I’m sending a big virtual smooch to all Mahablog readers and commenters. You make me laugh, you make me think, you keep me going. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you. Miss Lucy and I hope you have a lovely holiday, whether Christmas or “other.”
– maha
They’re bigger turkeys now than they were last Thanksgiving.
Enjoy your day!
Update: For your reading enjoyment:
Molly Ivins: Thanks—No, Seriously (and don’t miss the cartoon)
John Nichols: “Freedom, Brotherhood, and Justice…”
Update update: I notice Pajamas Media is linking to Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech, delivered on January 6, 1941. PJM of Seattle excerpted the parts about God and national defense. Here’s another part that I have quoted in the past:
For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:
Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for the few.
The preservation of civil liberties for all.The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.
These are the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.
And these are, without exception, things at which the Bush Administration has failed, utterly. In some cases the White House has not just failed, but acted aggressively to set us all back.
FDR continued,
Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate improvement.
As examples:We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.
We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.
We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it.
I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call.
A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my Budget Message I shall recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying today. No person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of this program; and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.
If the Congress maintains these principles, the voters, putting patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause.
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception–the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
Again, consider how much of what FDR hoped for, and accomplished, has been lost by right-wing extremism. FDR’s corpse would do a better job running the government than the creature in the Oval Office now.
Sorry, I wasn’t going to rant today. It’s just that there’s something obscene about using the “Four Freedoms” speech to prop up imperialism, which seems to me is what PJM is trying to do.
Dan Froomkin’s Friday column is mostly an excerpt from the book Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families. May they all come home safely, and soon.
This bit is by Sgt. Sharon D. Allen:
The camp is under red-lens light discipline, which means we can’t use an unfiltered flashlight. It severely lessens our evening entertainment options. So, soon after we arrived, we began our strange nightly gatherings. You won’t find it on any schedule, but you can set your watch by it. As the sun nudges the horizon and the gravel cools, some of us give up our battle with the ambient light and surrender our reading until the morning. Others collect up their poker winnings or grumble about their losses. And we all drag our chairs and cigarettes and joylessly warm water out to the gravel and talk. We call it “the circle.” In the Army there is an incredibly varied cross section of society, and we are a diverse group. We have a couple kids straight out of high school, who’d either joined to get a little excitement out of life or to get a leg up on it so that they could go to college. We have older guys, who’ve already put in their time. They tend to be either jaded or genial, both in reaction to the accumulated bullshit slung at most soldiers who’ve been in the service for years. We have everyone from idealists to realists to fatalists, more than a few who began at one end of the spectrum and eventually meandered their way to the other.
I always find it amusing when people talk about “the military” vote, perspective, or whatever. My company has 170-some soldiers, and 170-some opinions. We might have more invested in foreign policy than people back home, but that doesn’t mean we all agree on exactly what those policies should be. Two of the guys, Jeff and Sam, are brothers serving together here but in different platoons. They are both slightly to the left of extremely conservative, yet also very anti-Iraq war. Their father threatened to cut off his own head and send it in to Al-jazeera if his sons aren’t returned home soon.
Be sure to read the whole excerpt. The soldiers are asking the same questions about the war that we are (or should be).
There are some on both the Left and the Right — I think the Right is worse, actually — who speak of “the troops” as if they were an army of identical clones. For example, last week rightie bloggers declared that the Gannett-owned military Times newspapers don’t speak for “the troops,” as if they and they alone were authorized to declare who speaks for whom in the military. Just after the Tuesday election, I caught a couple of rightie posts (can’t find them now, sorry) declaring that “the troops” in Iraq were upset by the results because they didn’t want to come home before “the job” was done.
What a pile of manure. “The troops” are individuals who come to their own conclusions. Some want to continue military operations in Iraq, and some don’t. Some think the invasion was necessary, and some don’t.
You know I think the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. But speaking of war generally, I say — if you’re going to have a war, have a war. If the situation is so dire that a war must be fought, then the strength and resources of the entire country should be marshaled to fight the war and get the bleeping thing over with as quickly as possible. Every single day, every citizen should be reminded that our soldiers are fighting for us, and should be asked to give something to the effort. If recruitment goals fall short, then crank up the draft. There should be bond drives and oil rationing. There should be cookie baking and sock knitting, and children should donate their lemonade stand money for the troops.
