Iranian Missiles

Sure, I'm concerned ... as I've always been about the proliferation of WMD.

But is this not a case of the chickens coming home to roost?

Has America not been the world's largest developer and purveyor of such weapons and every other assorted means of destruction, while raking in tons of blood money?

To decry Iran's effort to arm itself against the rogue state called Israel (nuclear) is the height of hypocrisy. It's the equivalent of arming myself to the teeth, and then arming my neighbor down the block, and when my neighbor down the block threatens another neighbor who buys some arms, does it make sense for me to raise hell and threaten them?

Who wants Iran with WMD?
But then, who wants Israel with WMD?
Oops, that's right, I forget - they're our ally.

Or are they?
They've spied on us.
They've made plans without reference to us.
Is not Israel in this thing for itself?
Are they not utterly desperate?

Have we failed them?
Of course, we have, and we've allowed them, encouraged them, to become an armed state - our so-called anchor of democracy in the ME.

And now McCain and his bluster. Yup, just what we need.

When what we need are cool heads and thoughtful discourse - Obama promises to meet with anyone anywhere. Yes! This costs us nothing, and it might gain us a bit of peace of in a war-torn region.

I don't want to see Iran with WMD, but they're a nation - well-defined and large. Nations do what nations do and have always done. They're only doing what we've done; what Europe has done (although with much more restraint and intelligence) and what Israel has done (a cruel little land bent on destroying the Palestinian - both Muslim and Christian - and anyone else who offers a voice of reason or protest in their paranoid mind-storm).

Hats off to Obama for willing to say it: "Let's talk!"
Before we start pulling triggers.

I don't doubt that Israel is planning a strike on Iran - and what could we do? We have created a monster there, and now it's about to bite us.

Now is the time to apply sanctions on Israel, and let the Israel lobby in this country cool its jets. If folks here are really concerned about Israel's survival, it will be secured at the conference table not in an F-14 delivering a bomb.

Hagee, Again

This right-wing preacher, flush with money - much of it innocent, sent in by the easily-swayed, some it politically tainted by the worst kinds of ideology, has gotten YouTube to remove every video showing Hagee for what he is - a total crackpot, far removed from the Biblical realities he purports to know and defeind better than anyone else.

Hagee is a fear-mongering, power-loving, war-lusting character who's a wonderful speaker, with a marvelous voice and a charming southern accent that drips with sincerity.

Why YouTube would cave in like this is beyond me ... but then, the media giants have been caving in all over the place to the Bush Administration and the like. We no longer have news organizations; we have news/show biz - it's all about profits and ratings, posturing and pandering.

Where is Edward R. Murrow or John Cameron Swayze when we need them? When news was news, and the world was important.

Thank goodness for the Huffington Post and others who are raising their voices and putting the right questions to the Neo-Theo Cons promoting a disastrous world view that seeks war as a prelude to the Second Coming of Jesus.

That people should believe this is beyond the grasp of my poor mind, but such fervor has always been hanging around on the edges of Christianity - actually, most any religion - for wherever power is to be found, distortions of power are close at hand.

Anyway, stakes are high, that's for sure, and it's always time for thoughtful folks to be alert to the enormous pressures of extremism, which is never good and never right.

Limbaugh

Just finished the Sunday NY Times Magazine piece on Limbaugh - argh!

His portrait graces (misplaced word) the cover - glaring, cigar plugged into his face, hand ready to remove plug so invective can flow onto our airwaves.

A millionaire many times over - thrice married and now alone in a 24,000 square foot home in Palm Beach, he's still the toast of the town for many, the darling of right-wing talk radio, and legend in his own mind.

The article by Zev Chafets is well-written and balanced - quoting folks from the other side who nonetheless admire Limbaugh's intellect and creativity, his amiability, as well as his business acumen. Chafets offers a reasoned assessment of an American icon - whether we agree with Limbaugh, disagree, or are somewhere in the middle (although that option seems hardly tenable for an intentionally polarizing personage like Limbaugh), he has shaped the American political landscape and is likely to continue doing so.

