The Robin's Nest

Lakoff on Republicans and incompetence

2006-07-26T14:45:00.000-07:00

excerpt from the article:

Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush’s “failures” and label him and his administration as incompetent. Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault.

George Lakoff on freedom

2006-07-26T14:41:00.000-07:00

excerpts from the article:

----Over more than two centuries Americans demanded successive expansions of freedom — progressive freedom. Expansions of voting rights, civil rights, education, public health, scientific knowledge, and protections from fear and want: these all made us freer to follow our dreams. These were the ideals of freedom that I grew up with. They are now all under threat, not by guns or bombs, but an under-the-radar redefinition of freedom and liberty to suit right wing ideology. And it is taking place under our noses, with the complicity of the media, where there has been little noticeable questioning of the President’s use of “freedom” and “liberty.” The media has not made an issue of it.

----Progressives: There should be a freedom to marry. The government should not be able to decide who can marry who.
Conservatives: “Freely elected” government officials should determine who can marry who. That’s what a “free country” means.

Progressives: Social security, the minimum wage, universal health care, college for all are ways to guarantee freedom from want.
Conservatives: Giving people things they haven’t earned creates dependency and robs people of their freedom.

Progressives: The 45 million working people who can’t afford health care cannot all pull themselves up by their bootstraps. An economy that drives down wages to increase investor profits creates a cheap labor trap. The trap works against freedom from want.
Conservatives: Economic liberty comes through the free market ; government gets in the way: government works against economic liberty in four ways: regulation, workers’ rights, taxes, and class action lawsuits.

Progressives: Freedom of religion includes freedom from having a religion imposed on you.
Conservatives: Freedom to practice religion for fundamentalist evangelicals means spreading the good news of the truth of the gospel, which implies school prayer, “under God” in the Pledge, the Ten Commandments in courthouses, and the teaching of Intelligent Design.

Progressives: The President’s spying on citizens without a warrant is a violation of freedom.
Conservatives: The President is just doing his duty to preserve our freedom.

The poor and politics

2006-07-26T14:26:00.000-07:00

From Sept. 2005

We’ve recently heard people such as Michael Chertoff and Rick Santorum basically saying that the people in New Orleans were told to leave, and if they didn’t, they had made their own bed. The President’s mother insensitively opined that the evacuees had come from poor backgrounds and were enjoying better lives in the Houston Stadium. Supercilious Rush Limbaugh declared that the people in New Orleans should have saved some money for such a rainy day.

I’ve heard people defending the Bush family’s insensitivity to and neglect of the poor by saying that the Bushes were born rich and so don’t understand. It’s one thing for a Bush apologist such as Limbaugh to exhibit such ignorance, but in my mind it’s absolutely unethical for any political leader to not understand the plight of the poor. People from disadvantaged backgrounds often do not have credit cards, savings accounts, or cars. They don’t have people to lean on who do have these advantages. Furthermore, many have internalized society’s negative messages towards them and have grown up feeling hopeless, powerless, invisible, and unworthy. These people could not feel confident in their ability to hop in their SUV, fill it up with over $3/gallon gasoline, and drive to their second home to wait out the storm.

When one out of every 8 Americans lives in poverty (the highest rate of any industrialized nation), it is a moral and political imperative for our leaders to understand the physical and psychological environment experienced by many of the poor. Particularly since capitalism requires a lower class working for substandard wages, we at least owe the poor more than disdain.

We like to think we are the greatest nation because we have a handful of the richest people in the world. Perhaps a nation’s greatness would be better measured by how well it takes care of its less advantaged.

Do we even NEED lobbyists?

2006-07-26T14:11:00.000-07:00

From February, 2006

The recent scandals involving lobbyists are very alarming. The most obvious method of addressing pending legislation would be for panels to present pro and con information to Congress as a whole. Each side would present its case, lawmakers could ask questions, discuss the issues, and then vote. A legislator who doesn't attend these sessions couldn't vote on the issue.

Highly paid lobbyists wining and dining legislators promotes bribery or arm-twisting. And groups that can't afford lobbyists are not getting a fair or equal opportunity for their issues to be heard. How difficult is it to see the problem with lobbyists presenting their interests to selected policy makers one-on-one? It's all about influence and no longer about balanced consideration of all options and their ramifications.

If our legislators have time to have lunch and play golf with lobbyists from one side of an issue, then they have time to listen to presentations about BOTH sides of the issues. Actually, it's nothing more than their job. If we don't insist on changes to the status quo, we are essentially partners in the corruption.

Are "patriotism" and "war" synonymous?

2006-07-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

From May, 2006

Patriotism is:

...driving a fuel-efficient vehicle
...donating blood
...being an active and caring part of your neighborhood
...treating your less advantaged neighbor with respect
...supporting local farmers and merchants
...fighting for better schools for all neighborhoods
...volunteering in your community
...taking care of the environment
...appreciating the diversity of your fellow Americans
...mediating peaceful compromises with those around you
...being one with the world not superior to it.

Patriotism is exemplified by our personal lifestyle choices, not by our actions in a foreign country.

How did we let this administration define “patriotism” as being synonymous with “war”?

The new Christianity without Jesus

2006-07-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

Humans are capable of a wide range of cognitive and emotional expression.
We can be aggressive, tender, introspective, competitive, peaceful, emotive, judgmental, or caring. At some point early in human development, however, societies became patriarchal, and strength and power became the most valued qualities.

Although women and men are more alike than different (more differences are found within gender than between genders), patriarchal societies tended to exaggerate and encourage those differences. Work was divided along gender lines, as were the human qualities we are all capable of. Females were assigned the more peaceful, communicative, and emotive qualities, while males were assigned the more aggressive, stoic, and cognitive qualities. Just as women were considered inferior to men, so the qualities assigned to them were considered inferior and unimportant.

An alternative approach would have been to let everyone develop all of their human abilities and express each one depending on the situation, such as showing nurturance to a crying baby or showing competition when in a race, regardless of gender. People would exhibit varying constellations of the different human abilities, but it would be based on their individual personality, not on their gender. Feminism enabled many women and men to move past their proscribed gender roles, but our collective societal beliefs still cling to the past.

A comparison can be made to the God of the Old Testament and Jesus of the New Testament. God is presented as similar to the masculine gender identity; he appears arrogant, interested in his own power, judgmental, and advocates aggressive solutions, speaking of “an eye for an eye”. Jesus, on the other hand, has qualities representative of the feminine gender identity. He was humble, and he spoke of “turning the other cheek”, taking care of the poor (nurturance and compassion), and accepting diversity. He is emotive and does not seem invested in his own power.

More interesting – and disturbing - is that our current Christian political leaders seem to have substituted God’s “masculine” identity for Jesus’ “feminine” identity. Our guiding “moral” principles seem now to revolve around aggressive national power (“my country right or wrong” and “might makes right”), self-centered personal power (“I’m going to make my own financial fortune and I don’t care about the less advantaged”), and discriminatory social power (let’s take rights away from people who are different than I am”).

We are still a patriarchy, and there is still a stigma of inferiority attached to so-called “feminine” qualities. Power is still seen as the most valued human quality and war is glorified. Could this be part of the reason that Christianity has been “de-feminized” ? The world is quickly becoming an extremely volatile place, and a cowboy administration based on a “masculinized” morality seems likely to further fan the flames, particularly as recognized states are increasingly resorting to terrorist tactics of pre-emption, disproportunate retaliation, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

As a secularist, I don’t believe that religion belongs in government, but if we must have it for two more years, I’d prefer our “Christian” leaders start focusing on what Jesus stood for. A government that focused on Jesus’ values, rather than on religious identification and power, may very likely be able to prevent World War 3. We need to finally agree that humans are capable of a range of behaviors, stop glorifying and overusing our “masculine” abilities, and start appreciating those behaviors previously assigned to the “feminine gender identity”. Those “feminine” qualities might literally be the saving grace for our world.

Such a shift would open up to us a whole new worldview, and enable us to finally envision (and desire) prevention of conflict, as well as non-violent resolution of grievances. A good place to start would be to address the poverty that most of the world’s citizens live in. Jesus would like that.

Propagandistic vs. investigative journalism

2005-08-05T22:18:00.000-07:00

excerpts:

So now we know for sure. Those "highly placed Bush Administration sources" anonymously quoted over and over again in front-page and cover stories are, in fact, the likes of Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. The Valerie Plame affair has not only outed the chronic propaganda leakers in the Bush Administration; it has also exposed for the public to see the corrupt relationship between the White House and leading members of the national press corps.

It's no wonder George W. Bush has such contempt for the media. His cronies must laugh regularly about how easily they manipulate reporters. Driven by ego and competitive pressure, they are willing carriers of the Administration's propaganda, blinded by feelings of false power because they are close to the people actually pulling their strings.

As the New York Times said in a recent editorial (July 19) defending Judith Miller, if Rove and other officials are "concerned about getting out the truth, all they would need to do would be to stand up in public and tell it." That is exactly right. What a different world it would be, right now, if most reporters for mainstream media refused the corrupt bargain and were willing to write stories spun by the Administration only if the sources were on the record and accountable. Shouldn't that be the standard practice, with rare exceptions, instead of the opposite? As Americans consider what is happening in Iraq and at home, they keep asking why no one is held accountable, why no one seems to be responsible. A major reason is the habitual granting of anonymity to the executive branch by the Washington press corps.

We need a national shield law, but not to protect promises of confidentiality to some of the most powerful people In the world. We need it to protect reporters who place their jobs on the line--and frequently lose them--when they take the risk of exposing abuses of power by those inside government and without.

No, the first lesson of the Valerie Plame affair should not be about how better to protect reporters like Judith Miller, although reporters clearly need better protection. Instead, let's first make it an occasion for soul-searching about how the mainstream media covers the President of the United States.

More on Hiroshima

2005-08-05T22:14:00.000-07:00

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Hiroshima Cover-up Exposed

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/23914/

Excerpts:

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan almost 60 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years all but a handful of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.

More recently, McGovern declared that Americans should have seen the damage wrought by the bomb. "The main reason it was classified was ... because of the horror, the devastation," he said. Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

The atomic cover-up also reveals what can happen in any country that carries out deadly attacks on civilians in any war and then keeps images of what occurred from its own people.

At this point, the American public knew little about conditions in the atomic cities beyond Japanese assertions that a mysterious affliction was attacking many of those who survived the initial blasts (claims that were largely taken to be propaganda). Newspaper photographs of victims were non-existent, or censored. Life magazine would later observe that for years "the world ... knew only the physical facts of atomic destruction."

Tens of thousands of American GIs occupied the two cities. Because of the alleged absence of residual radiation, no one was urged to take precautions.

"Nothing and no one had prepared me for the devastation I met there," Sussan later told me. "We were the only people with adequate ability and equipment to make a record of this holocaust. ... I felt that if we did not capture this horror on film, no one would ever really understand the dimensions of what had happened. At that time people back home had not seen anything but black and white pictures of blasted buildings or a mushroom cloud."

Along with the rest of McGovern's crew, Sussan documented the physical effects of the bomb, including the ghostly shadows of vaporized civilians burned into walls; and, most chillingly, dozens of people in hospitals who had survived (at least momentarily) and were asked to display their burns, scars, and other lingering effects for the camera as a warning to the world.

Despite rising nuclear fears in the 1960s, before and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, few in the U.S. challenged the consensus view that dropping the bomb on two Japanese cities was necessary. The United States maintained its "first-use" nuclear policy: Under certain circumstances it would strike first with the bomb and ask questions later. In other words, there was no real taboo against using the bomb. This notion of acceptability had started with Hiroshima. A firm line against using nuclear weapons had been drawn--in the sand. The U.S., in fact, had threatened to use nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis and on other occasions.

