tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-262698392024-03-16T02:08:55.323-05:00GeotheologyScott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.comBlogger492125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-60688454144205547532015-03-01T13:49:00.001-06:002015-03-01T13:49:31.654-06:00Maybe it's time?Perhaps I shall take up this blog again. I have let Facebook become my primary outlet of expression. I believe I shall fix that.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-19053125642533112352011-08-26T14:48:00.000-05:002011-08-26T14:48:26.251-05:00The Pseudo Conservative, Pseudo Libertarian Views of Glenn Beck and Ron Paul<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLQlmhY3-diVNLZWqOWiWNvvXVQWIhh4zzlPBy8SBBCS9VJFNuyS-5Q_sGS3b6rxk2O5JHLLYuaeECNNJxRhcY_EWPg9y4YMgGrKA-ZWQPMsewSb41U9EnqXmUTGjKI3FrUVRi/s1600/paulbeck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLQlmhY3-diVNLZWqOWiWNvvXVQWIhh4zzlPBy8SBBCS9VJFNuyS-5Q_sGS3b6rxk2O5JHLLYuaeECNNJxRhcY_EWPg9y4YMgGrKA-ZWQPMsewSb41U9EnqXmUTGjKI3FrUVRi/s1600/paulbeck.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Glenn Beck and Ron Paul and most of the other "small government dogma" types that push this "the government is the problem" swill like to pretend that they are "conservatives" or "libertarians". But, they are really neither if you go by the more traditional, classic definitions of the terms. <br />
<br />
The first tenet of original libertarianism, which has cross mojinated with modern "conservatism" at this point,is that the ONLY legitimate purpose of government is to protect the rights of the people. I wonder how you can protect people's rights without protecting their person or how you can abstractly separate rights from physical well being with regards to regulations, laws, government agencies or whatever, but somehow Beck and his followers think they make sense. They don't. Conservatism also used to be about espousing the traditional, spiritual, community values and care for neighbors or the "least of these". Somehow, conservatism has morphed into Ayn Rand's anti altruistic, pro business, pro corporate, anti government version of reality. It makes no sense to me and it probably doesn't make sense to you if you are reading on this website.<br />
<br />
Chaps like Glenn Beck and Ron Paul, et al, say they want to minimize government and that no one should expect the government to protect them. He asserted that since the government can't, won't or shouldn't protect us that we need to all keep guns around and be ready to get in line for a bucket brigade in case of catastrophe as if we live in Tombstone of the old west or something. <br />
<br />
As Ken Brooker Langston points out in his article "Why I Am Not A Libertarian", its true that of all the political groupings out there, guys like Beck and his followers have the most grandiose rhetoric. They get to spout all that stuff about freedom vs. tyranny and use the quotes the founding fathers made about King George and so on...<br />
<br />
It's also the perfect belief system for young, uneducated or fundamentalist people that see things in stark black and white and especially young males. You don't need knowledge or experience or details or nuances on complicated issues. All you need to "get it" is to buy in to essentially ONE BIG IDEA that supposedly resolves everything- that other than a minimalist military and court system that government and taxation is evil, that all you need is more gun rights, slight protection of life by the authorities, to enforce property rights and contracts and then the "free market" AKA Ayn Rand's magical, laissez faire economic principles will take care of everything else. How do I know this? Because for a few years as a college freshman and sophomore between 1982-84 I bought it and learned ALL the arguments before I grew up and figured out that the world doesn't work that way. It never has and never will no matter what you call it, reaganomics, trickle down economics, free market capitalism, whatever. It has been tried and it has a track record of success on par with hardcore socialism, it sucks. Someone will say that the death toll from hardcore socialism is much higher... but you can only try to make a point like that if you decide not to count the mega- millions of laborers, Indigenous people, American Indians, Africans and so on that died and are still dying in the ongoing conquest of the West and the endless quest for the gold, coal, oil, timber, cotton and gemstones.<br />
<br />
Beck and the rest of the pseudo-conservative/libertarian's view of political realities is a caricature, a simplistic right wing fantasy and it just can't work.<br />
<br />
The truth is actually that we live in a society that is a hybrid of pure capitalism or socialism and it has been for a very long time... It works somewhat ugly when it "works" (depending on who and where you are) at all... It has boom and bust cycles and trends, but its about as good as we can expect to do at trying to manage a complex, pluralistic country in a complicated and jacked up world, especially when we've put corporations, materialism and consumerism and the profit motive at the very pinnacle of our value system.<br />
<br />
As for me, I don't really care if the government is big or small so long as it is doing the right things and doing them as efficiently as possible and it does not impinge too much upon my personal life. In this approach one does not need either "small government" or "more government" dogmas.<br />
<br />
One day guys like Beck and the rest will be mere shadowy and unpleasant memories in a world that has left them behind... assuming we don't crash and burn the planet or Western "culture" first. Some days I am more optimistic about the future than others. After reading about Rick Perry's latest poll numbers, today is is one of the less optimistic days.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-28924624975798222902011-08-25T17:13:00.001-05:002011-08-25T20:37:48.730-05:00Geysers and Floods of Pig Feces: The Bush Environmental Legacy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjF_BWI40YLELo90nrz99k2g5VDaR6mhEvTAUxC41q-3_j36LVNhlthRJ-5OoChBga5J4BfEX8TmPpunu-17x4a7yuv9iFuEBoiS7zo7_3Sh5ZwHjH2UtMrLfylns5wt7qmms8/s1600/floyd%2527s+dung.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjF_BWI40YLELo90nrz99k2g5VDaR6mhEvTAUxC41q-3_j36LVNhlthRJ-5OoChBga5J4BfEX8TmPpunu-17x4a7yuv9iFuEBoiS7zo7_3Sh5ZwHjH2UtMrLfylns5wt7qmms8/s320/floyd%2527s+dung.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
In light of the threat of Hurricane Irene wreaking havoc once again in the Coastal Carolinas I have decided to take up the sword and blog again. Just as Hurricane Floyd did in 1999 when it washed out millions of gallons of animal waste from concentrated animal feeding operations, Hurricane Irene threatens a repeat of the same catastrophe since there are, as far as I can tell, still no hard regulations or laws dealing with the waste management practices of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). <br />
<br />
For now, allow me to address this matter with this old chestnut that I once crafted for my circle of e-mail friends in the days before Facebook and Twitter. Enjoy: <br />
<br />
Geysers of Pig Feces: The Bush Environmental Legacy:<br />
<br />
(excerpted and adapted and de-nastywordified from a book by Al Franken, arch enemy of one Bill O'Reilly; <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="color: navy;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Dutton</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">, </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">New York</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">, 2003, p. 329-335.</span></span></span></span> Since then Franken Became a Senator and Bill is still Bill and somehow still on the air although entrapped in the hermetically sealed bubble of FOX News's version of reality)<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">F</span></span>ormer President G.W. Bush would argue that our natural resources are best managed by people intimately familiar with all the relevant regulations and statutes, and the tricks polluters use to evade them.<br />
<br />
I agree. Such people include academics, regulators, and environmental advocacy groups. Experts all. Oh, but let's not forget the lobbyists for the polluters themselves. In their own way, they are every bit as expert. This last group seems to be disproportionately represented in this administration. There's people like: I am not going to put you through a long list of horrible environmental actions taken by this administration. Instead, I refer you to what TeamFranken calls the Internet. For instance, a Google search of the terms "Bush, horrible, environment" yields 42,500 websites, some of which discuss Bush's environmental record without any reference to horny, barely legal coeds.<br />
<br />
Instead, I want to focus on what, for me, is the symbol of the Bush administration's relationship to the environment: the sky-scraping pig feces geyser.<br />
<br />
The scene I described at the beginning of this chapter was not from some science fiction movie. It's very real. It happened on one of the growing number of factory farms that are despoiling vast tracts of America. It's a very, very crappy story.<br />
<br />
Before we start, allow me to make it clear that I love meat. In fact, I am eating meat right now. Sitting to my right are two members of TeamFranken. Sitting to my left are two pounds of summer sausage.<br />
<br />
Twenty years ago, the hogs produced in this country were raised by family farmers. Today, three companies produce 60 percent of all the hogs in America. And they do it in factory farms, or CAFOs: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.<br />
<br />
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations are, perforce, Concentrated Animal Feces Operations. Every hog produces ten times as much feces as a human being. Imagine if you produced ten times as much shit as you do right now. You'd probably be able to read this entire book on the can, instead of just this one chapter.<br />
<br />
A single CAFO in Utah is home to 850,000 hogs, producing as much shit as the city of New York. New York City has fourteen sewage treatment plants. CAFOs have none. This presents something of a problem.<br />
<br />
In order to dispose of hog waste, farmers have, since time immemorial, used it as fertilizer. It's a nice idea. The pig eats an ear of corn and, two or three minutes later, takes a dump. The feces is then used as fertilizer to grow more corn, which is then fed to the pig, producing more feces, and so on and so forth. It's the circle of life.<br />
<br />
The concentration of hundreds of thousands of animals in a small area has disrupted this delicate balance by overloading the feces side of the equation. The waste from a hundred thousand pigs cannot be recycled in the same way. This is where our lagoons come into play.<br />
<br />
A typical factory farm lagoon holds anywhere from five to twenty-five million gallons of untreated pig dung. As you might imagine, it smells a bit. In fact, according to pilots, you can smell a CAFO dung lagoon from an altitude of three thousand feet. The smell also travels horizontally. People lucky enough to live in the vicinity of an industrial hog farm are, with each breath, made keenly aware of the cause of their declining property values. If you live downwind of a CAFO, the value of your property drops thirty percent. If you drink a glass of orange juice, it tastes like hog shit.<br />
<br />
"I've seen grown men cry because their homes stank," says Don Webb, a very sad retired hog farmer.<br />
<br />
The dung stink is exacerbated by the practice of spraying excess shit into the air and onto fields of Bermuda grass when the lagoons threaten to overflow. The industry maintains that spraying the shit onto Bermuda grass is a productive way of recycling the sewage, although the grass is so toxic that it will kill any animal that eats it. At any rate, most of the sprayed feces just goes into the environment, seeping into the groundwater, into the air, and into rivers and streams.<br />
<br />
In 1995, a spill from one of these lagoons killed a billion fish in the Neuse River of North Carolina. Every year since, dead fish have continued to wash up onshore by the tens of millions. They're not dying from the smell. No, these fish are falling prey to a previously unknown life form spawned in the pig shit basins and carried into the river waters: the pfiesteriapiscicida. This dinoflagellate is a microscopic free-swimming single-celled organism that can mutate into at least twenty-four different forms, depending on its prey. It attacks the fish, stunning them with one toxin, then liquefying their flesh with another, then feasting on the liquefied skin and tissue. This is why so many of the fish in the Neuse (dead and alive) sport horrible, bloody lesions.<br />
<br />
The fishermen and bridge keepers of the Neuse have also developed these ugly sores, which is why they don't wear shorts on a first date. Of course, it's hard to get a date when you suffer from lethargy, headaches, and such severe cognitive impairment that you can't remember your own name or dial a telephone number. Which pfiesteria also causes.<br />
<br />
Because the meat industry in this country has become vertically integrated, Big Meat has put the small independent hog farmer out of business. Twenty years ago there were 27,500 family hog farmers in North Carolina alone. Now there are none. Today, a single company named Smithfield owns more than 70 percent of the state's hogs. Small farmers are learning that you can't beat Big Meat.<br />
<br />
Nobody claims that factory farming is pretty. But its defenders say that it brings economies of scale that drive down the price of meat for consumers. This is true as long as you don't factor in the all the dung. Bobby Kennedy, Jr., president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, told me that, if the waste were disposed of legally, the cost of pork from factory farms would be higher than pork from family farms.<br />
<br />
They cannot produce hogs, or pork chops, or bacon more efficiently than a family farm without breaking the law. They aren't about the free market, because they can't compete without committing criminal acts every single day. Their whole system is built on being able to disable or capture government agencies.<br />
<br />
They're not in favor of responsibility, or democracy, or private property. It's just about privatizing the air, water, all the things that the public's supposed to own. They are trying to take them away from us, privatize them, and liquidate them for cash.<br />
<br />
That's the only coherent philosophy they have. That's it.<br />
<br />
Yeah!<br />
<br />
To be totally honest, I wish the Clinton administration had done more to address the pig shit problem. But at least he was pushing in the right direction. Toward the end of his administration, the EPA issued stringent new CAFO regulations, requiring hog factories to take responsibility for their waste and initiating suits against some of the violators.<br />
<br />
When Bush took office, his appointees gutted the regulations. Eric Schaeffer, head of enforcement for the EPA, resigned in disgust after being told to drop the agency's cases against the offending conglomerates. The administration cut a deal granting immunity to factory farm air polluters, and its Republican allies in Congress defeated a proposal by Paul Wellstone to bar hog producers from also owning the slaughterhouses. As Bush's stance on pig feces became clear, you could hear the squeals of joy at Smithfield.<br />
<br />
They say that a rising tide lifts all boats. But in a pig dung lagoon, the only boat that rises is the one on top of the geyser.<br />
<br />
Perhaps there is someone reading this who is saying, "Give me a break, Al. I don't care about pigs, or pig waste, or family farms, or mountaintops, or this pfiest-a-mahoosey, or the environment." To you, I have this to say: You were not legitimately elected president, sir.<br />
<br />
But I respect the office you hold, and I'm honored that you're reading my book.<br />
<br />
<span data-jsid="text">*The geysers, which are not necessarily explained in detail in the excerpt from Franken's work, having been explained before this section, are the phenomenon that occurs when seepage or a tear in the lining of a pig feces lagoon allows the substance to get under the said lining and build up a methane gas bubble that occasionally in magnificent glory not unlike that of Yellowstone's 'Old Faithful'.</span><br />
(apply standard disclaimers about his views not necessarily being my views here)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-80465607285333340222011-05-15T13:22:00.001-05:002011-05-15T13:22:26.563-05:00Scientists Cure Cancer But No One Seems to Notice<a href='http://hubpages.com/hub/Scientists_cure_cancer__but_no_one_takes_notice'>Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice</a><div style='clear: both; text-align: center; font-size: xx-small;'>Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.4</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-19597529461558963552011-05-15T11:51:00.001-05:002011-05-15T11:51:34.082-05:00Chomsky: The U.S. will do anything to stop democracy in the MidEast<a href='http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/05/chomsky-u-s-will-try-to-stop-democracy-in-the-middle-east/'>Chomsky: The U.S. is desperate to stop middle east democracy movements | Raw Replay</a><div style='clear: both; text-align: center; font-size: xx-small;'>Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.4</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-63942402508630357242011-02-21T16:33:00.001-06:002011-02-21T16:33:53.420-06:00Back at you, Glenn Beck<a href='Scott Starr (@starrider7777) has shared a Tweet with you: <br/> <br/> "starrider7777: Hey Glenn Beck back atcha-May 1933 Hitler outlaws unions http://t.co/16O5vgx" <br/> --http://twitter.com/starrider7777/status/39806987030110208'>Scott Starr (@starrider7777) has shared a Tweet with you: <br/> <br/> "starrider7777: Hey Glenn Beck back atcha-May 1933 Hitler outlaws unions http://t.co/16O5vgx" <br/> --http://twitter.com/starrider7777/status/39806987030110208</a><div style='clear: both; text-align: center; font-size: xx-small;'>Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.4</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-46218834499472048232011-02-16T22:46:00.001-06:002011-02-16T22:46:34.777-06:00<a href='Scott Starr (@starrider7777) has shared a Tweet with you: <br/> <br/> "TheEconomist: China will become the world's largest economy in 15 years. Japan’s economy is largely stagnant and its politics a mess http://econ.st/ijVlnJ" <br/> --http://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/38042532948611072'>Scott Starr (@starrider7777) has shared a Tweet with you: <br/> <br/> "TheEconomist: China will become the world's largest economy in 15 years. Japan’s economy is largely stagnant and its politics a mess http://econ.st/ijVlnJ" <br/> --http://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/38042532948611072</a><div style='clear: both; text-align: center; font-size: xx-small;'>Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.4</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-65874268343180104722010-03-22T15:36:00.001-05:002010-03-22T15:37:24.897-05:00The Campaign Against Medicare<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Reagan album" height="307" src="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/ReaganAlbum.jpg" width="320" /></div><br />
<h3><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Many of the same arguments used against Medicare</span> <span style="font-size: small;">(a successful program) are still in use against healthcare reform legislation today. </span></span></h3><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">With Reagan’s 1961-62 campaign against Medicare, a symbolic line was crossed, the line separating business booster from political operative.</span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> Beginning in 1952 the Truman Administration, through Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing, had begun advocating medical care for the aged—what would become Medicare. This was a retreat from Truman’s earlier calls for universal health care for all Americans. The implacable opposition of the AMA and other pressure groups made universal health care an impossible goal. By scaling back the ambition of the health care plan to encompass only aged Americans receiving Social Security, the Truman Administration hoped to mollify the conservative opposition. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> In 1952 the first bill was introduced in Congress to create a Medicare program. The AMA immediately announced its opposition and worked tirelessly and successfully to prevent any such program from advancing in the Congress. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> In 1958 the debate over Medicare acquired new intensity as Congressman Aime Forand (D-RI) introduced a bill in the Ways and Means Committee that was drafted by the Medicare-advocates who, in 1965, would play key roles in the eventual enactment of the legislation. The Forand bill was the most serious effort to introduce Medicare, and the AMA mobilized a massive campaign against it, quintupling its lobbying budget to fight Forand. Ultimately, Forand’s bill was bottled-up within the House Ways and Means Committee, but its popularity with both politicians and some segments of the public (labor united behind the idea of Medicare for the first time for example) gave the AMA a real scare. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> By 1960 the two groups had been at loggerheads for nearly a decade and a compromise to the conflict was proposed by Senator Robert Kerr (D-OK) and Representative Wilbur Mills (D-AR). The Kerr-Mills bill—which like the Forand bill was also drafted in part by Medicare-advocate Wilbur Cohen—sought to substitute for a federal Medicare program covering aged Social Security beneficiaries, a state-based welfare program covering only the medically indigent and the aged on state welfare rolls. This scaled-back scheme was enacted into law in September 1960. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The Kerr-Mills plan had important differences from Medicare. First, it was a welfare benefit, limited in its scope to those able to demonstrate lack of financial means. Second, the programs would be state-based, rather than federal. But most importantly, the program would be entirely optional for the states. If a state chose not to construct a health care program under Kerr-Mills, they were free to ignore the law. Senator Pat McNamara (D-Mich.)—who was an opponent of Kerr-Mills—complained at the time, “The blunt truth is that it would be the miracle of the century if all of the states—or even a sizeable number—would be in a position to provide the matching funds to make the program more than just a plan on paper.”<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#17">17</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13"></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> On its face, Kerr-Mills had the potential to be more generous in some ways than a Medicare-type program. At the time, there were 2.4 million seniors receiving state old-age assistance, and an estimated 10 million medically indigent who were not on state welfare rolls but who were unable to pay their own medical bills. Some or all of this population might be covered, depending upon the decisions of the individual states. This contrasted with the 14 million Social Security beneficiaries at the time. So in terms of scope, Kerr-Mills was likely to be a somewhat smaller program. But in terms of types of services, and the generosity of coverage, Kerr-Mills was virtually unlimited, with the federal government pledging to pay from 50% to 80% of the costs of whatever programs the various states created. But 50-80% of nothing is still nothing; so if a state failed to create a program—or created a very stingy one (as is typical for welfare benefits)—the theoretical federal support would be likely to not come to very much. Indeed, by 1963 there were still 18 states which had never implemented Kerr-Mills, three years after the legislation was enacted, and five large industrial states with only 32% of the medically-indigent were receiving nearly 90% of the federal funds expended under the program.<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#18">18</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14"></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> Initially, even this truncated approach to social provision was bitterly resisted by the AMA. If Truman’s universal health care plan was socialism through and through; the scaled-back Medicare proposals were just socialism’s foot in the door; and even a Kerr-Mills program would just be socialism-lite. But finally, the AMA bowed to political realities and dropped its opposition to Kerr-Mills. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> At this point, in 1961-62, Kerr-Mills was the AMA’s fall-back position in its continued opposition to Medicare legislation. The AMA’s argument was that Medicare was unnecessary because Kerr-Mills was a sufficient solution to the problem of medical care for the elderly. Given the limitations of Kerr-Mills, it is not surprising that the program failed to accomplish very much in the five years before it was repealed. A cynic might suspect that failure to accomplish very much was probably just what the AMA hoped for. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> In the subsequent political battles over Medicare, the AMA would deploy an alternative strategy, rather than relying on support of the Kerr-Mills legislation. Following the 1964 presidential election, the AMA developed an alternative to Medicare which they labeled “Eldercare.” This scheme was essentially Kerr-Mills on steroids. It promised much more generous benefits than Medicare, but again limited to only the welfare population rather than to all aged Social Security beneficiaries. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> In any case, the passage of Kerr-Mills in 1960 did not end the pressure for a Medicare program—as the conservatives and the AMA wished and hoped. After all, the non-indigent elderly were still in need of health care coverage and still unlikely to be able to purchase it in the marketplace. Studies at the time reported that the aged used medical services at a rate twice that of the non-aged; that three-fifths of the aged had less than $1,000 in liquid assets; and that nearly 54% of the aged lacked any form of health insurance. While opponents of Medicare disputed the precise statistics, it was clear to virtually everyone that the aged had medical-care problems that far exceeded those of the average American. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> Following the defeat of the Forand bill, and the election of John Kennedy in November 1960, Medicare’s backers crafted a new version of the legislation, introduced by Clinton Anderson (D-NM) in the Senate and Cecil King (D-CA) in the House. The bill had the President’s backing and thus had acquired a sudden new dimension of political heft missing during the Eisenhower years. The AMA was thus understandably panicked by the appearance of the King-Anderson bill, after having tried to compromise Medicare out of existence with the Kerr-Mills strategy. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> King-Anderson was, in terms of the Medicare program we know today, half-Medicare. It proposed to cover the costs of hospital and nursing home care, but not surgical costs and not out-patient physicians’ services. In this respect, it was scaled-back slightly from the Forand bill, which in addition offered coverage of surgical expenses. This scaling-back was a futile effort to lessen resistance to the idea of government-provided health insurance coverage. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> So as 1961 dawned, the Kerr-Mills bill was established law, and the first King-Anderson legislation was pending in the Congress. The election of John F. Kennedy added new pressure to the push for King-Anderson and advocates for Medicare were optimistic that the 1961-62 session of Congress would see increased pressure for the enactment of Medicare in the form of the King-Anderson bill. Medicare was by no means a done-deal in 1961-62, even absent the AMA campaign against it. But the AMA campaign was a significant force of opposition striving to block Medicare during this period. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">It is important to bear this history in mind when considering Operation Coffeecup, and Reagan’s subsequent positioning on Medicare, because it is this history that Reagan was to mythologize.<br />
</span><br />
<h3><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> Coffee-Klatch Politics </span></h3><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The Woman’s [sic] Auxiliary of the AMA was an affiliated organization composed primarily of the wives of member physicians. Its 82,000 members in 1961 undertook a variety of educational, charitable, community service, and public relations tasks on behalf of the AMA. In the Spring of 1961, the Woman’s Auxiliary was asked to launch a special high-priority initiative under the title of WHAM, Women Help American Medicine. The avowed aim of WHAM was bluntly stated as: “This campaign is aimed at the defeat of the King-Anderson bill of the 87 th Congress, a bill which would provide a system of socialized medicine for our senior citizens and seriously curtail the quality of medical care in the United States.”<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#19">19</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15"></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The WHAM campaign officially kicked-off with a rally in Indianapolis on December 5, 1961 before an audience of 70 state Auxiliary women and 20 doctors, who were serving as WHAM advisers in Indiana. Within a month, WHAM state-rallies had been held in Illinois, Florida, Texas and Minnesota, with others scheduled for North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Kentucky during February. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The AMA’s campaign against the King-Anderson version of Medicare was a complex, extensive, and well-financed lobbying tour-de-force. Many aspects of the WHAM campaign were very public and visible. The AMA placed advertisements in major newspapers and funded radio and television spots, all deploying the usual red-brush of “socialism,” and even the specter of jack-booted federal bureaucrats violating “the privacy of the examination room.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The grass-roots efforts were even more extensive. Under the banner of “Operation Hometown” the AMA enlisted local medical societies to propagandize against King-Anderson. Speeches, reprints of articles, pamphlets on the dangers of “socialized medicine,” news releases, and even a High School Debate Kit, were all provided to local physicians to assist in the campaign. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> These were the public face of the campaign, the very visible components of the AMA’s overall strategy. But there was also a more-stealthy component to the campaign, one that depended for its success on its sponsorship and origins being hidden from the members of Congress who would be lobbied under its aegis. This was Operation Cofffeecup. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The idea behind Operation Coffeecup, as the name hints, was to arrange a series of coffee-klatches hosted by the members of the Woman’s Auxiliary. The Auxiliary members receiving the Operation Coffeecup materials were instructed to downplay the purpose of the get-to-gathers, depicting them as sort of spontaneous neighborhood events: “Drop a note—just say ‘Come for coffee at 10 a.m. on Wednesday. I want to play the Ronald Reagan record for you.”<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#20">20</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16"></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The idea of using women in this way—as the grass-roots defenders of medical care—tapped into a long tradition of what historians now typically call “maternalist” approaches to social reform. From the earliest days of the Revolutionary Period when the “mothers of the Republic” were thought to be special repositories of civic virtue, to the settlement movement and the campaign for Mothers’ Pensions during the Progressive Era, Americans have often viewed women as providing a kind of “motherly” succor that gives them a special claim to authority on matters relating to social welfare. Thus it was a clever tactic to have the members of the Woman’s Auxiliary and their friends and neighbors write the first-person grassroots letters to members of Congress, rather than having the largely male physician-members of the AMA do so. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The attendees at these coffees were trained and encouraged in writing apparently spontaneous letters to members of Congress expressing their strong opposition to the pending King-Anderson bill. It was essential, the attendees were instructed, that their letters appear to be the uncoordinated, spontaneous, expressions of a rising tide of public sentiment. If the letters were perceived as being part of an organized campaign—the organizers of the organized campaign told the attendees—they would be dismissed by members of Congress, who were routinely inundated with such mail.<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#21">21</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17"></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The kit of materials sent to each Auxiliary chapter contained: </span><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> A cover letter, informing the attendees that “the chips are down, in the next months Americans will decide whether or not this nation wants socialized medicine;” </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> A list of members of Congress; </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> A ten-point check-list on how to write effective letters to Congress; </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> A set of instructions to hosts in what Operation Coffeecup was and how it was to be carried out, including “Provide guests with stationery, pens and stamped envelopes. Don’t accept an ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ reply—urge each woman to write her letters while she’s in your house—and in the mood!”; </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> A report form listing the number of attendees, the number of times the accompanying record was played, and the number of letters written. </span></li>