And if the situation isn’t dire enough to go to that amount of trouble, then maybe we shouldn’t be fighting the bleeping war to begin with.
Suggestion: Donate to the USO.
From the archives: Wilfred Owen.
Celebrate while still you can.
Reg Henry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
… as a journalist — likely definition: “A writer who is accused of bias by people who are themselves hopelessly biased” — I feel compelled to say something on behalf of those of us patriotic folks who support the troops but do not support the war in Iraq. As polls suggest, there are many of us now in these disunited United States.
The idea that a patriotic American can simultaneously support the troops and oppose the war drives people on the right nuts. “How does that work?” they ask incredulously.
I will tell them in a minute, but first let me say that the simple pleasure of being irritating is surely reason and incentive enough for waverers on this point to adopt the sane position of pro-troops, anti-war.
There is an important distinction to be observed here, and unfortunately Americans are notoriously hopeless at making distinctions. …
… the troops are good people (I know, I was a soldier once myself) but the war in Iraq is bad. Worse, it is stupid, serving as an incubator of terrorism undertaken in the name of defeating terrorism. …
… Yes, we support the troops — when can their glory fade? — but we also know that someone has blundered, in fact a whole party of someones. Happy Independence Day anyway. Our unburned flags will be flying.
Howard Zinn, Alternet, “Patriotism and the 4th of July”
In celebration of the Fourth of July there will be many speeches about the young people who “died for their country.” But those who gave their lives did not, as they were led to believe, die for their country; they died for their government. The distinction between country and government is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, which will be referred to again and again on July 4, but without attention to its meaning.
The Declaration of Independence is the fundamental document of democracy. It says governments are artificial creations, established by the people, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and charged by the people to ensure the equal right of all to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Furthermore, as the Declaration says, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” It is the country that is primary–the people, the ideals of the sanctity of human life and the promotion of liberty.
When a government recklessly expends the lives of its young for crass motives of profit and power, while claiming that its motives are pure and moral, (”Operation Just Cause” was the invasion of Panama and “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in the present instance), it is violating its promise to the country. War is almost always a breaking of that promise. It does not enable the pursuit of happiness but brings despair and grief.
Mark Twain, having been called a “traitor” for criticizing the U.S. invasion of the Philippines, derided what he called “monarchical patriotism.” He said: “The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: ‘The King can do no wrong.’ We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had — the individual’s right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.”
See also:
George Lakoff, Boston Globe, “Understanding the Meaning of Freedom”
E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, “A Dissident’s Holiday”
Susan Madrak, Huffington Post, “Of Thee I Sing”
Brent Budowsky, “A July Fourth call to arms”
Blogging time is short today, so I’m just going to link to a few things going on elsewhere –
Per Glenn Greenwald, Michelle Malkin is not only certifiably unhinged, she has persuaded some of her more loosely wired followers that New York Times editors and reporters deserve to be hunted down.
Let’s start with the following New York Times reporters and editors: Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr. , Bill Keller, Eric Lichtblau, and James Risen.
Do you have an idea where they live? Go hunt them down and do America a favor. Get their photo, street address, where their kids go to school, anything you can dig up, and send it to the link above. This is your chance to be famous - grab for the golden ring.
This is exactly the kind of rhetoric that gets people assassinated. If I were any of the people named in this post, I’d be calling lawyers.
Yesterday David Neiwert posted revealed that Malkin’s, um, thinking has been heavily influenced by a prominent white supremacist. Not exactly a surprise, although it does make one wonder what witches’ brew of character disorders is bubbling in Malkin’s (non-Caucasian) psyche.
[Update: The Heretik links to the wingnuts so I don’t have to.]
For a sad testimony to how far off the tracks our nation has gone, see “Gitmo win likely cost Navy lawyer his career” by Paul Shukovsky in yesterday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Follow that up with visits to Billmon and Digby.
Finally, Gary Farber tells us how to have a great 4th of July celebration.