"Original Child Bomb" went on to debut at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, win a major documentary award, and this week, on Aug. 6 and 7, it will debut on the Sundance cable channel. After 60 years at least a small portion of that footage will finally reach part of the American public in the unflinching and powerful form its creators intended. Only then will the Americans who see it be able to fully judge for themselves what McGovern and Sussan were trying to accomplish in shooting the film, why the authorities felt they had to suppress it, and what impact their footage, if widely aired, might have had on the nuclear arms race -- and the nuclear proliferation that plagues, and endangers, us today.

Hiroshima, cover-ups, and the nuclear race

2005-08-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

AlterNet: Lessons Learned, Lessons Not Learned

http://www.alternet.org/story/23915/

Excerpts:

Sixty years ago tomorrow, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, the military dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki.

These are the only two nuclear bombs ever used in war, and with good reason. The devastation from the bombs was unfathomable, and as the extent of the destruction became public knowledge, the bombs themselves became a symbol of the atrocity of war.

Immediately after the bombs, once Japan had surrendered unconditionally, the U.S. military instituted a blanket ban on reporting about the effects of the bombs. It took seven years for the first photos to surface in Japan, and many more for the larger world to learn what happened on those two days.

Sadly, the threat of nuclear weapons seems to have faded from the public consciousness, even as the fear of terrorist attacks looms large. With all the talk of "dirty bombs" and "suitcase bombs," the fact is that more than 30,000 nuclear weapons remain in the arsenals of the eight countries that admit to having any. As Walter Cronkite says in a new radio documentary, "Lessons from Hiroshima: 60 Years Later," "some 4,000 of these are on hair-trigger alert."

One of the most interesting and damning points you make in the documentary is that if the cover-up had not happened, then possibly there would not have been an arms race, that nuclear weapons would not be the threat that they still are today.

Yes, you certainly have a strong argument about that. Obviously, no one knows for sure, and one of the journalists in the program makes the case that the arms race wouldn’t have happened. But without a doubt the debate would have been different. In the United States there was no debate about the legitimacy of having nuclear arms, the only argument was "Oh my God, how did the Soviet Union get it? The Rosenbergs must have stolen it." That was the only debate; it wasn't about whether it was legitimate to have these weapons, or for the U.S. to test them. Certainly it would have changed the nature of the debate.

I was in Hiroshima just after the 55th anniversary, and the city is incredible; it's a monument to peace, there are paper cranes everywhere, there's a Peace Museum, and it's full of memorials. So in 55 years they'd turned from being the aggressor to being a proponent of peace, and in some way you could make the argument that if the war hadn’t ended like that ...

Sure, but do you have to put people through that kind of death and destruction in order to become a monument to peace? It's a credit to the people of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki both, that they've drawn on those lessons and they've made their cities leaders in the movement for peace, but you don't wish that on anyone.

When you mentioned that the Japanese argument in WWII for invading Asia was to liberate them, do you see any other parallels between that war and what's going on now with American policy?

Of course. Ironically, the U.S. has been encouraging the Japanese military and government to increase the sizes of its army and navy, including sending troops to Iraq. And that's why it's so telling that this Japanese soldier [is] completely opposed to sending troops to Iraq, because how is it any different from what they did in Asia?

But on a broader level, what the U.S. is doing now in Iraq is using a lot of the same logic, which is "We're going there to liberate Iraq from a horrible dictator." Of course, that's not what they told us at the time. At the time it was to stop the weapons of mass destruction and to stop nuclear expansion [laughs], and when those arguments turned out to be totally phony, they came up with this latest one. It's the logic of every aggressor, the aggressor never says "We're going there to benefit from your oil and expand our military bases and our geopolitical position." They go there and say "we're fighting for democracy and to liberate you."

Hip clothing and sweat shops

2005-08-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/23867/

excerpt:

If this summer's fashion trends can tell us anything, it's that the world is definitely getting smaller. Standing on Broadway in fashion-crazy lower Manhattan, the scene on the street is more Global Village than Greenwich Village: women running in and out of stores in saris and Native-American-inspired footwear, vendors selling African-style wooden beaded jewelry, and paisley-clad hipsters each trying to look more citizen-of-the-world than the next.

The only problem is that the ethnic patchwork is contrived. Young women who have never traveled out of their zip code are dressing like they just came back from a whirlwind tour of Nairobi, Prague and the Khyber Pass. While some girls really did get that embroidered blouse in the former Soviet bloc, most of them have patched together their summer wardrobes at the Gap, Urban Outfitters, or United Colors of Benneton. And most of them have done so in blissful -- or willful -- ignorance of where their clothing actually came from.

Most people are at least vaguely aware that much of our clothing is produced in conditions antithetical to the values of "one world" bohemianism. Aside from the "Made In ___" tag that identifies its country of origin, it's impossible to tell just by looking at a piece of clothing whether it was manufactured by sweatshop workers. But odds are that it was.

George Lakoff - War on Terror, RIP

2005-08-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

excerpt:

War on Terror, Rest in Peace
By George Lakoff, AlterNet
Posted on August 1, 2005, Printed on August 2, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/23810/
The "War on Terror" is no more. It has been replaced by the "global struggle against violent extremism."

The phrase "War on Terror" was chosen with care. "War" is a crucial term. It evokes a war frame, and with it, the idea that the nation is under military attack -- an attack that can only be defended militarily, by use of armies, planes, bombs, and so on. The war frame includes special war powers for the president, who becomes commander in chief. It evokes unquestioned patriotism, and the idea that lack of support for the war effort is treasonous. It forces Congress to give unlimited powers to the President, lest detractors be called unpatriotic. And the war frame includes an end to the war -- winning the war, mission accomplished!

The war frame is all-consuming. It takes focus away from other problems, from everyday troubles, from jobs, education, health care, a failing economy. It justifies the spending of huge sums, and sending raw recruits into battle with inadequate equipment. It justifies the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. It justifies torture, military tribunals, and no due process. It justifies scaring people, with yellow, orange, and red alerts. But, while it was politically useful, the war frame never fit the reality of terrorism. It was successful at consolidating power, but counterproductive in dealing with the real threat.

Colin Powell had suggested "crime" as the frame to use. It justifies an international hunt for the criminals, allows "police actions" when the military is absolutely required, and places the focus and the funding on where it should go: intelligence, diplomacy, politics, economics, religion, banking, and so on. And it would have kept us militarily strong and in a better position to deal with cases like North Korea and Darfur.

But the crime frame comes with no additional power for the president, and no way to hide domestic troubles. It comes with trials at the international court, giving that court's sovereignty over purely American institutions. It couldn't win in the administration as constituted.

..... click on link above for the rest of this excellent article

George Lakoff is the author of Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate' (Chelsea Green). He is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute.

Karl Rove and manipulating the masses

2005-08-02T21:33:00.000-07:00

Now it appears that Rove "outed" Valerie Plame to punish her husband for "outing" the administration's lies in their march to war. This administration seems to think they are better than the rest of us. They are more interested in "getting their own way" through manipulation than they are in the truth or in democracy. A great country should not believe that the end justifies the means. The means should matter. This administration seems to only care about the end, and about getting the end that will personally benefit them.

When did we stop being a country that demands accountability, the separation of church and state, human rights, science, due process, honesty, and democracy?

Karl Rove and the "motives" of democrats

2005-06-26T20:22:00.000-07:00

Karl Rove's recent statement about the presumed "motives" of democrats is merely the latest of this administration's orchestrated attempts to distract the public from the real negative realities by using misinterpretations to stir up public emotions. He said that after 9/11, conservatives wanted to go to war while liberals wanted to give therapy to the terrorists (necrotherapy?).

There was talk after 9/11 of wanting to understand the motives of terrorists, to understand the antecedents of fundamentalism and violence. Simply meeting violence with escalated violence only continues a cycle, only focuses on a "symptom" - it does nothing to guarantee the future safety of our world. Understanding (which doesn't mean agreeing with) how a terrorist is "created" can provide the information needed to focus on the "illness", rather than just on the "symptom". Rove took this sage and big-picture philosophy and twisted it; he took the desire to "understand" and translated it into "therapy". He once again exploited a national tragedy for political gain.

Rove's belittlement of therapy and maliciously twisted interpretation are in keeping with his seeming manner of interacting with the world. Making false and sensational statements has a short-term, spectacular effect, much as (sending other people's children to)war does - they both "work" until it's time for the next one. On the other hand, understanding the causes of terrorism, protecting the future peace by learning to prevent violence, has a longer-term effect, much as therapy does. But apparently it's more important to appear macho in the moment than it is to be wise in the long haul.

It's very maddening to see how this morally bankrupt administration can make such calumniatory statements from on high. It's terrifying that they have learned they will not be held accountable.

"National INsecurity cards"

2005-05-11T22:57:00.000-07:00

An interesting essay by Bruce Schneier at http://www.alternet.org/rights/21977/

excerpts:

...It doesn't really matter how well an ID card works when used by the hundreds of millions of honest people that would carry it. What matters is how the system might fail when used by someone intent on subverting that system: how it fails naturally, how it can be made to fail, and how failures might be exploited.

...And when the inevitable worms, viruses, or random failures happen and the database goes down, what then? Is America supposed to shut down until it's restored?

...What good would it have been to know the names of Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, or the D.C. snipers before they were arrested? Palestinian suicide bombers generally have no history of terrorism. The goal here is to know someone's intentions, and their identity has very little to do with that.

"Anti-war" must become "pro-democracy"

2005-05-11T22:52:00.000-07:00

A really good article on alternet by Naomi Klein, "War on Iraq: How to End the War", http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21980/

First excerpt:

When I was in Iraq a year ago trying to answer that question, one of the most effective ways I found to do that was to follow the bulldozers and construction machinery. I was in Iraq to research the so-called reconstruction. And what struck me most was the absence of reconstruction machinery, of cranes and bulldozers, in downtown Baghdad. I expected to see reconstruction all over the place.

I saw bulldozers in military bases. I saw bulldozers in the Green Zone, where a huge amount of construction was going on, building up Bechtel’s headquarters and getting the new U.S. embassy ready. There was also a ton of construction going on at all of the U.S. military bases. But, on the streets of Baghdad, the former ministry buildings are absolutely untouched. They hadn’t even cleared away the rubble, let alone started the reconstruction process.

The one crane I saw in the streets of Baghdad was hoisting an advertising billboard. One of the surreal things about Baghdad is that the old city lies in ruins, yet there are these shiny new billboards advertising the glories of the global economy. And the message is: “Everything you were before isn’t worth rebuilding.” We’re going to import a brand-new country. It is the Iraq version of the Extreme Makeover.

Second excerpt:

In looking at democracy in Iraq, we first need to make the distinction between elections and democracy. The reality is the Bush administration has fought democracy in Iraq at every turn.

Why? Because if genuine democracy ever came to Iraq, the real goals of the war—control over oil, support for Israel, the construction of enduring military bases, the privatization of the entire economy—would all be lost. Why? Because Iraqis don’t want them and they don’t agree with them. They have said it over and over again—first in opinion polls, which is why the Bush administration broke its original promise to have elections within months of the invasion. I believe Paul Wolfowitz genuinely thought that Iraqis would respond like the contestants on a reality TV show and say: “Oh my God. Thank you for my brand-new shiny country.” They didn’t. They protested that 500,000 people had lost their jobs. They protested the fact that they were being shut out of the reconstruction of their own country, and they made it clear they didn’t want permanent U.S. bases.

That’s when the administration broke its promise and appointed a CIA agent as the interim prime minister. In that period they locked in—basically shackled—Iraq’s future governments to an International Monetary Fund program until 2008. This will make the humanitarian crisis in Iraq much, much deeper. Here’s just one example: The IMF and the World Bank are demanding the elimination of Iraq’s food ration program, upon which 60 percent of the population depends for nutrition, as a condition for debt relief and for the new loans that have been made in deals with an unelected government.