</ul><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> All of this material was packaged as inserts to an LP vinyl recording entitled “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine.” The 19-minute recording featured a 2,000-word, 11-minute, impassioned address by Reagan, followed by an 8-minute follow-up by an unnamed announcer. Reagan’s work on behalf of the AMA was, listeners were assured, unpaid (although there was no mention of the fact that Reagan’s father-in-law was a top official of the AMA) and was motivated only by his own strong political convictions on the issue. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The record was the focus and the central product of Operation Coffeecup. It was the motivational message from Reagan that was expected to inspire the attendees to write those spontaneous letters to Congress. The AMA pressed 3,000 copies of “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine” and distributed them to AMA Woman’s Auxiliary members nationwide. The resulting letters to Congress, the AMA boasted, were “legion.”<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#22">22</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18"></a> At the June 1962 convention each state President presented the highlight accomplishments of her state during the preceding year. The convention was told that “Operation Coffeecup spurred many members-at-large to personal action,” and one state president reported that one of her auxiliary members was personally responsible for getting 250 people to write letters to Congress opposing the King-Anderson bill.<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#23">23</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19"></a></span><br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="5"><tbody>
<tr> <td></td> </tr>
<tr> <td><div align="center"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Figure 2: Cover of AMA record album, author’s copy </span></div></td> </tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">In order to maintain the illusion of spontaneity, the AMA did not announce the existence of Operation Coffeecup or publicize the Reagan recording. The record was to be used, campaign organizers cautioned, only in the groups meeting under the controlled conditions of the informal coffees. Under no circumstances, recipients of the record were warned, were they to permit commercial broadcast of the recording. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> Operation Coffeecup was kept deliberately low-key and internal to the AMA, its Woman’s Auxiliary, and the trusted friends and neighbors of the Auxiliary women. Reagan’s efforts against Medicare were revealed, however, in a scoop by Drew Pearson in his Washington Merry-Go-Round column of June 17th. Pearson titled his item on Reagan, “Star vs. JFK,” and he told his readers: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> <i>Ronald Reagan of Hollywood has pitted his mellifluous voice against President Kennedy in the battle for medical aid for the elderly. As a result it looks as if the old folks would lose out. He has caused such a deluge of mail to swamp Congress that Congressmen want to postpone action on the medical bill until 1962. What they don’t know, of course, is that Ron Reagan is behind the mail; also that the American Medical Association is paying for it.</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> Reagan is the handsome TV star for General Electric . . . Just how this background qualifies him as an expert on medical care for the elderly remains a mystery. Nevertheless, thanks to a deal with the AMA, and the acquiescence of General Electric, Ronald may be able to outinfluence the President of the United States with Congress.</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#24">24</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1"></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Reagan’s recorded remarks are quite extensive, and reveal a determined and in-depth attack on the principles of Medicare (and Social Security), going well beyond opposition to King-Anderson or any other particular piece of legislation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><i>My name is Ronald Reagan. I have been asked to talk on the several subjects that have to do with the problems of the day. . . .</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program. . . .</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> But at the moment I'd like to talk about another way because this threat is with us and at the moment is more imminent. One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. . . . Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We have an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#25">25</a></span><br />
<div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">And what was this frightful threat that Reagan perceived as “imminent”?</span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">.<i> . . Congressman Forand introduced the Forand Bill. This was the idea that all people of Social Security age should be brought under a program of compulsory health insurance. Now, this would not only be our senior citizens, this would be the dependents and those who are disabled, this would be young people if they are dependents of someone eligible for Social Security. . . . </i></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> It should be obvious that Reagan’s description of the Forand bill is a description of any Medicare-type program, not just a specific piece of legislation.<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#26">26</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3"></a> The idea that people of “Social Security age should be brought under a program of compulsory health insurance,” just is the idea of Medicare. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> So if Reagan and the AMA were so opposed to this “threat” of health insurance coverage under Social Security, what was their preferred alternative?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><i>As a matter of fact, in the last session of Congress a bill was adopted known as the Kerr-Mills bill. Now, without even allowing this bill to be tried to see if it works, they have introduced this King bill which is really the Forand bill. What is the Kerr-Mills bill? It is a frank recognition of the medical need or problem of our senior citizens that I have mentioned. And it is provided from the Federal Government money to the states and the local communities that can be used at the discretion of the state to help those people who need it. </i></span><br />
<div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">The Kerr-Mills bill, which was not “pending legislation” but an existing law, was the AMA position on behalf of which Reagan was working. Kerr-Mills was a state-level welfare program for the needy. Where Medicare proposals like King-Anderson offered health care coverage to Social Security beneficiaries, Kerr-Mills offered to help pay the medical bills of those on welfare, or those who could qualify as indigent given their medical expenses. (Kerr-Mills would be superseded in 1965 by the program currently known as Medicaid, which like Kerr-Mills, is a welfare program.) So Reagan—on behalf of the AMA—was suggesting that the nation should be content with welfare benefits under a Medicaid-type program as the only form of government-provided health care coverage. </span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">This irony of the early debates surrounding the American welfare state—that conservatives were the pro-welfare faction and liberals the pro-work requirement faction—was a key dynamic in the Medicare debates, as Theodore Marmor has pointed out.<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#27">27</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4"></a> (There was also the issue of federalism in play here, with Republicans tending to advocate state programs and Democrats federal ones.) The reason for this reversal of roles (which was also evident in the debates around the original Social Security Act of 1935) is not hard to discern. By restricting federal programs to the “truly needy” those programs can be kept small, involving few if any middle-class or upper-class Americans. But if the universalist approach of social insurance is adopted then government’s role in the provision of economic security will be massive. So conservatives were historically only too happy to swallow a little more welfare, if that meant swallowing a lot less government. </span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Just to show that “class-warfare” was not a political deployed only by Democrats, Reagan then made one last argument against a Medicare approach:</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><i>Now what reason could the other people have for backing a bill which says we insist on compulsory health insurance for senior citizens on a basis of age alone regardless of whether they are worth millions of dollars, whether they have an income, whether they're protected by their own insurance, whether they have savings. I think we could be excused for believing that, as ex‑Congressman Forand said, this was simply an excuse to bring about what they wanted all the time: socialized medicine. </i></span><br />
<div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">This again shows the basic antipathy of Reagan and conservatives to one of the foundational principles of Social Security, that it is a universal program in which benefits are not tied to a means-test. And again, he reveals the irony of a conservative spokesman advocating a means-tested program, i.e., welfare, as superior to universal contributory social insurance. </span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">The other issue here is the “foot in the door” argument. Reagan insisted throughout his Operation Coffeecup speech that if the nation adopted Medicare this would just be the opening gambit in a movement for government-sponsored universal health care coverage and—given the equation between this state of affairs and “socialized medicine”—that Medicare would thus be the first step on the road to socialism. What goes unexamined by Reagan in this context is the question of why Kerr-Mills should be any different. Why are we entitled to assume that government-sponsored health care coverage of the Kerr-Mills variety contains no danger of leading to socialized medicine but that health care coverage of the Medicare variety does? The answer to Reagan’s unexamined question again hinges on the populations involved. If we are talking about a program covering only the welfare population, then there is a built-in ceiling on participation. Or to put it less antiseptically: if we have a program for the non-poor aged, other populations may clamor for participation; but if we have a program limited to the poor, we can presume there will be little agitation to join that particular social group in order to obtain medical care coverage.<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#28">28</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5"></a></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Reagan then moved on in his argument to offer his take on Social Security, and how Social Security related to this idea of public health insurance: </span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><i>They want to attach this bill to Social Security and they say, "Here is a great insurance program, now instituted, now working." Let's take a look at Social Security itself. Again, very few of us disagree with the original premise that there should be some form of saving that would keep destitution from following unemployment by reason of death, disability, or old age. And to this end Social Security was adopted. But it was never intended to supplant private saving, private insurance, pension programs of unions and industries. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">This language skillfully elides the distinction—central to the conceptual basis of Social Security—between contributory social insurance and a welfare-based safety net. While Social Security was not intended to “supplant” private provision, the suggestion that its purpose was to avoid “destitution” can be read two ways. Social insurance theorists and policymakers believed that the way to prevent “destitution” was by deploying a universal, compulsory, social insurance scheme in which there is no means-test of eligibility. The contrary view is that whatever social provision government makes available ought to be in the form of welfare—staving off destitution by rescuing the destitute in an economic safety net. The reason the difference matters is it determines the scope of the government’s involvement in providing economic security. In the social insurance vision the program is massive, involving the participation of virtually every employed adult in the nation. In the welfare vision the program is miniscule, limited by the number of truly poor in the country. Thus an anti-government ideology, like that propounded by Reagan throughout his career, prefers a welfare safety-net to a universal social insurance scheme in order to minimize the role of government in economic provision. So Reagan in his commentary on Medicare was also subtly trying to undermine the whole Social Security system. This too was part of his 1961 agenda. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">But as to the government’s involvement in health insurance coverage that, according to Reagan, can only lead to a totalitarian future:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><i>The doctor begins to lose freedom. . . . First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then doctors aren’t equally divided geographically. So a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him, you can't live in that town. They already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it's only a short step to dictating where he will go. . . . All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man's working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it's a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay. And pretty soon your son won't decide, when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do.</i></span><br />
<div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">This specter of government control of the practice of medicine was never what Medicare was about. Nor was regulation of medical practice contemplated by Harry Truman in his most extravagant dreams of universal health insurance for all Americans. Medicare, as proposed in King-Anderson and as eventually enacted into law, only involves procedures for paying health care providers—it is a system for financing the costs of medical care, it has nothing to do with the regulation of medical practices. But this threat was the reliable boogey-man of all of the AMA campaigns since 1945, and Reagan used it extensively in his AMA recording.</span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">In fairness, it is true that the Medicare program marginally regulates aspects of health care provision by the indirect effect of its reimbursement policies. In this regard, it is no different than any private insurer. When Blue Cross/Blue Shield decides it will not pay for certain medical procedures, or will only pay for a generic drug rather than a brand-name one, this affects the practice of medicine by encouraging forms of practice consistent with these reimbursement policies. So too with Medicare. But this is a far cry from the specter of an intrusive government presence in the examining room, peering over the doctor’s shoulder. It was this more apocalyptic version of Medicare’s potential effects on the practice of medicine that Reagan used to scare his listeners. </span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Having raised the specter of the government telling our children what they will do for a living and where they will work, Reagan offered the way out, the letter-writing campaign which would, in fact, help defeat the King-Anderson bill:</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><i>What can we do about this? . . . We can write to our congressmen and to our senators. . . . And at the moment the key issue is: We do not want socialized medicine. . . . In Washington today 40,000 letters, less than 100 per congressman, are evidence of a trend in public thinking. . . . Representative Halleck of Indiana has said, “When the American people want something from Congress . . . if they make their wants known, Congress does what the people want.” So write. . . . that you demand the continuation of our traditional free enterprise system.</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">You and I can do this. The only way we can do it is by writing to our congressman even if we believe he’s on our side to begin with. Write to strengthen his hand. Give him the ability to stand before his colleagues in Congress and say, I heard from my constituents and this is what they want.</span></i><br />
<div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">So this was the heart of the matter. A few thousand letters to members of Congress and the ladies of the Woman’s Auxiliary could stop the inexorable march of socialism and save the free enterprise system. Well, at least, they could certainly help kill any proposal for Medicare. </span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Then, finally, the closing pitch, with Reagan the actor painting the portrait of an American sunset in a totalitarian world brought-on by the hell-hound of compulsory health care coverage under Medicare: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> <i>And if you don't do this and if I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Following Reagan’s stagecraft peroration, the voice of an unidentified male announcer then comes on to reemphasize the political nature of the pitch, and to make certain that no wavering listeners miss the point. There can be no mistaking the aim of the AMA’s attack on “socialized medicine”—it is most assuredly an attack on the principle of Medicare and the legislation then pending to enact it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><i>Perhaps a little background on the subject of socialized medicine will prove helpful to you. To begin with, socialized medicine simply means compulsory national health insurance, medicine controlled and administered by the federal government; financed through compulsory taxation. For many years, an attempt has been made to socialize the practice of medicine through the Social Security tax mechanism. . . . Last year, Representative Forand attempted to establish the principle of socialized medicine by applying it only to the elderly—at first. He, and others like him, counted on the concern we all feel for those of the aged in need of help. The Forand Bill failed. But this year, another congressman has stepped forward to lead the forces of socialized medicine: Representative King, of California. It is his measure, H.R. 4222, or the King Bill, that now threatens the free practice of medicine.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> Obviously, if socialized medicine “simply means compulsory national health insurance,” then any form of Medicare (the Forand bill, the King-Anderson bill, or the legislation finally adopted in 1965) would qualify as socialized medicine. So it is clear that it was the <i>principle of Medicare</i>, and not a specific bill, that was the target of Reagan and his Operation Coffeecup.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">The announcer then refers again to the Kerr-Mills bill as the AMA’s favored alternative approach to the issue of health care for senior citizens: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><i>I'm sure that we all recognize that some of our older people are in poor health and some can't afford to pay for the health care they need. That's why the doctors of America strongly supported the legislation passed during the last Congress: the so-called Kerr-Mills law. They felt, and have always felt, that people who need medical help should get it, but that tax dollars should not be used to pay the medical and hospital bills of those who are perfectly able to pay their own. Physicians favored the Kerr-Mills law because it would help those of the elderly who need help, help them quickly, and effectively, and do so without wasting either the taxpayer's money or destroying the basic American freedoms involved in our system of medical practice.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The key virtues of Kerr-Mills, the announcer went on to say, were that it was an optional program administered at the state-level, and it helped the truly needy. What he did not clearly state was that it also meant that the government’s role in ensuring the availability of health care coverage would be minimal. And what the announcer and Reagan both carefully avoided making explicit was that the Kerr-Mills bill was a form of welfare. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> In any case, the desirable Kerr-Mills approach contrasted sharply, the announcer continued, with the King-Anderson approach. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><i>Here's how it would work. The federal government would buy a limited amount of hospitalization, nursing-home care, home-health services, and outpatient hospital diagnostic services for all eligible to receive Social Security retirement payments, regardless of their financial needs. The number of days the beneficiary could receive these services is limited. And the patient would be required to pay ten dollars a day for the first nine days spent in a hospital, and twenty dollars for each complete diagnostic study made. Physicians' services in the fields of radiology, pathology, physiatry, and anesthesiology would be included, plus the services of interns and residents and those serving the outpatient clinics. There is little doubt but what the program would soon be expanded to include all physicians' services, as well as to cover the entire population, thus completely socializing medicine in the United States. The federal government would set up the rules and regulations under which the program would operate. And every one who pays Social Security taxes would help pay the bill . . .</i></span><br />
<div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Of course this rough description of how any Medicare system operates was intentionally misleading in several respects. Yes, beneficiaries would be required to meet a daily co-payment requirement, which might well be “ten dollars a day”—as opposed to paying it all without a Medicare program—paying it all at a time when the average hospital stay already cost about $50 per day. In fact, in the first four years of Medicare’s operations the average cost of a day in the hospital was $54.25, of which Medicare reimbursed on average 80% of the cost.<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#29">29</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6"></a> And the fact that the government program would only reimburse the costs for a limited number of days of hospital care did not of course mean that care would be rationed and therefore medical care would become unavailable after a fixed period. But this distinction between regulations limiting the government’s payments for medical care, and limitations in that care itself, was one which the AMA campaigns always made sure was confused as much as possible, in order to maintain some semblance of plausibility to their claim that the government intended to regulate the practice of medicine. </span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">In any case, however misleading it may have been, this description of the mechanism of Medicare was supposed to be self-evidently scary to the wives of AMA physicians and their neighbors and friends. But lest anyone miss the point, and lest anyone doubt that Reagan and the AMA were antithetical to the Social Security program itself, here is how the announcer continued:</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> <i>I'm sure many of you are wondering why there's any objection to using the Social Security system to finance medical care for the aged. Well first of all, it is a misnomer to think of Social Security as being insurance. In the Nestor vs. Fleming case heard before the Supreme Court in 1959, the Department of justice in its brief said, "the OASI program is in no sense a federally-administered insurance program under which each worker pays premiums over the years and acquires at retirement an indefeasible right to receive a fixed monthly benefit. The contributions exacted, are a tax." Many people also have the mistaken impression that Social Security benefits are paid out of accumulated reserves, similar to private insurance programs, when in truth the program is financed almost entirely on a pay-as-you-go basis, with the benefits paid out of current income. Pay-as-you-go means that the government raises, through current taxes, just enough money to pay the cost of the benefits currently due. No one prepays his own benefits. Today's taxpayers pay for today's beneficiaries. The acceptance of the King bill would actually mean that our children and grandchildren will be asked to pay ever-increasing Social Security taxes to finance the medical-care needs of the previous generations. With growing families, young people have enough difficulty trying to make ends meet without assuming the additional obligation of paying higher taxes to pay for the medical-care needs of all over sixty-five, many of whom are in better financial shape than those paying the tax.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> This description of the Social Security system is a traditional form of the conservative critique of Social Security. This critique shows that Reagan and the AMA were not reconciled to the existence of the Social Security program itself, not to mention its extension to include Medicare. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> Finally, the announcer closed with the same “it’s sunset in America” passage read by Reagan: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> <i>Now this is the choice we're faced with: on the one hand, we can help those who need help while preserving the right of the self-reliant to finance their own care. Or we can legislate a compulsory national health scheme for the aged, regardless of whether they need it or not. . . . Americans are being asked to choose between a system of medicine practiced in freedom and a system of socialized medicine for the elderly which will be expanded into socialized medicine for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Your letter will help determine the outcome of this struggle. Remember what Ronald Reagan said:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> [Reagan's voice comes on again] </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"><i>Write those letters now. Call your friends, and tell them to write them. If you don't, this program I promise you will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until, one day . . . we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don't do this, and if I don't do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free.</i><br />
</span><br />
<h3><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">The Reagan Myth and Medicare</span></h3><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> Throughout his presidency, Ronald Reagan displayed a disconcerting tendency to prefer performance over reality and myth over historical fact. As Reagan recalled his own personal history in 1980, he had never been an opponent of Medicare and had never advocated making Social Security voluntary. To President Carter’s claims that he had in fact opposed both Medicare and the existing Social Security system, Reagan’s flip reply was “There you go again,” and that was pretty much the end of the issue. </span> <span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> However, it is quite unambiguously the case that Ronald Reagan had a long-standing, deeply-held, strongly-expressed, political/philosophical antipathy to both Social Security and Medicare. Not only did Reagan advocate making Social Security voluntary in the 1964 Goldwater campaign, he continued pushing this position throughout the 1970s—even arguing in 1975 that Social Security should be privatized—despite his denials in the 1980 campaign that he had ever advocated any such thing. He also clearly opposed Medicare in any form in his efforts as part of Operation Coffeecup. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The fact is that Ronald Reagan played a visible role in delaying the creation of the Medicare program. In 1961-62 he helped block passage of the King-Anderson bill, which potentially might have given us the Medicare program four years earlier.<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#30">30</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7"></a> We can also be fairly confident that when Medicare was enacted four years later, that Ronald Reagan was still deeply opposed to its creation and viewed it as the sun setting on America’s future. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> In the first four years of its operation, the Medicare program paid for $17.9 billion of medical care for America’s senior citizens. This money paid 24.6 million hospital bills under Part A of the program, and 96.8 million doctors bills under Part B of the Medicare system. The Part A hospital insurance covered 246 million days of in-patient care in the nation’s hospitals during those first four years.<a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#31">31</a><a href="http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8"></a> It is impossible to say how much of this care would not have been provided in the absence of the Medicare program; but given that somewhere around 50% of seniors lacked any form of health insurance before Medicare, it is a virtual certainty that millions of Americans received medical care under Medicare that they otherwise would not have received, and that much pain and suffering was thereby reduced or avoided. The AMA’s assumption that all this care would somehow have been received—through Kerr-Mills or some other mechanism—was certainly a self-serving self-deception. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> The cold fact is that probably millions of Americans could have received foregone medical care during the nearly four years between the December 1961 launching of Operation Coffeecup and the eventual enactment of Medicare in July 1965, if the AMA and Ronald Reagan had not been so successful in their efforts to block Medicare’s passage. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> By 1980, this aspect of Reagan’s personal history had become a political liability that he did his best to conceal. There are only four possible interpretations of Reagan’s subsequent representations regarding his earlier positions on Medicare and Social Security. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> We might credit him with changing his mind in the light of a decade-and-a-half of experience with Medicare, and with the realization that indeed the sun continued to come up each morning, and that Norman Thomas never ascended to the presidency. Yet he gave no indication that he had changed his mind on the principles of his conservative philosophy toward the American welfare state. It seems more likely that he was philosophically un-reconciled to both Medicare and Social Security, even if he had to soft-pedal his opposition in order to be a successful politician. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> He might simply have been lying. As politicians are sometimes wont to do, Reagan might have been “spinning” his audiences during the 1980 campaign, trying to convince them that a politically troublesome fact of his past was not a fact at all. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> We might be willing to grant that over time memory had dimmed the distinction in his mind between the Kerr-Mills and King-Anderson bills. Certainly we can grant the little slip of timing by which Reagan claimed Kerr-Mills was a pending alternative to King-Anderson at the time he recorded his AMA record for Operation Coffeecup. But it is simply not creditable for a presidential candidate—and a politician who had been speaking and writing on the subject for decades—to fail to understand the rather large distinction between a welfare program like Kerr-Mills and a social insurance program like Medicare. To imply that Kerr-Mills was somehow a better version of Medicare, and that was the reason he supported it in 1962, is simply not credible as a truthful report about Reagan’s past political positions. The AMA and Reagan supported Kerr-Mills in 1961-62 precisely in order to prevent Medicare from ever being enacted. The AMA and Reagan both knew perfectly well what they were doing, and it is difficult to believe that Reagan could somehow have forgotten the purpose of his work on behalf of the AMA campaign. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> Finally we come to what is perhaps the most disconcerting possibility of all. It may well be the case that Reagan was so adroit at story-telling in place of analysis, and anecdotes in lieu of facts, that for him mythmaking and policymaking were often one and the same activity. When he wanted to emphasize his commitment to the state of Israel, he may have genuinely seen no harm in manufactured memories of his having played a role in documenting the Holocaust. When he wanted to argue that welfare was wasteful and often unnecessary, he may have genuinely believed that there was a “welfare queen” in Chicago who drove her Cadillac to the welfare office to pick up her multiple checks. And when he wanted to be seen as the friend of seniors and the defender of Social Security and Medicare, he may have honestly believed that his efforts on behalf of Operation Coffeecup had nothing to do with trying to kill Medicare, but rather with trying to improve it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> We cannot be sure which of these scenarios best capture Reagan’s efforts to falsify his own past. For myself, I fear Reagan actually believed many of the myths he spun around his personal and political history. And there is no myth quite so dangerous as one the mythmaker himself fully believes. </span><br />
