Not a big Joe Biden fan but he's absolutely 110% right about every word he says here. I'm sure Rush and company jumped all over this but that's because he's talking about them. Trickle-down doesn't trickle-down. It trickles offshore.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Friday, July 06, 2007
Why We Keep This Creed
A great column by Bush's former speechwriter explaining why criticism isn't treason.
By Michael Gerson
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
One of the great Independence Day speeches of American history was an attack on Independence Day.
On the Fourth of July, 1829, William Lloyd Garrison-- who looked like a shop clerk and set rhetorical fires like an arsonist -- took the pulpit at the Park Street Church in Boston. Rather than celebrate, he said, Americans should "spike every cannon and haul down every banner" because of the "glaring contradiction" between the Declaration of Independence and the practice of slavery. The grievances of slaves, he argued, made the grievances of the American colonists look like trivial whining. "I am ashamed of my country," he concluded. "I am sick of our unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty and equality; of our hypocritical cant about the unalienable rights of man."
Even across the centuries, his gall is startling. But Garrison laid bare the central contradiction of the American experiment: that the land of the free was actually a prison for millions of its inhabitants.
The war that ended slavery, it turned out, did not end oppression. In "Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War," Nicholas Lemann recounts how armed paramilitary groups, often consisting of former Confederate officers and soldiers, conducted a violent guerrilla campaign to reimpose race-based rule across the South in the 1870s. In our own period of ethnic cleansing, local officials were assassinated, elections were overturned and resisters were massacred. Lemann tells the story of Charles Caldwell, a black state senator from Mississippi, lured to a bar for a Christmas drink and shot in the back. Staggering to his feet, he said: "Remember when you kill me you kill a gentleman and a brave man." He was then shot 30 or 40 more times.
Why love such a country? Why celebrate its birth? The answer was given from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church on Independence Day 1965.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that America has a "schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against herself." But we are redeemed, he argued, by our creed, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which manages "to forever challenge us; to forever give us a sense of urgency; to forever stand in the midst of the 'isness' of our terrible injustices; to remind us of the 'oughtness' of our noble capacity for justice and love and brotherhood." Americans, he said, believe in "certain basic rights that are neither derived from nor conferred by the state. . . . They are God-given, gifts from his hands."
"You may take my life," King said, "but you can't take my right to life. You may take liberty from me, but you can't take my right to liberty." And this creed of "amazing universalism" calls "America to do a special job for mankind and the world . . . because America is the world in miniature and the world is America writ large."
The privileged and powerful can love America for many reasons. The oppressed and powerless, stripped of selfish motives for their love, have found America lovely because of its ideals.
It is typical of America that our great national day is not the celebration of a battle -- or, as in the case of France, the celebration of a riot. It is the celebration of a political act, embedded in a philosophic argument: that the rights of man are universal because they are rooted in the image of God. That argument remains controversial. Some view all claims of universal truth with skepticism. Some believe such claims by America amount to hubris.
Which is why some of us love this holiday so much. It is the day when cynicism is silent. It is the day when Americans recall that "all men are created equal" somehow applies to the Mexican migrant and the Iraqi shopkeeper and the inner-city teenager. And it is the day we honor those who take this fact seriously. Those in our military who fight for the liberty of strangers are noble. Those dissidents who risk much in Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea and China are heroic. Those who work against poverty and injustice in America are patriots -- because patriotism does not require us to live in denial, only to live in hope.
In America we respect, defend and obey the Constitution -- but we change it when it is inconsistent with our ideals. Those ideals are defined by the Declaration of Independence. We have not always lived up to them. But we would not change them for anything on Earth.
michaelgerson@cfr.org
By Michael Gerson
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
One of the great Independence Day speeches of American history was an attack on Independence Day.
On the Fourth of July, 1829, William Lloyd Garrison-- who looked like a shop clerk and set rhetorical fires like an arsonist -- took the pulpit at the Park Street Church in Boston. Rather than celebrate, he said, Americans should "spike every cannon and haul down every banner" because of the "glaring contradiction" between the Declaration of Independence and the practice of slavery. The grievances of slaves, he argued, made the grievances of the American colonists look like trivial whining. "I am ashamed of my country," he concluded. "I am sick of our unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty and equality; of our hypocritical cant about the unalienable rights of man."