But I must confess, when I saw the cover, my first thought was simple: the face of evil!

Limbaugh might even agree - because he hopes to bedevil the liberal establishment, and I guess that includes folks like me, because I read his words - it all makes sense to me - but as far as I'm concerned, he's flat-out wrong, along with Reagan (Limbaugh's hero) and all the fat-cat Repubs who've made a killing off the decimated middle class and the pillaging of the national treasury.

No doubt this self-educated Missouri boy is brilliant, providing on-air commentary with only a few notes, no script writers, overcoming medication addictions, a total hearing loss seven years ago (now aided with cochlear implants) and maintaining a steady aim at his "enemies."

As a friend of mine who owned an auto dealership in Tulsa once said, "The car dealer down the road is my best friend. His effort to sell cars redoubles my effort to sell more."

I guess a guy like Limbaugh keeps us all honest, but I can't help but think: this kind of political hash, so close to hatred (yes, that's a value judgment), can only spawn distortion. Where's the compassion? Or is that a liberal word?

America's a fascinating land - we toy with conservatism time and again, only to have it fail. Grudgingly, we realize that a liberal vision is what has made this land truly great. The conservative Reagan pattern has spent this nation into hideous debt, depleted our efforts to mitigate poverty, playing into the wannabe mindset of the hope-to-be-rich-someday crowd who will vote for this nonsense even as their home is being foreclosed and their SUV now costs a hundred bucks to fill up.

Hats of the NY Times for this piece.

I Am a Christian

I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior. I believe in the virgin conception - though I don't expect anyone else to. I believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, because God takes the material world seriously, though I don't expect every Christian to come to the same conclusion.

I believe in the inspiration of the Bible, but let's not argue about it; I believe in the second coming of Jesus - somewhere, somehow, all of this will reach an unexpected good end.

I believe that all are saved, but not everyone knows it, and it's a delight and a joy to help folks see it; I also believe that salvation is experienced in all the religions of the world - wherever women and men pray and seek wisdom, wherever love is given and love received, wherever justice is sought, because there's a wideness in God's mercy.

I believe that human beings, fragmented by sin (whatever that may be) can be ugly and horrible, but also grand and noble. I believe that God is involved in all of it for good, though God cannot be the "all powerful" being envisioned by the Middle Ages and speculative philosophy. God is limited by the nature of love, much like a parent with regard to a child.

I believe that Jesus dying on the cross and rising from the dead added something of infinite worth to the universe. To stand by that cross, if that should be how the pathway of life takes us, is to stand before Truth. I also believe that not everything posing as religion, and offering this and that hope, can really work. There is, sadly, false paths and delusional programs. But ultimately, they're a small part of the whole picture, and grace, even then, remains operative and powerful.

Which is to say, I'm a Christian. Jesus is my Lord and Savior.

So that I can express dismay with my fellow Christians who purport to know all the truth, to have the inside edge on all matters from abortion to homosexuality, and who would see me as a defective Christian, or maybe not even a Christian.

My college, Calvin, recently made it impossible for a professor to continue because she wanted to worship at a predominantly black congregation. The college requires its professors to be members of the Christian Reformed Church, and though willing to work out some sort of oversight program, Denise Isom rightly saw this as decidedly unworkable and unreasonable.

At Wheaton College, an English professor who taught there for 20 years has resigned upon filing for a divorce after 30 years of marriage. The college's policy requires a divorcing faculty member to submit the case to the school for review. Kent Gramm said, however, "I would rather not deal with a policy such as Wheaton's."

I'm am profoundly tired of triumphalist Christianity, a creation of the medieval church, a mantle now worn by much of the so-called "evangelical" wing of the church. I'm tired of folks parading around their title, "evangelical," and attaching to it a political agenda - anti-gay and anti-choice, to mention only a few of the anti- positions associated with their interests - and telling the world "this is what a Christian believes," because they allege themselves to have a better knowledge of the Bible and what it means, a better relationship with Jesus, and are just all around better in their own eyes.