Feminism as counterterrorism

2005-05-11T22:48:00.000-07:00

An interesting article on alternet by Barbara Ehrenreich, "War on Iraq: A New Counterterrorism Strategy: Feminism"

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21973/

excerpt:

So here in one word is my new counterterrorism strategy: feminism. Or, if that's too incendiary, try the phrase "human rights for women." I don't mean just a few opportunistic references to women, like those that accompanied the war on the Taliban and were quietly dropped by the Bush administration when that war was abandoned and Afghan women were locked back into their burqas. I'm talking about a sustained and serious effort.

We should announce plans to pour U.S. tax dollars into girls' education in places like Pakistan, where the high-end estimate for female literacy is 26 percent, and into scholarships for women seeking higher education in nations that typically discourage it. (Secular education for the boys wouldn't hurt, either.) Expand the grounds for asylum to all women fleeing gender totalitarianism, wherever it springs up. Reverse the Bush policies on global family planning, which condemn seventy-eight thousand women to death each year in makeshift abortions. Lead the global battle against the trafficking of women. I'm not expecting such measures alone to incite a feminist insurgency within the Islamist one. Carmen Bin Ladin found her rich Saudi sisters-in-law sunk in bovine passivity, and some of the more spirited young women in the Muslim world have been adopting the head scarf as a gesture of defiance toward American imperialism. We're going to need a thorough foreign policy makeover--from Afghanistan to Israel--before we have the credibility to stand up for anyone's human rights. You can't play the gender card with dirty hands.

If this country were to embrace a feminist strategy against the insurgency, we'd have to start by addressing our own dismal record on women's rights. We'd be pushing for the immediate ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which has been ratified by 169 countries but remains stalled in the U.S. Senate. We'd be threatening to break off relations with Saudi Arabia until it acknowledged the humanity of women. And we'd be thundering about the shortage of women in the U.S. Senate and House, an internationally embarrassing 14 percent. We should be aiming for a representation of at least 25 percent, the same target the Transitional Administrative Law of Iraq has set for the federal assembly there.

Helen Thomas

2005-05-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

A really good article:

The Guards are Sleeping, by Gael Murphy
posted at: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21904/

White House correspondent Helen Thomas speaks about the herd mentality of mainstream media and challenging the administration on its rationale for the war.

Excerpt: Democrats' New Spine

2005-05-09T20:06:00.000-07:00

Mystery of the Democrats' New Spine by Robert Parry
posted at http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21878/

excerpt:

One explanation for the Democrats' turnabout is the rise of progressive media, most notably progressive AM talk radio which has expanded rapidly over the past several months. Finally, Democratic leaders can go on sympathetic radio shows and make their case directly to listeners.

Before, Democrats almost always would find themselves speaking in unfriendly territory. Sometimes they would appear on conservative media, such as Fox News, or they'd face mainstream pundits eager to prove they weren't liberal by being tougher on Democrats than Republicans, the likes of NBC's Tim Russert.

Faced with hostile questioning, national Democrats often sought a safe middle ground, which made them look weak or indecisive, opening them to attacks as "flip-floppers" or "lacking conviction." On the other hand, Republicans could count on friendly receptions from conservative hosts and mostly deferential treatment on mainstream programs.

Bush and dictators - kill or hold hands

2005-04-28T22:20:00.000-07:00

So Bush kills 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians because their dictator is brutal. Why doesn't he do something about Kim? And why does he hold hands with the Saudi Arabia dictator?

Let's face it, he doesn't care if someone is a dictator. Our government has many times supported dictators. We just need for them to be in our pocket. Otherwise, they have to go. But we have the high moral ground.

Activist pharmacists

2005-04-28T22:13:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that the social climate has degenerated so far that pharmacists think they have the right to refuse to fill prescriptions because of their own personal beliefs. Their job is simply to fill prescriptions that doctors have written.

So why don't we just let therapists who feel drug abuse is morally wrong tell the police if a client says they are using drugs, or better yet, why don't we let those therapists who don't like suicidal clients simply let those clients kill themselves?

If a pharmacist doesn't like dispensing certain medications, then they need to either tough it out, or quite simply, quit! That's how the world works. You have to do your job, and if you can't handle your job, then you need to get a different one.

For heaven's sake, I think it's incredibly immoral for people to exploit and kill animals. So can I now refuse services to anyone who eats meat?

Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount

2005-04-26T23:28:00.000-07:00

Sound like the religious right...?

1. Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.

2. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

3. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

4. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness: for they shall be filled.

5. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

6. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

7. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the
children of God.

8. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

9. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you,
and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my
sake.

Religious right doesn't talk about Jesus, does it?

2005-04-26T22:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hitt26apr26,0,1240928.story

This is a great commentary by Jack Hitt in the LA Times.

excerpts:

....Instead of taking orders from temple chieftains, Jesus provoked his followers into thinking for themselves. His preferred media outlet? A literary genre called the parable. It's a style of Q&A wherein the teacher doesn't give the answer but challenges the listener with a half-finished story that forces him to think through to the answer by himself. The radical right has swapped out this genius preacher for some easy listening. They insist that everything will be fine if we just nail the Ten Commandments above every courthouse.

....Curious. Jesus updated the Ten Commandments in his most famous speech, the Sermon on the Mount. In it, one finds the Eight Beatitudes. Why don't we ever hear about nailing those somewhere? Here's why: It's not simply the law in the Ten Commandments that attracts fundamentalists. Rather, it's the syntax. The authoritarianism of so many "Thou Shalt Nots."

The syntax of Jesus' Eight Beatitudes is not so easy (Blessed are the poor in spirit…. Blessed are the peacemakers). These words invite the kind of hard questions that Jesus loved to tweak his followers with. How are they blessed? And why? It's just like Jesus to leave us with questions instead of answers.

....Here is a quote from Jesus that you almost never hear: "What do you think?" It's right there in the Bible. Jesus asks this question all the time.

....But that Jesus is nowhere to be found on our televisions or in our newsweeklies. Ironically, mass-market Christians rarely cite or emphasize the living Jesus, the Jesus who speaks. They like their Christ dead.

There's no point to steroids if they're legal

2005-04-26T20:22:00.000-07:00

It occured to me that these athletes using steroids would never really want them to become legal drugs. Assuming they affect everyone in an equal fashion, if everyone used them, then whatever differences there were between individual athletes would still exist. Everyone would be stronger and faster, but Jane would still be faster than Paula, and Paula would still be faster than Emily, the same hierarchy that existed when they didn't take steroids.

So steroids aren't just about cheating in the sense of getting more returns for the work that you're actually doing, but it's also about cheating in that the steroid user needs it to be illegal so that they can have a cheap jump over the people who won't use something illegal. If it were legal and everyone jumped on the wagon, there would be no point to it.

NYT editorial - The Oblivious Right

2005-04-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/opinion/25krugman.html?ex=1115092800&en=8b6d6747850cbe04&ei=5070

Another good editorial by NYT columnist Paul Krugman

excerpt:

...Since November's election, the victors have managed to be on the wrong side of public opinion on one issue after another: the economy, Social Security privatization, Terri Schiavo, Tom DeLay. By large margins, Americans say that the country is headed in the wrong direction, and Mr. Bush is the least popular second-term president on record.

What's going on? Actually, it's quite simple: Mr. Bush and his party talk only to their base - corporate interests and the religious right - and are oblivious to everyone else's concerns.

The administration's upbeat view of the economy is a case in point. Corporate interests are doing very well. As a recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, over the last three years profits grew at an annual rate of 14.5 percent after inflation, the fastest growth since World War II.

The story is very different for the great majority of Americans, who live off their wages, not dividends or capital gains, and aren't doing well at all. Over the past three years, wage and salary income grew less than in any other postwar recovery - less than a tenth as fast as profits. But wage-earning Americans aren't part of the base.

....But Americans are feeling a sense of dread: they're worried about a weak job market, soaring health care costs, rising oil prices and a war that seems to have no end. And they're starting to notice that nobody in power is even trying to deal with these problems, because the people in charge are too busy catering to a base that has other priorities.

Outlaw lobbying

2005-04-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

I'm so fed up with the outrages and excesses of the "lobbying industry". This group, it seems to me, is nothing more than people trying to manipulate votes by whatever means possible with official approval. And the lobbyists rake in these huge amounts of money. How can anyone even believe anymore that they believe in what they are hawking?

I think we should outlaw lobbying. When there are issues to be decided, groups from each side of the issue can present their case to the House and to the Senate - but to these bodies as a whole, not to individual politicians. There would be no private meetings allowed, private meetings in which "favors" can be exchanged. No expense-paid trips, no gifts, etc. Only group presentations in which facts are the issue, not greasing palms.

After each side presents its case, the two sides can debate with each other. The politicians can ask questions. They can discuss the issues with each other. Then there will be a vote. No one can vote who has not attended both presentations. Perhaps if the politicians aren't off on expense-paid trips to foreign countries, they'll now have the time to attend their own meetings, discuss issues instead of being bribed to believe one side, and cast votes that represent our wishes not the lobbyists' wishes. After all, isn't this what they were elected to do?

1960: Question Authority
2005: Demand Accountability!

"Wild west" excuses

2005-04-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

Whenever I hear about people in the west justifying something because of their "wild west" personality, it always seems odd to me. How is the "wild west" unique to the west?

The first European settlers arrived on the east coast over the Atlantic Ocean. They fought Indians, put up settlements, and struggled to make it in a harsh, undeveloped land. Then some of them migrated to the midwest. They, too, fought Indians, put up settlements, and struggled to make it in a harsh, undeveloped land. Then some of them migrated further west to the Pacific Ocean. They then had their turn at fighting Indians, putting up settlements, and struggling to make it in a harsh, undeveloped land.

All parts of this country passed through an initial stage of development that fits the "wild west" persona. All parts then moved past this stage into further stages of development. The west is not the only area to have such a past - they were not even the first. Why do they lay sole, unique claim to it? And why is it that they wish to still claim that personality, even when their development has given them many more progressive personalities?

Just a handy excuse for any behavior that hints of lynchings, mob rule, and justice at the barrel of a gun, I guess.

Female Iraqi blogger - Riverbend

2005-04-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21782/

Alternet has posted an article about Riverbend, the female Iraqi blogger. Her blog posts have just been made into a book.

Her blog is at:

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Alternative lifestyles and the gay umbrella

2005-04-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

Two caveats -
(1) The following post is admittedly talking in terms of generalities and
(2) As long as no one is being victimized, I believe that people are free to be who they want to be, and all deserve equal rights.

Alternet has an article posted right now called "Straightwashing", by Rebecca Hyman. It discusses a current trend among human rights groups, in the wake of recent Republican gains, to push gays to act more "straight", in order to help Democrats seem more mainstream. She relates this to the current public discussion about gay marriage (or rather, equal rights for marriage).

Hyman cites how many gays historically fought against the institution of marriage (for anyone) and wanted instead to promote other lifestyles as equally valid. She says, "Sociologists have long demonstrated that the notion of marriage and the family that is currently celebrated by conservatives is inherently white and middle-class, doesn't represent the majority of family structures in the country, and is a recent invention".

Hyman writes that by seeking legal recognition of gay marriage, gays are only fighting for the "straightest" appearing/acting of their ranks. If gays are allowed to marry and achieve acceptance, then there is a greater danger that less conforming individuals, such as transsexuals, will be further isolated, will seem even more different than "normal".

She is basically highlighting the divide in the gay community about whether to fight to be accepted into society (for ex, by getting marriage rights), or whether to fight to change society itself to include a more diverse range of lifestyles.

I don't think it's a problem that some gays want to be accepted as "just like your straight neighbor, married with two kids and a white picket fence". For heaven's sake, that's who they are and what they want. To me, this discussion is highlighting instead the problem of how people have been grouped. Perhaps the problem is that all gays have been lumped together because of their sexual preference. The solution may be for those gays who aren't so mainstream to join forces with heterosexuals who aren't so mainstream.