<br />
<h3><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Acknowledgments</span></h3><span style="font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;"> <i>This paper has benefited from the review and comments of Professor Max J. Skidmore of the department of political science at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and from the thoughtful insights and comments of Professor Edward D. Berkowitz of the department of history at George Washington University. </i></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-6826779645195173452010-03-21T11:21:00.000-05:002010-03-21T11:21:37.021-05:00A Biblical View of Social Justice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Bdy7cJUYxJ42Gv6AK0QGWFc3ZaQSKmjkXErRHYfFTgbiXBcLG9RIrbZceVKcWm4Fj5HQ-i8iu0KHD1tmTswnruI1L-wSyD9tD_zaRWXVKU3A08z61NlYY5ECHhc2Awd360jY/s1600-h/just.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Bdy7cJUYxJ42Gv6AK0QGWFc3ZaQSKmjkXErRHYfFTgbiXBcLG9RIrbZceVKcWm4Fj5HQ-i8iu0KHD1tmTswnruI1L-wSyD9tD_zaRWXVKU3A08z61NlYY5ECHhc2Awd360jY/s200/just.jpg" vt="true" width="200" /></a></div>A Biblical View of Social Justice<br />
Posted by John Wheaton | Sunday, November 2, 2008 | 7:45 pm CT <br />
<br />
Christian Social Justice: “Life is Just not Fair!” by John Wheaton, J.D.<br />
<br />
SOURCE: <a href="http://thechristianworldview.com/tcwblog/archives/741">http://thechristianworldview.com/tcwblog/archives/741</a><br />
<br />
Life is just not fair.<br />
<br />
Is it fair that Tiger Woods makes millions for playing a game of leisure while the average person struggles to pay the bills working 50-60 hours a week? Even worse, is it fair that some people are born into extreme wealth and freedom while others must live and often die in dire poverty or under severe oppression? No, life is not fair; unfairness is inherent in the human condition. But life can and should be just. When human acts or omissions are at the heart of these inequities and suffering, then social injustices have occurred. Unfortunately, these injustices shame and scar our world every day. This begs the question: What should a Christian do about it?<br />
<br />
In matters of social concern, the biblical Christian should know God’s heart well. God has a special interest in the welfare of those at the lowest end of the social ladder: widows, orphans, legal aliens, and others who are oppressed or disadvantaged in society (Jeremiah 7:5-7). Recognizing this, modern Christians must lead the world in striving for social justice by clearly 1) defining “social justice”, 2) determining key biblical principles of social justice, and 3) developing a strong position on state-sponsored social action especially as it relates to addressing the major social problems of the early 21st century. <br />
What is Social Justice?<br />
First, it is essential that Christians clearly define what social justice entails. On its face, the term has a positive connotation that conveys a seemingly strong sense of virtue and morality. Basing a claim on an appeal to “social justice” provides the claim holder with a degree of persuasive advantage – a kind of moral blessing on his or her political, theological, or social ideas (Nash 6). However, social justice involves much more than a superficial label or feelings of compassion. It must involve a clear understanding and delineation of each social problem, the root cause of the problem, and the best solution for the problem. In short, “Good justice requires good judgment” (8).<br />
<br />
Generally, social justice has two key components:<br />
<br />
1.social – “living together in communities or organized groups”, and<br />
2.justice – “the upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law” (American Heritage Dictionary). Combining these two concepts, an apt, working definition might be, “Social justice exists when people get what they are due from their particular group or community.” Conversely, a social injustice occurs when people do not get what they deserve. This begs another important question: What do people deserve from their particular social group or society? Some say each person deserves an equal opportunity to work and acquire their society’s resources; others say each person deserves an equal share, or at least a basic share. As America’s founders recognized, people deserve from their society at least three basic inalienable rights specified in the Declaration of Independence: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” While these rights are not directly protected by God – He even permits some people to be born into social conditions that threaten their life, liberty, and opportunities – it will be shown shortly that He expects human societies to uphold these rights and that He holds people accountable for failing to do so.<br />
More specifically, social justice deals with three areas of social concern:<br />
<br />
1.economic justice,<br />
2.remedial justice, and<br />
3.distributive justice. Economic justice involves a society’s rules and procedures for maintaining productive, efficient, and fair commercial markets. Remedial justice, similarly, involves just and fair rules and procedures pertaining to civil and criminal (legal) matters. Put in terms of the aforementioned operative definition, economic and remedial justice assure that every person is given fair and equal opportunity to access a society’s economic resources and its political and legal systems.<br />
While economic and remedial justice systems focus on just procedures (i.e. due process), the third area, distributive justice, focuses on fair outcomes. It is concerned with relative fairness – that all people within a society actually possess a certain portion of that society’s “benefits and burdens” (Rawls 50). Put in terms of the aforementioned operative definition of social justice, every person deserves a certain fair share of society’s benefits and burdens. Even though all three forms of justice deal with social concerns, it is this last concept of distributive justice that is most often the central topic of debate surrounding social justice issues today – that is, how should a society be structured to assure a fair distribution of burdens and benefits among its citizens?<br />
<br />
What are the Key Biblical Principles of Social Justice?<br />
With a clear understanding of what “social justice” entails, the next essential step for the Christian is to determine what the Bible teaches about it. While the scriptures have plenty to say about justice, it is important to distinguish passages concerning the “outcome fairness” required by distributive justice from passages involving the “procedural fairness” required by a society’s economic or remedial justice systems. It is even more important to consider each “distributive” passage in context – to understand that some social action can be mandated and performed by the state while some is to be done lovingly and voluntarily by private groups (including churches) and individuals.<br />
<br />
Proverbs 31:8-9 says, “Open your mouth, judge righteously, and defend the rights of the afflicted and needy.” This and many other biblical passages make it clear that every human being has a God-given, unalienable right to life and liberty in society, which includes the right to be free from oppression and affliction, whether at the hands of human or natural forces.<br />
<br />
Conversely, every human being, especially society’s leaders, has a God-given moral duty to protect fellow human beings from social injustices whenever and wherever it is practical to do so (Prov. 3:27-28). The prophets Amos and Micah spent much of their ministries condemning leaders in Israel for failing to practice social justice. They stressed the “integral relationship between true spirituality and social ethics” (The New Open Bible 1003). Scores of other scriptural examples and passages abound on social action and justice.<br />
<br />
The fundamental basis for pursuing social justice goes back to the fact that every human being is created in God’s image and thus has intrinsic value. Furthermore, Jesus makes it clear that God’s law can be summarized in two commandments: love God and love your neighbor (Luke 10:25-37). He explains further that “love thy neighbor” means helping people in need until they can become self-sufficient as illustrated by the so-called Parable of the Good Samaritan. In fact, all people have a moral duty to help other people who are disadvantaged in society. According to scripture, the church and the state play distinctive roles in addressing those needs.<br />
<br />
On the one hand, the theocratic nation of Israel had a responsibility to practice distributive social justice in a statist sense as prescribed in the Mosaic Law (Old Covenant). Deuteronomy 15:1-11, for example, details how debts were to be forgiven every seventh year as one means of providing for the poor. This shows how Israeli society was expected to relieve the burden of debt on those who were unable to succeed in the marketplace of that day.<br />
<br />
Another example of state sponsored distributive justice in Israel involved one form of tithing. Deuteronomy 14:28-29 states,<br />
<br />
At the end of every third year you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in that year, and shall deposit it in your town. The Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance among you, and the alien, the orphan and the widow who are in your town, shall come and eat and be satisfied, in order that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do.<br />
<br />
This tithe was in essence a welfare tax whereby Israeli citizens were to give the equivalent of 3.3% of their annual incomes to help the disadvantaged in society – those who could not meet their own needs through agrarian or commercial means.<br />
<br />
Even gentile nations, it seems, were expected to practice some form of distributive justice. For instance, Israel was condemned for committing another kind of “sodomy”; specifically, failing to help the poor and needy. “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy” (Ezek.16:44-50).<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the church and individual Christians under the New Covenant of grace have somewhat different obligations of distributing resources. Since New Testament times, Christians have operated under various forms of governments and economic systems. While the church and individual Christians must be in subjection to these governing social systems, and may be able to influence civic leaders to be more just and fair, their first priority is to practice the law of love directly on their fellow man. This means to give care to anyone in need, beginning first with one’s own family (1 Tim 5:8), then fellow believers (Gal. 6:10), and even to every human being (Gal 6:10; James 1:27-2:26; cf. Rom. 13:1-10). Sharing the love and good news of Jesus Christ can and should be a part of the Christian’s sharing ministry (Matt. 28:18-20; cf. Acts 3).<br />
<br />
Early Christians, for example, demonstrated how a system of distribution could be set up to meet the needs of everyone within a local church community (Cf. Acts 2:43-45, Acts 5:1-11, Acts 6:1-6). This communal sharing was a voluntary method of meeting pressing needs within the church. Of course, this was a far cry from the politically driven socio-economic Marxism, communism, and socialism that exist in present times, all which grant citizens the right to possess a large share of society’s burdens but only a small (though equal) share of its benefits.<br />
<br />
The Apostle Paul similarly demonstrated how voluntarily meeting the needs of Christians in other church communities was important (cf. Acts 11:29-30, Gal. 2:10, Rom. 15:25-27, 1 Cor. 16:1-4). In fact, unlike the tithe of Israel, Paul showed that Christian giving for needy brothers in Christ was to be generous, voluntary, equitable, cheerful, anonymous, and in the name of Jesus Christ. This giving out of love instead of obligation truly glorified God. (cf. 1 Cor. 16:2; 2 Cor. 8-9, Matt. 6:2-4, Col. 3:17, 1 Cor. 10:31). It is helpful here to reiterate that, under the New Covenant, Christian charity was to be voluntary, not coerced by the state or any other institution.<br />
<br />
Finally, it should be noted that the early church used great care in discerning who should receive their social support. For example, a widow was to be put on a list for permanent, life-time support only if she met certain criteria. Paul sets these down clearly in I Timothy 5:3-6: she must be at least 60 years old, “left alone” without family or presumably any other means of support, a woman of prayer, married only once, and a reputation for good works, among other things. In contrast, Paul admonishes the Thessalonians to withhold their social care to those unwilling but able to work: “if anyone will not work, neither let him eat” (II Thess. 3:6-15).<br />
<br />
All of these scriptural examples show how God is not as concerned with perfect equality or fairness as He is with the just treatment of those who are unable to support themselves in a local community and in society at large. In this sense, life really is meant to be just… not fair. On the one hand, able bodied people are expected to support themselves. Those unable to support themselves, depending upon the severity of their condition, are provided with social safety nets beginning first with the family, then the church, and lastly, as will next be shown, the state.<br />
<br />
What Should be the Christian’s Position on State Sponsored Social Action?<br />
It is evident that pursuing social justice is one of the highest moral responsibilities of the church and of the individual Christian. Recognizing that life can and should be just, though not necessarily fair, Christians should be at the forefront of the effort to pursue social justice through voluntary church and charitable social work. While it is important for every believer and church to practice private, voluntary acts of charity and social justice, it is also essential that every Christian develop sound convictions regarding social action by the state.<br />
<br />
Christians should be at the forefront of encouraging state-sponsored, democratic and, what some would deem “conservative” social values. Not only the value of giving wealth and resources to aid the truly needy in society, but also, to name a few, the just and biblical values of protecting private property rights and ownership, maintaining a small but efficient governmental bureaucracy, encouraging a strong work ethic and a free market economy, defending the traditional family and the rights of the unborn and infirmed, promoting a strong national defense and a protective foreign policy that preserves our national interests while defending human rights, and promoting free speech and religious tolerance. [Though I would like to defend these conservative ideals as decidedly biblical and Constitutional, present time and space limitations do not permit me to do so here – perhaps in a future paper.]<br />
<br />
Of course, Christians have little or no influence over state policy in most non-democratic societies. In such cases, unfortunately, the Christian has no choice but to quietly acquiesce to the governing authority – except in matters of conscience – or risk the loss of life, property, or the limited liberties he or she may have under the regime.<br />
<br />
However, in a free and open society like the United States, Christians can and should influence social policy through their voting, being involved in party politics, forming public interest groups, serving in government, and participating in lawful demonstrations.<br />
<br />
Many Christian pro-life groups, for example, are committed to using political means to end the abominable injustice of killing unborn children in America. In fact, immoral abortion laws will never be overturned in the U.S. without rigorous and legal political action being taken by a powerful coalition of Christian and other anti-abortion groups.<br />
<br />
Some argue, however, that Christian individuals, advocacy groups, and churches are too involved in American politics. They say spreading the gospel, not gaining political power, should be the primary concern of the Christian and the church. Of course the gospel should be primary, and Christians must not seek to build a theocracy or wield their power and influence in a way that shames God or the gospel. But it is not an either-or proposition. Relinquishing governmental control to others so that Christians merely have “power under” as popular scholar and pastor Greg Boyd suggests, is altogether foolish and immoral (Goodstein, “Disowning Conservative Politics”). It imprudently puts Christians outside the gates of democratic power and influence – a place they have every right and responsibility to be, and a place where they can effectively protect the rights of their families and their fellow man, most notably, the poor and oppressed (cf. Prov. 31:8-9). As one parishioner asked rhetorically after hearing Pastor Boyd’s recent assertion that the church should step out of politics, “So why NOT us? If we contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity of Jesus, why shouldn’t we be the ones involved in politics and setting laws?” (Goodstein, “Disowning Conservative Politics”). Another disgruntled parishioner exclaimed, “You can’t be a Christian and ignore actions that you feel are wrong. A case in point is the abortion issue. If the church were awake when abortion was passed in the 70’s, it wouldn’t have happened. But the church was asleep” (Goodstein, “Disowning Conservative Politics”).<br />
<br />
The church and individual Christians in America must be citizens who are fully awake and aware, engaged in the political process at every level, raising their voices, their dollars, and their hands to elect candidates and support just lobbying efforts. Christians can also support state social action and policies where individual, church and charity actions fall short, such as using public money or manpower to rebuild infrastructure after a disaster like Katrina. Furthermore, Christians can also support state action, such as President George W. Bush’s Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which directs public monies toward private church and charity programs. These programs can often do the work of helping people much more personally and effectively than the unwieldy bureaucracies of government.<br />
<br />
One good example of how Christians are attempting to have God-honoring influence on the political process (even on two sides of the same social justice issue) is the Climate Change Initiative. In early 2006, a group of American evangelical leaders issued a statement calling on the U.S. government to join a large block of the world community in striving to end what they claimed was human-induced global warming (Climate Change). The initiative was based mainly on an appeal to social justice: “The consequences of global warming will… hit the poor the hardest, in part because those areas likely to be significantly affected first are in the poorest regions of the world” (Climate Change). Even more interesting (and laudable) are the opening words to their statement, which powerfully express their view concerning Christians having a voice in state social policy:<br />
<br />
As American evangelical Christian leaders, we recognize both our opportunity and our responsibility to offer a biblically based moral witness that can help shape public policy in the most powerful nation on earth, and therefore contribute to the well-being of the entire world. Whether we will enter the public square and offer our witness there is no longer an open question. We are in that square, and we will not withdraw. (Climate Change)<br />
<br />
Whether the evangelical signers of the Climate Change Initiative are correct in their assessment remains to be seen; the scientific community’s jury is still out on whether human activity really causes global warming. This is precisely why another group of evangelical leaders decided to join the political debate on the issue and declined to sign the statement based, no less, on a separate social justice claim.<br />
<br />
E. Calvin Beisner, associate professor of historical theology at Knox Theological Seminary… said ‘the science is not settled’ on whether global warming was actually a problem or even that human beings were causing it. And he said that the solutions advocated by global warming opponents would only cause the cost of energy to rise, with the burden falling most heavily on the poor. (Goodstein, “Evangelical Leaders”)<br />
<br />
This example, and many more, illustrates how every Christian – whatever his or her political stripes – can and should influence state policy regarding life-giving social action.<br />
<br />
This example also aptly illustrates how Christians must exercise careful discernment when considering the problem, root cause, and best solution for any social concern. Christians should be very careful not to jump on a bandwagon of questionable validity. Not every social action is necessarily good and positive even if it springs from sincere and good intentions. Some examples of seemingly helpful actions – distributing condoms in Africa, clean needles to drug addicts, or incremental welfare to unwed mothers – may address immediate or surface problems, but over time, they can lead to much worse social problems. It has been widely shown that distributing condoms, clean needles, and incremental child welfare only perpetuate the social problems those state distribution programs are attempting to alleviate. Christians have a duty to offer prudent and wise solutions.<br />
<br />
“… [G]ood and just results are the ultimate test. Sound and logical principles must be at the heart of our feelings and acts of compassion, or we risk making bad situations worse” (Nash 2). We also risk shaming the good name of Jesus Christ if we offer solutions, such as those just listed, that are illogical, impractical, and just plain ridiculous.<br />
<br />
A word of caution about socialism (democratic or otherwise) is in order here. Should Christians advocate a state political and economic system that to some extent redistributes wealth in order to bring about equality and lift up the poor? This temptation to use the state as a collectivist Robin Hood that steals from the rich and gives to the poor must be avoided at all costs. In fact, socialism, in any form, only hurts the poor in the end. Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute clearly addresses the dangers of socialism in his paper, “Capitalism and Christianity: an Uneasy Partnership”:<br />
<br />
In the 20th century, capitalism proved superior for meeting human needs than socialism. Yet many Christians, rightly concerned about the poor, blame capitalism for the world’s ills…. While some government safety nets may be in order, government redistribution of wealth is usually a disincentive for production, lowering economic production and exacerbating social problems. Equal opportunity to succeed in a free society is what is required. Christian men and women can help people in poverty by ensuring they get the education required to prosper and that they are not kept in poverty through the unjust action of others. (Capitalism and Christianity 39)<br />
<br />
Bandow’s article concludes,<br />
<br />
Is capitalism Christian? No. It neither advances human virtures (sic) nor corrects ingrained personal vices; it merely reflects them. But socialism and its weaker statist cousins exacerbate the worst of men’s flaws. By divorcing effort from reward, stirring up covetousness and envy, and destroying the freedom that is the necessary precondition for virtue, socialism tears at the just social fabric that Christians should seek to establish. A Christian must still work hard to shed even a little light into a capitalistic society. But his task is likely to be much harder in a collectivist system. (55)<br />
<br />
Conclusion<br />
In regard to social justice, Christians must have a clear intellectual grasp of what social justice entails and the biblical principles that guide the Christian in his or her support of individual, church, and state social action. Christians also have a duty to wisely apply those sound principles to the major social problems of the early part of the 21st century. How individual believers and the church at large address these issues will impact many lives and bring great glory (or shame) to the name and gospel of Jesus Christ. It is of course axiomatic that any social action be motivated and implemented in a spirit of true Christian justice, grace and love.<br />
<br />
In the final analysis, recognizing that life can and should be just, though not always fair, Christians can take the lead in church and charitable work and in advocating the careful application of state sponsored social action. Only Christians can offer the disadvantaged (both in the church and society) true love and spiritual healing, and, ultimately, only Christians can give God the glory in the process. By doing so they thus “fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2, 10).<br />
<br />
Works Cited<br />
American Heritage Dictionary Online. www.bartleby.com. No pag.<br />
Bandow, Doug. “Capitalism and Christianity: An Uneasy Partnership”. EBSCO Publishing: International Journal on Peace. September 3, 2002, Vol. XIX No. 3.<br />
Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action. May 28, 2006. www.christiansandclimate.org/statement. No pag.<br />
Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The White House of President George W. Bush, August 7, 2006. http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/fbci/. No pag.<br />
Goodstein, Laurie. “Disowning Conservative Politics Is Costly for Pastor”, The New York Times, July 30, 2006.<br />
Goodstein, Laurie. “Evangelical Leaders Join Global Warming Initiative, The New York Times Online, February 8, 2006 www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/national/08warm.html.<br />
Nash, Ronald H. Social Justice and the Christian Church. (1st edition) Lima, Ohio: Academic Renewal Press, 2002.<br />
The New Open Bible. New American Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990.<br />
Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. (1st edition) Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2001.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-59248047809042798252010-03-06T09:39:00.001-06:002010-03-06T10:15:30.058-06:00Despite recent demagoguery, Non-Citizens also have Constitutional Rights<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgdedCuE-ik8pWjsoD7HwQWrYKrjdxAnQgWjt91GuXzcODGMBeMqUJQNtXg7Qd-G2FkiGUhWrK6S_i6YSVGpurejUUNwd2wODjoIOnoiHmgWIzBvY-wsUtHR5-hefQWlEdBd44/s1600-h/bill-o-rights.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgdedCuE-ik8pWjsoD7HwQWrYKrjdxAnQgWjt91GuXzcODGMBeMqUJQNtXg7Qd-G2FkiGUhWrK6S_i6YSVGpurejUUNwd2wODjoIOnoiHmgWIzBvY-wsUtHR5-hefQWlEdBd44/s320/bill-o-rights.gif" /></a></div><br />
<br />
* Civil Liberties & Human Rights<br />
<br />
SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS SPREADS CENTRAL MYTH ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION<br />
By Glenn Greenwald<br />
<br />
Salon.com<br />
February 1, 2010<br />
<a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/01/collins/ind%E2%80%A6" onmousedown="UntrustedLink.bootstrap($(this), "3bd3bdc8285f2877dc2c9d66d38dc231", event)" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.salon.com/news/<wbr></wbr><span class="word_break"></span>opinion/glenn_greenwald/20<wbr></wbr><span class="word_break"></span>10/02/01/collins/ind…</a><br />
<br />
Over the weekend, Sen. Susan Collins released a five-minute video (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8j9lwTmiSA" onmousedown="UntrustedLink.bootstrap($(this), "3bd3bdc8285f2877dc2c9d66d38dc231", event)" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/wat<wbr></wbr><span class="word_break"></span>ch?v=u8j9lwTmiSA</a>) in which she sounded as though she were possessed by the angriest, most unhinged version of Dick Cheney. Collins recklessly accused the Obama administration of putting us all in serious danger by failing to wage War against the Terrorists. <br />
<br />
Most of what she said was just standard right-wing boilerplate, but there was one claim in particular that deserves serious attention, as it has become one of the most pervasive myths in our political discourse: namely, that the U.S. Constitution protects only American citizens, and not any dreaded foreigners. Focusing on the DOJ’s decision to charge the alleged attempted Christmas Day bomber with crimes, Mirandize him, and provide him with counsel, Collins railed: “Once afforded the protection our Constitution guarantees American citizens, this foreign terrorist ‘lawyered up’ and stopped talking”<br />
<br />
This notion that the protections of the Bill of Rights specifically and the Constitution generally apply only to the Government’s treatment of American citizens is blatantly, undeniably false — for multiple reasons — yet this myth is growing, as a result of being centrally featured in “War on Terror” propaganda.<br />
<br />
First, the U.S. Supreme Court, in 2008, issued a highly publicized opinion, in *Boumediene v. Bush*, which, by itself, makes clear how false is the claim that the Constitution applies only to Americans. The Boumediene Court held that it was unconstitutional for the Military Commissions Act to deny habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees, none of whom was an American citizen (indeed, the detainees were all foreign nationals outside of the U.S.). If the Constitution applied only to U.S. citizens, that decision would obviously be impossible. What’s more, although the decision was 5-4, none of the 9 Justices — and, indeed, not even the Bush administration — argued that the Constitution applies only to American citizens. That is such an inane, false, discredited proposition that no responsible person would ever make that claim.<br />
<br />
What divided the Boumediene Court was the question of whether foreigners held by the U.S. military outside of the U.S.(as opposed to inside the U.S.) enjoy Constitutional protections. They debated how Guantanamo should be viewed in that regard (as foreign soil or something else). But not even the 4 dissenting judges believed — as Susan Collins and other claim — that Constitutional rights only extend to Americans. To the contrary, Justice Scalia, in his scathing dissent, approvingly quoted Justice Jackson in conceding that foreigners detained inside the U.S. are protected by the Constitution (emphasis added): “Justice Jackson then elaborated on the historical scope of the writ: ‘The alien, to whom the United States has been traditionally hospitable, has been accorded a generous and ascending scale of rights as he increases his identity with our society … . But, in extending constitutional protections beyond the citizenry, the Court has been at pains to point out that it was the alien’s presence within its territorial jurisdiction that gave the Judiciary power to act.’ Id., at 770–771.”<br />
<br />
That’s from Scalia, and all the dissenting judges joined in that opinion. It is indisputable, well-settled Constitutional law that the Constitution restricts the actions of the Government with respect to both American citizens and foreigners. It’s not even within the realm of mainstream legal debate to deny that. Abdulmutallab was detained inside the U.S. Not even the Bush DOJ — not even Antonin Scalia — believe that the Constitution only applies to American citizens. Indeed, the whole reason why Guantanamo was created was that Bush officials wanted to claim that the Constitution is inapplicable to foreigners held outside the U.S.— not even the Bush administration would claim that the Constitution is inapplicable to foreigners generally.<br />
<br />
The principle that the Constitution applies not only to Americans, but also to foreigners, was hardly invented by the Court in 2008. To the contrary, the Supreme Court — all the way back in 1886 — explicitly held this to be the case, when, in *Yick Wo v. Hopkins*, it overturned the criminal conviction of a Chinese citizen living in California on the ground that the law in question violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection. In so doing, the Court explicitly rejected what Susan Collins and many others claim about the Constitution. Just read what the Court said back then, as it should settle this matter forever (emphasis added): <br />
<br />
“The rights of the petitioners, as affected by the proceedings of which they complain, are not less because they are aliens and subjects of the emperor of China… . The fourteenth amendment to the constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens. It says: ‘Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ These provisions are universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality; and the equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws… . The questions we have to consider and decide in these cases, therefore, are to be treated as involving the rights of every citizen of the United States equally with those of the strangers and aliens who now invoke the jurisdiction of the court.”<br />
<br />
Could that possibly be any clearer? Over 100 years ago, the Supreme Court explicitly said that the rights of the Constitution extend to citizens and foreigners alike. The Court has repeatedly applied that principle over and over. Only extreme ignorance or a true desire to deceive would lead someone like Susan Collins to claim that such rights are “protection[s] our Constitution guarantees American citizens.”<br />
<br />
Second, basic common sense by itself should prevent people like Susan Collins from claiming the Constitution applies only to American citizens. There are millions of foreign nationals inside the U.S. at all times — not only illegally but also legally: as tourists, students, workers, Green Card holders, etc. Is there anyone who really believes that the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply to them? If a foreign national is arrested and accused by the U.S. Government of committing a crime, does anyone believe they can be sentenced to prison without a jury trial, denied the right to face their accusers, have their property seized without due process, be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, and be denied access to counsel?<br />