That's like saying, "I am right in what I think and believe, and those who agree with me are also right." Nice, if you can get away with it, but in the end, destructive of life's fabric, because they have to keep proving others wrong in order for them to be right.

I have been a Christian all of my life - and I just turned 64, but I am weary, weary, weary of the posturing and parading of the right wing. I guess that makes me left wing. Though the left wing of the church can't claim the high moral ground either, it's the lack of claim that makes for a healthier Christianity - a Christianity, not of power, but of kindness and humility, fairness and tolerance, while speaking out on the real moral issues of the day: poverty, hunger, global climate, health care, sex trafficking, war-mongering and militarism, capitalism without restraint, totalitarianism, corporate greed and the winner-take-all mentality.

I stand with Jesus, and that, with 4 bucks gets me a caramel latte at Starbucks. My faith in Jesus doesn't give a higher moral ground, doesn't give my some special insight into truth, love or whatever.

But I wouldn't stand anywhere else. And standing with Him, I see some light in His light - something of a great love and compassion, taking a chance to confront the bigwigs and face down the religious know-it-alls.

Like John the Baptist said, "A whole lot more of Him and whole lot less of me."

Impeach Bush?

Swirling around the edges of Bush and Gang, the persistent question of impeachment.

I'm not sure, but it seems that as the curtain closes on Bush's presidency, more and more revelations about the hoodwinking of America.

If Clinton could be impeached for obstruction of justice on a matter of bedroom politics, do the lies and manipulations of the Bush Administration with regard to WMDs and Iraq constitute an impeachable offense? Is Bush a war criminal?

I'm confident that history will reveal the Bush administration to be the worst, rife with self-righteousness and worse. I have no doubt that the Neo-Cons and Theo-Cons knew full-well what they were doing - a rabid effort to take over Middle Eastern oil for American imperial interests.

Did Bush know this?

Some of the time, I'm convinced that was a pawn in their hands, a not-to-bright Texas weed wacker with an Ivy League pedigree bought by Daddy.

Then, I wonder - is he the proverbial country lawyer?

But, then, every country lawyer I've known (and I lived in Oklahoma for 12 years) were utterly bright, and it wasn't long before their skill emerged ... I've yet to see a shred of skill in Bush and have never heard him speak with any down-home eloquence, but only a stumbling rhetoric filled with schoolyard posturing, phrases memorized - seemingly without comprehension.

McCain offers nothing more - though a man of intelligence, his positions are obscurely imperialist, and stung by Vietnam, he's going to fight that war all over again, this time in Iraq, fulfilling a mythical complaint: if only the politicos had left the military alone, Vietnam could have been won (whatever that means).

Which reminds me, having just celebrated the Fourth of July and reading the Gettysburg Address - oh, to have a patriot like Lincoln, a man of breadth and profound sympathies.

To know that patriotism without international regard is no patriotism, but a betrayal of one's nation. Real patriotism always had large boundaries.

We would do well to study Reinhold Niebuhr's work on nationalism - what he described as a "sublimated egoism - the narrow-minded substitute for true patriotism, a substitute that always makes the wrong decision and leads a nation down a destructive pathway.

Niebuhr writes: The truth is that every immediate loyalty is a potential danger to higher and more inclusive loyalties, and an opportunity for the expression of a sublimated egoism (Moral Man and Immoral Society).

What we have seen with Bush and Gang is an unrestrained limited loyalty, and the usual counter-voices of church and philosophy have been silent far too long.

The weapon used by the Neo-Cons to silence criticism has been the patriotic label. To raise a question or voice a doubt, immediately the "unpatriotic" label was hurled with forceful effectiveness. Anyone who saw the king to be naked chose silence for fear of being labeled unpatriotic in a time when Americans were demonstrating their all too common lack of intelligence. After 9/11, fearfulness ruled the day, wiretapping and Orwellian newspeak ruled the night - and this great Republic teetered on the edge of madness.