Historically, the only gays people "knew" were the "out" ones, the ones who appeared "different". Many people therefore assumed that gays were all "wierd"; they began to equate "same-gender sexual preference" with "gender identity" because they only noticed the men wearing dresses and women "dressing like men". They thought that "gay" meant wanting to be the opposite gender. Now even many gays who can "pass" (who "look straight" - ie, dress "appropriately for their gender") are known to the mainstream world, because these gays verbally acknowledge their sexuality. Now the mainstream world is learning that many gays are more similar to them than they had previously realized.

As "gayness" becomes less stigmatized, it becomes apparent that it is less about "being different" than about a simple difference in sexual object preference. "Being gay" is no longer synonymous with "being different". I would suggest that it also allows many more people to acknowledge their same gender sexual attractions. Before to do so would mean that they had to see themselves as "different", when they didn't feel "different". Now they can be themselves, a person who finds the same gender attractive, but whose identity isn't constructed around a sense of "being different". There ARE people who "feel different", whose identities are based on this feeling. I think it was a historical mistake to equate this with "gayness". I think some people who feel "different" are gay, but many are heterosexual. Assuming that "different" is synonymous with "gay" is what is making some people feel that gay marriage is going to hurt others in the "gay group".

Since the sixties, there have been heterosexuals writing about sexual freedom and fighting for the right to live different lifestyles. Why are we assuming it's a "gay issue"? It's an issue for some gays, but not for all gays. It's also an issue for some non-gays. I think that the groups should be composed by beliefs, not by sexuality.

My belief about this is further strengthened when I think about how first the "group" was gays, then gays and lesbians, then gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, and finally the "group" is gay/lesbian/bisexual/transsexual. At least the first three groups have to do with same-gender attractions. They're based on sexual preference. But to add transsexuals??? That's a gender identity issue, not a sexual preference issue.

And further, who says that gays and lesbians are similar? In my experience, lesbians are much, much more like straight women than they are like gay men. Many (not all) gay men just seem to be "men", without the civilizing influence of women in their lives (I'm thinking here of the often rampant sexual promiscuity). So finally, it seems to me the group cohesion of the "gay group/movement" is nothing more than "outcasts".

So I don't think that some gays fighting for the right to be legally married hurts the "gay movement". It's just people fighting for equal rights. Those people who want to fight for alternative lifestyles (IMO) shouldn't be seen as "the gay movement", they should be seen as the "alternative lifestyle movement", and they should be composed of gays, straights, bis, transsexuals, and anyone else whose political interest is "alternative lifestyle". The addition of heterosexuals to the mix should only increase validity of the movement in the general public's eyes.

What should the "gay movement" be? With a group so diverse, I can't see it rightfully being anything but a civil rights group, supporting people in however they want to improve their lives. So to say that fighting for "gay marriage" is harmful to other members of "the group" is wrong, I think. Gay marriage is just one of many political issues, and "alternative lifestyle" may be another.

But gay marriage is unique to gays, while "alternative lifestyle" is not. So I think those gays/bis/transsexuals whose big political priority is getting acceptance for different lifestyles shouldn't consider the "gay movement" to be their primary umbrella. It should just be one aspect of a larger "alternative lifestyle" umbrella which also has heterosexual "alternative lifestyle" activists.

Loud hosts on Air America

2005-04-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

I have listened to NPR faithfully for many years now. For the last couple of weeks I have given Air America a try. I'm about ready to give up on them, except I wouldn't mind listening to Laura Flanders on the weekends.

After lunch for three hours there is a loud, rude, abrasive man who calls himself "Big Ed". I don't think he ever talks normally; he seems to always be yelling. He talks over callers, ends their call when they are in midsentence because he has become bored, and is rude. And yesterday he was actually repeatedly shouting the same phrase ("Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? - probably twenty times) at a caller in order not to give the caller a chance to speak. Does he think people really want to hear him shouting over the radio? Do people find this entertaining? Are they over the age of 12?

I agree that it's good that now there is an alternative to conservative talk radio. But does providing an alternative mean that we have to stoop to their level??? His behavior is so unprofessional and immature. I find some of his callers interesting and the host himself brings up some good points. But I don't think I can handle the delivery method any longer. He is SO "AM talk radio", just with a liberal twist. There's still hateful talk, there's still rudeness.

And where's the positive slant? I was excited there was a liberal radio station, but I was excited because I wanted to feel the positive groundswell, to hear about positive ideas we can use to take our country back. I didn't plan on finding a radio station with the same mentality as Rush Limbaugh.

After him, from 3-6 is the "female loud person". Her name is Randi. Sometimes she speaks in a normal voice, but when she gets excited, she's screaming. I just don't care for that. Someone being impassioned is one thing; screaming is another. And she refers to some callers as "idiots". Hosts like these just make me think that their audiences are the same ones that go to Ben Stiller movies, people stuck at a teenage level of humor and intellect.

The sad thing is, both of these hosts impart some really good ideas and information. It's bad enough having to sit through sooooo many commercials (especially for an NPR person who is not used to ANY), but to have to listen to this "AM radio" behavior is just getting to be too much.

This kind of radio personality is definitely not worth giving up Terry Gross on NPR.

Moveon.org and same-side attacks

2005-04-19T22:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.alternet.org/story/21787/

Alternet is carrying a story about Moveon.org's recent ad campaign against democrat Steny Hoyer, who was one of many democrats voting for the bankruptcy bill, siding with credit card companies over consumers. Also, yesterday the male "loud host" on Air America was talking about it, saying that he felt Moveon.org was wrong in targeting a fellow liberal.

Perhaps it wasn't best to target one Democrat when many voted for it, and perhaps the method they used wasn't the best. But I don't agree that we should never speak out about one of "our own". To me, the regressives are all about "America right or wrong", and I think that's a huge problem. If you really love your country, you want to know the good and the bad, so that you can make it better. Saying that Democrats shouldn't hold their own accountable for their behavior is the same thing, it's like saying "my party right or wrong".

The Air America guy's justification for opposing Moveon.org's targeting Hoyer was that all that matters is winning. He said that once we win, then we can do what we want. And apparently the Democrats were quoted saying that they needed to get some of the credit card lobby's money to help them win elections later, so they were going to vote for the Republican bill.

But how exactly does that logic work? How are you going to win back voters by saying "well, our record is "non-Democratic", but vote for us, and once we win, then we'll vote Democratic again" ? Sure, winning (in this case) is important, but what does it mean to win if you do it without a set of principles? That's like how people always root for Team A, even though Team A changes towns, its players change every year, and it has a new manager every year. Democrat will mean nothing more than the name "Team A" with this sort of logic - there will be nothing to the constancy or substance of what the name supposedly represents.

Anything that sounds like "my X right or wrong", always jumps out at me as wrong. Think about raising kids. Those parents who say "my kid right or wrong", who defend their kid just to defend against some imaginary threat against the family name, are doing the child a disservice and usually end up with problem children. How are you going to teach the child to recognize and to do the right thing, if you defend them no matter what and don't hold them accountable?

Same with politics. Our vote is our voice. The politicians are supposed to represent us. How can we expect them to represent us if we don't tell them our likes and dislikes? And if we don't tell them or give them feedback, then we are allowing them to take our votes for granted, to assume that we are going to vote for them simply because they have the title "democrat" - then we ARE telling them that they can do whatever they want. "Right" and "wrong" doesn't matter - all that matters is winning or looking good or not admitting mistakes.

What in the world does it mean if a Democrat wins an election, if they don't stand for the principles of the Democratic party? Then it's a win in name only. The point is to make the world a better place, and we do that by supporting people who show by their actions that they have the same philosophy we do, not by supporting them simply because they have the title "Democrat". Voting the party line or saying "my country/party right or wrong" means we're not thinking and we're letting someone else take our voice.

Moveon.org's ads are not in an election year. They like Hoyer, they just don't like what he has done recently. I don't understand why they singled him out, but I do understand why they feel a need to call attention to what he has done and to hold him accountable for it. I think they are just saying, "we voted for you to represent us, and you are not representing our best interests".

Perhaps they are using democracy to its fullest advantage, by communicating with a representative more often than just with a vote at election time. Or maybe they are saying "you are paying attention to the power that credit card companies have (money) and instead you better start paying attention to our power (our future votes). I think that's fair.

Liberalism in academia

2005-04-11T22:03:00.000-07:00

An Alternet article by Russell Jacoby, The Nation, entitled: The New PC: Crybaby Conservatives.

It's rather lengthy, so I've posted excerpts below. The parenthetical remarks are mine.

AlterNet: The New PC: Crybaby Conservatives
http://www.alternet.org/story/21715/

...Even the most rabid critics do not accuse professors of being on the payroll of al Qaeda or other Islamist extremists. Moreover, conservatives command the presidency, Congress, the courts, major news outlets and the majority of corporations; they appear to have the country comfortably in their pocket. What fuels their rage, then? What fuels the persistent charges that professors are misleading the young?

...Today's accusations against subversive professors differ from those of the past in several respects. In a sign of the times, the test for disloyalty has shifted far toward the center. Once an unreliable professor meant an anarchist or communist; now it includes Democrats.

...the new conservative critics seem driven by an ethos that they have adopted from liberalism: affirmative action and a sense of victimhood, which they officially detest.

...They want America's faculties to reflect America's political composition. Of course, they do not address such imbalances in the police force, Pentagon, FBI, CIA and other government outfits where the stakes seem far higher and where, presumably, followers of Michael Moore are in short supply.

...Conservatives claim that studies show an outrageous number of liberals on university faculties and increasing political indoctrination or harassment of conservative students. In fact, only a very few studies have been made, and each is transparently limited or flawed. (article goes into much more detail)

...The notion that faculties should politically mirror the U.S. population derives from an affirmative-action argument about the underrepresentation of African Americans, Latinos or women in certain areas. Conservatives now add political orientation, based on voting behavior, to the mix. but one does not choose their race or gender; they choose their political orientation - might that be an important distinction...?

...I teach at UCLA. The history professors are housed in cramped quarters of a decaying Modernist structure. Our classiest facility is a conference room that could pass as generic space in any downtown motel. The English professors inhabit what appears to be an aging elementary school outfitted with minuscule offices. A hop away is a different world. The UCLA Anderson School of Management boasts its own spanking-new buildings, plush seminar rooms, spacious lecture halls with luxurious seats, an "executive dining room" and--gold in California--reserved parking facilities. Conservatives seem unconcerned about the political orientation of the business professors. Shouldn't half be Democrats and at least a few be Trotskyists? (I think this is an important observation (the difference in offices) especially since the democrat to republican ratio is probaby very different depending on department)

...In the name of intellectual diversity and students' rights, many courses could be challenged. A course on Freud would have to include anti-Freudians; a course on religion, atheists; a course on mysticism, the rationalists.

...Conservatives who pursue higher degrees may prefer to slog away as junior partners in law offices rather than as assistant professors in English departments. (I suspect self-selection, too)

...The effort, in the name of rights, to shift decisions about lectures and assignments from professors to students marks a backward step: the emergence of the thought police on skateboards. At its best, education is inherently controversial and tendentious. While this truth can serve as an excuse for gross violations, the remedy for unbalanced speech is not less speech but more. If college students can vote and go to war, they can also protest or drop courses without enlisting the new commissars of intellectual diversity.

We need smaller schools

2005-04-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

I've been reading so much about violence in schools, even in grade schools, about school police using tasers on little kids. You know, I think that if we (read: our political representatives) REALLY cared about our youth (our future), instead of putting police and metal detectors in the schools, they would take a different approach. (In a similar vein, I think that if we really didn't like war, we would put great energy into learning how to prevent them, rather than putting billions of dollars into learning how to wipe out other peoples more effectively and quickly.)