Even across the centuries, his gall is startling. But Garrison laid bare the central contradiction of the American experiment: that the land of the free was actually a prison for millions of its inhabitants.
The war that ended slavery, it turned out, did not end oppression. In "Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War," Nicholas Lemann recounts how armed paramilitary groups, often consisting of former Confederate officers and soldiers, conducted a violent guerrilla campaign to reimpose race-based rule across the South in the 1870s. In our own period of ethnic cleansing, local officials were assassinated, elections were overturned and resisters were massacred. Lemann tells the story of Charles Caldwell, a black state senator from Mississippi, lured to a bar for a Christmas drink and shot in the back. Staggering to his feet, he said: "Remember when you kill me you kill a gentleman and a brave man." He was then shot 30 or 40 more times.
Why love such a country? Why celebrate its birth? The answer was given from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church on Independence Day 1965.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that America has a "schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against herself." But we are redeemed, he argued, by our creed, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which manages "to forever challenge us; to forever give us a sense of urgency; to forever stand in the midst of the 'isness' of our terrible injustices; to remind us of the 'oughtness' of our noble capacity for justice and love and brotherhood." Americans, he said, believe in "certain basic rights that are neither derived from nor conferred by the state. . . . They are God-given, gifts from his hands."
"You may take my life," King said, "but you can't take my right to life. You may take liberty from me, but you can't take my right to liberty." And this creed of "amazing universalism" calls "America to do a special job for mankind and the world . . . because America is the world in miniature and the world is America writ large."
The privileged and powerful can love America for many reasons. The oppressed and powerless, stripped of selfish motives for their love, have found America lovely because of its ideals.
It is typical of America that our great national day is not the celebration of a battle -- or, as in the case of France, the celebration of a riot. It is the celebration of a political act, embedded in a philosophic argument: that the rights of man are universal because they are rooted in the image of God. That argument remains controversial. Some view all claims of universal truth with skepticism. Some believe such claims by America amount to hubris.
Which is why some of us love this holiday so much. It is the day when cynicism is silent. It is the day when Americans recall that "all men are created equal" somehow applies to the Mexican migrant and the Iraqi shopkeeper and the inner-city teenager. And it is the day we honor those who take this fact seriously. Those in our military who fight for the liberty of strangers are noble. Those dissidents who risk much in Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea and China are heroic. Those who work against poverty and injustice in America are patriots -- because patriotism does not require us to live in denial, only to live in hope.
In America we respect, defend and obey the Constitution -- but we change it when it is inconsistent with our ideals. Those ideals are defined by the Declaration of Independence. We have not always lived up to them. But we would not change them for anything on Earth.
michaelgerson@cfr.org
Monday, June 25, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Lemme out!
James Dobson and Don Wildmon have taken the National Association of Evangelicals (of which they AREN'T members, I might add) to task for adding the environment to their list of priorities.
One-Size Politics Doesn't Fit All
I, for one, am relieved that any group of evangelicals is promoting anything else in addition to sexual and reproductive morality and are considering that maybe the Republicans might - gasp! - be wrong about some issues.
Most of the people in charge of that party and the current administration have a different god than we do - the almighty dollar. They just woo us with a few planks in the platform and tack "God bless America" onto the end of their speeches to win our votes. The rest of their days are spent cutting backroom deals with cronies and helping them get richer at everyone else's (not to mention the environment's) expense.
It also frightens me that so many Christians believe that the jungle law and social Darwinism taught by mean-spirited agnostic radio commentators are biblical principles. I've actually been suspected of being a communist for praising the early church's all-for-one monetary philosophy. Capitalism really does trump scripture when the rubber meets the road in your workaday red state church.
The GOP has had evangelicals in their hip pocket for far too long. I want out.
One-Size Politics Doesn't Fit All
I, for one, am relieved that any group of evangelicals is promoting anything else in addition to sexual and reproductive morality and are considering that maybe the Republicans might - gasp! - be wrong about some issues.