<br />
Anyone who claims that the Constitution only protects American citizens, but not foreigners, would necessarily have to claim that the U.S. Government could do all of that to foreign nationals. Does anyone believe that? Would it be Constitutionally permissible to own foreigners as slaves on the ground that the protections of the Constitution — including the Thirteenth Amendment — apply only to Americans, not foreigners?<br />
<br />
Third, to see how false this notion is that the Constitution only applies to U.S. citizens, one needs to do nothing more than read the Bill of Rights. It says nothing about “citizens.” To the contrary, many of the provisions are simply restrictions on what the Government is permitted to do (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion … or abridging the freedom of speech”; “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner”). And where rights are expressly vested, they are pointedly not vested in “citizens,” but rather in “persons” or “the accused” (“No person shall … . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”; “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed … . and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense”).<br />
<br />
The only way to argue that these rights apply only to Americans is to argue that only Americans, but not foreigners, are “persons.” Once one makes that claim, then one is in Dred Scott territory. If foreigners are not “persons,” then what are they: sub-persons? Non-persons? *Untermenschen*? <br />
<br />
There are, of course, certain Constitutional rights that are clearly reserved only for citizens — such as the right to vote or to hold elective office — but when that is the case, the Constitution explicitly states that to be so (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States … .”). Indeed, the Fourteenth Amendment, in the very same clause, demonstrates the distinction between “citizens” (which only includes “Americans”) and “persons” (which includes everyone), and proves that the former is merely a subset of the latter: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” <br />
<br />
Article II, Section 1 — in defining eligibility to be President — makes the same distinction: “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President.”<br />
<br />
“Persons” and “citizens” have entirely different meanings in the Constitution. There are a handful of instances in which the Constitution applies only to American citizens. When that is the case, the Constitution explicitly uses the word “citizens.” In all other instances, it simply restricts what the Government is permitted to do generally or uses the much broader term “persons” to describe who holds the rights it guarantees. That’s the obvious point the *Yick Wo* Court made in 1886 in holding “these provisions are universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction,” and it ought to prevent the most minimally honest individuals among us from claiming otherwise, as Susan Collins just did.<br />
<br />
It’s certainly true that, even after Boumediene, there is a viable debate over whether so-called alien “enemy combatants” held outside of the U.S. are entitled to the full panoply of Constitutional protections (of course, that debate ignores the unanswerable question: how do you know someone is an “enemy combatant” — let alone a “Terrorist” — if they don’t first have a trial?). There are also instances (such as deportation hearings) where the due process rights to which foreign nationals are entitled are less stringent than standard rights guaranteed in criminal trials (because foreign nationals have no Constitutional right to be admitted entrance to the U.S.).<br />
<br />
But this right-wing demagoguery (coming from both Republicans and some Democrats) has nothing to do with those debates. For one thing, the accused Christmas Day bomber was captured and is being held inside the U.S.(right-wing fear-mongers have long argued that we should not bring GITMO detainees to the U.S. because, once inside the U.S., they would then enjoy full Constitutional protections). But more important, the standard rhetorical formulation being used — “extending rights to foreign Terrorists which the Constitution reserves for U.S. citizens” — suggests that Constitutional rights are for American citizens only. That is blatantly false, and anyone making that claim — as Susan Collins and so many others have — is either extremely ignorant or extremely dishonest.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-36098755320941309862009-11-21T12:38:00.003-06:002010-02-21T12:01:53.260-06:00The Healthcare Debate<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAuiKt5Uttum8BN9GI4QpUky7ERWJOBi-pqPnDLuA5tGT0vlR9Ch9_Cb2F0jcsFQvfDSgQMj86KCd21uouzaL6Q2tZ4Rtbm0HEJfxHIkgGLeGKZYlPFa4p49HVC_6m7SC6xA_H/s1600/redblue_pill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAuiKt5Uttum8BN9GI4QpUky7ERWJOBi-pqPnDLuA5tGT0vlR9Ch9_Cb2F0jcsFQvfDSgQMj86KCd21uouzaL6Q2tZ4Rtbm0HEJfxHIkgGLeGKZYlPFa4p49HVC_6m7SC6xA_H/s320/redblue_pill.jpg" /></a></div>I know a couple of people that are in medical crisis right now as we speak that don't have coverage. Guess who's paying for it at absorbent rates... US. They get care alright, but, its given grudgingly and minimally and at often sub standards- but still very expensive rates are charged- and its paid for by our taxes and in higher insurance premiums. As I understand it, the way to go is a single payer system. That did come up, but was also shot down by the (R)'s aka, the "Obama is a Nazi" crowd. Therein lies part of the problem We now have one party that is totally committed and deeply invested in the failure of our President and the failure of healthcare reform because they have broadcasted to everyone that the President is and evil tyrant bent on the destruction of America and all that is holy. You see, they simply can't afford for anything good to happen on his watch now- since they have set it up in such a way that all Obama has to do now to accentuate their desperation and clownishness is NOT be Hitler. Smooth, dang those boys are smooth.<br />
<br />
Anyhow, because of this dynamic from the "right", there is almost no bipartisan teamwork, consensus or effort to find a way to alleviate the problems within our healthcare system. You have one side tossing about trying to find something that will simply clear the house whether it is a good, long term solution or not and another side that thinks that even having this conversation is somehow subversive and evil. I am not optimistic about anything good coming out of this mix.<br />
<br />
I did some research on the definition of the single payer system as prompted by the article above. It is defined as:<br />
<br />
"Single-payer health care: A system of health care characterized by universal and comprehensive coverage. Single-payer health care is similar to the health services provided by Medicare in the US. The government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector. Doctors are in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis from government funds. The government does not own or manage their medical practices or hospitals.<br />
<b>Single-payer health care is distinct and different from socialized medicine in which doctors and hospitals work for and draw salaries from the government</b>."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAuiKt5Uttum8BN9GI4QpUky7ERWJOBi-pqPnDLuA5tGT0vlR9Ch9_Cb2F0jcsFQvfDSgQMj86KCd21uouzaL6Q2tZ4Rtbm0HEJfxHIkgGLeGKZYlPFa4p49HVC_6m7SC6xA_H/s1600/redblue_pill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></div>Ok, interesting. It is clearly defined and distinct from socialized or govt. run medicine. So, I played dumb, asking some of my so called conservative colleagues there what single- payer healthcare was all about.<br />
The first thing out of every single one of their mouths was... it's "government run healthcare".<br />
<br />
I know it may seem that I am harsh and picking on the talk show and Fox news set- but this is a prime example of why. If a person uses those sources for their sole reservoir of information they will become imbued with a certain false certitude about everything, a Manichean worldview and become essentially locked into a monolithic ignorance or worse- become self defeatingly stupid. Practically every time I have a discussion on any issue with these colleagues the are apt to parrot what they have heard on some talk radio show. You see, I listen to those shows quite a bit myself in an effort to understand all facets of a given question. I recognize when someone is simply parroting ideas they have heard from one of their intellectual surrogates.<br />
<br />
One of the most destructive forces that has undue influence on these matters today in our society is what has been described as "The permanent war economy". This is also part of what is called the military industrial complex or defense industry- and what is passing for conservative thought today is eaten up with it. Unfortunately, no one in either of the two major political parties is even talking about any of this. Figures like Ron Paul have made some reference to ideas in this ballpark when they speak of statism and interventionism.<br />
Here are some useful thoughts on the matter found written elsewhere by Chris Hedges:<br />
<br />
“In "Pentagon Capitalism" Seymour Mellman described the defense industry as viral. Defense and military industries in permanent war, he wrote, trash economies. They are able to upend priorities. They redirect government expenditures towards their huge military projects and starve domestic investment in the name of national security. We produce sophisticated fighter jets, while Boeing is unable to finish its new commercial plane on schedule and our automotive industry goes bankrupt. We sink money into research and development of weapons systems and neglect renewable energy technologies. Universities are flooded with defense-related cash and grants, and struggle to find money for environmental studies. This is the disease of permanent war.<br />
Massive military spending in this country, climbing to nearly $le1 trillion a year and consuming half of all discretionary spending, has a profound social cost. Bridges and levees collapse. Schools decay. Domestic manufacturing declines. Trillions in debts threaten the viability of the currency and the economy. The poor, the mentally ill, the sick and the unemployed are abandoned. Human suffering, including our own, is the price for victory.<br />
<br />
Citizens in a state of permanent war are bombarded with the insidious militarized language of power, fear and strength that mask an increasingly brittle reality. The corporations behind the doctrine of permanent war-who have corrupted the doctrine of permanent revolution-must keep us afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear means that we will be willing to give up our rights and liberties for security. Fear keeps us penned in like domesticated animals.<br />
<br />
Mellman, who coined the term permanent war economy to characterize the American economy, wrote that since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, current, and future military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government. The military industrial establishment is a very lucrative business. It is gilded corporate welfare. It comes with guaranteed profits. Defense systems are sold before they are produced. Military industries are permitted to charge the federal government for huge cost overruns. Massive profits are always guaranteed.”<br />
<br />
Literally three days after the first big bailout package passed- the one that was tried to pass with no oversight at all- the one that happened on Bush's watch about two weeks after Republican presidential candidate McCain bloviated that the economy was fundamentally sound and that all this talk about economic imbalance was a construct of the "liberal media" to make Bush look bad and scare the people into voting for democrats- another big spending package was passed. It also put out a 7 to 8 hundred billion dollar payoff. What was it for? It was for the sustenance of the 750 plus military bases we have around the world and all the big military projects and defense contracts (by the way, there are 195 countries- so we have over three times more military bases than there are countries which begs the question what on earth are we doing and why???). This package passed the house without any discussion, without any cost- benefit analysis, without any conception of the blowback of all this military only interface we have with much of the world and without hardly any public awareness. It is comical to watch all the so called conservatives rail about out of control government spending and cry about the bailouts and then fall into lockstep whenever anything military is on the table. "You can't cut defense spending", they'll say, "it will eliminate jobs and decrease national security- we have to keep pumping in money or the economy will tank". Its just funny how that concept supposedly works if you are building weapons but not if you are building bridges or infrastructure.<br />
I will go out on a limb and say unless we deal with this "permanent war economy" problem and the attending militaristic mindset, value system and the blowback and socio- economic suffocation under it we ARE doomed as a nation. <br />
<br />
I offer this as part of the answer to the question about the fairness of the present healthcare system and the question of whether its our right to have universal healthcare. I am not of the opinion that we are owed anything from the world, so its hard to think in terms of fairness… but, I will say that the way things are make little sense. I am likewise not of the opinion that these matters are questions of rights- but rather of sustainable dynamics within a society. It makes little sense to me to have a society that is consumed by militarism and living in fear of foreign enemies and willing to spend trillions on “national security” to the detriment of many other aspects of the system. It makes no sense to be consumed with fear of other geopolitical systems that are perceived as threats or of terrorist acts and then essentially unconcerned about whether or not our neighbors right here at home are able to protect themselves from health risks or financial ruin in the case of medical crisis. It makes no sense to be willing to invest that much in weaponry for protection from “enemies” but then wax all pious and individualist when it comes to protection from disease or bankruptcy to the machinery of big corporate medicine.... especially when our government spends 29 or greater times more on weapons and "defense" than all of the nations we consider rogue states combined.<br />
<br />
Many times I have heard people defending our present medical system by pointing out how the best care is available here and that people come from all over the world to get treatments here. That argument is pretty well moot. Only the most affluent can get here to receive that care and the best care, this care that is allegedly the envy of the world, is simply not available to vast sections of our own population. A recent study shows that people without coverage are twice as likely to die of their complications because there are constantly brushed aside and given the minimum attention required by law. This “best care, treatments and medicine in the world” is then, not part of the equation for people without coverage.<br />
<br />
There are more theological and moral implications to these topics that would require much more attention. I have just touched on some of the moral calculus on this, but, there is much more to be said of course. The theological implications are deeper than I care to go on this fine, chilly, football Saturday morning. But, since this dilemma has inspired me to reflect deeper and articulate my thoughts, I will address this more very soon.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-25864131099041571122009-10-28T17:44:00.000-05:002009-10-28T17:44:17.885-05:00Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land<embed id=VideoPlayback src=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-6604775898578139565&hl=en&fs=true style=width:400px;height:326px allowFullScreen=true allowScriptAccess=always type=application/x-shockwave-flash> </embed><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-79364048682925222092009-08-22T14:07:00.002-05:002009-08-24T02:14:11.732-05:00A Challenge for "The Bible Answer Man" on Money, Greed and God<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxBIT7mIqvoGvK68VuSiBG-LKu84aWJsNjTH-AFbG06NSxgNpwB-C4i6yIQRTtLEtT2kQNfip5zoM3rISdqkugdruMWDvQnyXj-ZA-xnp-1UOE5scuz8TkURSVdhyCNb87y77/s1600-h/allseeingeye.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxBIT7mIqvoGvK68VuSiBG-LKu84aWJsNjTH-AFbG06NSxgNpwB-C4i6yIQRTtLEtT2kQNfip5zoM3rISdqkugdruMWDvQnyXj-ZA-xnp-1UOE5scuz8TkURSVdhyCNb87y77/s320/allseeingeye.gif" /></a></div>Hank Hanegraaff, the "Bible Answer Man" recently aired an interview of Jay Richards over two days of the B.A.M. radio program, concerning Richards' new book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Money-Greed-God-Capitalism-Solution/dp/0061375616/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249591326&sr=8-1">Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem</a></i>. The bumpers for the interview and the trailers for the book made it almost irresistible to listen in on. The book was purported to "annihilate all the "leftist" and "socialist" myths and propaganda on economics being taught as fact today" and a "must read for Americans and Christians seeking the truth in these trying times".<br />
<br />
The book was advertised as Part one of the interview is <a href="http://www.equip.org/broadcasts/money-greed-and-god20090508">here</a>. Part two is found <a href="http://www.equip.org/broadcasts/money-greed-and-god20090608">here</a>.<br />
<br />
**I found the program not to live up to the billing, to simply do a cursory gloss over the "myths" it was supposedly destroying and leave many unanswered questions. I think its worth mentioning here that I am not a leftist, liberal or socialist. The only labels I will wear are Christian, human, American, Cherokee and Oklahoman. I will not participate in the false dichotomy and endless contention of "conservative" vs. "liberal' or "capitalist" vs. "socialist" debate as it is customarily formulated. I will not allow someone else to signify me as any of those other things simply because I am questioning the veracity of the thesis on capitalism as put forth by Richards and Hanegraaff in this radio program and in the book.<br />
<br />
I too am a fan of the “Bible Answer Man”. I have four of his books and listen to his radio program most days. I was also listening on the two days that he ran the two programs about the "Christian Merits" of capitalism. It is very seldom that I question or challenge the positions that the “Bible Answer Man” takes. I did have a few issues with this topic as it was spelled out by Mr. Hanegraaff and Mr. Richards. I was looking for a blog or a forum by CRI or either one of these gentlemen to address some of the questions I was left with and found practically nothing so I decided to throw the discussion out onto the internet via my own blog.<br />
<br />
To be fair I have not read the book yet. Some of what I am wanting to address may be in the book. However, based upon the way this material was presented in the radio program I would not likely spend my money on the book. The book was advertised as one that “annihilates the liberal myths on economics often taught as facts”. Now, I would say that to annihilate a position and expose it as myth it would take more than just a cursory gloss over of that position being annihilated and slapping the label “liberal” on it and calling it done. To me at least, and I suspect to other critical thinkers it would take a line item review of the “mythical economic theories taught as fact” and then a thorough and comprehensive rebuttal to those. Granted, the radio show was a limited time format, but I still think they could have taken on those “liberal” positions much better, especially if they are being portrayed as merely “myth” and “propaganda”. Instead what we had was a couple of hours of full on praise of capitalism and cheerleading of capitalist assertions on economics and opinions. Richards said in the program that “liberal” and “socialist” types always have the “best rhetoric”, but based on this program alone and the way these topics were handled one could conclude that the “capitalists” have a very good propaganda model working as well. Then if you factor in the patriotic and religious overtones and jingoistic cant of the corporate, advertising dollars driven media, I think I would really have to question and/or challenge the idea that the “leftists” have the best rhetoric. <br />
<br />
I will not go into a treatise on the media or a history lesson on the wars and bloodshed propagated by the capitalist urge and the “great commission” to spread the gospel of capitalism and “make the world safe for democracy” in places like East Timor, the Philippines, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and so on and so on. But I will simply point out that Hanegraaff and Richards and those like them generally prefer to either downplay or flat out ignore these sorts of things while they are praising capitalism and/or dismissing those “silly liberal” myths. Granted, they do like to list the litany of crimes against humanity by people like Hitler and Stalin. But there seems to be a void where qualifications about capitalism concerning things like the conquest of North America, the theft of land and the holocaust of American Indians ought to be. For instance, when discussing the need to quell the resistance of “American Indians” so as to obtain the goal of “civilizing” them and assimilating them into the framework of the republic, general William T. Sherman put forth an idea that speaks volumes about the worldly culture of capitalist ideals. He said that the “Indians”, “know no greed, and, until they understand greed, they will never understand the private ownership of property.” This demonstrates, not only the superficial understanding of other cultures that we often see from the captains of capitalism, but also that the capitalist system is propagated and motivated in large part by the institutionalized, individualized greed. American Indian and Christian, theologian George E. Tinker spells out quite a case on this in his books “Spirit and Resistance” and “Missionary Conquest”. <br />
Another point I would like to make is on how Richards and Hanegraaff spoke about how capitalism “creates” wealth, progress and prosperity. First, this depends upon how one defines wealth, progress and prosperity. Since these men are professing Christians some qualifications on these terms ought to be easy to come up with. That seemed to be missing in any kind of comprehensive, spiritual treatment in the program and review of the book. <br />
Also, I would challenge the very pretense that capitalism truly “creates” anything. It sometimes seems like these avowed capitalists think that all the resources and raw materials that are harvested and/or consumed to make the products that fuel the capitalist engine simply appear from nowhere. It seems that they think that the earth is an inexhaustible resource, a bottomless garbage can and that the forces, human costs, blowback and turbulence created by mass consumption and material greed are minimal, easily controlled and easily rationalized since they create jobs and medical and military advances. Again, a redefinition of progress and prosperity seems to be needed here. About as far as they, or many other capitalist apologists go on this is the platitude about how God has created the Earth to be used and consumed by men. I will resist the urge to go into a much more comprehensive treatment the theological incompleteness of this sort of rationalization for the moment. <br />
I would however like to challenge the idea that one can have a “Christian capitalism”. I will allow that you can have a Christian values driven person or people operating within the framework of capitalism (or other economic systems like socialism for that matter). But, the idea that you can have a “Christian capitalism”, a Christian nation or a Christian business is about as valid as the idea that you can have a Christian machine or a Christian milkshake. It just doesn’t work that way. Such ideas simply do not take into ful account the fatally flawed, fallen nature of mankind and are oddly as Utopian as anything I have ever heard coming from the “left”. It is allowed that humans can be the representatives of the Kingdom of God while they are in the world. But, do not forget, if one is going to use the Bible to prop up the cause of capitalism or any other ism that Jesus said that his Kingdom is not of this world. We are also told not to love the world or anything in it in the scriptures. I do have a qualified understanding of what that really means- but, I am wondering if they have not realized what this fully means themselves. Richards did go into a bit about the “Secret” of capitalism and a treatment on the “rule of law” on this point. But, again it did not take into account practically any of the questions I am raising here. In fact his points about the “secret” and unleashing of the “creative potential” of humans as reflections of God started to sound like new age humanism. Maybe that is unfair not having read the book. But, as I have stated already, based on what I have heard, I am not planning to spend my money on the book and feed Richards’ capitalist urge. Maybe I'll find it in the library or someone will send me a copy if they are convinced of it's truth and wish to change my mind.<br />
Lastly, here are the type of concepts that Richards and Hanegraaff really need to address if they are going to presume to annihilate these supposedly leftist myths and economic theories:<br />
<br />
Excerpted from: <b>IN THE ABSENCE OF THE SACRED- By Jerry Mander</b><br />
<a href="http://dieoff.org/page12.htm">Source</a><br />
The following list is an attempt to articulate the obligatory rules by which corporations operate. Some of the rules overlap, but taken together they help reveal why corporations behave as they do and how they have come to dominate their environment and the human beings within it. <br />
<ul><li><b>The Profit Imperative:</b> Profit is the ultimate measure of all corporate decisions. It takes precedence over community well-being, worker health, public health, peace, environmental preservation or national security. Corporations will even find ways to trade with national "enemies"—Libya, Iran, the former Soviet Union, Cuba—when public policy abhors it. The profit imperative and the growth imperative are the most fundamental corporate drives; together they represent the corporation's instinct to "live." <br />
</li>
<li><b>The Growth Imperative:</b> Corporations live or die by whether they can sustain growth. On this depends relationships to investors, to the stock market, to banks and to public perception. The growth imperative also fuels the corporate desire to find and develop scarce resources in obscure parts of the world.<br />
This effect is now clearly visible, as the world's few remaining pristine places are sacrificed to corporate production. The peoples who inhabit these resource-rich regions are similarly pressured to give up their traditional ways and climb on the wheel of production-consumption. Corporate planners consciously attempt to bring "less developed societies into the modem world" to create infrastructures for development, as well as new workers and new consumers. Corporations claim that they do this for altruistic reasons to raise the living standard—but corporations have no altruism. <br />
Theoretically, privately held corporations—those owned by individuals or families—do not have the imperative to expand. In practice, however, their behavior is the same. Such privately held giants as Bechtel Corporation have shown no propensity to moderate growth. <br />
</li>
<li><b>Competition and Aggression:</b> Corporations place every person in management in fierce competition with each other. Anyone interested in a corporate career must hone his or her ability to seize the moment. This applies to gaining an edge over another company or over a colleague within the company. As an employee, you are expected to be part of the "team," but you also must be ready to climb over your own colleagues. <br />
Corporate ideology holds that competition improves worker incentive and corporate performances and therefore benefits society. Our society has accepted this premise utterly. Unfortunately, however, it also surfaces in personal relationships. Living by standards of competition and aggression on the job, human beings have few avenues to express softer, more personal feelings. (In politics, non-aggressive behavior is interpreted as weakness.) <br />
</li>
<li><b>Amorality:</b> Not being human, corporations do not have morals or altruistic goals. So decisions that maybe antithetical to community goals or environmental health are made without misgivings. In fact, corporate executives praise "non-emotionality" as a basis for "objective" decision-making. <br />
Corporations, however, seek to hide their amorality and attempt to act as if they were altruistic. Lately, there has been a concerted effort by American industry to appear concerned with environmental cleanup, community arts or drug programs. Corporate efforts that seem altruistic are really Public relations ploys or directly self-serving projects. <br />
There has recently been a spurt of corporate advertising about how corporations work to clean the environment. A company that installs offshore oil rigs will run ads about how fish are thriving under the rigs. Logging companies known for their clearcutting practices will run millions of dollars' worth of ads about their "tree farms." <br />
It is a fair rule of thumb that corporations tend to advertise the very qualities they do not have in order to allay negative public perceptions. When corporations say "we care," it is almost always in response to the widespread perception that they do not have feelings or morals. <br />
If the benefits do not accrue, the altruistic pose is dropped. When Exxon realized that its cleanup of Alaskan shores was not easing the public rage about the oil spill, it simply dropped all pretense of altruism and ceased working. <br />
</li>
<li><b>Hierarchy:</b> Corporate laws require that corporations be structured into classes of superiors and subordinated within a centralized pyramidal structure: chairman, directors, chief executive officer, vice presidents, division managers and so on. The efficiency of this hierarchical form (which also characterizes the military, the government and most institutions in our society) is rarely questioned. <br />
The effect on society from adopting the hierarchical form is to make it seem natural that we have all been placed within a national pecking order. Some jobs are better than others, some lifestyles are better than others, some neighborhoods, some races, some kinds of knowledge. Men over women. Westerners over non-Westerners. Humans over nature. <br />
That effective, non-hierarchical modes of organization exist on the planet, and have been successful for millennia, is barely known by most Americans. <br />
</li>
<li><b>Quantification, Linearity, Segmentation:</b> Corporations require that subjective information be translated into objective form, i.e. numbers. The subjective or spiritual aspects of forests, for example, cannot be translated, and so do not enter corporate equations. Forests are evaluated only as "board feet." <br />
When corporations are asked to clean up their smokestack emissions, they lobby to relax the new standards in order to contain costs. The result is that a predictable number of people are expected to become sick and die. <br />
The operative corporate standard is not "as safe as humanly possible," but rather, "as safe as possible commensurate with maintaining acceptable profit." <br />
</li>
<li><b>Dehumanization:</b> In the great majority of corporations, employees are viewed as ciphers, as non-managerial cogs in the wheel, replaceable by others or by machines. <br />
As for management employees, not subject to quite the same indignities, they nonetheless must practice a style of decision making that "does not let feelings get in the way." This applies as much to firing employees as it does to dealing with the consequences of corporate behavior in the environment or the community. <br />
</li>
<li><b>Exploitation:</b> All corporate profit is obtained by a simple formula: Profit equals the difference between the amount paid to an employee and the economic value of the employee's output, and/or the difference between the amount paid for raw materials used in production (including costs of processing), and the ultimate sales price of processed raw materials. Karl Marx was right: a worker is not compensated for full value of his or her labor—neither is the raw material supplier. The owners of capital skim off part of the value as profit. Profit is based on underpayment. <br />
Capitalists argue that this is a fair deal, since both workers and the people who mine or farm the resources (usually in Third World environments) get paid. But this arrangement is inherently imbalanced. The owner of the capital—the corporation or the bank always obtains additional benefit. While the worker makes a wage, the owner of capital gets the benefit of the worker's labor, plus the surplus profit the worker produces, which is then reinvested to produce yet more surplus. <br />
</li>
<li><b>Ephemerality:</b> Corporations exist beyond time and space: they are legal creations that only exist on paper. They do not die a natural death; they outlive their own creators. They have no commitment to locale, employees or neighbors. Having no morality, no commitment to place and no physical nature (a factory, while being a physical entity, is not the corporation). A corporation can relocate all of its operations at the first sign of inconvenience—demanding employees, high taxes and restrictive environmental laws. The traditional ideal of community engagement is antithetical to corporation behavior. <br />