Put the money into building many, many more schools. Schools should not be housing thousands of students. And school buses shouldn't be holding 90 children! I really believe the children need smaller, more intimate settings, where there is much less chance of their feeling neglected, or isolated, or anonymous (a factor which leads to the greater adult crime in big cities, I think).

When children have problems, they would have more of a chance to connect with a caring adult early on in the process, rather than with a disciplinarian at a later stage of acting out. It would be easier to help those children who come from disadvantaged homes, because the teachers would have fewer kids to deal with. The children would be more likely to all know one another in a smaller school. And the teachers would have the ability (I would say, the directive) to immediately put a halt to anything that looks like bullying. We don't allow racial slurs, but we do nothing to stop bullying, which can cause lifelong scars (and school shootings).

Putting an elementary school child in an environment with hundreds of other children, or a high school kids in with thousands of other kids, is like throwing them into the big city. How can we do that to our kids? No wonder they're engaging in adult and criminal activities at younger and younger ages. They're kids - they need adequate, smaller group supervision, not huge, threatening environments which require police intervention. I think we're bringing this all on ourselves, we're doing it to our kids ourselves.

George Lakoff on self-righteousness

2005-04-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

UC Berkeley Linguist George Lakoff from "Moral Politics: How Liberals & Conservatives Think," Univ. Chicago Press, 2nd Edition, p.59, in a section elaborating on the metaphors that undergird the "Keeping of Moral Books." He discusses Moral Capital, Justice, Rights & Duties and then...

"Self-Righteousness: A self-righteous person is someone who carefully keeps his own moral ledger books, who makes sure that, according to his own system of moral accounting, he is morally solvent and that, in his accounting system, his credits always outweigh his debits. A thoroughly self-righteous person knows neither shame nor gratitude, since he has no moral debts, again according to his own method of accounting.

"There are three things that make him not righteous but self-righteous. The first is that he recognizes no moral values other than his own as valid. The second is that he keeps his own books.... there is no external auditing. And the third is that he must communicate his moral standing to his interlocutors.

"The self-righteous person's superfluity of moral credit is the basis of his discourse. He presupposes his own moral values and his own righteousness as a condition of conversation. The effect of this is that anyone talking to a self-righteous person must either agree with his moral values and act equally self-righteous, or face being put in a morally inferior position in the discourse. This is what makes self-righteous people particularly infuriating to talk to."

"Secular" painted as a bad thing

2005-04-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

I believe it is a huge fallacy to believe that someone has to be religious to be a moral authority. A huge one with grave repercussions. To make the point that much of this is a matter of opinion, consider this: a different way to look at it is that a religious person is someone who needs to have someone else tell them what to believe. But at the end of the day, even all the religious authorities are just people. We all have the ability to consider moral issues and come to personal conclusions all by ourselves. So perhaps the reason for "religious authorities" is simply to attempt to have one viewpoint win out over another.

Finally, while some people attempt to paint words such as "secular", "liberal", and "progressive" as disgraceful positions, that, too, is a matter of opinion. Many people wear those labels with pride. Someone else's scorn of that does not make it wrong. It seems to me that many conservatives see things in black/white, they're right and most of the world is wrong. Non-conservatives fight for democracy, the right for people to have individual differences, to follow their own moral compass, for everyone to coexist. Some of those people may choose to follow "religious authorities" and some of them may not. Some people find moral guidance in non-religious authorities, in the hands-on moral work done by everyday people.

That's the beauty of a real democracy. A "disgraceful" secular/liberal/progressive government protects your right to be yourself.

Editorial - The war on women's lives and the Pope

2005-04-09T19:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.alternet.org/rights/21696/

American women of all political parties, need to understand that--as Newsday columnist Marie Cocco puts it--we are seeing a "jeremiad against women who want to control every facet of their destiny. The campaign against sex education, against condoms--and now against a tiny pill that sits in the medicine chests of millions of American homes--is a comprehensive assault on modern life."

The battle is no longer simply over abortion.

It is over the most basic rights of women to have any control over when--or if--they will bear children.

We may wake up one day and discover that our rights have been nibbled away by laws consistent with the beliefs of Pope John Paul II and others who have opposed women's reproductive freedom--and their political allies--that have a radical agenda of which few Americans approve.

Arianna Huffington - culture of life

2005-04-09T19:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/21628/

excerpt:

If the Republicans insist on making the "culture of life" a federal issue, the Democrats should, by all means, let them. But they need to make sure that the national debate doesn't center on tragic anomalies like the Schiavo case but on the thousands of people whose lives are cut short because they lack access to decent health care or on the prolonged suffering of the millions of children living in poverty.

Instead of allowing themselves to be cowed by the fear of looking like they're coming down on the immoral side of the moral values debate, Democrats should snap out of it and demand that the president interrupt his next vacation and that Bill Frist hold another midnight session of Congress to address the moral disgrace of 45 million people with no health insurance and 36 million people living in poverty. This is the only way to reclaim the moral high ground.

Alternet book review by Rubin

2005-04-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.alternet.org/story/21698/

An interesting discussion of why people vote Republican when it isn't in their best interests.

excerpt:

In his intriguing book What's the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank argues that culture now trumps economics in the political sphere and offers as explanation yet another, if more sophisticated, version of false consciousness. "People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about," he writes on the very first page. "This species of derangement is the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests." American politics is, he insists,

a panorama of madness and delusion worthy of Hieronymous Bosch: of sturdy blue-collar patriots reciting the Pledge while they strangle their own life chances; of small farmers proudly voting themselves off the land; of devoted family men carefully seeing to it that their children will never be able to afford college or proper health care; of working-class guys in Midwestern cities cheering as they deliver up a landslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life ...

Now even the disabled can disable someone

2005-04-06T01:02:00.000-07:00

Oh, my god - now even the disabled can disable another sentient creature. You'd think that they of all people would know better. And which is the only state about to do this? Texas.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0405/p01s02-ussc.html?ref=aol

Remote-Control Hunting Draws Fire
By Kris Axtman, The Christian Science Monitor

HOUSTON (April 5) – Sliding his computer mouse around until he locates a moving target, the hunter sets the animal in his sites and pulls the rifle's trigger with a click of his finger. Down goes a wild boar. Another trophy bagged.

Yet in this case it's not a video game. It's a new kind of hunting experience in which people anywhere in the world can sit at home and target real game by controlling a gun in a remote location.

To supporters, it's a way to allow the disabled, among others, to enjoy the thrill of hunting. But critics see it as a form of video slaughter.

Conservative proselytizing

2005-04-06T00:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/05krugman.html?incamp=article_popular_1

Article titled: An Academic Question

Paul Krugman, in a New York Times article today, talks about the current conservative complaining about the "liberal bias" in universities. The link is above; it's a good article.

It reminds me of a recent article I read in which the author was saying that there is a current conservative push to "get to" people when they are young (much as religion needs to). The article said that this is why they are focusing attention on supposed "gay characters" in children's cartoons and why they are now mounting an attack against schools - creationism in grade schools and laws to enforce "conservative values" in universities. The author said something about, how do you reach people when they are still impressionable and able to be manipulated? You start when they are young and focus on the parts of the world they move in - TV and school. So while these recent conservative attacks seem so ludicrous to most people, they have an explicit purpose - proselytizing. They have to make sure that only those images supporting the status quo are shown to impressionable minds.

New York Times editorial on the papacy

2005-04-06T00:02:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting New York Times editorial today about the history of the papacy. Another person standing up and talking about facts and not letting others define the discussion. Thomas Cahill, The Price of Infallibility:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/cahill.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fContributors

Jane Fonda on Air America

2005-04-05T22:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.airamericaradio.com/

Today I heard an interview with Jane Fonda on Air America. I realized how much I like hearing her opinions and how much I wish she were more a part of politics today.

One of the things she said was that Jesus' real values are feminist values. I really believe that statements like this are very important. Or statements that ask the religious right why does it pick and choose what it wants to follow out of the bible.

Non-conservatives have really let the neo-cons define the issues. It's way late, but finally people are standing up and laying their own claim to moral ground. Maybe it's in time for the 2006 election. So many things have to do with how you look at things, and that's why a truly democratic society is important. We're currently on a swing towards a theocracy in which one group is imposing its conservative views on everyone. And that's not democracy. That's a power grab.

I didn't think it would happen, but I think I'm finally becoming hopeful. I think a backlash has finally begun! We may once again have a democracy...

"Culture of Life Top Ten"

2005-04-05T22:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.alternet.org/story/21660/

Posted on alternet, "The culture of life top ten". I really like this article. This is what non-conservatives need to be emphasizing, that life is more than birth and death. I really have a feeling that conservatives are going to start saying that since they're the "culture of life", that non-conservatives embrace a "culture of death". We can't fall into that trap. We have to promote our own definitions, and stop letting the neo-cons define the issues.

From the article (see article for information under each category):

In the wake of the Terri Schiavo case, we've been hearing a lot about the so-called "culture of life." Christian conservatives use the term to refer to God's wish that we preserve all human lives, especially those more vulnerable than our own. In practice, however, it applies to a surprisingly stingy range of concerns: abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research.

At minimum, a true "culture of life" would support the following ten positions:

1. Withdraw the Troops
2. Stop the Death Penalty
3. Pass Effective Gun Control Laws
4. Fund Social Services
5. Create Universal Health Care for Children
6. Research Alternative Energy
7. Investigate Prisoner Abuses
8. Support AIDS Clinics Abroad
9. Implement a Fair Guestworker Program
10. Join the International Criminal Court

Together, these issues account for the needless deaths of tens of thousands of people a day. A culture that valued their lives is one we could all celebrate.

Michael Blanding is a freelance writer living in Boston. Read more of his work at www.michaelblanding.com.

Sexism in sex

2005-04-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

On TV, whenever the male fails to achieve an erection, the couple is sad that tonight they can't have sex. What planet are they from? The male can still satisfy the female - he doesn't need an erection for his mouth to work.

For generations, sex was all about the male pleasuring himself by using the female's body, and it was decided that women couldn't enjoy sex. In reality, it was all about men defining sex as being that which was good for them and not even acknowledging or knowing that sex is also that which most pleasures a woman. While many women greatly enjoy intercourse, for most of them it isn't the stimulation that will result in an orgasm.

Imagine if we had a matriarchy where sex was decreed to be men performing oral sex on women. Occasionally the women would want intercourse and the male would have an orgasm, but it was considered foreplay and not a real part of sex. Most often, sex would involve men performing oral sex on women and nothing more. Women would have an orgasm and the men would just be happy to satisfy their partners. That doesn't seem so fair, doesn't it?

So why now, when almost everyone realizes that a woman's pleasure center is not in her vagina, is sex still really considered to be the act which gives the man an orgasm? That's really what these TV shows are saying.

And when movie producers use symbolism to evoke sexual images, why do they only choose things like a train entering a tunnel? Why don't they use images like someone licking an ice cream cone? Sure, sometimes you see something like that, but it's always a woman doing it, evoking an image of oral sex on a man, not vice versa.

Why do men prefer to excite women by using imagery which draws on the sexual acts which bring men themselves the most pleasure, not the imagery of that which is more likely to give women orgasms?

Proselytizing and government funding

2005-04-02T17:38:00.000-08:00

Bush wants to make government funding available to religious organizations, which previously hasn't been an option. I believe the reason that it hasn't been allowed is because they don't simply do good works, but they insist on proselytizing.

So what I want to know is - if Jesus and God want them to be good people, to go out and help others in need, why don't they just do this good work and take the government assistance to do even more good work, and just do it without trying to convert people (who, as people in need, are more vulnerable to this kind of manipulation)?

Why is proselytizing more important to them.....? What does that say about their "good hearts"?

"Innocent lives"

2005-03-29T22:17:00.000-08:00

The protesters around Terri Schiavo's hospice are saying that they respect life and that they want to protect her "innocent life".

The ten year old who has been malnourished for most of his life, do they respect his life? Is his an innocent life?