I’m not doing predictions, except to endorse these. But of course there has to be an official 2006 Mahablog I Ching Reading! If you are curious, the I Ching Reading for 2005 was Hexagram 3, Retrenchment. The judgment: Nothing should be undertaken. Get help. The I Ching is never wrong.
[See 2006 reading beneath the fold] (more…)
I overlooked this column, “Slurs Fly from the Left,” by Jeff Jacoby in Wednesday’s Boston Globe and only noticed it today through some links. See if you notice what’s missing:
NOTHING BRINGS OUT RACIST slurs like an ambitious black man who doesn’t know his ‘’place.” So when Maryland’s lieutenant governor, Michael Steele, announced his candidacy for the US Senate recently, the bigots reared up. On one popular website, The News Blog, Steele’s picture was grotesquely doctored, making him look like a minstrel-show caricature. ‘’I’s Simple Sambo and I’s Running for the Big House,” read the insulting headline accompanying the picture.
This wasn’t some white supremacist slime from the right-wing fringe. The News Blog is a liberal site, and the reason for its racist attack on Steele, a former chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, is that he is a conservative. Specifically, a black conservative. As far as too many liberals are concerned, blacks who reject liberalism deserve to be smeared as Sambos and worse.
‘’Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael Steele . . . are fair because he is a conservative Republican,” The Washington Times reported. ‘’Such attacks . . . include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an ‘Uncle Tom,’ and depicting him as a blackfaced minstrel.”
What’s missing, of couse, is the blogger of The News Blog, Steve Gilliard. Who is black. And the beef with Steele is not with his conservatism but with his aquiesence to racism. Steve defends himself quite well here; no need for me to do it for him. “What would you think about Jewish politicians who sought the favor of Islamic radicals,” Steve asks. “Would you want that person to represent you?”
Still, I wasn’t going to write about this until I ran into Ann Coulter’s latest, um, effort. No need turning over rocks or reading between lines to find racism; Coulter throws it in your face. Here’s Ann’s ode to Kwanzaa:
(Sing to “Jingle Bells”)
Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!
Yeah, she actually wrote that. Here’s a bit more, if you can stand it:
Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Least-Great Generation. In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA’s revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani — the same seven “principles” of Kwanzaa….
…Kwanzaa was the result of a ’60s psychosis grafted onto the black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga’s United Slaves — the violence, the Marxism, the insanity. Most absurdly, for leftists anyway, is that they have forgotten the FBI’s tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.
Now the “holiday” concocted by an FBI dupe is honored in a presidential proclamation and public schools across the nation. Bush called Kwanzaa a holiday that promotes “unity” and “faith.” Faith in what? Liberals’ unbounded capacity to respect any faith but Christianity?
She also notes President Bush’s recognition of Kwanzaa: “It’s as if David Duke invented a holiday called ‘Anglika.’”
Jeff Jacoby wrote in the Boston Globe that “Once upon a time, segregationists excoriated white liberals as ‘nigger lovers.’ Today, racist insults in the political arena are more likely to come from the left — and to target black conservatives.” And if he reads Coulter’s column, will he revise his opinion? Of course not — IOKIYAR.
Update: See RT at Just a Bump in the Beltway and John at AMERICAblog.
Today is the observance of the annual cease fire on the war on Christmas. Christmas wins, again. In celebration, people wallow waist deep in shredded gift wrap and prepare the armistice feast.
Once proper tribute is paid to the default holy day we take a moment to acknowledge the alternate choices on the menu, such as Hanukkah — a minor Jewish observance that got caught up in the Christmas gravitational pull — and Kwanzaa. Some Buddhist sects observe “Bodhi Day” — the anniversary of the enlightenment of the Buddha — in December also. But this is a day dedicated to silent meditation on the ephemeral nature of all physical things, so those who observe it like to get it out of the way early in the month.
A less rigorous way to observe Bodhi Day is to rent a copy of “Little Buddha” and watch Keanu Reaves re-enact the enlightenment of Prince Siddhartha. Although some Buddhists really hated this film, I was charmed by Reaves’s portrayal of the World-Honored One. Especially the part where the Prince gets flustered when his Dad says no, he can not go off into the woods and become a wandering holy man like all the other guys. Like, dude.