</li>
<li><b>Opposition to Nature:</b> Though individuals who work for corporations may personally love nature, corporations themselves, and corporate societies, are intrinsically committed to intervening in, altering and transforming nature. For corporations engaged in commodity manufacturing, profit comes from transmogrifying raw materials into saleable forms. Metals from the ground are converted into cars. <br />
Trees are converted into boards, houses, furniture and paper products. Oil is converted into energy. In all such energy, a piece of nature is taken from where it belongs and processed into a new form. All manufacturing depends upon intervention and reorganization of nature. After natural resources are used up in one part of the globe, the corporation moves on to another part. <br />
This transformation of nature occurs in all societies where manufacturing takes place. But in capitalist, corporate societies, the process is accelerated because capitalist societies and corporations must grow by extracting resources from nature and reprocessing them at an ever-quickening pace. Meanwhile, the consumption end of the cycle is also accelerated by corporations that have an interest in convincing people that commodities bring material satisfaction. Inner satisfaction, self-sufficiency, contentment in nature or a lack of a desire to acquire wealth are subversive to corporate goals. <br />
Banks finance the conversion of nature insurance companies help reduce the financial risks involved. On a finite planet, the process cannot continue indefinitely. <br />
</li>
<li><b>Homogenization:</b> American rhetoric claims that commodity society delivers greater choice and diversity than other societies. "Choice" in this context means product choice in the marketplace: many brands to choose from and diverse features on otherwise identical products. Actually, corporations have a stake in all of us living our lives in a similar manner, achieving our pleasures from things that we buy in a world where each family lives isolated in a single family home and has the same machines as every other family on the block. The "singles" phenomenon has proved even more productive than the nuclear family, since each person duplicates the consumption patterns of every other person. <br />
Lifestyles and economic systems that emphasize sharing commodities and work, that do not encourage commodity accumulation or that celebrate non-material values, are not good for business. People living collectively, sharing such "hard" goods as washing machines, cars and appliances (or worse, getting along without them) are outrageous to corporate commodity society. <br />
Native societies—which celebrate an utterly non-material relationship to life, the planet and the spirit—are regarded as backward, inferior and unenlightened. We are told that they envy the choices we have. To the degree these societies continue to exist, they represent a threat to the homogenization of worldwide markets and culture. Corporate society works hard to retrain such people in attitudes and values appropriate to corporate goals. <br />
In undeveloped parts of the world, satellite communication introduces Western television and advertising, while improvements in the technical infrastructure speed up the pace of development. Most of this activity is funded by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as agencies such as the US Agency for International Development, the Inter-American Bank and the Asian-American Bank, all of which serve multinational corporate enterprise. <br />
The ultimate goal of corporate multinationals was expressed in a revealing quote by the president of Nabisco Corporation: "One world of homogeneous consumption. . . [I am] looking forward to the day when Arabs and Americans, Latinos and Scandinavians, will be munching Ritz crackers as enthusiastically as they already drink Coke or brush their teeth with Colgate." Page 31 <br />
</li>
</ul>In the book, Trilateralism, editor Holly Sklar wrote: "Corporations not only advertise products, they promote lifestyles rooted in consumption, patterned largely after the United States.... [They] look forward to a post-national age in which [Western] social, economic and political values are transformed into universal values... a world economy in which all national economies beat to the rhythm of transnational corporate capitalism.... The Western way is the good way; national culture is inferior." <br />
Form Is Content Corporations are inherently bold, aggressive and competitive. Though they exist in a society that claims to operate by moral principles, they are structurally amoral. It is inevitable that they will dehumanize people who work for them and the overall society as well. They are disloyal to workers, including their own managers. Corporations can be disloyal to the communities they have been part of for many years. Corporations do not care about nations; they live beyond boundaries. They are intrinsically committed to destroying nature. And they have an inexorable, unabatable, voracious need to grow and to expand. In dominating other cultures, in digging up the Earth, corporations blindly follow the codes that have been built into them as if they were genes. <br />
We must abandon the idea that corporations can reform themselves. To ask corporate executives to behave in a morally defensible manner is absurd. Corporations, and the people within them, are following a system of logic that leads inexorably toward dominant behaviors. To ask corporations to behave otherwise is like asking an army to adopt pacifism.- Jerry Mander<br />
<blockquote>Corporation: n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.<br />
<b>—Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914.</b> </blockquote><b><br />
</b><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-34881601684756893992009-08-19T23:23:00.000-05:002009-08-19T23:24:32.496-05:00Kings of Leon- Crawl<object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/q4ko6i74dDs&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/q4ko6i74dDs&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object><br />This song is a skull crusher!!!!!!!!!!!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-14116476253610166572009-08-19T21:51:00.004-05:002009-08-19T22:19:33.152-05:00Is President Barack Obama a Socialist?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2pq-adh2vn7H726QKN-wC2ESODfs2oZcfXNfZlGtiSCT5haF0gKO6t5dLLaPV8OY4tzT3kFN6Qkho3SLthys1R8eB4Aha355yrJAhchj_Qp26O-3A_ypAt-7ysmv9JYbjIhyphenhyphena/s1600-h/pig.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 146px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2pq-adh2vn7H726QKN-wC2ESODfs2oZcfXNfZlGtiSCT5haF0gKO6t5dLLaPV8OY4tzT3kFN6Qkho3SLthys1R8eB4Aha355yrJAhchj_Qp26O-3A_ypAt-7ysmv9JYbjIhyphenhyphena/s200/pig.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371870033816016242" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />I have been considering my thoughts about the current American political scene quite a bit lately. One reason I have been contemplating all this is that I have been sent, frequently of late, sent a lot of negative e-mail and video clips about President Obama's supposedly Socialist agenda. Many of the YouTube style videos out on this have the comments either cut off or moderated pending approval. This is kind of funny when the videos are often accusatory about president Obama and/or representatives of his administration being asked and supposedly tough questions and then supposedly dodging answering them sufficiently.<br /><br />I observe that most of the strongest critics are not even listening to the answers- but rather are simply enjoying seeing the "tough" questions that they are obsessed about having asked be posed. When the answers come- many of these these critics simply ignore the answers they were given and insist that their questions were either ignored or that the answers were fallacious. People often see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. This is an innate feature of humanity it seems. Those that are observant will see many prime examples of this in the political discourse of nearly every single day right now.<br /><br />Here is what I have seen transpire over recent years.<br /><br />First, when former President George W. Bush wanted to implement his tax cuts for the wealthier American citizens and businesses, McCain opposed it and voted NO (neaux).<br />McCain said it would hurt the middle class and the less fortunate. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Go check the voting records</span>.<br /><br />During Obama's campaign for the presidency he explained that he was seeking to essentially roll those same tax cuts that John McCain opposed back and instead give them to the middle class and less fortunate (ironically, like Joe the plumber). Suddenly Obama was labeled a socialist and commie according to the McCain- Palin campaign and right wing America. This, I thought to myself, was an insult to the intelligence of EVERYONE.<br /><br />Secondly, there was this from the Constitution:<br /><br /><h3> AMENDMENT XVI</h3> Passed by Congress July 2, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913. <p>The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever sources derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. The income tax is collected yearly on a percentage basis. The higher the earnings, the higher the percentage collected from them. This changes article 1 section 2.<br /></p> So then, we have had a progressive income tax in America for many years. That's the way its been done for a couple of lifetimes. Considering that, this charge of socialism and the evils of wealth redistribution and revolutionary radicalism levied against now President Obama regarding his taxation plans doesn't rhave in teeth after all. Anybody that yet believes that President Obama is a total socialist/communist obviously has not really read the Communist Manifesto and does not really know what the definitions of socialism are. The best one can come up with is a few quotes by Karl Marx that seem to parallel some quotes by President Obama. I can produce quotes from any American leader in the last 200 plus years that parallel ideas by many other notorious dictators from Saddam to Stalin to Hitler. So what? Such comparisons are usually just political gamesmanship or shortcuts to actual analysis.<br /><br />I have discovered in my own studies and research that <span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><span class="text_exposed_show">President </span>Obama is not a socialist if you ask a socialist; Greg Pason, National Secretary of the Socialist Party USA and David Schaich, Socialist Party Campaign Clearinghouse Coordinator both say he's <span class="text_exposed_hide">...</span><span class="text_exposed_show">definitely not. </span>Schaich<span class="text_exposed_show"> says: “The idea that Barack Obama is socialist, or quasi-socialist, or semi-socialist, or socialist-light, or anything of the sort, is far-right nonsense. Barack Obama, like John McCain, is very much a ‘politician as usual,’fully committed to the continuation of the capitalist system and the expansion of its empire.” A socialist agenda (even a reformist one) would not prop up capitalism and capitalist economies or companies when they fail, but rather sieze upon the opportunity to radically transform the economy. None of President Obama's proposals or programs offer any perceptible threat to capitalism. These quotes and many others were easily found in cursory research of the actual question of whether president Obama is a socialist- rather than a blind acceptance of the precept that he is or a search for evidence to prove a pre determined premise.<br /><br /></span>I will also say that it is kind of hollow to be complaining about socialism and/or communism or using words like "liberal", "socialist" or "communist" as perjoratives when our homes and store shelves are jampacked with goods made in COMMUNIST China and nearly every dollar we spend at places like Wal-Mart fattens up China with its terrible human rights record and its RED, NUCLEAR CAPABLE ARMY. Unless you do not buy, sell, trade, consume or own anything from China you simply cannot gripe about socialism and/or communism without being a hypocrite.<br /><br />Now, communism or capitalism are both worldly systems flawed by fallible humanity and self interests and vested interests of the wealthy and/or powerful. Neither system is really, intrinsically more or less evil than the other. I have seen no convincing evidence that God is a capitalist. In fact, as As C.S. Lewis pointed <span class="text_exposed_hide"><span class="text_exposed_link"></span></span><span class="text_exposed_show">out in "Mere Christianity", a great deal of what is condemned nowadays as leftist or subversive is found in the teachings of Christ as in the Sermon on the Mount and also in the New Testament as written by Paul- like sharing, concern for fellow man, love of enemies, the peaceable as opposed to militaristic nature, the humility and meekness as opposed to crassness, the aversion to worry and fear, etc. The "religious right" which is participant in much of this cant and fear mongering and worry about the evils of socialism would do well to remember some of that.</span> Now get this straight, I am neither capitalist or communist- both systems are worldly and ultimately doomed to failure by human factors- not to mention the natural cycles of history and/or God's intervention and plan for human history, if one believes in that sort of thing (I do).<br /><br />With all of this hullabaloo about wealth redistribution, many "conservatives" seem to have forgotten what Sarah Palin did in Alaska: <p>Palin’s criticisms of President Obama’s “spread the wealth” remarks are ironic to put it nicely and plain old campaign Bull in the street vernacular. She recently characterized Alaska’s tax code in a very similar way. Just last month, in an interview with Philip Gourevitch of the New Yorker, Palin explained the windfall profits tax that <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008103325_alaskatax07.html">she imposed on the oil industry</a> in Alaska as a mechanism for ensuring that Alaskans “<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/09/22/080922fa_fact_gourevitch?printable=true">share in the wealth</a>” generated by oil companies: </p> <blockquote><p>And Alaska—we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. <strong>So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs. </strong>… It’s to maximize benefits for Alaskans, not an individual company, not some multinational somewhere, but for Alaskans.</p></blockquote> <p>In fact, <a href="http://gov.state.ak.us/aces/aces_about.php">Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share</a> (ACES) program, which manages the <a href="http://gov.state.ak.us/aces/aces_about.php">redistribution of oil wealth</a> in Alaska, brings in so much money that <a href="http://www.bankrate.com/yho/itax/edit/state/profiles/state_tax_Aka.asp">the state needs no income or sales tax</a>. In addition, this year ACES will provide every Alaskan with a check for an <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008103325_alaskatax07.html">estimated $3,200</a>. </p> <p>Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/11/03/081103taco_talk_hertzberg?printable=true">spreading the wealth and sharing it</a>?</p> <p>Perhaps the McCain- Palin supporters or "conservatives" see some important distinction between what Obama is talking about and what Palin has done to redistribute wealth in Alaska that I am missing it and I need a far greater intellect to tell the difference? I submit, though, that it is at least possible, if not very likely, that just as McCain and Palin were trying to win a campaign, many "conservatives" and/or "conservative" politicians are now simply trying to cost the current President some political capital so as to increase their chances at regaining seats of power and they are in fact self contradictory and just don't know it or don't care. I submit that ascertaining that really only only requires the analytic skills of say... a sincere fifth grader with a speck of curiosity, objectivity or self critical analysis.</p>It seems to me that the American system has long been a sort of hybrid of capitalism and so called socialist ideas, what with things like Social Security, Medicare, corporate subsidies and bailouts, welfare, and all sorts of other programs designed to make our system work more smoothly and not implode upon itself due to imbalances in it. "Liberals" certainly seem to idealize and overestimate the amount of actual good and prosperity can be achieved by way of good intentions and throwing money at problems. Conversely, "liberals" tend to underestimate how much the flaws of human nature can be suppressed using these same means. In the end, both "conservatives" and "liberals" both seem to have Utopian ideas about the perfectibility of human nature and how good things could be if they could just convert or eliminate each other or the "others" they fancy as "them". I myself am an idealist- but not as much of one as those who proudly wear the labels of "conservative" or "liberal.... I do try to stay grounded in a reality based world view.<p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-9131049191032811032009-08-17T08:42:00.007-05:002009-08-18T00:09:46.321-05:00Busting The Reaganomics Myth<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdh-RO0TiqhajS_WD3oT3v8N-cdRFHgRKsOh16AuXpdS7woub8_nZv7tk2zToRNBiFVnEGMqawZ5gB1zk7k1fCt68hCluiHhNpOz8N9OrFfT1NIm50kHu894NhgIrKCAYb0qMH/s1600-h/reagan-failure1231279718.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 290px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdh-RO0TiqhajS_WD3oT3v8N-cdRFHgRKsOh16AuXpdS7woub8_nZv7tk2zToRNBiFVnEGMqawZ5gB1zk7k1fCt68hCluiHhNpOz8N9OrFfT1NIm50kHu894NhgIrKCAYb0qMH/s400/reagan-failure1231279718.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5370928544865315698" border="0" /></a><br />What we have nowadays, rather than a “government”, is actually more of a dualistic system of adversarial fat cats whose primary activities, it would seem, are the acquisition of power, the maintaining of it, exchanging insults and being nasty to one another…<br /><br />This article, about a former Reagan admin. insider, will challenge all the conventional wisdom about "conservative" vs. "liberal" politics:<br /><br /><h3>"Trickle Down" economics was a "Trojan Horse" </h3> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/D_Stockm.jpg" alt="David Stockman" width="150" height="200" /><br /> David Stockman</p> <p>In the 1980’s Ronald Reagan ushered in a new era in American economics as he cut the top tax bracket from 70% down to 50% and then down again to 28%. In order to get support for doing this from the people, and also from politicians, a very crafty set of lies were produced. As David Stockman, then Reagan’s budget director, put it: giving small tax cuts across the board to all brackets was simply a <em>“Trojan Horse”</em> that was used to get approval for the huge top tax bracket cuts. “Trickle-Down” was a term used by Republicans that meant giving tax cuts to the rich. Stockman explains that: </p> <blockquote class="speechq"> <p>"It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory." </p> <p>"Yes, Stockman conceded, when one stripped away the new rhetoric emphasizing across-the-board cuts, the supply-side theory was really new clothes for the unpopular doctrine of the old Republican orthodoxy." </p> <p>"…the Reagan coalition prevailed again in the House and Congress passed the tax-cut legislation with a final frenzy of trading and bargaining. Again, Stockman was not exhilarated by the victory. On the contrary, it seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth, as though the democratic process had finally succeeded in shocking him by its intensity and its greed. Once again, Stockman participated in the trading -- special tax concessions for oil -- lease holders and real-estate tax shelters, and generous loopholes that virtually eliminated the corporate income tax. Stockman sat in the room and saw it happen." </p> <p>"'Do you realize the greed that came to the forefront?' Stockman asked with wonder. 'The hogs were really feeding. The greed level, the level of opportunism, just got out of control.'"</p> </blockquote> <p><u>The Education of David Stockman</u> 1981:</p> <p><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/budget/stockman.htm" target="_blank">http://www. theatlantic. com/politics/budget/stockman.htm</a></p> <p>Reagan's policies did more than simply cut income taxes. A large number of tax loopholes were written into the tax code that catered to special corporate interests. In fact many of the current scandals involving companies such as Enron are rooted in laws that were passed during the Reagan administration that gave these companies more legal legroom to work with and less oversight. </p> <p>In addition, the small “income-tax cuts” that were given to the middle and lower income tax brackets were countered with new taxes that were directed at middle and low income individuals, as former House Speaker Jim Wright said: </p> <blockquote class="speechq"> <p>Reagan's tax increases fell mainly on consumers, low- and middle-income people. Sales and excise levies. Reagan didn't call these taxes. They were, in his euphemistic lexicon, "user fees" and "revenue-enhancers."</p> </blockquote> <p>The most important issue though is that even if you take the Reagan “Trickle-Down” policy at face value it’s still horribly flawed as a policy that will provide economic growth that benefits all Americans. </p> <p>There is no realistic way for "Trickle-Down" economics to work to increase the income of the working classes of America. In fact I am certain that the developers of the theory of "Trickle-Down" economics were fully aware of this and that "Trickle-Down" has in fact worked as intended. This means that the intent behind implementing "Trickle-Down" was to benefit the wealthiest Americans at the expense of working class Americans. "Trickle-Down" hasn't failed, as many modern economists have suggested, it has succeeded in its goals, which is the increase of economic inequality and the shift of a greater portion of America's wealth into the hands of the wealthiest Americans. </p> <p>I'll show you exactly why "Trickle-Down" can never really trickle down, and I'll expose the logic that was used to trick Americans into supporting the idea that freeing up money for the wealthy could somehow benefit the poor and middle class. </p> <p>I'm going to use a very simplistic example to demonstrate the principles of "Trickle-Down" economics. No, this is not a 100% accurate model of our economic system, and it assumes that "all other aspects of the economy are equal," but the major principles are represented. I will give "Trickle-Down" the benefit of the doubt and assume that it actually does create jobs in my example. </p> <p>We have a room with 5 people in it. The total value of all the money in the room is $10. 00. The money is apportioned as in the table below. </p> <div class="centerimage"> <table class="data"> <tbody> <tr> <td class="c4" colspan="3" valign="top" width="163"> <p>Total Value $10. 00</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c5" valign="top" width="55"> <p class="MsoNormal">Jim</p> </td> <td class="c6" valign="top" width="60"> <p>$4. 00</p> </td> <td class="c7" valign="top" width="48"> <p class="MsoNormal">40%</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c5" valign="top" width="55"> <p class="MsoNormal">Susan</p> </td> <td class="c6" valign="top" width="60"> <p>$3. 00</p> </td> <td class="c7" valign="top" width="48"> <p class="MsoNormal">30%</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c5" valign="top" width="55"> <p class="MsoNormal">Tom</p> </td> <td class="c6" valign="top" width="60"> <p>$2. 00</p> </td> <td class="c7" valign="top" width="48"> <p class="MsoNormal">20%</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c5" valign="top" width="55"> <p class="MsoNormal">Amy</p> </td> <td class="c6" valign="top" width="60"> <p>$1. 00</p> </td> <td class="c7" valign="top" width="48"> <p class="MsoNormal">10%</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c5" valign="top" width="55"> <p class="MsoNormal">Bill</p> </td> <td class="c6" valign="top" width="60"> <p>$0. 00</p> </td> <td class="c7" valign="top" width="48"> <p class="MsoNormal">0%</p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> <p>Sam enters the room and says that he has $10. 00 that he wants to give to Jim. This makes everyone else unhappy of course and everyone says that they will beat Jim up if he takes the money. Sam then proposes a solution. He says that if everyone allows him to give Jim $6. 00 he will give $1. 00 to everyone else in the room. This sounds pretty good to everyone so they agree to let Jim receive the money. So, after Jim gets the money and everyone gets a dollar this is what the monetary breakdown of the room looks like:</p> <div class="centerimage"> <table class="data"> <tbody> <tr> <td class="c4" colspan="3" valign="top" width="163"> <p>Total Value $20. 00</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c5" valign="top" width="55"> <p class="MsoNormal">Jim</p> </td> <td class="c6" valign="top" width="60"> <p>$10. 00</p> </td> <td class="c7" valign="top" width="48"> <p class="MsoNormal">50%</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c5" valign="top" width="55"> <p class="MsoNormal">Susan</p> </td> <td class="c6" valign="top" width="60"> <p>$4. 00</p> </td> <td class="c7" valign="top" width="48"> <p class="MsoNormal">20%</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c5" valign="top" width="55"> <p class="MsoNormal">Tom</p> </td> <td class="c6" valign="top" width="60"> <p>$3. 00</p> </td> <td class="c7" valign="top" width="48"> <p class="MsoNormal">15%</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c5" valign="top" width="55"> <p class="MsoNormal">Amy</p> </td> <td class="c6" valign="top" width="60"> <p>$2. 00</p> </td> <td class="c7" valign="top" width="48"> <p class="MsoNormal">10%</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="c5" valign="top" width="55"> <p class="MsoNormal">Bill</p> </td> <td class="c6" valign="top" width="60"> <p>$1. 00</p> </td> <td class="c7" valign="top" width="48"> <p class="MsoNormal">5%</p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> <p>As you can see, due to inflation most of the other people in the room either lost value or saw no real gain. As you can also see the size of the "economy" did in fact grow as the theory of "Trickle-Down" proposes, but the growth only benefited one person, Jim, and arguably Bill. Even though the economy grew overall most of the people in the room saw a loss of value. This is because the value of money is relative. It's relative to many factors, but one is how much money is in the system. If you have 1 dollar out of 10 then its worth more than 1 dollar out of 1,000. How wealthy you are in terms of dollars is not measured by the number of dollars you have, it is measured by the <em>share</em> of dollars that you have out of the total number of dollars in the system. </p> <p>Now, your opinion of Sam and Jim can be one of only two options. </p> <p>1) Jim and Sam were naive and actually thought that they were going to be helping everyone with their actions; the fact that the actions had a negative effect on everyone else was an accident. </p> <p>2) Jim and Sam knew that taking the $10. 00, keeping $6. 00 of it, and giving $1. 00 to everyone else wasn't going to help anyone but Jim, and they tricked everyone for the purpose of self gain using the $1. 00 "gift" to the under-classes as a "Trojan Horse" to support the action. </p> <p>As in the example above there are three basic possibilities for economic growth (and many variations in between): Either the growth of the economy can be spread equally among everyone, the growth of the economy can be shifted towards the bottom of the population in which case the poor see a rise in relative value, becoming "less poor," or the growth can be shifted toward the top in which case the rich see a rise in relative value, becoming "more rich. "</p> <p>The general economic policy of "Trickle-Down" that was put in place by Reagan has gone fundamentally unchanged since it was adopted by the country in the 1980s. The claim of Reagan was that "all boats would rise" by giving huge tax cuts for the wealthy. This did not happen. The majority of boats stayed the same or sank, while only between 5% and 1% of the boats actually rose. </p> <p>The effects of "Trickle-Down" policy are evident. As would be expected from the policy, the largest beneficiaries of the "Trickle-Down" system have been the wealthy. </p> <p>Individual earnings inequality as reported by the U. S. Census Bureau was falling or stable from the 1960s through the 1970s, however, beginning in the 1980s, along with the economic reforms of "Trickle-Down" policy, income inequality began to rise and has continued to rise dramatically ever since, as shown in the figure below. </p> <p>(Data for the graphs below comes from the US Census Bureau)</p> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/ineq.gif" width="505" height="309" /><br /> <a href="http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/histinctb.html" target="_blank">http://www. census. gov/hhes/income/histinc/histinctb.html</a></p> <p>Although there was a huge increase in real income for average Americans between World War II and the 1970s the income of the average American male has gone essentially unchanged since 1970 as the figure below indicates. Income for females though has continued to rise. <span class="bold">What is significant about this graph is that between 1980 and present (2003) the incomes of the top 2% of American wage earners has gone up dramatically despite the stagnation of the income of average Americans. </span></p> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/medianinc.gif" width="532" height="351" /></p> <p>This graph shows both average hourly earnings and the minimum wage together in 2001 dollars. As you can see both the minimum wage and average hourly earnings reached their peak in the 1960s and 1970s. This graph does not go back any farther than 1960, but for all practical purposes the peak shown here in 1973 is the historical peak for hourly earnings in America. See the source data in the link below for details on hourly earnings. </p> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/wageminandave.gif" width="524" height="436" /><br /> <a href="http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2000/sheets/b047.xls" target="_blank">http://w3. access. gpo. gov/usbudget/fy2000/sheets/b047. xls</a></p> <p>As we can see below, the percentage of people in poverty who are also working full time has gone up steadily since the 1970s, and it also underscores an important point, as all of these graphs do, which is that the fundamental economic policy of the Reagan administration has gone essentially unchanged, even by President Clinton.</p> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/workingpoor.gif" width="492" height="301" /><br /> <a href="http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/histpov/hstpov18.html" target="_blank">http://www. census. gov/hhes/poverty/histpov/hstpov18.html</a></p> <p>Today we are still operating under a Supply Side economic model. In fact, even though the average income tax rate paid in America today is roughly the same as it was in 1979, the average income tax rate for the top 1% is less than it was in 1979. The graph below shows the actual percentage of income paid to all (Income, Social Security, Corporate, Capital gains, and Excise) Federal taxes per the various groups. During the Regan era, you can see that total Federal taxes on the lowest income groups actually went up. Clinton continued to maintain the Supply Side model that was established under Reagan. By 2000 the Top 1% still maintained significantly lower taxes compared to the pre-Reagan era, but taxes on "upper middle class" earners had increased and taxes on the middle class have stayed about the same as they were just prior to Reagan's entry into office, which is higher than they ever were prior to the 1970s.</p> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/fedtax.gif" width="887" height="419" /><br /> <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4514&sequence=3&from=0" target="_blank">http://www. cbo. gov/showdoc. cfm?index=4514&sequence=3&from=0</a></p> <p>As the figures below indicate, the degree of increase in income for the wealthiest Americans has far outpaced the majority of the population, a trend that also started with the Reagan Presidency. A large factor in this increase for the top 2% has been capital gains. </p> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/houseincshare.gif" width="597" height="355" /></p> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/aftertaxinc97.gif" width="617" height="361" /><br /> <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=3089&sequence=11" target="_blank">http://www. cbo. gov/showdoc. cfm?index=3089&sequence=11</a></p> <p>The two graphs above show similar data, but there are some important differences. Obviously the first graph shows a wider range of data in terms of the years that it covers, but the first graph also shows the data for total household incomes, which have increased among the bottom quintiles in large part because of the increase in two or three worker households, but the bottom graph shows the data adjusted for household size. In addition the bottom graph obviously also shows data for the top 1%, whereas the top graph does not, and, perhaps most significantly, the bottom graph shows <em>after tax</em> income, so it is showing what was taken home after all federal taxes were paid. </p> <p>This next graph shows an even longer range view. This shows after tax income in 2000 dollars going back to 1913 for the top 1% and the average for the remaining bottom 99%.