The gay man who minds his own business, works hard, has a committed relationship, but gets beaten up by thugs because he is gay. Do they respect his life? Is his an innocent life?

The kid whose schools have never had enough books and those they had were outdated, with walls that are crumbling, who has parents who aren't involved because either they're always having to work to put food on the table or because they grew up in an atmosphere that taught them they would never be allowed to get ahead, do they respect this kid's life? Is hers an innocent life?

The senior eating catfood because rents have skyrocketed and she is no longer able to work, do they respect her life? Is hers an innocent life?

The "culture of life" is a misnomer for these activists. They're "B/D activists". They care about birth and death, and for the rest you're on your own. They don't care about you in between. They have no respect for your life for most of it.

The "culture of life"

2005-03-29T22:03:00.000-08:00

From what I can tell, the "culture of life" has to do with insisting that even if there are only a few cells in a woman's womb, they must be carried to term. Now it also seems to mean that even if a person's brain has liquified and they have no consciousness or ability to think or feel pain, their body must be kept alive and not be allowed to follow its natural course. The "culture of life" seems to just refer to the physical state of life, regardless of the shape or quality of that life.

It seems to me that anyone truly concerned with life would be much more concerned with the quality of life.

Meaning, they'd be leading the fight for better schools for all children.

Meaning, they would support contraception and early term abortions because they wouldn't want children to grow up in in neglectful, possibly abusive homes because the parents didn't want them, or in homes in which their physical and emotional needs wouldn't be met because the family is so poor, possibly because of having too many children already.

Meaning, they would fight to end discrimination on any grounds, to ensure that all people are treated fairly.

Meaning, they would be working to institute workplace childcare programs and anything else that would financially help single mothers or struggling families.

Meaning that they would make sure that social security remains a safety net for everyone, that it continues to be a way for us all to be able to take care of each other, rather than throwing us out to sea to fend for ourselves and possibly fail.

So many things I can think of that it seems to me that someone truly concerned with life would make a priority. Rather than rising up occasionally to interfere in people's personal lives, they would consistently and actively be focusing on the quality of (all) people's actual lives.

Because life is what is between birth and death.

Anti-abortion but pro-death-threats

2005-03-29T21:59:00.000-08:00

We've all heard about the anti-abortion zealots who kill pro-choice doctors. Now this same group is making death threats against the husband of Terri Schiavo, his lawyer, and one of the judges involved over the last 7 years of adjudication in this matter.

I just don't get it. How can you protest something by doing the very thing you accuse someone else of doing? Is it more of this "eye for an eye" illogic?

How do they explain it?

"Activist" congress members

2005-03-27T20:32:00.000-08:00

Why is it that when judges make rulings that conservatives don't like, those judges are immediately labeled "activist judges"? The conservatives say that those judges are "reinterpreting" the law.

Now that congress and the president have tried to bypass our judicial system to force things to go their own way in the matter of Terri Schiavo, are they calling themselves "activist politicians"?

Or has "activist" just come to mean to them someone who does something they don't agree with?

An old school shooting

2005-03-27T14:31:00.000-08:00

On NPR this weekend, a man named Kevin Roth talked about how he was the victim of a school shooting in 1966 by his friend David Black. Kevin Roth wants to apologize to David Black for all of the demeaning teasing he subjected him to.

I thought this was really interesting. His wanting to apologize has the potential to focus attention on the causes of violence, instead of only focusing on how to punish the violent person. It's like trying prevent future terrorist attacks by understanding the motives of attackers, even if you don't agree with them. You can't prevent without understanding. Without that understanding and prevention, all you can do is behave similarly and attack back. An "eye for an eye". Hmmmm....

Religion and violence

2005-03-27T13:28:00.000-08:00

On NPR the other day a religious person was saying that "religious intolerance" causes wars. Maybe other people hear it differently, but to me that suggests that agnostics and atheists are being violent towards religious people, and that is so not the case. Religious people are fighting with other religious people. I'd say it's not "religious intolerance" that causes violence, but religion itself.

Religion breeds division. Religions, in order to continue to exist, need to portray religion as an end in itself and one's own religion as the true religion. They need to indoctrinate and proselytize, and if the religion they are preaching isn't the "true" religion, if they are truly all equal means to the same end, then why even believe one over the other? So they must teach that theirs is the true religion, and that's where the division between people starts.

So in trying to maintain their own existence, religions have to inculcate division and notions of superiority, and therefore they are the breeding grounds for future violence and judgmentalism, in my opinion.

Iraq and vindication

2005-03-27T13:18:00.000-08:00

There are those who say that the roots of democracy in Iraq vindicate our invasion. I think that is sooooo wrong. Feeling pleased that things might be better someday in Iraq, that someday they might be free of American control as well as Saddam, is not the same as agreeing with the methods. Those who are speaking of vindication are basically saying that the end justifies the means, and I don't think that's right.

When I think about how we are spending MILLIONS EVERY DAY in Iraq, it blows me away. If we were willing and able to spend all this money, why didn't we take a chunk of it and try to bribe Saddam? We could have said, "hey, here's twenty billion dollars, it's just a small fraction of what we would spend if we invaded your country, take this money and a bunch of your buddies and we'll build you a big palace on a remote island. All you have to do in return is to stay in Iraq for six months, convince your people that you have decided to institute a democracy, have elections, and then leave. You and your people can live rich lives on this island in the big palace. You just can't have anything to do with ruling a country anymore. Otherwise, we're going to destroy you. What do you choose?"

Why did that option not even enter the equation? Is it more shameful to "bribe" someone than it is to kill 100,000 civilians and destroy a country? Is it more important to be tough and manly than it is to be smart when you do a "regime change"? Really, with all this money and the human lives that this is costing, how could they not even have considered the other option? So, no, I don't think that any success in Iraq "vindicates" the method used.

More on the gay gene

2005-03-27T12:54:00.000-08:00

When people state their reasons for believing in a gay gene, they usually offer as proof that often gay people have gay siblings or cousins. But they never say that gay people have gay children. So this gene would have to be something that is carried by heterosexuals more than it is by homosexuals themselves.

A set of heterosexual parents have some children, and maybe one is gay. That gay child also has a gay cousin. So perhaps the father in this couple has a gay gene and his brother also has it, so that each had a gay child. This gene wasn't expressed in themselves, as they are heterosexual. But it is something they were able to pass on to some of their own children. But those resultant gay children, when they have their own children, aren't passing it on to their own children because the children of gays are usually straight (as most people usually are).

So what does this mean?

That the supposed "gay gene" is carried by but not expressed in heterosexuals? That it's recessive in the parents but dominant when passed on to what results in a gay child, who expresses the gene but passes it on in a recessed and non-expressed form to their own children?

Those heterosexuals who have this gay gene and pass it on to one of their children who becomes gay, how recessive is this gene in themselves? Could it really be dominant, but society shaped them to "overpower" genetics so that they could live a heterosexual life? Could it really be a "bisexual" gene, meaning that someone with this gene could "go either way", and we assume it's a gay gene that only exists in the homosexual children because their same-gender attractions are the only ones who seek to explain? That really it's also in the parents and the other children, but because they choose to follow a heterosexual path we assume they don't have the "bisexual" gene?

I just don't think it's as simple or black and white as a dominant gay gene and a dominant heterosexual gene within an environment with no influence.

So, maybe they should be looking for this "gay gene" in heterosexuals, since they're the ones who seem to pass it on.

Violence and race

2005-03-27T12:49:00.000-08:00

People like to say that whites are more aggessive and domineering, by reasons of genetics. I don't think that's true. I think that whites had more opportunities and took those opportunities. And there are so many instances of domination in the world. Men oppressing women within every race, humans dominating animals and the earth, "wild west" Indians fighting with other Indian tribes, black Africans dominating other black Africans, religions and their endless bloody battles. The common denominator isn't race, it's human-ness.

I think that this scheme of domination either comes from religion, or religion was written based on it. Because religion always seems to have to do with hierarchy and levels of worthiness. There's god at the top, then some angels, then the Pope, then others of the "cloth", then humans (and our levels within human-ness), then animals,then the earth, etc. People fight to maintain or to change this status quo. Hierarchies breed violence. There's just something about humans that we need to feel "above" others. If we finally stop using gender and race as a way to establish a hierarchy, we'll probably just find something else. Perhaps if religion truly portrayed all life as equally valid, humans would start to emulate that worldview.

"European descent" vs. "white"

2005-03-27T12:24:00.000-08:00

On the census and on the demographic part of forms that we have to fill out, new sensitivity is being shown to people's ethnic identity. It has been found that so many people are the products of race-mixing (of course, there actually isn't a genetic basis for the conception of "race", anyway) that we needed more categories than simply "white, black, hispanic", etc. Also, some people don't identify with the "race" they appear to be, and some people identify with more than one race. Also, "black" has been changed to "African American" to give more acknowledgment of their ethnic identity.

But I think there are still some problems. First, I think that "African American" is a misnomer. Whether you believe in evolution or Adam and Eve, we all are from Africa. And those we call African American are more recently from many countries other than Africa, such as Jamaica, etc. And what about a caucasian from South Africa who moves here - is she an "African American"? So the term "African American" lumps all these people from Africa, America, and other countries under one term, simply because they have the darkest skin, even though their cultures are vastly different.

How would we refer to someone who actually grew up in Africa (which itself isn't a monoculture, consisting of many countries) as opposed to someone who is an American black? An American black is very much a product of America; I would say they share more similarities with other Americans than they do with people actually from Africa.

A second problem I have is that the term "Native American" suggests that American Indians evolved here in America. In reality, they were the first immigrants, walking across the Bering Strait when there was a land bridge. They're immigrants just like anyone else.

And a third problem I have is that they have made well-meaning efforts to be more sensitive to non-caucasians, but what about caucasians? A caucasian is no more "white" than a negroid is "black". And "white" is so bland - what about the historical culture of whites? I suggest they start using the term "European descent" instead of "white". Furthermore, I believe there is new evidence suggesting that rather than all people starting in Africa and some migrating to Europe and becoming lighter in color, that a separate group of people evolved simultaneously in Europe.

Really, I think it's all just a game we have concocted, anyway. We're all humans, not really different races. And who REALLY knows what their past is, other than that people have told them? I think we're more a product of our present than of the historical past of our supposed ancestors. To the extent that our past effects us, it's because we have chosen to internalize those past stories into our thinking systems.

Foliage phobia

2005-03-27T12:21:00.000-08:00

In the midwest and the east and the south, trees are lush and full and foliage grows everywhere. Everything is green and full. In the southwest, I've noticed tree trimmers cutting trees and bushes down to the nub. So many of them end up looking like larger versions of those miniature Japanese trees that cost so much money.

My mother said the other night that she gave some gardeners directions for how much to cut from a tree, and they just went ahead and pruned it into nothing. I told her that I think southwesterners have "foliage phobia".

Phrases

2005-03-27T12:20:00.000-08:00

I recently read a couple of phrases I like.

"National exceptionalism" and "imperial impunity"

Wine and wafers

2005-03-27T12:16:00.000-08:00

Catholics have communion with grape juice or wine representing the blood of Christ and wafers representing his body. And they eat those representations. The other day I saw some Jewish Russians having a Friday religious celebration in which they did the same thing, and yet, since they don't believe that Jesus has come yet, it must mean something else. I asked some people and they said that this behavior is common in many religions. I want to find out what it means in the other religions, and why did it get linked to Jesus in the newer religion?

Suffering and Christianity

2005-03-27T11:52:00.000-08:00

Today is Easter. The Catholic Pope is ill and is suffering, and a couple of days ago he referred to his suffering as bringing him closer to god, which has some relevance to the Christian holiday today.

I'd like to know, why would a god ever elevate suffering to an ideal, to a holy place? Commonsense tells us that suffering isn't fun or something to strive for or rejoice in. It seems ludicrous to me. It seems like just another human invention, possibly devised to make the sufferer feel better or feel less fear of the unknown. Or perhaps, since all of us suffer at one time or another, especially at the end of life, perhaps it was a way for the church to relate to the masses and get converts.