Some people knock Kwanzaa as a “made up” holiday, but then, so is Christmas. By now you’ve probably heard that the date, not provided in Scripture, was chosen to compete with the Roman Saturnalia and the pagan Yule. Recognition of December 25 as the day of Jesus’ birth dates from the fourth century or so, however, so it was made up a long time ago.
Then there’s the question of how much of the traditional Birth of Jesus story is true, and indeed, how much of the Jesus Is God story is true. This is a matter that needs to be taken on faith, since historians tend to be skeptical. Some scholars like to point out that the virgin birth-in-a-manger story was left out of the earliest gospel, Mark, indicating that when Mark was written (ca. 70 AD) the story wasn’t in circulation yet. The gospel of Luke, which contains the most complete virgin birth story, was written several years later, possibly as late as 130-150 AD. The process of the deification of Jesus was by then well under way.
(For a rollicking good read on how the process ended — including riots in the streets, political intrigue, and the alleged murder of one Church Father at the hands of another — I recommend When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity during the Last Days of Rome by Richard Rubenstein. If you liked I, Claudius, you’ll love WJBG.)
But in her book Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews : A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity, Professor Paula Fredriksen of Boston U depicts the historical Y’shuah as a devout Jew who would have been appalled at the notion that he was God. Frederiksen and other scholars argue that Jesus was really about purifying Judaism, not starting a whole ‘nother religion to compete with it, and certainly not claiming to be a world redeemer or messiah. First-generation Christianity was considered to be a Jewish sect. I believe it wasn’t until after the destruction of the Temple (70 AD), when being Jewish was a tad, um, dangerous, that Christians drew a bright line between them and those other people. By then many of the members were Greek-speaking gentiles, and non-Jewish notions about who Jesus was and what he had been about were taking hold.
Then as now, people who feel the pain of life seek comfort in the sheltering arms of religion. But, once comforted, the religious have an unfortunate tendency to make others miserable for the sake of the faith. Human history is a long tale of sacrifice, oppression, inquisitions, war, and martyrdom in the name of religion. Religions themselves tend to follow the same trajectory — Once the Founder is gone, his original vision and teachings are quickly watered down by lesser followers. Sects form and begin to squabble with each other. Religious institutions and their leaders are corrupted, then reformed, then corrupted again.
So, it is not at all surprising that many grow hostile to religion. There is so much obvious hypocrisy and humbuggery in most religious institutions one might wonder why anyone with two brain cells to rub together gets taken in. But then there’s that pain of life thing, and the urge to look for someone or something more powerful than oneself to take the pain away.
And the fact is that religion can be redemptive. Yes, it has given us such loathesome creatures as Torquemada and James Dobson, but it’s also inspired Albert Schweitzer, Ghandi, and Aung San Suu Kyi. It may be that most of the popular beliefs of the major monotheistic religions — God, Lucifer, angels — can be traced back to ancient Persian folk tales, and much religious faith amounts to an emotional crutch. Yet an instant of pure experience — grace, epiphany, kensho — can be genuinely transformative. And I believe that beneath much of the fruitless hamster-wheel existance of modern life there is a deeply buried longing for a true spiritual path, a longing that modern Christianity rarely addresses. This same longing likely was felt by a Jewish fellow named Y’shuah who lived 2,000 years ago, and a king’s son named Siddhartha, who lived about five centuries earlier.
Instead of living the lives they’d been expected to live — one as a carpenter, and one as a king — both Y’shuah-Jesus and Siddhartha took off on their own difficult paths. Both struggled through a dark night of the soul (Jesus in the Wilderness, Siddhartha under the Bodhi Tree). And both seem to have found Something.
Jesus urged his followers to seek the Kingdom of Heaven. It was, he said, like a treasure hidden in a field; one who finds such a treasure will sell everything else he has to buy that field. Institutional Christianity, on the other hand, tries to replace the challenge of the spiritual path with easily digestible dogmas, comforting totems, and tribal identity. It’s spiritual distraction, not spiritual direction. And if there’s a better way to trivialize the life of Jesus than by whining that clerks in Target don’t say “Merry Christmas,” I can’t think of it.