</p> <p class="centerimage"><a href="http://www.aflcio.org/corporateamerica/paywatch/" target="_blank"><img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/chartpay.gif" width="415" height="219" /></a><br /> <a href="http://www.aflcio.org/corporateamerica/paywatch/" target="_blank">http://www. aflcio. org/corporateamerica/paywatch/</a></p> <p>After World War II significant efforts were made to ensure prosperity for all Americans. These efforts dramatically reduced poverty rates and helped to build the strong middle-class that America has become famous for. However, as the graph below shows, significant changes began with the Reagan presidency. </p> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/familyshares.gif" width="665" height="386" /></p> <p>Between 1965 and 2001 the number of multi-worker households has increased dramatically. In fact the slight increase in income that is shown for the 1<sup>st</sup> through 4<sup>th</sup> quintiles in the graph titled Average Household Income by Quintile (a quintile represents 1/5<sup>th</sup> of the population) is primarily attributed to an increase in the number of households with two or more workers supporting the household. Individual male income for the 1<sup>st</sup> through 4<sup>th</sup> quintiles has actually gone down or stayed the same since the 1980s when adjusted for inflation. </p> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/marriedwork.gif" width="503" height="373" /></p> <p>In 1965 27% of the full time workforce was female, by 2001 that number had risen to 41%. What has allowed the average American household to continue to maintain a good standard of living is an increase in multi-worker households and a decrease in the number of children that families have, as well as a large increase in the trade deficit, with increasing numbers of American goods being made in third world countries. </p> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/marriedwife.gif" width="553" height="393" /></p> <p>The issue is that the economic policies of the Reagan administration were designed to primarily benefit wealthy Americans. At the time a lot of smoke and mirrors were used to convince average Americans that these policies would help them as well. A similar set of lies has been used by those, like Steve Forbes, who promote a flat tax system. </p> <p>What the "Trickle-Down"/Supply Side policies of the Reagan administration were designed to do was to increase the amount of money available to wealthy Americans for investing and developing businesses. This was intended to create an increase in production of products and services and hence and increase in new jobs. The reason that the policy is called Supply Side, is because the supply of goods increases before there is a demand for goods. So, in that case, the supply of goods is intended to then spark demand, resulting in economic growth. </p> <p>This use of Supply Side policy led to a huge increase in consumerism and the use of credit. An environment of consumerism was created in American society through the media via advertisements, movies, and television shows, etc. that promoted consumerism. Consumers though, did not have the money to fulfill the desires created by society so debt was used to participate in the economy. Restrictions on credit were loosened under the Reagan administration making it easier for individuals to gain credit lines because the use of credit was essential to growing the economy because real wages were not going up for the average American, yet it was essential that the average American increase spending in order to fuel the economy. This situation fueled female entry into the workforce as more households require two workers to maintain their standard of living. </p> <p>The result of this is that American household debt has been constantly hitting new highs since the 1980s as can be seen in the graph below provided by Michael Hodges. </p> <p class="centerimage"> <img src="http://rationalrevolution.net/images/THIS_W4.GIF" width="294" height="362" /><br /> <a href="http://mwhodges.home.att.net/nat-debt/debt-nat-a.htm" target="_blank">http://mwhodges. home. att. net/nat-debt/debt-nat-a.htm</a></p> <p>The truth is that "Trickle-Down" was never intended to help middle income and poor Americans; it was intended to help the wealthy and Corporate America. </p> <p>The economic policies of the Reagan era increased the trade deficit and provided easier ways for companies to "hide" money.</p> <p>1980 the top 1% of tax filers received 8. 45% of American AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) and in 2000 that figure had risen to 20. 81% of the national AGI. Today the over 50% of the national income goes to the wealthiest 20% of Americans. This is the first time since 1935 that such a large portion of the national income has gone to such a small portion of the population. In 1967 the wealthiest 20% only accounted for 43% of the nation's income. The trend began in 1982. Between 1967 and 1982 middle-income households were gaining a larger share of the economy. What this means is that between 1982 and 2001 the bottom 80% of Americans have lost share in the nation's economy. This was the inevitable result of Reaganomics. It was an intended result. Political control and economic control go hand in hand. If the control of the economy is not in the hands of the majority of Americans then neither is political control. </p> <p>For more on taxation and income in America see:</p> <p><a href="http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/american_income_taxation.htm" target="_blank">In Depth Analysis of American Income and Taxation</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-957390067510889362009-07-15T16:38:00.003-05:002009-07-15T16:43:10.443-05:00The New Rulers of the World- John Pilger<embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-7932485454526581006&hl=en&fs=true" style="width:400px;height:326px" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> </embed><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-62823031134209502512009-05-25T11:38:00.003-05:002009-05-25T11:55:12.017-05:00America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsTp5HM1NSEV8pYf9blOfuaDef0io49Jw__CwhczdG7H3zFB8Ijnnb2bXB5f_C2Qmsat9TyM3YpQraEVMbEV1VDZG4uQ0h1y60hg-x-3J1z2HEaH_Mx3cyk5qiRZeDjF80kXTu/s1600-h/decline.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 381px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsTp5HM1NSEV8pYf9blOfuaDef0io49Jw__CwhczdG7H3zFB8Ijnnb2bXB5f_C2Qmsat9TyM3YpQraEVMbEV1VDZG4uQ0h1y60hg-x-3J1z2HEaH_Mx3cyk5qiRZeDjF80kXTu/s400/decline.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339805675277182034" border="0" /></a>Posted on Mar 23, 2009<h6 class="date">By Chris Hedges</h6>In decaying societies, politics become theater. The elite, who have hollowed out the democratic system to serve the corporate state, rule through image and presentation. They express indignation at AIG bonuses and empathy with a working class they have spent the last few decades disenfranchising, and make promises to desperate families that they know will never be fulfilled. Once the spotlights go on they read their lines with appropriate emotion. Once the lights go off, they make sure Goldman Sachs and a host of other large corporations have the hundreds of billions of dollars in losses they incurred playing casino capitalism repaid with taxpayer money.<br />We live in an age of moral nihilism. We have trashed our universities, turning them into vocational factories that produce corporate drones and chase after defense-related grants and funding. The humanities, the discipline that forces us to stand back and ask the broad moral questions of meaning and purpose, that challenges the validity of structures, that trains us to be self-reflective and critical of all cultural assumptions, have withered. Our press, which should promote such intellectual and moral questioning, confuses bread and circus with news and refuses to give a voice to critics who challenge not this bonus payment or that bailout but the pernicious superstructure of the corporate state itself. We kneel before a cult of the self, elaborately constructed by the architects of our consumer society, which dismisses compassion, sacrifice for the less fortunate, and honesty. The methods used to attain what we want, we are told by reality television programs, business schools and self-help gurus, are irrelevant. Success, always defined in terms of money and power, is its own justification. The capacity for manipulation is what is most highly prized. And our moral collapse is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse.<br /><br />Theodor Adorno in 1967 wrote an essay called “Education After Auschwitz.” He argued that the moral corruption that made the Holocaust possible remained “largely unchanged.” He wrote that “the mechanisms that render people capable of such deeds” must be made visible. Schools had to teach more than skills. They had to teach values. If they did not, another Auschwitz was always possible.<br /><br />“All political instruction finally should be centered upon the idea that Auschwitz should never happen again,” he wrote. “This would be possible only when it devotes itself openly, without fear of offending any authorities, to this most important of problems. To do this, education must transform itself into sociology, that is, it must teach about the societal play of forces that operates beneath the surface of political forms.”<br /><br />Our elites are imploding. Their fraud and corruption are slowly being exposed as the disparity between their words and our reality becomes wider and more apparent. The rage that is bubbling up across the country will have to be countered by the elite with less subtle forms of control. But unless we grasp the “societal play of forces that operates beneath the surface of political forms” we will be cursed with a more ruthless form of corporate power, one that does away with artifice and the seduction of a consumer society and instead wields power through naked repression.<br /><br />I had lunch a few days ago in Toronto with Henry Giroux, professor of English and cultural studies at McMaster University in Canada and who for many years was the Waterbury Chair Professor at Penn State. Giroux, who has been one of the most prescient and vocal critics of the corporate state and the systematic destruction of American education, was driven to the margins of academia because he kept asking the uncomfortable questions Adorno knew should be asked by university professors. He left the United States in 2004 for Canada.<br /><br />“The emergence of what Eisenhower had called the military-industrial-academic complex had secured a grip on higher education that may have exceeded even what he had anticipated and most feared,” Giroux, who wrote “The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex,” told me. “Universities, in general, especially following the events of 9/11, were under assault by Christian nationalists, reactionary neoconservatives and market fundamentalists for allegedly representing the weak link in the war on terrorism. Right-wing students were encouraged to spy on the classes of progressive professors, the corporate grip on the university was tightening as made clear not only in the emergence of business models of governance, but also in the money being pumped into research and programs that blatantly favored corporate interests. And at Penn State, where I was located at the time, the university had joined itself at the hip with corporate and military power. Put differently, corporate and Pentagon money was now funding research projects and increasingly knowledge was being militarized in the service of developing weapons of destruction, surveillance and death. Couple this assault with the fact that faculty were becoming irrelevant as an oppositional force. Many disappeared into discourses that threatened no one, some simply were too scared to raise critical issues in their classrooms for fear of being fired, and many simply no longer had the conviction to uphold the university as a democratic public sphere.”<br /><br /><p style="font-size: small;"> Frank Donoghue, the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Professors-Corporate-University-Humanities/dp/0823228606/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237779243&sr=1-1">“The Last Professors: </a> The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities,” details how liberal arts education has been dismantled. Any form of learning that is not strictly vocational has at best been marginalized and in many schools has been abolished. Students are steered away from asking the broad, disturbing questions that challenge the assumptions of the power elite or an economic system that serves the corporate state. This has led many bright graduates into the arms of corporate entities they do not examine morally or ethically. They accept the assumptions of corporate culture because they have never been taught to think.</p> <p style="font-size: small;">Only 8 percent of U.S. college graduates now receive <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/02/25/books/20090225_HUMAN_GRFK.html"> degrees in the humanities</a>, about 110,000 students. Between 1970 and 2001, bachelor’s degrees in English declined from 7.6 percent to 4 percent, as did degrees in foreign languages (2.4 percent to 1 percent), mathematics (3 percent to 1 percent), social science and history (18.4 percent to 10 percent). Bachelor’s degrees in business, which promise the accumulation of wealth, have skyrocketed. Business majors since 1970-1971 have risen from 13.6 percent of the graduation population to 21.7 percent. Business has now replaced education, which has fallen from 21 percent to 8.2 percent, as the most popular major. </p> <p style="font-size: small;">The values that sustain an open society have been crushed. A university, as <a href="http://www.johnralstonsaul.com/menu_en.html"> John Ralston Saul</a> writes, now “actively seeks students who suffer from the appropriate imbalance and then sets out to exaggerate it. Imagination, creativity, moral balance, knowledge, common sense, a social view—all these things wither. Competitiveness, having an ever-ready answer, a talent for manipulating situations—all these things are encouraged to grow. As a result amorality also grows; as does extreme aggressivity when they are questioned by outsiders; as does a confusion between the nature of good versus having a ready answer to all questions. Above all, what is encouraged is the growth of an undisciplined form of self-interest, in which winning is what counts.”</p> <p style="font-size: small;">This moral nihilism would have terrified Adorno. He knew that radical evil was possible only with the collaboration of a timid, cowed and confused population, a system of propaganda and a press that offered little more than spectacle and entertainment and an educational system that did not transmit transcendent values or nurture the capacity for individual conscience. He feared a culture that banished the anxieties and complexities of moral choice and embraced a childish hyper-masculinity, one championed by ruthless capitalists (think of the brutal backstabbing and deception cheered by TV shows like “Survivor”) and Hollywood action heroes like the governor of California.</p> <p style="font-size: small;">“This educational ideal of hardness, in which many may believe without reflecting about it, is utterly wrong,” Adorno wrote. “The idea that virility consists in the maximum degree of endurance long ago became a screen-image for masochism that, as psychology has demonstrated, aligns itself all too easily with sadism.” </p> <p style="font-size: small;">Sadism is as much a part of popular culture as it is of corporate culture. It dominates pornography, runs like an electric current through reality television and trash-talk programs and is at the core of the compliant, corporate collective. Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice. And it has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our lack of compassion for the homeless, our poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed and the sick.</p> <p style="font-size: small;">“The political and economic forces fuelling such crimes against humanity—whether they are unlawful wars, systemic torture, practiced indifference to chronic starvation and disease or genocidal acts—are always mediated by educational forces,” Giroux said. “Resistance to such acts cannot take place without a degree of knowledge and self-reflection. We have to name these acts and transform moral outrage into concrete attempts to prevent such human violations from taking place in the first place.”</p> <p style="font-size: small;"> The single most important quality needed to resist evil is moral autonomy. Moral autonomy, as Immanuel Kant wrote, is possible only through reflection, self-determination and the courage not to cooperate. </p> <p style="font-size: small;"> Moral autonomy is what the corporate state, with all its attacks on liberal institutions and “leftist” professors, has really set out to destroy. The corporate state holds up as our ideal what Adorno called “the manipulative character.” The manipulative character has superb organizational skills and the inability to have authentic human experiences. He or she is an emotional cripple and driven by an overvalued realism. The manipulative character is a systems manager. He or she exclusively trained to sustain the corporate structure, which is why our elites are wasting mind-blowing amounts of our money on corporations like Goldman Sachs and AIG. “He makes a cult of action, activity, of so-called efficiency as such which reappears in the advertising image of the active person,” Adorno wrote of this personality type. These manipulative characters, people like Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, AIG’s Edward Liddy and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, along with most of our ruling class, have used corporate money and power to determine the narrow parameters of the debate in our classrooms, on the airwaves and in the halls of Congress while they looted the country. </p> <p style="font-size: small;"> “It is especially difficult to fight against it,” warned Adorno, “because those manipulative people, who actually are incapable of true experience, for that very reason manifest an unresponsiveness that associates them with certain mentally ill or psychotic characters, namely schizoids.”</p> <span class="whitebox"> <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090323_america_is_in_need_of_a_moral_bailout/"> </a></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-1620939173561492742009-05-25T11:22:00.003-05:002009-05-25T11:36:51.916-05:00Editorial: Unchristian Response from American Christians<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheTkomV82Ub0cCbsj7gpsMzk1TAjRlBBg17cKCRX1OwNg5UinZktpz9yUq-wdKxzIWmaTwyGy90xUFyIOMk5AAcvgxyTGdivAPbjqznqeiHPVXJebiiJ962f25H1vvyjFxZTdt/s1600-h/shockandAwe.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 241px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheTkomV82Ub0cCbsj7gpsMzk1TAjRlBBg17cKCRX1OwNg5UinZktpz9yUq-wdKxzIWmaTwyGy90xUFyIOMk5AAcvgxyTGdivAPbjqznqeiHPVXJebiiJ962f25H1vvyjFxZTdt/s400/shockandAwe.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339801132310191538" /></a><br /><br /><table class="contentpaneopen"><tbody><tr><td class="contentheading" width="100%"><a href="http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index.php/civil-liberties/319-leonard-pitts-jr" class="contentpagetitle"><br /></a> <div class="small"> <span class="small"> Written by Leonard Pitts Jr. </span> </div> <div class="createdate"> Thursday, 07 May 2009 09:19 </div> </td> <td class="buttonheading" width="100%" align="right"> <a href="http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index.php/civil-liberties/319-leonard-pitts-jr?format=pdf" title="PDF" onclick="window.open(this.href,'win2','status=no,toolbar=no,scrollbars=yes,titlebar=no,menubar=no,resizable=yes,width=640,height=480,directories=no,location=no'); return false;" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/images/M_images/pdf_button.png" alt="PDF" /></a> </td> <td class="buttonheading" width="100%" align="right"> <a href="http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index.php/civil-liberties/319-leonard-pitts-jr?tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default&page=" title="Print" onclick="window.open(this.href,'win2','status=no,toolbar=no,scrollbars=yes,titlebar=no,menubar=no,resizable=yes,width=640,height=480,directories=no,location=no'); return false;" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/images/M_images/printButton.png" alt="Print" /></a> </td> <td class="buttonheading" width="100%" align="right"> <a href="http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index.php/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&link=aHR0cDovL3d3dy52ZXRlcmFuc2ZvcmNvbW1vbnNlbnNlLm9yZy9pbmRleC5waHAvY2l2aWwtbGliZXJ0aWVzLzMxOS1sZW9uYXJkLXBpdHRzLWpy" title="E-mail" onclick="window.open(this.href,'win2','width=400,height=350,menubar=yes,resizable=yes'); return false;"><img src="http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/images/M_images/emailButton.png" alt="E-mail" /></a> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table class="contentpaneopen"> <tbody><tr> <td class="article_indent" valign="top"> <p>May 5, 2009 - Between 1933 and 1945, as a series of restrictive laws, brutal pogroms and mass deportations culminated in the slaughter of 6 million Jews, the Christian church, with isolated exceptions, watched in silence.</p> <p><br />Between 1955 and 1968, as the forces of oppression used terrorist bombings, police violence and kangaroo courts to deny African-Americans their freedom, the Christian church, with isolated exceptions, watched in silence.<br /><br />Beginning in 1980, as a mysterious and deadly new disease called AIDS began to rage through the homosexual community like an unchecked fire, the Christian church, with isolated exceptions, watched in silence.<br /><br />So who can be surprised by the new Pew report?<br /><br />Specifically, it's from the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, and it surveys Americans' attitudes on the torture of suspected terrorists. Pew found that 49 percent of the nation believes torture is at least sometimes justifiable. Slice that number by religious affiliation, though, and things get interesting. It turns out the religiously unaffiliated are the “least” likely (40 percent) to support torture, but that the more you attend church, the more likely you are to condone it. Among racial/religious groups, white evangelical Protestants were far and away the most likely (62 percent) to support inflicting pain as a tool of interrogation.<br /><br />You'd think people who claim connection to a higher morality would be the ones most likely to take the lonely, principled stand. But you need only look at history to see how seldom that has been the case, how frequently my people -- Christians -- acquiesce to expediency and fail to look beyond the immediate. Never mind that looking beyond the immediate pretty much constitutes a Christian's entire job description.<br /><br />In the Bible it says, “Perfect love casts out fear.” What we see so often in people of faith, though, is an imperfect love that embraces fear, that lets us live contentedly in our moral comfort zones, doing spiritual busywork and clucking pieties, things that let you feel good, but never require you to put anything at risk, take a leap, make that lonely stand. Again, there are exceptions, but they prove the rule, which is that in our smug belief that God is on our side, we often fail to ask if we are on His.<br /><br />So it is often left to a few iconoclasts -- Oskar Schindler, the war profiteer who rescued 1,200 Jews in Poland; James Reeb, the Unitarian Universalist minister murdered for African-American voting rights in Alabama; Princess Diana, the British royal who courted international opprobrium for simply touching a person with AIDS in Britain -- to do the dangerous and moral thing while the great body of Christendom watches in silence.<br /><br />Now there is this debate over the morality of torture in which putative people of faith say they can live with a little blood (someone else's) and a little pain (also someone else's) if it helps maintain the illusion of security (theirs), and never mind such niceties as guilt or innocence.<br /><br />Thus it was left to Jon Stewart, the cheerfully irreligious host of “The Daily Show,” to speak last week of the need to be willingly bound by rules of decency and civilization or else be indistinguishable from the terrorists. “I understand the impulse,” he said. “I wanted them to clone bin Laden so that we could kill one a year at halftime at the Super Bowl. ... I understand bloodlust, I understand revenge; I understand all those feelings. I also understand that this country is better than me.”<br /><br />So there you have it: a statement of principle and higher morality from a late-night comic. That Christians are not lining up to say the same is glaringly ironic in light of what happened to a Middle Eastern man who was arrested by the government, imprisoned and tortured. Eventually he was even executed, though he was innocent of any crime.<br /><br />His name was Jesus. </p><p><a href="http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_12300471"><strong>The Salt Lake Tribune</strong></a></p></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-52143235675462900812009-05-21T20:15:00.000-05:002009-05-21T20:19:15.090-05:00Lawrence O'donnell Calls Cheney Speech Sleazy And An Abomination<object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/je5e6_vGIvg&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/je5e6_vGIvg&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-41655162330636209162009-05-21T19:24:00.004-05:002009-05-21T20:00:25.607-05:00Obama Vs. Cheney on Guantanamo and Waterboarding<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHEOPWTU6M0xHqQVKjoFh4TN3REfVKhhn1nOnrvoujJz7fQ5TuLvf7WWzrazvdJU0hWvgCxp2P8HG-JyXOYrKlMDRmX3Av9tNeHtuwnF2EphbPHKzcPkQ9OLvVTkCKUzoFG2oO/s1600-h/cheney_obama_.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 297px; height: 223px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHEOPWTU6M0xHqQVKjoFh4TN3REfVKhhn1nOnrvoujJz7fQ5TuLvf7WWzrazvdJU0hWvgCxp2P8HG-JyXOYrKlMDRmX3Av9tNeHtuwnF2EphbPHKzcPkQ9OLvVTkCKUzoFG2oO/s400/cheney_obama_.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5338446860970375426" /></a><br /><br />Here are the transcripts of first, President Obama's speech and then Dick Cheney's rebuttal speech that each address the questions about Guantanamo Bay detention facility and the use of waterboarding, given today, May, 21, 2009. I generally agree with President Obama's approach and philosophy on these matters and conversely have MANY problems and issues with Mr. Cheney's truth engineering. I am sure I will get around to dissecting his screed soon enough.<br /><br />Barack Obama:<br /><br />These are extraordinary times for our country. We are confronting an historic economic crisis. We are fighting two wars. We face a range of challenges that will define the way that Americans will live in the 21st century. There is no shortage of work to be done, or responsibilities to bear.<br /><br />And we have begun to make progress. Just this week, we have taken steps to protect American consumers and homeowners, and to reform our system of government contracting so that we better protect our people while spending our money more wisely. The engines of our economy are slowly beginning to turn, and we are working toward historic reform of health care and energy. I welcome the hard work that has been done by the Congress on these and other issues.<br /><br />In the midst of all these challenges, however, my single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe. That is the first thing that I think about when I wake up in the morning. It is the last thing that I think about when I go to sleep at night.<br /><br />This responsibility is only magnified in an era when an extremist ideology threatens our people, and technology gives a handful of terrorists the potential to do us great harm. We are less than eight years removed from the deadliest attack on American soil in our history. We know that al Qaeda is actively planning to attack us again. We know that this threat will be with us for a long time, and that we must use all elements of our power to defeat it.<br /><br />Already, we have taken several steps to achieve that goal. For the first time since 2002, we are providing the necessary resources and strategic direction to take the fight to the extremists who attacked us on 9/11 in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We are investing in the 21st century military and intelligence capabilities that will allow us to stay one step ahead of a nimble enemy. We have re-energized a global non-proliferation regime to deny the world’s most dangerous people access to the world’s deadliest weapons, and launched an effort to secure all loose nuclear materials within four years. We are better protecting our border, and increasing our preparedness for any future attack or natural disaster. We are building new partnerships around the world to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates. And we have renewed American diplomacy so that we once again have the strength and standing to truly lead the world.<br /><br />These steps are all critical to keeping America secure. But I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we also cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values. The documents that we hold in this very hall — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights — are not simply words written into aging parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality and dignity in the world.<br /><br />I stand here today as someone whose own life was made possible by these documents. My father came to our shores in search of the promise that they offered. My mother made me rise before dawn to learn of their truth when I lived as a child in a foreign land. My own American journey was paved by generations of citizens who gave meaning to those simple words — “to form a more perfect union.” I have studied the Constitution as a student; I have taught it as a teacher; I have been bound by it as a lawyer and legislator. I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, and as a citizen, I know that we must never — ever — turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake.<br /><br />I make this claim not simply as a matter of idealism. We uphold our most cherished values not only because doing so is right, but because it strengthens our country and keeps us safe. Time and again, our values have been our best national security asset — in war and peace; in times of ease and in eras of upheaval.<br /><br />Fidelity to our values is the reason why the United States of America grew from a small string of colonies under the writ of an empire to the strongest nation in the world.<br /><br />It is the reason why enemy soldiers have surrendered to us in battle, knowing they’d receive better treatment from America’s armed forces than from their own government.<br /><br />It is the reason why America has benefited from strong alliances that amplified our power, and drawn a sharp and moral contrast with our adversaries.<br /><br />It is the reason why we’ve been able to overpower the iron fist of fascism, outlast the iron curtain of communism, and enlist free nations and free people everywhere in common cause and common effort.<br /><br />From Europe to the Pacific, we have been a nation that has shut down torture chambers and replaced tyranny with the rule of law. That is who we are. And where terrorists offer only the injustice of disorder and destruction, America must demonstrate that our values and institutions are more resilient than a hateful ideology.<br /><br />After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era — that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law; that our government would need new tools to protect the American people, and that these tools would have to allow us to prevent attacks instead of simply prosecuting those who try to carry them out.<br /><br />Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that — too often — our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us — Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens — fell silent.<br /><br />In other words, we went off course. And this is not my assessment alone. It was an assessment that was shared by the American people, who nominated candidates for President from both major parties who, despite our many differences, called for a new approach — one that rejected torture, and recognized the imperative of closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay.<br /><br />Now let me be clear: we are indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates. We do need to update our institutions to deal with this threat. But we must do so with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process; in checks and balances and accountability. For reasons that I will explain, the decisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable — a framework that failed to rely on our legal traditions and time-tested institutions; that failed to use our values as a compass. And that is why I took several steps upon taking office to better protect the American people.<br /><br />First, I banned the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the United States of America.<br /><br />I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation. What’s more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts — they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.<br /><br />The arguments against these techniques did not originate from my Administration. As Senator McCain once said, torture “serves as a great propaganda tool for those who recruit people to fight against us.” And even under President Bush, there was recognition among members of his Administration — including a Secretary of State, other senior officials, and many in the military and intelligence community — that those who argued for these tactics were on the wrong side of the debate, and the wrong side of history. We must leave these methods where they belong — in the past. They are not who we are. They are not America.<br /><br />The second decision that I made was to order the closing of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay.<br /><br />For over seven years, we have detained hundreds of people at Guantánamo. During that time, the system of Military Commissions at Guantánamo succeeded in convicting a grand total of three suspected terrorists. Let me repeat that: three convictions in over seven years. Instead of bringing terrorists to justice, efforts at prosecution met setbacks, cases lingered on, and in 2006 the Supreme Court invalidated the entire system. Meanwhile, over five hundred and twenty-five detainees were released from Guantánamo under the Bush Administration. Let me repeat that: two-thirds of the detainees were released before I took office and ordered the closure of Guantánamo.