When I think about the things that god supposedly wants and then I try to get a conception of a human who would be like that, it's not a pretty picture. Someone who says your suffering draws you closer, someone who wants - no, needs - you to constantly praise him, someone who needs you to reassure him that he is the best and the only, someone who promotes violence by saying "an eye for an eye", someone who forbids you to get angry at him and swear at him, and on and on... And a sexist person at that, who says that men cannot covet their neighbor's wife, but makes no mention of women not coveting, who has no interest in maintaining the morality of women (because of course they are born unclean and are hopeless)?

Why do we accept unhealthy characteristics in a god that we wouldn't accept in a human?

Pedophile vs. gay

2005-03-27T11:41:00.000-08:00

I keep hearing the many priests who abuse children referred to as gay. Why is that, is it because they tend to abuse boys rather than girls? Since the church is male dominated, the children (altarboys) used in services are male, so the priests have a lot more opportunity with male children.

I have my own issues with the sexual promiscuity practiced by many gay men, but personally I don't think the promiscuity is because they're gay, I think it's because they're men. They're men without the civilizing influences of women.

But calling child-abusing priests "gay" is just plain wrong. They're not gay, they're pedophiles. There's a big, big difference. The vast majority of pedophiles are straight men, regardless of the gender of their young victims.

My guess is that it's the gender bias of the church that accounts for the fact that the victims of the pedophiles are male. Either because, as I already noted, young boys are more accessible than young girls, or because the church has historically celebrated maleness and even male/male sex and denigrated womanhood.

But in terms of all pedophiles, whether priests or the man down the corner, the problem isn't just that they are attracted to children. It blows me away that they think they have the RIGHT to molest someone else, either through force or through the manipulation of impressionable youth. A priest knows his behavior is wrong. A non-priest may be disturbed so much that he doesn't "know", but the objections of his victim should be a clue. And yet they still act as though they have the right. That their desires take precedence over the the objections of their victim. Really, a pedophile is a rapist of children. I think that perhaps the word "pedophile" doesn't stress this enough.

Minorities and creativity

2005-03-27T11:10:00.000-08:00

They often say that gay (men) are especially creative. They also say that "crazy people" are very creative (although I understand that the research shows this association to be very faint). And of course, they always say that minorities can dance "better" (whatever that means) than other people. It seems that this "world wisdom" considers these things to be fact and to be biological.

But something occurred to me. When you're a minority, "less" is expected of you. You aren't expected to succeed at what the mainstream succeeds at - as a matter of fact, you are often prevented from even trying. But the reverse side of this is that it frees a minority up from having to conform - they are more free to explore other ways of viewing and experiencing the world.

They are "expected" to be different and so are allowed to go off on their "abnormal" ways. And this freedom allows them to explore new areas, it gives them permission to be creative.

Imagine if we let everyone have this freedom? Maybe we should "give up" on more people and see what happens if we let people experience the world as individuals instead of as socially programmed receptacles of predetermined knowledge?

Homes as investments

2005-03-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

It really, really bothers me that homes are used as investments. People need homes, they need places to live and feel safe. Using them as investment vehicles and tying them to market influences prices many people out of homes, even as rentals. I really think that home prices should be more tied to the cost of living (of course, some homes would be more than others because they are bigger, etc). It just really strikes me as ludicrous that something that people need should be used in such a way that many cannot afford one.

We say that cars depreciate and homes appreciate in value, but that's not a fact, that's something that's an artifact of our system. If we let cars appreciate in value, we would just keep replacing everything on them just as we do homes. We don't do it because it's not worth it, but that too is an artifact of the system.

Homes appreciate in value because of the system. If homes were no longer considered investment vehicles, they would stop getting priced out of so many people's reach. This even applies to rental property, because the owners of the rental property are playing the same game, constantly raising rents, calling it "market pricing" but of course doing nothing more than trying to make a profit off of something that people need. And what's more, that huge profit is money made with no work done. Money for nothing.

And yet, homes are a necessity. Something that is necessary should be within reach.

The agnostic gene

2005-03-27T10:40:00.000-08:00

Julie and John Smith were a very religious couple. Their home was filled with religious artifacts, they held bible study classes in their home on the weeknights, they attended church twice a day on Sundays, and they both held jobs within the church school.

When they had their children, Julie Jr. and Seth, they wanted to raise them as they believed. So they added child bible study classes to their weeknight schedule, they enrolled the children in the church school, they said prayers with them at every meal and at every bedtime, and they only allowed them to socialize with children from similarly religious families.

They made it clear to Julie Jr. and Seth that their own religion was the right way to believe and that it was the only natural and normal way to view the world. They made sure that that the chidren knew that agnostics and people from other religions were unnatural, were wrong, and were going to hell. Everything in these children's environment - their home, their school, their family, their friends - told them that their natural identity was meant to be religious.

Imagine Julie Sr. and John's shock when they discovered that their child Julie Jr., now in high school, was an agnostic. They realized that since being of their religion was natural and normal, that Julie Jr. must have a bad gene. She must have an agnostic gene. Seth must have only normal genes.

Because of course, our environment doesn't have an effect on us. Our environment doesn't shape us at all, and we don't make choices in reference to that environment based on our cognitive abilities. Everything is naturally occuring or else is a bad gene.

"Woman" used as an adjective

2005-03-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

We always use the noun "woman" as an adjective. We say, "the woman doctor", "the woman driver", "the woman student". Do we say, "the man doctor", "the man driver", the "man student"? No, of course not, we use the adjective "male". So why do we use a grammatically incorrect phrase when we are referring to women? I realize that language is always changing, but why did it change in reference to women but not to men?

I've heard "woman" used as an adjective in movies from the 1930's, so it's not a new phenomenon. In patriarchal societies, men are seen as the norm, the default. So often we specify gender when the individual in question is a woman, but not when it's a man. For example, if someone is talking about a doctor, they would assume you know it's a man and therefore they wouldn't specify gender. But if it's a woman, they would say "the woman doctor".

But that's not what I'm trying to say. What I want to know is, when we DO specify gender, why do we use a noun as an adjective when the individual is a woman? If people were simply trying to specify gender, they would say "the female doctor", not "the woman doctor".

I'm guessing that it started when women starting moving into non-traditional fields and activities. Today people don't even think twice; they don't even seem aware that they are using a noun for an adjective. I've even heard sentences such as "women doctors now outnumber male doctors" - totally non-parallel forms in the same sentence!

But originally, I think that by using the noun "woman" instead of the adjective "female", the speaker was using a code to indicate his disapproval. Think about the tone usually used when someone says "woman driver". I think that's probably what was conveyed back then whenever the noun "woman" was used as an adjective.

War and memorials

2005-03-27T09:56:00.000-08:00

Whenever I've gone down south, I've always been amazed and repulsed by all of the statues commemorating war. There are statues of officers and of weapons (lots of tanks).

IMO, there should be no memorials that don't also, to at least an equal degree, communicate the sadness and regret I think we should all feel at having had to participate in (state and socially sanctioned) violence. Otherwise such statues commemorating war are simply celebrating our victory or our bravado. Even if you feel that you had no choice but to go to war because you were actively being attacked, there should still be regret.

War and violence are not good solutions and are not something to be proud of. The fact that we feel no shame or regret but only pride is nothing if not a predictor of the likelihood of future wars.

I remember when they were talking about what to do with the property that the World Trade Centers once stood on, it seemed most logical to me that they should rebuild on most of it. I think they should have used a smaller part to make a permanent peace display, one which appeals to people to address problems at their base, not simply to react to the symptoms of those problems with violence.

A memorial which uses all of that property and only addresses loss will simply be used as a "victimization" reminder, serving to keep us ready to keep using violence as a solution.

There are reasons that people or countries uses violence and for us to ignore them and to simply use violence in return is to guarantee that our world will never be free from war. Then it just becomes a game of who is tougher or affluent enough to afford the most weapons. And many people take pride in that, which is why I think war memorials celebrate and justify war.

If we truly didn't like war and violence, we would be trying to learn how to avoid them, instead of learning how to wage them better. We would be seeking to fairly address the world's problems at their cores, before they get to the point of violence. Instead, it's just a macho game and we take pride in our victories.

Where are the memorials celebrating peace activists, those who have worked to resolve conflicts without violence? Why do we have a department of war but not a department of peace?

We have a choice. We could see ourselves as the country with the most money and enough weapons to dominate and decimate the rest of the planet. Or we could see ourselves as the country with the most money and love of peace and justice that could use these powers to make the world a more just and safe place.

The word "allegedly"

2005-03-23T23:18:00.000-08:00

It seems like people are using the word "allegedly" incorrectly, even newscasters. Perhaps people are so afraid of being accused of slander that they throw it in anywhere and everywhere, just to cover their tails.

I think it's used in sentences in which it is redundant. For example, I've heard the news say something like "He is on trial for allegedly stealing a radio". But he isn't being tried for allegedly stealing it - he is alleged to have stolen it and he is on trial for stealing it. Right? A trial is all about alleging. So it seems redundant to say "on trial for allegedly stealing" - the whole point of the trial is to determine if he did or didn't.

And what about "the alleged defendant"? He isn't alleged to be a defendant! He IS a defendant. It is alleged that he did X or Y.

I also heard on the news something like "the police allegedly said that he stole the radio". The police didn't allegedly say that, they DID say that!

So, it's like people just throw the word "alleged" anywhere in the sentence, not paying attention to what it refers to, sentence-structure-wise.

"Love it or leave it" mentality

2005-03-23T23:07:00.000-08:00

So often when someone voices a criticism of the administration or of the direction our country is taking, there are people who try to silence them by retorting with some form of the saying "love it or leave it(the country)". It just blows me away. These people are thinking that they are the "true patriots" merely because they have a "my country right or wrong" mentality. And yet, to me, this is exactly the opposite of democracy, exactly the opposite of what this country is supposed to stand for.

First of all, free speech, particularly that of the dissenting variety, is an important part of the checks and balances format of our system. If issues aren't raised through dissent, faulty choices and directions will continue without check.

Secondly, "love it or leave it" is the type of thing a dictator would say, a style of "leadership" that does not welcome input from constituents, that simply wants to do whatever it chooses.

Thirdly, the people who really love their system are the ones who constantly want to make it better, not the ones who want to simply assume it's perfect and not consider how the system might impact on people other than themselves. In other words, the "true patriots" (I actually hate the word "patriot") are those who want to make the system better so that it works for everyone, not just for themselves.

I think the people who say "love it or leave it" either don't truly understand democracy or just want to feel they are "on the winning team" and don't want to be troubled with having to think about things or change things.

Bush's tone

2005-03-23T23:05:00.000-08:00

I find it odd that so many people feel that Bush has an authoritative manner. Whenever he speaks, he sounds whiney to me. Particularly when he says "it's hard work". It's just something about his tone, so whiney sounding. Maybe because I can't bear to see him on TV; when I hear what he says, it's all audio because I hear it on the radio.

Democrats and moral values

2005-03-21T23:25:00.000-08:00

Recent newspaper articles have noted 2008 Democratic hopefuls, such as Hilary Clinton, talking more about their "faith" in an effort to recoup this year's election losses. It immediately makes me wonder - why is it that when morals and values are the subject, politicians feel safest playing the "religion card"? Why do words and actions seem to only count when carried out under an umbrella of professed faith?

The Democratic platform is a very moral platform. Many Democrats belong to various faiths, but it is the moral implications of their platform that unites them. The particular religion or moral secularism of any given Democrat is a means to the shared end, an outlook on life which stresses human rights, accountability, helping those in need, nondiscrimination, working with the other peoples of the world, and a respect for individual differences. Democrats can win by explaining and emphasizing how the programs and laws that stem from their philosophies are based on morality.

