unfettered power of corporations in the political process in this country, I present to you an essay by Norman Solomon. It appeared on the website Truthout on February 2, 2010. A memorable line in the essay is this one: “We had to destroy our country in order to save it.” That line is from the Vietnam War era, when claims were made to that effect. This year’s “defense” budget is larger than last year’s and approaches the cost of the bailout at $744 billion dollars. That is $2 billion dollars a day, my friends. Is it any wonder why we can’t have decent health care for our citizens when we are bleeding treasure to kill “terrorists”? Just who is the terrorist, here, anyway? I think our own government, controlled by these same corporations, is the terrorist – for fear mongering us into meekly approving the transfer of our wealth to the multinational “defense” corporations to “defend” our country. In a speech linked to later in this post, Martin Luther King said much the same thing, in his Riverside Church speech on April 4, 1967. In that speech, he said that I “could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.”

Don’t Call It a “Defense” Budget

This isn’t “defense.”

The new budget from the White House will push US military spending well above $2 billion a day.

Foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it.

“Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors,” The New York Times reported February 2.

It isn’t defense to preclude new domestic initiatives for a country that desperately needs them: for health care, jobs, green technologies, carbon reduction, housing, education, nutrition, mass transit …

“When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, social programs must inevitably suffer,” Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out. “We can talk about guns and butter all we want to, but when the guns are there with all of its emphasis you don’t even get good oleo. These are facts of life.”

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I don’t own a television, but I did “tune” into President Obama’s State of the Union address the other night via streaming video on my computer. I didn’t watch very long – I quickly tired of the unending applause and shots of Pelosi and Biden jumping up and down, as if on cue, to rouse the audience to more standing ovations. Today, I read the entire address at the Minneapolis Star Tribune site in less than 20 minutes and wondered why it took an hour and five minutes to deliver the address. It must have been all that applause.

So what was my opinion of the address? Not that anyone is paying attention to my ideas, but I think the State of the Union is pretty sorry and Obama didn’t do much more than issue rhetorical platitudes. The only bright spot in the speech for me was when he criticized the Supreme Court for its recent ruling that corporations have the right of free speech. I particularly didn’t like the part where he said he was going to freeze discretionary spending starting in 2011, but said absolutely nothing about the out-of-control military spending in this country.

I’m becoming interested in the idea of hubris and nemesis and in that spirit, I’m offering an essay by Eli Zaretsky, who was born in Brooklyn, New York. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1960 and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1978. His books include, Capitalism, the Family and Personal Life and Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis. He has been a professor of history at Eugene Lang College, part of the New School in New York City, since 1999.

A storm has been building in this country since Bush took office in 2001. Today, we are more indebted, have fewer civil liberties, and are more unhappy than ever. Partisan bickering and finger-pointing are rife and no solutions to our troubles appear to be at hand. Mr. Zaretsky has identified some points to watch. As you read his points, keep in mind that Adolf Hitler’s rise to power did not involve any violence at all. He was elected to office and consolidated his power through legal means. I don’t know how nemesis is going to manifest itself in this country, but the scenario that Mr. Zaretsky outlines could be one possiblity. If you would like to learn more about what he is writing about, I can’t suggest a better source than Dave Neiwert’s blog.

Personally, since I am interested in social justice, I am praying for the opposite of the trend identified by Mr. Zaretsky. But I fear that the followers of Palin, Beck, Robertson, and Limbaugh have the upper hand in what passes for political discourse in this country. If the economy does not improve markedly soon (and I see little possibility that it will do so), it is entirely possible that we will soon be living in a country with startling parallels to Germany in the 1930s.

This essay, by Eli Zaretsky, appeared on the Tikkun Daily Blog on January 23, 2010.

Proto-Fascist Elements in America Today

If I were Barack Obama, I would be frightened right now, not so much because of the likelihood that there would be serious Democratic losses in the 2010 election, or even a strong challenge to my re-election in 2012. No, I would be frightened because I would feel that I was in danger of losing control of my party, of my authority in government generally, and of the respect I had among the American people. I would feel — if I had my pulse on the nation — that the country was in an unstable and volatile situation and that things could go pretty haywire pretty fast, and I wouldn’t be sure if I could control them. I would be frightened that I had taken on a job that was beyond my capacities, if I were Barack Obama.

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I can’t say that I’m terribly surprised with the results of the race for the Senate in Massachusetts. The Democrats, trying very, very hard to be Republicans, just found out that they really shouldn’t try to be Republicans because they lost the support of all of the Independents who voted for them in 2008. Change we can believe in. Indeed. As disappointed as I am with the results, perhaps it is necessary for this to happen so that the Democrats wake up and realize that the approach they are taking just isn’t working. They really need to get out of the Washington bubble and start talking to people and find out what their concerns are and start addressing them. That is what this election was all about: the Democrats, spending our grandchildren’s inheritance in their Corporate American agenda, aren’t in tune with America. Will the Republicans do any better? Nope. But like I said some time ago, in my analogy of the fire ant nest, people are pissed off and biting anyone they can find to bite. The Republicans, if they take this win as an omen of a bright future, are going to find out that they are going to get bitten, too. It is time for change, real change, not this faux change that Obama peddled to us. Talk is cheap.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, whose essays I have posted before, had some wonderful thoughts on this election and I am posting them here, for your consideration.