Most of the people in charge of that party and the current administration have a different god than we do - the almighty dollar. They just woo us with a few planks in the platform and tack "God bless America" onto the end of their speeches to win our votes. The rest of their days are spent cutting backroom deals with cronies and helping them get richer at everyone else's (not to mention the environment's) expense.
It also frightens me that so many Christians believe that the jungle law and social Darwinism taught by mean-spirited agnostic radio commentators are biblical principles. I've actually been suspected of being a communist for praising the early church's all-for-one monetary philosophy. Capitalism really does trump scripture when the rubber meets the road in your workaday red state church.
The GOP has had evangelicals in their hip pocket for far too long. I want out.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Questions for 2008
This column is by Gordon McDonald, author and pastor, chair of World Relief, and editor at large for Leadership Journal, a magazine for Evangelical ministers.
*****
The other day I read this headline in our newspaper: "Christian Right Leaders Struggle to Find a Strong Candidate for President in '08."
It turns out that, a few weeks ago, there was an unpublicized meeting in Florida at a five-star hotel during which "Christian leaders" discussed who they would support in the upcoming presidential race. I worry about a situation in which a few people who are very adroit at seizing the microphone presume to make a movement out of all of us and then speak on our behalf.
I was not raised (by parents or mentors) to think politically or to participate in public political dialogue. My generation of men and women who felt called to the Christian ministry were told that our task was to develop deeply rooted Christians who would transform our discipleship into action items such as work ethics, family strength, financial responsibility, moral choices in entertainment, and responsible political decisions. It was not "ours," we were taught, to form or join political organizations and use our privilege as Christian influencers to pick and tout candidates from our pulpits or TV/radio shows or print publications.
But the rules seem to have changed, and people like myself who are a bit unhappy about this may have to speak up a bit more. Thus, in an idle moment I imagined myself invited to the Florida meetings, and I began writing down issues and questions I would like to have raised had I been there. I am somewhat confident I know what others who did go would have talked about. So on my list I went in other directions.
As the various names would have been raised at the table in Florida (Clinton, Romney, Obama, McCain, Edwards, Giuliani—please note the randomized sample offered without prejudice), these are the questions I would have raised:
These are all questions with an admitted political ring to them. But each arises from my convictions as a biblical person.
If I'd been invited to Florida to ask my questions, I would liked to have described an experience I had the other day while waiting at an airport gate for a plane.
I found myself seated across the aisle from a young couple in their early twenties. He was suited up in army fatigues, a duffle bag in front of him. It was clear that he was headed for Iraq or Afghanistan. Next to him was his girlfriend or his wife (I couldn't tell).
I watched as she virtually connected herself to him from head to toe, trying every other minute to get even closer. The look of anguish on her face as she came nearer and nearer to the moment of their final goodbye was the look of one facing death. And I said to myself—as I watched youth in all of its idealism and romance about to be wrenched apart by forces over which they had no control—this isn't the way it was supposed to be. Somebody please change this!
Thus my final question for candidate: Are they willing to do so?
*****
The other day I read this headline in our newspaper: "Christian Right Leaders Struggle to Find a Strong Candidate for President in '08."
It turns out that, a few weeks ago, there was an unpublicized meeting in Florida at a five-star hotel during which "Christian leaders" discussed who they would support in the upcoming presidential race. I worry about a situation in which a few people who are very adroit at seizing the microphone presume to make a movement out of all of us and then speak on our behalf.
I was not raised (by parents or mentors) to think politically or to participate in public political dialogue. My generation of men and women who felt called to the Christian ministry were told that our task was to develop deeply rooted Christians who would transform our discipleship into action items such as work ethics, family strength, financial responsibility, moral choices in entertainment, and responsible political decisions. It was not "ours," we were taught, to form or join political organizations and use our privilege as Christian influencers to pick and tout candidates from our pulpits or TV/radio shows or print publications.