<br /><br />There is also no question that Guantánamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al Qaeda that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law. Indeed, part of the rationale for establishing Guantánamo in the first place was the misplaced notion that a prison there would be beyond the law — a proposition that the Supreme Court soundly rejected. Meanwhile, instead of serving as a tool to counter-terrorism, Guantánamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantánamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.<br /><br />So the record is clear: rather than keep us safer, the prison at Guantánamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies. It sets back the willingness of our allies to work with us in fighting an enemy that operates in scores of countries. By any measure, the costs of keeping it open far exceed the complications involved in closing it. That is why I argued that it should be closed throughout my campaign. And that is why I ordered it closed within one year.<br /><br />The third decision that I made was to order a review of all the pending cases at Guantánamo.<br /><br />I knew when I ordered Guantánamo closed that it would be difficult and complex. There are 240 people there who have now spent years in legal limbo. In dealing with this situation, we do not have the luxury of starting from scratch. We are cleaning up something that is — quite simply — a mess; a misguided experiment that has left in its wake a flood of legal challenges that my Administration is forced to deal with on a constant basis, and that consumes the time of government officials whose time should be spent on better protecting our country.<br /><br />Indeed, the legal challenges that have sparked so much debate in recent weeks in Washington would be taking place whether or not I decided to close Guantánamo. For example, the court order to release seventeen Uighur detainees took place last fall — when George Bush was President. The Supreme Court that invalidated the system of prosecution at Guantánamo in 2006 was overwhelmingly appointed by Republican Presidents. In other words, the problem of what to do with Guantánamo detainees was not caused by my decision to close the facility; the problem exists because of the decision to open Guantánamo in the first place.<br /><br />There are no neat or easy answers here. But I can tell you that the wrong answer is to pretend that this problem will go away if we maintain an unsustainable status quo. As President, I refuse to allow this problem to fester. Our security interests won’t permit it. Our courts won’t allow it. And neither should our conscience.<br /><br />Now, over the last several weeks, we have seen a return of the politicization of these issues that have characterized the last several years. I understand that these problems arouse passions and concerns. They should. We are confronting some of the most complicated questions that a democracy can face. But I have no interest in spending our time re-litigating the policies of the last eight years. I want to solve these problems, and I want to solve them together as Americans.<br /><br />And we will be ill-served by some of the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue. Listening to the recent debate, I’ve heard words that are calculated to scare people rather than educate them; words that have more to do with politics than protecting our country. So I want to take this opportunity to lay out what we are doing, and how we intend to resolve these outstanding issues. I will explain how each action that we are taking will help build a framework that protects both the American people and the values that we hold dear. And I will focus on two broad areas: first, issues relating to Guantánamo and our detention policy; second, issues relating to security and transparency.<br /><br />Let me begin by disposing of one argument as plainly as I can: we are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security, nor will we release detainees within the United States who endanger the American people. Where demanded by justice and national security, we will seek to transfer some detainees to the same type of facilities in which we hold all manner of dangerous and violent criminals within our borders — highly secure prisons that ensure the public safety. As we make these decisions, bear in mind the following fact: nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal “supermax” prisons, which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists. As Senator Lindsey Graham said: “The idea that we cannot find a place to securely house 250-plus detainees within the United States is not rational.”<br /><br />We are currently in the process of reviewing each of the detainee cases at Guantánamo to determine the appropriate policy for dealing with them. As we do so, we are acutely aware that under the last Administration, detainees were released only to return to the battlefield. That is why we are doing away with the poorly planned, haphazard approach that let those detainees go in the past. Instead, we are treating these cases with the care and attention that the law requires and our security demands. Going forward, these cases will fall into five distinct categories.<br /><br />First, when feasible, we will try those who have violated American criminal laws in federal courts — courts provided for by the United States Constitution. Some have derided our federal courts as incapable of handling the trials of terrorists. They are wrong. Our courts and juries of our citizens are tough enough to convict terrorists, and the record makes that clear. Ramzi Yousef tried to blow up the World Trade Center — he was convicted in our courts, and is serving a life sentence in U.S. prison. Zacarias Moussaoui has been identified as the 20th 9/11 hijacker — he was convicted in our courts, and he too is serving a life sentence in prison. If we can try those terrorists in our courts and hold them in our prisons, then we can do the same with detainees from Guantánamo.<br /><br />Recently, we prosecuted and received a guilty plea from a detainee – [Ali] al-Marri — in federal court after years of legal confusion. We are preparing to transfer another detainee to the Southern District of New York, where he will face trial on charges related to the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania — bombings that killed over 200 people. Preventing this detainee from coming to our shores would prevent his trial and conviction. And after over a decade, it is time to finally see that justice is served, and that is what we intend to do.<br /><br />The second category of cases involves detainees who violate the laws of war and are best tried through Military Commissions. Military commissions have a history in the United States dating back to George Washington and the Revolutionary War. They are an appropriate venue for trying detainees for violations of the laws of war. They allow for the protection of sensitive sources and methods of intelligence-gathering; for the safety and security of participants; and for the presentation of evidence gathered from the battlefield that cannot be effectively presented in federal Courts.<br /><br />Now, some have suggested that this represents a reversal on my part. They are wrong. In 2006, I did strongly oppose legislation proposed by the Bush Administration and passed by the Congress because it failed to establish a legitimate legal framework, with the kind of meaningful due process and rights for the accused that could stand up on appeal. I did, however, support the use of military commissions to try detainees, provided there were several reforms. And those are the reforms that we are making.<br /><br />Instead of using the flawed Commissions of the last seven years, my Administration is bringing our Commissions in line with the rule of law. The rule will no longer permit us to use as evidence statements that have been obtained using cruel, inhuman, or degrading interrogation methods. We will no longer place the burden to prove that hearsay is unreliable on the opponent of the hearsay. And we will give detainees greater latitude in selecting their own counsel, and more protections if they refuse to testify. These reforms — among others — will make our Military Commissions a more credible and effective means of administering justice, and I will work with Congress and legal authorities across the political spectrum on legislation to ensure that these Commissions are fair, legitimate, and effective.<br /><br />The third category of detainees includes those who we have been ordered released by the courts. Let me repeat what I said earlier: this has absolutely nothing to do with my decision to close Guantánamo. It has to do with the rule of law. The courts have found that there is no legitimate reason to hold twenty-one of the people currently held at Guantánamo. Twenty of these findings took place before I came into office. The United States is a nation of laws, and we must abide by these rulings.<br /><br />The fourth category of cases involves detainees who we have determined can be transferred safely to another country. So far, our review team has approved fifty detainees for transfer. And my Administration is in ongoing discussions with a number of other countries about the transfer of detainees to their soil for detention and rehabilitation.<br /><br />Finally, there remains the question of detainees at Guantánamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people.<br /><br />I want to be honest: this is the toughest issue we will face. We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantánamo who pose a danger to our country. But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat include people who have received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States.<br /><br />As I said, I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people. Al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture — like other prisoners of war — must be prevented from attacking us again. However, we must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded. That is why my Administration has begun to reshape these standards to ensure they are in line with the rule of law. We must have clear, defensible and lawful standards for those who fall in this category. We must have fair procedures so that we don’t make mistakes. We must have a thorough process of periodic review, so that any prolonged detention is carefully evaluated and justified.<br /><br />I know that creating such a system poses unique challenges. Other countries have grappled with this question, and so must we. But I want to be very clear that our goal is to construct a legitimate legal framework for Guantánamo detainees — not to avoid one. In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man. If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight. And so going forward, my Administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution.<br /><br />As our efforts to close Guantánamo move forward, I know that the politics in Congress will be difficult. These issues are fodder for 30-second commercials and direct mail pieces that are designed to frighten. I get it. But if we continue to make decisions from within a climate of fear, we will make more mistakes. And if we refuse to deal with these issues today, then I guarantee you that they will be an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future. I have confidence that the American people are more interested in doing what is right to protect this country than in political posturing. I am not the only person in this city who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution — so did each and every member of Congress. Together we have a responsibility to enlist our values in the effort to secure our people, and to leave behind the legacy that makes it easier for future Presidents to keep this country safe.<br /><br />The second set of issues that I want to discuss relates to security and transparency.<br /><br />National security requires a delicate balance. Our democracy depends upon transparency, but some information must be protected from public disclosure for the sake of our security — for instance, the movements of our troops; our intelligence-gathering; or the information we have about a terrorist organization and its affiliates. In these and other cases, lives are at stake.<br /><br />Several weeks ago, as part of an ongoing court case, I released memos issued by the previous Administration’s Office of Legal Counsel. I did not do this because I disagreed with the enhanced interrogation techniques that those memos authorized, or because I reject their legal rationale — although I do on both counts. I released the memos because the existence of that approach to interrogation was already widely known, the Bush Administration had acknowledged its existence, and I had already banned those methods. The argument that somehow by releasing those memos, we are providing terrorists with information about how they will be interrogated is unfounded — we will not be interrogating terrorists using that approach, because that approach is now prohibited.<br /><br />In short, I released these memos because there was no overriding reason to protect them. And the ensuing debate has helped the American people better understand how these interrogation methods came to be authorized and used.<br /><br />On the other hand, I recently opposed the release of certain photographs that were taken of detainees by U.S. personnel between 2002 and 2004. Individuals who violated standards of behavior in these photos have been investigated and held accountable. There is no debate as to whether what is reflected in those photos is wrong, and nothing has been concealed to absolve perpetrators of crimes. However, it was my judgment — informed by my national security team — that releasing these photos would inflame anti-American opinion, and allow our enemies to paint U.S. troops with a broad, damning and inaccurate brush, endangering them in theaters of war.<br /><br />In short, there is a clear and compelling reason to not release these particular photos. There are nearly 200,000 Americans who are serving in harm’s way, and I have a solemn responsibility for their safety as Commander-in-Chief. Nothing would be gained by the release of these photos that matters more than the lives of our young men and women serving in harm’s way.<br /><br />In each of these cases, I had to strike the right balance between transparency and national security. This balance brings with it a precious responsibility. And there is no doubt that the American people have seen this balance tested. In the images from Abu Ghraib and the brutal interrogation techniques made public long before I was President, the American people learned of actions taken in their name that bear no resemblance to the ideals that generations of Americans have fought for. And whether it was the run-up to the Iraq War or the revelation of secret programs, Americans often felt like part of the story had been unnecessarily withheld from them. That causes suspicion to build up. That leads to a thirst for accountability.<br /><br />I ran for President promising transparency, and I meant what I said. That is why, whenever possible, we will make information available to the American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable. But I have never argued — and never will — that our most sensitive national security matters should be an open book. I will never abandon — and I will vigorously defend — the necessity of classification to defend our troops at war; to protect sources and methods; and to safeguard confidential actions that keep the American people safe. And so, whenever we cannot release certain information to the public for valid national security reasons, I will insist that there is oversight of my actions — by Congress or by the courts.<br /><br />We are launching a review of current policies by all of those agencies responsible for the classification of documents to determine where reforms are possible, and to assure that the other branches of government will be in a position to review executive branch decisions on these matters. Because in our system of checks and balances, someone must always watch over the watchers — especially when it comes to sensitive information.<br /><br />Along those same lines, my Administration is also confronting challenges to what is known as the “State Secrets” privilege. This is a doctrine that allows the government to challenge legal cases involving secret programs. It has been used by many past Presidents — Republican and Democrat — for many decades. And while this principle is absolutely necessary to protect national security, I am concerned that it has been over-used. We must not protect information merely because it reveals the violation of a law or embarrasses the government. That is why my Administration is nearing completion of a thorough review of this practice.<br /><br />We plan to embrace several principles for reform. We will apply a stricter legal test to material that can be protected under the State Secrets privilege. We will not assert the privilege in court without first following a formal process, including review by a Justice Department committee and the personal approval of the Attorney General. Finally, each year we will voluntarily report to Congress when we have invoked the privilege and why, because there must be proper oversight of our actions.<br /><br />On all of these matters related to the disclosure of sensitive information, I wish I could say that there is a simple formula. But there is not. These are tough calls involving competing concerns, and they require a surgical approach. But the common thread that runs through all of my decisions is simple: we will safeguard what we must to protect the American people, but we will also ensure the accountability and oversight that is the hallmark of our constitutional system. I will never hide the truth because it is uncomfortable. I will deal with Congress and the courts as co-equal branches of government. I will tell the American people what I know and don’t know, and when I release something publicly or keep something secret, I will tell you why.<br /><br />In all of the areas that I have discussed today, the policies that I have proposed represent a new direction from the last eight years. To protect the American people and our values, we have banned enhanced interrogation techniques. We are closing the prison at Guantánamo. We are reforming Military Commissions, and we will pursue a new legal regime to detain terrorists. We are declassifying more information and embracing more oversight of our actions, and narrowing our use of the State Secrets privilege. These are dramatic changes that will put our approach to national security on a surer, safer and more sustainable footing, and their implementation will take time.<br /><br />There is a core principle that we will apply to all of our actions: even as we clean up the mess at Guantánamo, we will constantly re-evaluate our approach, subject our decisions to review from the other branches of government, and seek the strongest and most sustainable legal framework for addressing these issues in the long-term. By doing that, we can leave behind a legacy that outlasts my Administration, and that endures for the next President and the President after that; a legacy that protects the American people, and enjoys broad legitimacy at home and abroad.<br /><br />That is what I mean when I say that we need to focus on the future. I recognize that many still have a strong desire to focus on the past. When it comes to the actions of the last eight years, some Americans are angry; others want to re-fight debates that have been settled, most clearly at the ballot box in November. And I know that these debates lead directly to a call for a fuller accounting, perhaps through an Independent Commission.<br /><br />I have opposed the creation of such a Commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability. The Congress can review abuses of our values, and there are ongoing inquiries by the Congress into matters like enhanced interrogation techniques. The Department of Justice and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws.<br /><br />I understand that it is no secret that there is a tendency in Washington to spend our time pointing fingers at one another. And our media culture feeds the impulses that lead to a good fight. Nothing will contribute more to that than an extended re-litigation of the last eight years. Already, we have seen how that kind of effort only leads those in Washington to different sides laying blame, and can distract us from focusing our time, our effort, and our politics on the challenges of the future.<br /><br />We see that, above all, in how the recent debate has been obscured by two opposite and absolutist ends. On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: “anything goes.” Their arguments suggest that the ends of fighting terrorism can be used to justify any means, and that the President should have blanket authority to do whatever he wants — provided that it is a President with whom they agree.<br /><br />Both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right. The American people are not absolutist, and they don’t elect us to impose a rigid ideology on our problems. They know that we need not sacrifice our security for our values, nor sacrifice our values for our security, so long as we approach difficult questions with honesty, and care, and a dose of common sense. That, after all, is the unique genius of America. That is the challenge laid down by our Constitution. That has been the source of our strength through the ages. That is what makes the United States of America different as a nation.<br /><br />I can stand here today, as President of the United States, and say without exception or equivocation that we do not torture, and that we will vigorously protect our people while forging a strong and durable framework that allows us to fight terrorism while abiding by the rule of law. Make no mistake: if we fail to turn the page on the approach that was taken over the past several years, then I will not be able to say that as President. And if we cannot stand for those core values, then we are not keeping faith with the documents that are enshrined in this hall.<br /><br />The Framers who drafted the Constitution could not have foreseen the challenges that have unfolded over the last two hundred and twenty two years. But our Constitution has endured through secession and civil rights — through World War and Cold War — because it provides a foundation of principles that can be applied pragmatically; it provides a compass that can help us find our way. It hasn’t always been easy. We are an imperfect people. Every now and then, there are those who think that America’s safety and success requires us to walk away from the sacred principles enshrined in this building. We hear such voices today. But the American people have resisted that temptation. And though we have made our share of mistakes and course corrections, we have held fast to the principles that have been the source of our strength, and a beacon to the world.<br /><br />Now, this generation faces a great test in the specter of terrorism. Unlike the Civil War or World War II, we cannot count on a surrender ceremony to bring this journey to an end. Right now, in distant training camps and in crowded cities, there are people plotting to take American lives. That will be the case a year from now, five years from now, and — in all probability — ten years from now. Neither I nor anyone else can standing here today can say that there will not be another terrorist attack that takes American lives. But I can say with certainty that my Administration — along with our extraordinary troops and the patriotic men and women who defend our national security — will do everything in our power to keep the American people safe. And I do know with certainty that we can defeat al Qaeda. Because the terrorists can only succeed if they swell their ranks and alienate America from our allies, and they will never be able to do that if we stay true to who we are; if we forge tough and durable approaches to fighting terrorism that are anchored in our timeless ideals.<br /><br />This must be our common purpose. I ran for President because I believe that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together. We will not be safe if we see national security as a wedge that divides America — it can and must be a cause that unites us as one people, as one nation. We have done so before in times that were more perilous than ours. We will do so once again. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.<br /><br />END<br />----------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />Dick Cheney:<br /><br />Thank you all very much, and Arthur, thank you for that introduction. It's good to be back at AEI, where we have many friends. Lynne is one of your longtime scholars, and I'm looking forward to spending more time here myself as a returning trustee. What happened was, they were looking for a new member of the board of trustees, and they asked me to head up the search committee.<br /><br />I first came to AEI after serving at the Pentagon, and departed only after a very interesting job offer came along. I had no expectation of returning to public life, but my career worked out a little differently. Those eight years as vice president were quite a journey, and during a time of big events and great decisions, I don't think I missed much.<br /><br />Being the first vice president who had also served as secretary of defense, naturally my duties tended toward national security. I focused on those challenges day to day, mostly free from the usual political distractions. I had the advantage of being a vice president content with the responsibilities I had, and going about my work with no higher ambition. Today, I'm an even freer man. Your kind invitation brings me here as a private citizen - a career in politics behind me, no elections to win or lose, and no favor to seek.<br /><br />The responsibilities we carried belong to others now. And though I'm not here to speak for George W. Bush, I am certain that no one wishes the current administration more success in defending the country than we do. We understand the complexities of national security decisions. We understand the pressures that confront a president and his advisers. Above all, we know what is at stake. And though administrations and policies have changed, the stakes for America have not changed.<br /><br />Right now there is considerable debate in this city about the measures our administration took to defend the American people. Today I want to set forth the strategic thinking behind our policies. I do so as one who was there every day of the Bush Administration -who supported the policies when they were made, and without hesitation would do so again in the same circumstances.<br /><br />When President Obama makes wise decisions, as I believe he has done in some respects on Afghanistan, and in reversing his plan to release incendiary photos, he deserves our support. And when he faults or mischaracterizes the national security decisions we made in the Bush years, he deserves an answer. The point is not to look backward. Now and for years to come, a lot rides on our President's understanding of the security policies that preceded him. And whatever choices he makes concerning the defense of this country, those choices should not be based on slogans and campaign rhetoric, but on a truthful telling of history.<br /><br />Our administration always faced its share of criticism, and from some quarters it was always intense. That was especially so in the later years of our term, when the dangers were as serious as ever, but the sense of general alarm after September 11th, 2001 was a fading memory. Part of our responsibility, as we saw it, was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America ... and not to let 9/11 become the prelude to something much bigger and far worse.<br /><br />That attack itself was, of course, the most devastating strike in a series of terrorist plots carried out against Americans at home and abroad. In 1993, terrorists bombed the World Trade Center, hoping to bring down the towers with a blast from below. The attacks continued in 1995, with the bombing of U.S. facilities in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; the killing of servicemen at Khobar Towers in 1996; the attack on our embassies in East Africa in 1998; the murder of American sailors on the USS Cole in 2000; and then the hijackings of 9/11, and all the grief and loss we suffered on that day.<br /><br />Nine-eleven caused everyone to take a serious second look at threats that had been gathering for a while, and enemies whose plans were getting bolder and more sophisticated. Throughout the 90s, America had responded to these attacks, if at all, on an ad hoc basis. The first attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a law enforcement problem, with everything handled after the fact - crime scene, arrests, indictments, convictions, prison sentences, case closed.<br /><br />That's how it seemed from a law enforcement perspective, at least - but for the terrorists the case was not closed. For them, it was another offensive strike in their ongoing war against the United States. And it turned their minds to even harder strikes with higher casualties. Nine-eleven made necessary a shift of policy, aimed at a clear strategic threat - what the Congress called "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States." From that moment forward, instead of merely preparing to round up the suspects and count up the victims after the next attack, we were determined to prevent attacks in the first place.<br /><br />We could count on almost universal support back then, because everyone understood the environment we were in. We'd just been hit by a foreign enemy - leaving 3,000 Americans dead, more than we lost at Pearl Harbor. In Manhattan, we were staring at 16 acres of ashes. The Pentagon took a direct hit, and the Capitol or the White House were spared only by the Americans on Flight 93, who died bravely and defiantly.<br /><br />Everyone expected a follow-on attack, and our job was to stop it. We didn't know what was coming next, but everything we did know in that autumn of 2001 looked bad. This was the world in which al-Qaeda was seeking nuclear technology, and A. Q. Khan was selling nuclear technology on the black market. We had the anthrax attack from an unknown source. We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.<br /><br />These are just a few of the problems we had on our hands. And foremost on our minds was the prospect of the very worst coming to pass - a 9/11 with nuclear weapons.<br /><br />For me, one of the defining experiences was the morning of 9/11 itself. As you might recall, I was in my office in that first hour, when radar caught sight of an airliner heading toward the White House at 500 miles an hour. That was Flight 77, the one that ended up hitting the Pentagon. With the plane still inbound, Secret Service agents came into my office and said we had to leave, now. A few moments later I found myself in a fortified White House command post somewhere down below.<br /><br />There in the bunker came the reports and images that so many Americans remember from that day - word of the crash in Pennsylvania, the final phone calls from hijacked planes, the final horror for those who jumped to their death to escape burning alive. In the years since, I've heard occasional speculation that I'm a different man after 9/11. I wouldn't say that. But I'll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.<br /><br />To make certain our nation country never again faced such a day of horror, we developed a comprehensive strategy, beginning with far greater homeland security to make the United States a harder target. But since wars cannot be won on the defensive, we moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks. We decided, as well, to confront the regimes that sponsored terrorists, and to go after those who provide sanctuary, funding, and weapons to enemies of the United States. We turned special attention to regimes that had the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction, and might transfer such weapons to terrorists.<br /><br />We did all of these things, and with bipartisan support put all these policies in place. It has resulted in serious blows against enemy operations ... the take-down of the A.Q. Khan network ... and the dismantling of Libya's nuclear program. It's required the commitment of many thousands of troops in two theaters of war, with high points and some low points in both Iraq and Afghanistan - and at every turn, the people of our military carried the heaviest burden. Well over seven years into the effort, one thing we know is that the enemy has spent most of this time on the defensive - and every attempt to strike inside the United States has failed.<br /><br />So we're left to draw one of two conclusions - and here is the great dividing line in our current debate over national security. You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked, and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event - coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort. Whichever conclusion you arrive at, it will shape your entire view of the last seven years, and of the policies necessary to protect America for years to come.<br /><br />The key to any strategy is accurate intelligence, and skilled professionals to get that information in time to use it. In seeking to guard this nation against the threat of catastrophic violence, our Administration gave intelligence officers the tools and lawful authority they needed to gain vital information. We didn't invent that authority. It is drawn from Article Two of the Constitution. And it was given specificity by the Congress after 9/11, in a Joint Resolution authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force" to protect the American people.