But God's mercy is real, and I believe that God's mercy is enabling our nation to recover its balance, to regain an honest appraisal of our place in history and our need for allies. We cannot go it alone; it's foolishness to ever think so.

And the king has been naked for a long time.

May those with a voice, and good eyes, call it for what it is. The king is naked, and we have been seriously misled. But let's tell the whole truth: we've been misled because too many of us wanted to be misled. We American's love the smell of napalm in the morning.

When we needed a real leader, we got a charade, and a parade of looney tunes.

Is Bush impeachable?

Only time will tell ... proceedings against Bush and Gang may be needed to exorcise the demons that have long held sway in our national psyche.

Yet goodness has its own powers, too, and power enough to heal the wounds and put this nation back on track.

Perhaps time and history will provide their own history, relegating Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and Cheney to the dust bin of irrelevance - and for them, that may be punishment enough. But whatever happens, don't buy their books, unless they dedicate their earnings to the care of American veterans.

Bush's Legacy

Jobs = gone!

Oil prices = up!

Middle Class = disappearing!

Economy = tanked!

Iraq = disaster!

Afghanistan = failure!

McCain = same!

Can Religion Ever Lead the Way?

Congress is holding hearings on discrimination in the government against transgenders, who are finally being given a chance to tell their story. Hats off to Representatives Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin for these hearings.

The Bush admin has been a hostile environment, but the simple truth is sadder: the TG community has long been on the thin margin, and only the recent efforts of the gay and lesbian community has brought the light of compassion and common sense to bear.

But once again, "religious" folk reveal a narrow, if not malicious mindset - hiding behind religion, convoluting and twisting it, rather than using religion to open doors and "make straight the way of the Lord."

Opposing the legislation, Glen Lavy, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, said it would be a mistake to define gender identity or gender expression as a protected class. He said that objections to "the concept of transgender" are based on religious beliefs and that forcing the idea as a valid concept "is like forcing an Orthodox Jew to eat pork." And he said that employers would have difficulty enforcing dress codes and assuring privacy.

Exclusion arguments all have the same ring.

Read what folks said about integration 60 years ago. Dire predictions of social decay and disruption, not to mention "religious beliefs" supporting segregation.

Religion always has a narrowing impulse (see Leviticus), yet this is the very book Jesus quoted when adding a second component to His summary of the Law: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18).

When Peter (a Jew) is engaged by God to reach outward to the Gentiles (Acts 10), Peter has scruples, but in a vision/dream, Peter sees a sheet (picnic blanket) coming down from heaven with all kinds of unclean animals on it - the Lord says, "Eat!"

It seems that Peter was hungry!

Peter objects: "I've never eaten anything unclean."

The Lord says, "Don't call unclean when I've made clean."

Did the Lord have a change of mind?

Yup.

Lots of things necessary at one point give way to a new scheme - that's pretty much the heart and soul of the Bible - God really changes - not in love or purpose, but in the details, as God moves religion along a pathway from exclusion to inclusion, from narrowness to expansiveness, from hatred to love of neighbor, reminding all of us to not call "unclean" what God calls clean.

In these days of transition, God is clearly shaking the pillars of religion all around the world. Giving us a good shake, we're nervous, clinging to outmoded models and shouting our little laws and traditions all the louder, in the hope of proving their validity by our volume.

Like Peter, are we not hungry?
For Justice and Peace?
For a better world?

Like Peter, are we not tempted to stand by the old laws and regulations, the old patterns of thought and prejudice?

Yet in our hunger, God shows us a better way. At first, "Oh no, Lord; I'd never do that."

But God is doing a new thing (see Isaiah 43:19).

I thank God for the windows of understanding and tolerance being opened. I just wish "religious" folk could be at the vanguard.