But the rules seem to have changed, and people like myself who are a bit unhappy about this may have to speak up a bit more. Thus, in an idle moment I imagined myself invited to the Florida meetings, and I began writing down issues and questions I would like to have raised had I been there. I am somewhat confident I know what others who did go would have talked about. So on my list I went in other directions.
As the various names would have been raised at the table in Florida (Clinton, Romney, Obama, McCain, Edwards, Giuliani—please note the randomized sample offered without prejudice), these are the questions I would have raised:
- Can he/she give us a government that will recoup our reputation in the world as a generous and compassionate nation? And could he/she take more seriously the fact that a large part of this world now finds our country distasteful? And this goes for Christians in other lands also. (I'm embarrassed every time I go abroad.)
Is he/she brave enough to influence the formulation of bold new initiatives regarding energy-consumption, healthcare, and Social Security? (If there isn't, the year 2030 isn't going to be a good year)
Does he/she think they could stop putting our grandchildren in hock with hideous deficits? (Isn't being debt-free a Christian value?)
Would he/she take the issue of climate change and environmental care seriously? (It is God's creation, and some more generations may have to share it.)
Would he/she pledge to be so truthful with the American people that no reasonable person would question their integrity? Let's describe this as being Lincoln-esque. (I'm tired of spin.)
Would he/she renounce all forms of torture in the treatment of prisoners? (I'm ashamed that this is even an issue in America.)
Is he/she concerned about the growing social crisis of the separation between the rich and the poor? (It's becoming a gated world out there and one day there may be a new kind of homegrown terrorism.)
Does he/she think they might rethink the exporting of billions upon billions of dollars to places like Iraq when a few billion would make a lot of difference in the education of American children and the absurdly rising costs of college education? (I can't believe we are so silent on matters like this.)
Might he/she intend to offer any form of moral influence that would raise the tastes of our nation in its choices of entertainment, the spending of its money, and its growing addiction to sports? (Or does Rome live again?)
If there is ever again a justifiable reason to take this nation to war, could he/she make sure that everyone becomes involved in the sacrifice that war requires? To date the burden or war seems to be on a relatively small percentage of Americans while everyone else goes on living the so-called "good life?" (You destroy a nation by doing it the way we've been doing it. How did we forget Vietnam so easily?).
Could he/she see themselves being as turned on by the dream of alleviating diseases, suppressing genocide, and rescuing the dying nations (debt forgiveness comes to mind) as America once was about getting someone to the moon?
These are all questions with an admitted political ring to them. But each arises from my convictions as a biblical person.
If I'd been invited to Florida to ask my questions, I would liked to have described an experience I had the other day while waiting at an airport gate for a plane.
I found myself seated across the aisle from a young couple in their early twenties. He was suited up in army fatigues, a duffle bag in front of him. It was clear that he was headed for Iraq or Afghanistan. Next to him was his girlfriend or his wife (I couldn't tell).
I watched as she virtually connected herself to him from head to toe, trying every other minute to get even closer. The look of anguish on her face as she came nearer and nearer to the moment of their final goodbye was the look of one facing death. And I said to myself—as I watched youth in all of its idealism and romance about to be wrenched apart by forces over which they had no control—this isn't the way it was supposed to be. Somebody please change this!
Thus my final question for candidate: Are they willing to do so?
Thursday, March 01, 2007
I'm a Presidential convention delegate!
I've decided to put my mouse where my mouth is. I have become a delegate in a new web-based, grass-roots movement to elect a moderate presidential ticket that will be comprised of a candidate from each party. It's called Unity08. It circumvents the current broken primary system that allows a dozen states to choose the candidates with the most money to drop in their television markets - money contributed by a powerful minority. It will hopefully address the issues the majority of Americans care about rather than the hot-button issues that pander to the ultra-left and ultra-right special interests.
Here's a video clip of actor Sam Waterston explaining the idea and motivation behind this movement:
It's not perfect (the delegates range from libertarian to populist to merely fed up) but it's not business as usual, either. Just going with my gut. And honestly, I don't care if it splits the vote for either party. I really don't.
Hopefully Unity08 will get on the ballot in Alabama. There's a long, long way to go. But it is possible. And that's enough for me at this point.
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