<br /><br />Our government prevented attacks and saved lives through the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which let us intercept calls and track contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and persons inside the United States. The program was top secret, and for good reason, until the editors of the New York Times got it and put it on the front page. After 9/11, the Times had spent months publishing the pictures and the stories of everyone killed by al-Qaeda on 9/11. Now here was that same newspaper publishing secrets in a way that could only help al-Qaeda. It impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn't serve the interests of our country, or the safety of our people.<br /><br />In the years after 9/11, our government also understood that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists. And in a few cases, that information could be gained only through tough interrogations.<br /><br />In top secret meetings about enhanced interrogations, I made my own beliefs clear. I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.<br /><br />Our successors in office have their own views on all of these matters.<br /><br />By presidential decision, last month we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public's right to know. We're informed, as well, that there was much agonizing over this decision.<br /><br />Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.<br /><br />Over on the left wing of the president's party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorists. The kind of answers they're after would be heard before a so-called "Truth Commission." Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect treating political disagreements as a punishable offense, and political opponents as criminals. It's hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors.<br /><br />Apart from doing a serious injustice to intelligence operators and lawyers who deserve far better for their devoted service, the danger here is a loss of focus on national security, and what it requires. I would advise the administration to think very carefully about the course ahead. All the zeal that has been directed at interrogations is utterly misplaced. And staying on that path will only lead our government further away from its duty to protect the American people.<br /><br />One person who by all accounts objected to the release of the interrogation memos was the Director of Central Intelligence, Leon Panetta. He was joined in that view by at least four of his predecessors. I assume they felt this way because they understand the importance of protecting intelligence sources, methods, and personnel. But now that this once top-secret information is out for all to see - including the enemy - let me draw your attention to some points that are routinely overlooked.<br /><br />It is a fact that only detainees of the highest intelligence value were ever subjected to enhanced interrogation. You've heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists. One of them was Khalid Sheikh Muhammed - the mastermind of 9/11, who has also boasted about beheading Daniel Pearl.<br /><br />We had a lot of blind spots after the attacks on our country. We didn't know about al-Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and a few others did know. And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we didn't think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.<br /><br />Maybe you've heard that when we captured KSM, he said he would talk as soon as he got to New York City and saw his lawyer. But like many critics of interrogations, he clearly misunderstood the business at hand. American personnel were not there to commence an elaborate legal proceeding, but to extract information from him before al-Qaeda could strike again and kill more of our people.<br /><br />In public discussion of these matters, there has been a strange and sometimes willful attempt to conflate what happened at Abu Ghraib prison with the top secret program of enhanced interrogations. At Abu Ghraib, a few sadistic prison guards abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency. For the harm they did, to Iraqi prisoners and to America's cause, they deserved and received Army justice. And it takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful, and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men.<br /><br />Even before the interrogation program began, and throughout its operation, it was closely reviewed to ensure that every method used was in full compliance with the Constitution, statutes, and treaty obligations. On numerous occasions, leading members of Congress, including the current speaker of the House, were briefed on the program and on the methods.<br /><br />Yet for all these exacting efforts to do a hard and necessary job and to do it right, we hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative. In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.<br /><br />I might add that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about "values." Intelligence officers of the United States were not trying to rough up some terrorists simply to avenge the dead of 9/11. We know the difference in this country between justice and vengeance. Intelligence officers were not trying to get terrorists to confess to past killings; they were trying to prevent future killings. From the beginning of the program, there was only one focused and all-important purpose. We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorist plans.<br /><br />Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations. And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims. What's more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe.<br /><br />The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism. They may take comfort in hearing disagreement from opposite ends of the spectrum. If liberals are unhappy about some decisions, and conservatives are unhappy about other decisions, then it may seem to them that the President is on the path of sensible compromise. But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States. Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy. When just a single clue that goes unlearned ... one lead that goes unpursued ... can bring on catastrophe - it's no time for splitting differences. There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American people are in the balance.<br /><br />Behind the overwrought reaction to enhanced interrogations is a broader misconception about the threats that still face our country. You can sense the problem in the emergence of euphemisms that strive to put an imaginary distance between the American people and the terrorist enemy. Apparently using the term "war" where terrorists are concerned is starting to feel a bit dated. So henceforth we're advised by the administration to think of the fight against terrorists as, quote, "Overseas contingency operations." In the event of another terrorist attack on America, the Homeland Security Department assures us it will be ready for this, quote, "man-made disaster" - never mind that the whole Department was created for the purpose of protecting Americans from terrorist attack.<br /><br />And when you hear that there are no more, quote, "enemy combatants," as there were back in the days of that scary war on terror, at first that sounds like progress. The only problem is that the phrase is gone, but the same assortment of killers and would-be mass murderers are still there. And finding some less judgmental or more pleasant-sounding name for terrorists doesn't change what they are - or what they would do if we let them loose.<br /><br />On his second day in office, President Obama announced that he was closing the detention facility at Guantanamo. This step came with little deliberation and no plan. Now the President says some of these terrorists should be brought to American soil for trial in our court system. Others, he says, will be shipped to third countries. But so far, the United States has had little luck getting other countries to take hardened terrorists. So what happens then? Attorney General Holder and others have admitted that the United States will be compelled to accept a number of the terrorists here, in the homeland, and it has even been suggested US taxpayer dollars will be used to support them. On this one, I find myself in complete agreement with many in the President's own party. Unsure how to explain to their constituents why terrorists might soon be relocating into their states, these Democrats chose instead to strip funding for such a move out of the most recent war supplemental.<br /><br />The administration has found that it's easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo. But it's tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interests of justice and America's national security. Keep in mind that these are hardened terrorists picked up overseas since 9/11. The ones that were considered low-risk were released a long time ago. And among these, we learned yesterday, many were treated too leniently, because 1 in 7 cut a straight path back to their prior line of work and have conducted murderous attacks in the Middle East. I think the President will find, upon reflection, that to bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come.<br /><br />In the category of euphemism, the prizewinning entry would be a recent editorial in a familiar newspaper that referred to terrorists we've captured as, quote, "abducted." Here we have ruthless enemies of this country, stopped in their tracks by brave operatives in the service of America, and a major editorial page makes them sound like they were kidnap victims, picked up at random on their way to the movies.<br /><br />It's one thing to adopt the euphemisms that suggest we're no longer engaged in a war. These are just words, and in the end it's the policies that matter most. You don't want to call them enemy combatants? Fine. Call them what you want - just don't bring them into the United States. Tired of calling it a war? Use any term you prefer. Just remember it is a serious step to begin unraveling some of the very policies that have kept our people safe since 9/11.<br /><br />Another term out there that slipped into the discussion is the notion that American interrogation practices were a "recruitment tool" for the enemy. On this theory, by the tough questioning of killers, we have supposedly fallen short of our own values. This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It's another version of that same old refrain from the Left, "We brought it on ourselves."<br /><br />It is much closer to the truth that terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so. Nor are terrorists or those who see them as victims exactly the best judges of America's moral standards, one way or the other.<br /><br />Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.<br /><br />As a practical matter, too, terrorists may lack much, but they have never lacked for grievances against the United States. Our belief in freedom of speech and religion ... our belief in equal rights for women ... our support for Israel ... our cultural and political influence in the world - these are the true sources of resentment, all mixed in with the lies and conspiracy theories of the radical clerics. These recruitment tools were in vigorous use throughout the 1990s, and they were sufficient to motivate the 19 recruits who boarded those planes on September 11th, 2001.<br /><br />The United States of America was a good country before 9/11, just as we are today. List all the things that make us a force for good in the world - for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences - and what you end up with is a list of the reasons why the terrorists hate America. If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for - our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.<br /><br />What is equally certain is this: The broad-based strategy set in motion by President Bush obviously had nothing to do with causing the events of 9/11. But the serious way we dealt with terrorists from then on, and all the intelligence we gathered in that time, had everything to do with preventing another 9/11 on our watch. The enhanced interrogations of high-value detainees and the terrorist surveillance program have without question made our country safer. Every senior official who has been briefed on these classified matters knows of specific attacks that were in the planning stages and were stopped by the programs we put in place.<br /><br />This might explain why President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate. What value remains to that authority is debatable, given that the enemy now knows exactly what interrogation methods to train against, and which ones not to worry about. Yet having reserved for himself the authority to order enhanced interrogation after an emergency, you would think that President Obama would be less disdainful of what his predecessor authorized after 9/11. It's almost gone unnoticed that the president has retained the power to order the same methods in the same circumstances. When they talk about interrogations, he and his administration speak as if they have resolved some great moral dilemma in how to extract critical information from terrorists. Instead they have put the decision off, while assigning a presumption of moral superiority to any decision they make in the future.<br /><br />Releasing the interrogation memos was flatly contrary to the national security interest of the United States. The harm done only begins with top secret information now in the hands of the terrorists, who have just received a lengthy insert for their training manual. Across the world, governments that have helped us capture terrorists will fear that sensitive joint operations will be compromised. And at the CIA, operatives are left to wonder if they can depend on the White House or Congress to back them up when the going gets tough. Why should any agency employee take on a difficult assignment when, even though they act lawfully and in good faith, years down the road the press and Congress will treat everything they do with suspicion, outright hostility, and second-guessing? Some members of Congress are notorious for demanding they be briefed into the most sensitive intelligence programs. They support them in private, and then head for the hills at the first sign of controversy.<br /><br />As far as the interrogations are concerned, all that remains an official secret is the information we gained as a result. Some of his defenders say the unseen memos are inconclusive, which only raises the question why they won't let the American people decide that for themselves. I saw that information as vice president, and I reviewed some of it again at the National Archives last month. I've formally asked that it be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained, the things we learned, and the consequences for national security. And as you may have heard, last week that request was formally rejected. It's worth recalling that ultimate power of declassification belongs to the President himself. President Obama has used his declassification power to reveal what happened in the interrogation of terrorists. Now let him use that same power to show Americans what did not happen, thanks to the good work of our intelligence officials.<br /><br />I believe this information will confirm the value of interrogations - and I am not alone. President Obama's own Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Blair, has put it this way: "High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaeda organization that was attacking this country." End quote. Admiral Blair put that conclusion in writing, only to see it mysteriously deleted in a later version released by the administration - the missing 26 words that tell an inconvenient truth. But they couldn't change the words of George Tenet, the CIA Director under Presidents Clinton and Bush, who bluntly said: "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us." End of quote.<br /><br />If Americans do get the chance to learn what our country was spared, it'll do more than clarify the urgency and the rightness of enhanced interrogations in the years after 9/11. It may help us to stay focused on dangers that have not gone away. Instead of idly debating which political opponents to prosecute and punish, our attention will return to where it belongs - on the continuing threat of terrorist violence, and on stopping the men who are planning it.<br /><br />For all the partisan anger that still lingers, our administration will stand up well in history - not despite our actions after 9/11, but because of them. And when I think about all that was to come during our administration and afterward - the recriminations, the second-guessing, the charges of "hubris" - my mind always goes back to that moment.<br /><br />To put things in perspective, suppose that on the evening of 9/11, President Bush and I had promised that for as long as we held office - which was to be another 2,689 days - there would never be another terrorist attack inside this country. Talk about hubris - it would have seemed a rash and irresponsible thing to say. People would have doubted that we even understood the enormity of what had just happened. Everyone had a very bad feeling about all of this, and felt certain that the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and Shanksville were only the beginning of the violence.<br /><br />Of course, we made no such promise. Instead, we promised an all-out effort to protect this country. We said we would marshal all elements of our nation's power to fight this war and to win it. We said we would never forget what had happened on 9/11, even if the day came when many others did forget. We spoke of a war that would "include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success." We followed through on all of this, and we stayed true to our word.<br /><br />To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed.<br /><br />Along the way there were some hard calls. No decision of national security was ever made lightly, and certainly never made in haste. As in all warfare, there have been costs - none higher than the sacrifices of those killed and wounded in our country's service. And even the most decisive victories can never take away the sorrow of losing so many of our own - all those innocent victims of 9/11, and the heroic souls who died trying to save them.<br /><br />For all that we've lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings. And when the moral reckoning turns to the men known as high-value terrorists, I can assure you they were neither innocent nor victims. As for those who asked them questions and got answers: they did the right thing, they made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them.<br /><br />Like so many others who serve America, they are not the kind to insist on a thank-you. But I will always be grateful to each one of them, and proud to have served with them for a time in the same cause. They, and so many others, have given honorable service to our country through all the difficulties and all the dangers. I will always admire them and wish them well. And I am confident that this nation will never take their work, their dedication, or their achievements, for granted.<br /><br />Thank you very much. <br /><br />END<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-79376337586719168802009-05-15T13:19:00.007-05:002009-05-16T11:55:32.606-05:00Pelosi, Cheney and Hypocrisy on Waterboarding and Torture<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyaLpxG7hrmZq1YBXGc9uJgSz3Zq_p3Z_AUyu97bBfX4zJ4YKeGrJJ6SJfMIOCVKN9OSMYnDGjHtfHTJhJ-QzUuOkNDZt2F1-ea1CK8wbXIKyAmA-nxnDDpn4i6jOOgNSKUt2n/s1600-h/pelosi_cheney.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 274px; height: 206px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyaLpxG7hrmZq1YBXGc9uJgSz3Zq_p3Z_AUyu97bBfX4zJ4YKeGrJJ6SJfMIOCVKN9OSMYnDGjHtfHTJhJ-QzUuOkNDZt2F1-ea1CK8wbXIKyAmA-nxnDDpn4i6jOOgNSKUt2n/s400/pelosi_cheney.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5336117446370517938" /></a><br /><br />For all the "conservatives" and pundits that are full on attacking the integrity of Nancy Pelosi, whom I don't particularly care for either, over her perceived improprieties and "story changing" in the "waterboardgate" scandal.... I wonder if the irony or hypocrisy inherent in the juxtaposition of these two stories below even register on their consciences or if its just a matter of who you like and don't like or agree with and don't agree with... I just can't believe that A. they think this tactic of displacing blame will work and B. that it is apparently working on a lot of people...WOW!!!:<br /><br />Read and consider these two articles:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-27-cheney_x.htm">White House denies Cheney endorsed 'water boarding' </a><br /><br /><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/16/nation/na-cheney16">Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics</a><br /> <br />If one wants to go after Pelosi for mangling the truth- how can they not take issue with Cheney? <br /><br />I have often been lectured about moral relativism in discussions with those aligned with Cheney's worldview... Here's the definition of moral relativism:<br />"In philosophy moral relativism is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, ... Read More historical or personal circumstances. "<br />Doesn't Cheney's position and/or the lack of consistent standards between these two characters by Cheney's allies and advocates reflect moral relativism?<br /><br />The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.<br /><br />After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. A number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war. They were not the only defendants convicted in such cases. As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas. <br /><br />More recently, waterboarding cases have appeared in U.S. district courts. One was a civil action brought by several Filipinos seeking damages against the estate of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. The plaintiffs claimed they had been subjected to torture, including water torture. The court awarded $766 million in damages, noting in its findings that "the plaintiffs experienced human rights violations including, but not limited to . . . the water cure, where a cloth was placed over the detainee's mouth and nose, and water producing a drowning sensation." <br /><br />In 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners' civil rights by forcing confessions. The complaint alleged that the officers conspired to "subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning."<br /><br />The four defendants were convicted, and the sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in prison.<br /><br />We know that U.S. military tribunals and U.S. judges have examined certain types of water-based interrogation and found that they constituted torture. That's a lesson worth learning. The study of law is, after all, largely the study of history. The law of war is no different. This history should be of value to those who seek to understand what the law is -- as well as what it ought to be. <br /><br />Waterboarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in the Vietnam War. On January 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a controversial front-page photograph of two U.S soldiers and one South Vietnamese soldier participating in the waterboarding of a North Vietnamese POW near Da Nang. The article described the practice as "fairly common". The photograph led to the soldier being court-martialled by a U.S. military court within one month of its publication, and he was discharged from the army. Another waterboarding photograph of the same scene, referred to as "water torture" in the caption, is also exhibited in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.<br /><br />If one wants to go after Pelosi- how can they not see the duplicity in the former members of the Bush administration on this issue- denying and lying on this issue on TV and in press conferences in an all too obvious way and then give them a pass? That's partisan blindness, no matter what you think of the issue at hand and is one of the kinds of things that has put their party in their current political predicament. I have called it "selective truth engineering". I know a few people that claim as one of their pet peeves when people mangle the truth to make political points. I share that peeve.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-37300084676521614832009-02-15T11:04:00.005-06:002009-08-17T22:16:42.021-05:00Am I Conservative?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiwhz_JWl-Z0I-ui4tCinPMhHTxg6CTy_r4fDYld4crGWmS-AxT-1KIc4fMvdPq1NEbI8bwKeoN5tQUYUD5Cy4pLJVwXM1Qc-SsMfyfQGTm-PxdmxXYsTQn7LJwCS9JhdbYK7f/s1600-h/conservative.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 311px; height: 296px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiwhz_JWl-Z0I-ui4tCinPMhHTxg6CTy_r4fDYld4crGWmS-AxT-1KIc4fMvdPq1NEbI8bwKeoN5tQUYUD5Cy4pLJVwXM1Qc-SsMfyfQGTm-PxdmxXYsTQn7LJwCS9JhdbYK7f/s400/conservative.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303077205972629874" border="0" /></a><br />I have not been writing actively since about the time of the U.S. presidential elections. After the last several years of the very heated geopolitical climate, the milieu of the Church and all the passion I had invested in the things I have written about- it was time for a break and a re-alignment of my own spirit. After attending the funeral of my beloved 92 year old Cherokee grandmother and an energizing visit with my aunt and uncle and other relatives- I have decided it is time to wield my voice again- hopefully in a way thast reflects the progression of my spirit as guided by the Holy Spirit. I am hoping to bring out less of me and more of my Master.<br /><br />Let's start with this. This, from my e-mail archives, was merely an attempt to explain to my friends and family where I was coming from around the time of the elections. I think it is an important point in trying to explain my perspective, which is hopefully representative of God's perspective.<br /><br />Subject: Am I conservative?<br />Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:18:44 -0500<br /><br />I received a message earlier that asked a few good questions and raised a few good points. Since I have been torturing you with e-mail rants between another person and I- this may give a "frame of reference" to some things that have been said:<br /><br />To SS:<br /><br />Who is Mr. Rowley? (I had an exchange with him that was public and very harsh from his side)<br /><br />I receive a lot of emails from acquaintances that I've made over the years. 100% of the political related email that I receive is a bunch of right wing spin with one exception. You are the exception. Your emails appear to be left wing spin compared to everything that I receive. I enjoy and value your emails as I do you my friend.<br /><br />I know that you declare yourself independent as I have seen you state numerous times. Be aware, however, that SOLELY BASED ON YOUR EMAILS I would label you a full blown liberal before considering you to be libertarian as I believe that you would probably prefer. Anyway, it's all perception and opinion that is founded by one's own frame of reference. That's my honest perception be it good, bad, right, or wrong.<br /><br />I listen to NPR a lot recently because I detest commercials. Yesterday there was a very interesting segment with an author that chronicled the philosphies of the early Quakers. They were very disciplined and were driven to create education institutions for the pure sake of knowledge. It was important to them that there leaders were EXPERTS on the United States constitutions and all concepts and philosophies of it's basis. This was a critical point for their choosing a president considering that person is the foremost defender of the constitution. I have not heard this concept uttered a single time this election. Have any of the candidates achieved a sufficient level of expertise of the United States constitution to be true defenders of it?<br /><br />Answer from SS:<br /><br />That is the father of some good friends I made in Dallas. He gets credit for launching my career as an armchair pundit. I was in his back yard by the pool one day in 1998 with Chuck and his sons sharing some cold beverages. One of the sons casually mentioned that I was not going to be supporting then Texas governor George W. Bush for his quest for the office of president. Right then and there without asking a single question of me and without nuance he lit into me with a tirade not unlike the ones he's written this week. I barely got a word in.<br /><br />Afterwards, I thought to myself, if this mean spirited fellow is a representation of what conservatism has become, then as now counting myself as a conservative at heart, then this whole "conservative" thing is waaaayyyy off the intended track. This inspired me to start writing and as soon as I could I started doing just that and hitting his e-mail box with challenges to his twisted world view. Needless to say it has not played well with him.<br /><br />I agree that the perceptions of these terms have much to do with contrasts and frames of reference. I am sure I am a flaming liberal up next to Mr. Rowley and most other inobjective, party line toting ideologues. It is a relative term. I can tell you that in Native circles I would be considered very much conservative and traditionalist. I was thinking about this very concept today and came to the conclusion that where the disconnect and misunderstanding lies in this is that I am operating from a spiritual, biblical, Christian conservatism that takes seriously Christ's injunctions against intolerance and the overly militaristic reliance on the myth of redemptive violence and worldly power structures and folks like Mr. Rowley are operating from a very contaminated- by-the- world version of Christianity that for the most part is not authentic spirituality but worldliness and American nationalist, political ideology with a quasi Christian veneer slapped over it.<br /><br />I may be the only one operating with definitions like this that you know- but I stand on what I say. I have said before that these terms conservative and liberal have lost their meaning and what we actually have here in the US political arena is authoritarian and worldly and more authoritarian and worldly.<br /><br />Another thing... Mr. Rowley does not really know me because as you can imagine he is nearly impossible to talk to in person and has little more than his own 'frame of reference" and the e-mails to go on concerning what I think.<br /><br />Lastly, not that I am a constitutional expert, no, none of these candidates both know and honor what the constitution actually says- which I can plainly see even with my own limited knowledge of the document.<br /><br />Thanks for the good word.<br /><br />Now, this is a comment I got back from an old Bible teacher of mine that I first met during my stay in Waco, TX. on the subject of my claims of conservatism in the above message:<br /><br />Interesting.<br /><br />I tell people I’m a conservative, and that those who try to pass themselves off as “conservatives” these days are really liberals. I can demonstrate this philosophically. In short, the “liberal” position in the Enlightenment (out of which our nation sprang, NB), was “anti-conservative.” The “Conservative” position were those who believed in conserving tradition (in this case the Christian tradition) because of its inherent value (longer explanation belongs here). The Enlightenment philosophers rejected this conservatism because they came to believe that one both could and should “think for oneself.” That is liberalism. Your friend is a liberal.<br /><br />IN our country, as some contemporary philosophers have pointed out, we are all liberals. To be sure, there are “right leaning” liberals like Bush/Cheney, and left leaning liberals like Clinton/Gore, but we’re all liberals. Period.<br /><br />Now, if the idea of “thinking for yourself” is nothing but an Enlightenment myth/lie, then all liberalism is based on a false premise (that “thinking for yourself” is indeed possible) and doomed to failure. That is why the Enlightenment died. And good riddance. May true conservatism live on.<br /><br />If you want to explore this more, see the various works of Alasdair MacIntyre, especially After Virtue. He has some followup books that are also incredibly insightful, but that’s the place to start.<br /><br />As for me (and probably you), I believe we are attempting to conserve the Christian tradition of social justice that begins in the Law of Moses, continues in the OT Prophets, and is revived by Jesus. Romans 8:18-24 demonstrates that God intends eventually to bring all his creation under his kingdom/rule/reign. What that polity would look like is probably best described by the Sermon on the Mount (i.e., what would it look like if people really lived as if God really is in charge?). To conserve that tradition is indeed true conservatism. It is NOT “thinking for oneself,” and in fact many things in this sermon don’t make sense on a purely rational basis, but ONLY make sense if one really calls Jesus “Lord” and believes he is king and is in charge and cares about his subjects and his creation. Only on that basis can one have the courage to love one’s enemies and be cheated out of what he/she has lent to someone, etc.<br /><br />Stanley Hauerwas is another author to whom I’m greatly indebted. And one of his mentors was John Howard Yoder, a NT scholar.<br /><br />So, call your friend a stinking commie liberal. J With Christian love, of course.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-78295328324273894472008-11-08T20:50:00.001-06:002008-11-08T20:52:21.862-06:00Chalmers Johnson: Militarism and the End of the Empire<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qhxx-v2vIQs&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qhxx-v2vIQs&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26269839.post-32231000999019821302008-11-08T19:54:00.001-06:002008-11-08T20:13:22.259-06:00Why We Fight - Oil & Blowback<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4wg1WuPgFJQ&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4wg1WuPgFJQ&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Theology" rel="tag">Theology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/geotheology" rel="tag">geotheology</a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ideology" rel="tag">ideology</a></div>Scott Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13830800584331515286noreply@blogger.com0