We Tried to Warn Obama…But He Wouldn’t Listen

By Rabbi Michael Lerner January 19, 2010

The defeat of the Democrats’ choice to succeed Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate is being treated as though there is a decided shift of mass opinion to the Right in the U.S. But it is the Obama Administration, not the people who supported him in 2008, which moved to the Right–in the name of being pragmatists or realists– in the process emptying their own agenda in regard to health care, environment, human rights, social and economic justice, and global peace of the critical elements that made those programs sound hopeful, and leaving many of their supporters feeling confused, disillusioned, and unable to rally around the politics that seemed so very far from “the change you can believe in” that we had been promised.

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Randolph Bourne (1886-1918) was a public intellectual of the Progressive Era. His most widely known work is the long essay, The State, which was found among his papers after his death. Here is a short excerpt from the essay, which I think offers a way to escape from the insanity of Afghanistan by showing the function of war in the modern State. Perhaps, once we understand the function of war, we will be more willing to challenge the thinking that supports that function. Perhaps. I will be posting more on this theme in coming months.

“It cannot be too firmly realized that war is a function of States and not of nations, indeed that it is the chief function of States. War is a very artificial thing. It is not the naïve spontaneous outburst of herd pugnacity; it is no more primary than is formal religion. War cannot exist without a military establishment, and a military establishment cannot exist without a State organization. War has an immemorial tradition and heredity only because the State has a long tradition and heredity. But they are inseparably and functionally joined. We cannot crusade against war without crusading implicitly against the State. And we cannot expect, or take measures to ensure, that this war is a war to end war, unless at the same time we take measures to end the State in its traditional form. The State is not the nation, and the State can be modified and even abolished in its present form, without harming the nation. On the contrary, with the passing of the dominance of the State, the genuine life-enhancing forces of the nation will be liberated. If the State’s chief function is war, then the State must suck out of the nation a large part of its energy for its purely sterile purposes of defense and aggression. It devotes to waste or to actual destruction as much as it can of the vitality of the nation. No one will deny that war is a vast complex of life-destroying and life-crippling forces. If the State’s chief function is war, then it is chiefly concerned with coordinating and developing the powers and techniques which make for destruction. And this means not only the actual and potential destruction of the enemy, but of the nation at home as well. For the very existence of a State in a system of States means that the nation lies always under a risk of war and invasion, and the calling away of energy into military pursuits means a crippling of the productive and life-enhancing processes of the national life.”

I went to church this morning. Paging through the hymnal, I was surprised to see “Morning Has Broken”, a song I always associated with Cat Stevens, who has since changed his name to Yusuf Islam. The song has always been one of my favorites, but I didn’t know that it was a religious hymn. It was written by Elizabeth Farjeon in 1931 as a child’s poem and is properly known as “A Morning Song (For the First Day of Spring)”. It was set to the tune of “Bunessan”, a traditional Gaelic tune that was collected by Alexander Fraser in the 19th century. The piano arrangement is by Rick Wakeman, of the band Yes.

Slideshow by Michael P. Flaherty

A Morning Song (For the First Day of Spring)

by Elizabeth Farjeon

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the word

Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall, on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where his feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God’s recreation of the new day

Brian McLaren is a controversial figure in the Emerging Church movement. Whatever you might think of his theology, you have to respect his appeal to many who belong to Generation X. I found this commentary by Brian and thought that it expressed some ideas that deserve wider consideration. I’m posting it here in the hopes that a few people who haven’t read it will do so. This commentary was written after President Obama visited Elkhart, IN on February 9, 2009 and made a speech there, in which he addressed his ideas about how to bring this country out of its worst economic slump since the Great Depression. McLaren uses the word ‘recovery’ in a very different way than any economist that I’ve ever read does. Read what he has to say:

Economic Recovery 1 and 2

For many people, economic recovery means “getting back to where we were a few months or years ago.” That means recovering our consumptive, greedy, unrestrained, undisciplined, irresponsible, and ecologically and socially unsustainable way of life.

I’d like to suggest another kind of recovery … drawing from the world of addiction. When an addict gets into recovery, he doesn’t want to go back and recover the “high” he had before, or even to recover the conditions he had before he began using drugs and alcohol. Instead, he wants to move forward to a new way of life – a wiser way of life that takes into account his experience of addiction. He realizes that his addiction to drugs was a symptom of other deeper issues and diseases in his life … unresolved pain or anger, the need to anesthetize painful emotions, lack of creativity in finding ways to feel happy and alive, unaddressed relational and spiritual deficits, lack of self-awareness, and so on.

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