But now it’s Christmas. We’ve got a day set aside to give each other presents and enjoy one another’s company, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And let’s remember Y’shuah, whoever he was, and honor his struggles, whatever they were. And if you ever feel an urge to do some spiritual seeking, I say heed the call and go for it.
May all beings find a true path.
I am following up “Target Jesus” and “Christmas Warriors.” I want to respond at length to a commenter on “Target Jesus.”
I do feel like ,as a Christian, I’m being shoved into a little box. Where for hundreds of years Christianity was recognized as part of the national identity, now its as if we have become lepers to a small portion of the country so we must be bound, gaged and shoved into a small dark space out of the way. I’m not comfortable with that. I’m not for squashing anyone one elses religious freedoms because I dont want mine curtailed. That is the true problem here. Of course Christians are not quietly going into the closet without a struggle. Why on earth would you think they would?
I appreciate that the writer expressed her (or his) feelings honestly. She is getting into the true motives behind the Christmas wars, and I’d like to go into this a little more deeply.
I do feel like ,as a Christian, I’m being shoved into a little box.
The box you’re in is made up of your own ideas about who you think you are and how you think the world should be. It isn’t real.
Where for hundreds of years Christianity was recognized as part of the national identity,
We haven’t had a “national identity” for “hundreds of years.” In fact, many social historians don’t think we had much of a “national identity” until after the Civil War. I think you are imagining something that didn’t actually exist.
Thomas Jefferson wrote this in his autobiography, regarding the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786):
The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it’s protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.” The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it’s protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.
In other words, in 1786, the Virginia legislature chose to keep Christ out of this document so as to respect the rights of the “Mahometan” and “Hindoo.”
It is true that the overwhelming majority of Americans have been Christian, but not being Christian never excluded anyone from being American. There have been Jews in North America for 350 years, for example, and Jews supported independence and fought in the Revolution. There have been Buddhists in America since the 1840s; today Buddhist Americans are getting themselves killed in Iraq.
This country is not the exclusive property of Christians. It never was.
“…now its as if we have become lepers to a small portion of the country so we must be bound, gaged and shoved into a small dark space out of the way.”
This is delusional. Christianity is the dominant religion. The amount of Christian-format television and radio broadcasts continues to grow; if you’ve got cable, you can watch Christianity on TV 24/7. What other religion in this country has television programming carried nationwide on cable?
Can you name a way that Christianity is being repressed, other than attempts by Christians to repress non-Christians? For example, trying to get Christian prayers recited in public school classrooms would be forcing non-Christians to observe Christianity, which many find annoying.
I’m not for squashing anyone one elses religious freedoms because I dont want mine curtailed.
How is your religious freedom being curtailed? How is it that you are prevented from believing and worshipping as you wish? Do you have any concrete examples? I’d really like to know, because I am not seeing anybody get in the way of Christian worship in this country. Well, except for other Christians.
What I am seeing, however, is that Christians are trying to use intimidation and sometimes the authority of government to force everyone else to kowtow to Christianity. News flash: This will not win you popularity contests.
Of course Christians are not quietly going into the closet without a struggle. Why on earth would you think they would?
Why on earth would you assume that I think they would? I am not anti-Christian. I think Christianity is a great religion. I just don’t think it’s the only religion, nor do I think it’s better or worse than other religions, including mine. I have no interest in feeding your victimization fantasy. If you want someone to put down Christianity so that you can indulge in feeling sorry for yourself, please go elsewhere.
I don’t want to end this on a snarky note. A couple of other commenters to the “Target Jesus” post defended the megachurches and felt they were being unfairly dissed. And, indeed, members of the megachurches have a right to observe Christmas any way they like. As I said in the Christmas Warriors post, normally I wouldn’t care whether the megachurches cancelled a Sunday morning service or not. It’s their business. But after all the CRAPOLA about some imaginary “war on Christmas,” the cancelled Sunday services just reeked of hypocrisy.
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