Politicians may or may not be truly religious, but as religious affiliation is not synonymous with morality, we should judge candidates by the values we see exemplified in their past and proposed future policies, not by any claims of religiosity. If they genuinely feel a need to make public their personal spirituality, that's fine, but don't stop there - they should continue by talking directly about the moral underpinnings of their platform. And as the last election left the public thinking that Democrats don’t have values because they didn’t play the religion card, I'm hoping they won't wait until the next election to get this message out.

If morals are truly the point in the current political milieu, why not cut to the chase and simply talk directly about them?

Pain and species

2005-03-21T23:16:00.000-08:00

Although there are politicians declaring that it is cruel to intentionally cause Terri Schiavo to feel the pain of starvation, it is my understanding that a brain-dead person does not experience pain or any effects of starvation, because they have no brain with which to interpret the relevant nerve impulses.

On the other hand, an animal has a consciousness and a fully functioning central nervous system, and consequently can feel the same pain that a human does. And yet, we really don't care about the pain that animals feel, unless they belong to the few species we have deemed to be "pets". We don't care about the daily pain and suffering endured by livestock before it becomes our "food". But the pain that humans and pets and livestock feel is all the same - suffering is suffering.

If it is true that Ms. Schiavo's brain is now predominately spinal fluid and that she has no ability to feel pain or to even have any of the "higher human processes", then this case is highlighting our propensity to make decisions based on "ideology". The ideology is that if it's an animal, we must pretend they can't feel pain even though they do, but if it's a human, we must pretend that they can feel pain even if they can't.

In my opinion, our "compassionate decisions" should be based on scientific facts, not merely on the species of the subject. If something has a working central nervous system and can feel pain and suffer, we should seek to avoid causing it that pain. As the philosopher Jeremy Bentham said, "The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor 'Can they talk?' but rather, 'Can they suffer?' "

To me, any true “culture of life” would equate “life” with “quality of life”, not with an existence with no consciousness.

Jesus billboards

2005-03-20T17:19:00.000-08:00

I don’t agree with the yearly billboards which say "Jesus is the (only) reason for the season". Christianity is the dominant religion in our culture and therefore impacts on everyone's life. Christmas is a time of abundant good food, visitors, pretty decorations, love and sharing, and lightness in our hearts. Commercialism aside, it is a time of family bonds and goodwill towards others.

If we were to limit Christmas to only those who celebrate it as a birthday party for a historical figure, we'd be looking at a very few people, even among Christians. I'd say it's more accurate to say that Jesus' MESSAGE is the reason for the season. WWJD? I think he would say that the whole point is love, equality, and peace, and it isn't important if it’s moral secularism or a religion or Christmas lights that get you there. I think the "Prince of Peace" would say that "LOVE is the reason for the season".

The love and sharing and goodwill that people experience at Christmas time are deeply felt, are qualities that Jesus stood for, and are experiences we need to expand to other times of the year. But those billboards suggest that rather than truly acknowledge and appreciate what Jesus stood for, we should focus only on worshipping the man himself. The man over the message. Religion as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end. The "letter of the law" over the "spirit of the law". Personally, I don't think that's what Jesus wanted.

Reframing the question of the supposed gay gene

2005-03-13T15:15:00.000-08:00

It always amazes me that people are continually searching for some biological cause of gayness, when we don't even know the biological cause of heterosexuality.

We do know, however, the ENVIRONMENTAL causes of heterosexuality, such as the enormous effort that societies put into shaping children from birth to be "gender appropriate" and heterosexual. From day one, and every day after, there are familial pressures and institutionalized shaping all around to make us all be in one of two discrete categories: a straight feminine female or a straight masculine male. If heterosexuality is so normal and automatic that we need to find a "gay gene" to account for aberrations, why do we need to put so much effort into shaping people to look and act "appropriately"? But one thing is sure: such environmental influences represent a huge, uncontrolled variable in this biological research.

Besides assuming that environment plays no role in our sexual orientations, the search for a biological cause of gayness, by examining only self-acknowleged and publicly "out" gays, assumes that all people with this supposed gene actively express the gene. And yet, we know that sexuality is on a continuum; most people aren't 100% gay or straight, but fall somewhere in between, even if they only act on socially approved attractions. Should the scientists ever identify this gene, it will doubtless also be found in many bisexuals and heterosexuals - especially since it's heterosexuals who pass on this supposed gene.

So there are many people on the "sexuality continuum" who never act on their feelings. They may feel some same-gender attractions but they repress them. Because they don't act on their desires, they won't be in the "gay" sample chosen for study. There are also very closeted gay people who would not ordinarily be noticed and therefore would never be included in this type of study.

Therefore, a study which only examines self-acknowledged and publicly "out" gays is using a sample which is not representative of the whole "community". Any conclusions drawn could not be deemed representative of "gays" in general. The conclusions would have to apply just to gays who are "out" to the public and to themselves; rather than being a generalization about gays in general, the conclusions would refer to people who publicly act on same-gender attractions as opposed to those who don't.

So maybe the question should be reframed - instead of asking "what biological variables cause one to be gay?", we should be asking "what biological variables cause one to have the inner strength to explore their own sexuality and resist continual societal shaping?" It seems a much more accurate and positive way to frame the situation.

Fascinating word research

2005-01-10T23:52:00.000-08:00

Don't delete this because it looks weird. Believe it or not you can read it.

--The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid --

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in wahtoredr the ltteers in a wrod are; the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the fristand lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and youcan sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos notraed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh! andI awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!

Someone might take our capacity to read this paragraph as proof of the usefulness of the "whole-word" style of teaching reading. But I don't think that's true. We already know what these words mean and that's why we can perceive what they really are. We may read familiar words as a whole, but I think we learn best with phonetics, as it teaches you how to "figure out" an unknown word.

But it's still an incredibly interesting research finding!

Some of my favorite quotes

2005-01-10T23:44:00.000-08:00

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

by Pastor Martin Niemoller, Berlin, 1939.

***************************************************

"When we speak we are afraid our words will not be
heard or welcomed. Butwhen we are silent, we are still
afraid. So it is better to speak,remembering we were
never meant to survive."

Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

***************************************************

Success: fall down seven times, stand up eight.

***************************************************
Emily Dickinson
Not in Vain

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

************************************************

"Justice will be secured in Athens when those who are not
injured by injustice feel as indignant as those who are."
--Solon, 6th century, B.C.

*************************************************

SUvs and wartime sacrifices

2005-01-10T23:41:00.000-08:00

We've all seen the movies from World War II and the sacrifices that people back home had to make. Many types of foods or materials were rationed or weren't available at all. People knew there was a war going on; the war very much affected their everyday lives.

Today American military forces are involved in fighting in many countries. But unless we know someone in the military, our lives back home haven't changed at all. It has really, really amazed me that we don't have leaders exhorting us to do our part to diminish our dependence on foreign oil - by driving less, by carpooling, by using bikes or public transportation, and most importantly, by not continuing our love affair with either SUVs or gas-guzzling sports cars. This period in our history really seems like the most opportune of times to lead the nation in viewing fuel efficient vehicles as patriotic... To point out to us that we use the most world resources of any nation, even those with more people... and that maybe, just maybe, that's not a good thing...

Politicians and government manipulate us all the time. Why not use those skills to help us walk more softly on the world, and at the same time, become more independent of those who might abuse us? They could have started a nation-wide movement to help us see ourselves in a new light - Americans as world-conscious, Americans as people who conserve resources rather than use than up, Americans as people who leave some of the world for the developing countries, Americans as something more than gluttonous consumers... it could all start by encouraging people to see fuel efficient vehicles as patriotic...

But of course, if you're a government in bed with big business and the oil industry, you're going to manipulate us instead to keep spending, to keep using up resources, and to keep supporting wars designed to maintain our dominance over the the "foreign oil pipeline"...

Mythologies

2005-01-10T20:13:00.000-08:00

The other day on NPR, Chris Rainier, a reporter for National Geographic, was talking about the Tsunami. I didn't catch which country he was in, but he said that this people's "mythology" told them to run if they noticed such severe weather/environmental changes. Many of these people subsequently survived; their "mythology" had served them well.

I believe he was talking about the religion of these people. Now, why is it considered okay for him to call it "mythology"? I still don't understand why we call ancient Greek religion "mythology". What makes one thing a religion and another thing a mythology? Certainly, the disbelief of the speaker - it isn't his/her own religion. Also, the belief system in question is not a part of the culture of the speaker's own country. What else?

Palestinians voting

2005-01-10T20:07:00.000-08:00

Why is it that the media are reporting that "Palestinians are voting"? Only Palestinian MEN are voting. And if Palestine is like most countries (not China, which aborts female fetuses), women outnumber men. So when the majority is still not allowed to vote, why is this event being portrayed as a huge democratic success?

If the Palestinians had decided that only light skinned Palestinians could vote and not the darker skinned ones, we would be crying foul - but about this, we're mute. If they had decided that only educated people could vote, we'd be all over that. Apparently Palestinians don't care about women, but with no outcry, maybe we don't either....

Patriotism and violence

2004-12-24T19:56:00.000-08:00

I've been wondering.... why does "patriotism" always have to do with wars and killing? Why do we only consider authorized violence a means to "serve your country"?

Does "serving one's country" only have to do with sacrifice? People who willingly take on low paying jobs because those jobs enable them to help others - such as teachers and social workers - they're sacrificing - why aren't they considered to be serving their country?

Perhaps we reserve "patriotism" and "serving one's country" for instances where someone is potentially making the "ultimate sacrifice" by risking their life. Of course, we'd never get enough people to join the military if we didn't romanticize this notion of risking one's life or if we didn't make the concept of "war hero" so glamorous, when in reality war, injury, hurting others, and death are anything but glamorous.

It reminds me of how when one person is rubbing another person's back, the receiver makes sure to keep saying compliments, such as "oh, you should do this professionally", to reinforce continued rubbing.

But while risking one's life is a distinct type of behavior, I think it's wrong to act as though these behaviors are the only way to be "patriotic" or to "serve one's country". I don't think it's healthy for individuals or for the world to equate killing and dying - in short, violence - with our highest regard.

And why isn't "serving your world" of even more importance than "serving your country"? Why do we place the most value on doing things that put our country before the welfare of the world? Isn't that something like institutionalized selfishness? Or, a word more and more frequently being applied to the U.S., isn't it like arrogance? Why wouldn't the "whole" be more important than a "part" of the whole?

Some vegan links

2004-12-19T22:29:00.000-08:00

Vegan Action
http://www.vegan.org/

Vegan Outreach - Ending Cruelty to
Animals!
http://veganoutreach.org/

EarthSave International -
promoting a shift toward a healthy plant-based diet
http://www.earthsave.org/

Vegan & Vegetarian Recipes,
Articles, Health Resource
http://www.vegsource.com/

Vietnam/Iraq - from Ruth Rosen

2004-12-19T04:43:00.000-08:00

http://www.alternet.org/story/19641/

In early August came the surprising news that Vietnam, a country most of us couldn't find on a map, had attacked one or more U.S. Navy destroyers. On August 7th, Congress, with only two dissenting votes, quickly passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that authorized the funding of the Vietnam War. Few of us who opposed the war the very next day could have imagined that it would shadow the next decade of our lives. And even now, after former Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara and many others have acknowledged that those attacks never happened, it's hard to believe how little it took to convince Congress and the American people that Vietnam, like Iraq, represented an imminent threat to our country.

More on Ruth Rosen:

Rockridge Institute - Ruth Rosen

excerpt - George Lakoff interview

2004-12-19T03:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml

Back up for a second and explain what you mean by the strict father and nurturant parent frameworks.

Well, the progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.

The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.

So, project this onto the nation and you see that to the right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined ones — those who have already become wealthy or at least self-reliant — and those who are on the way. Social programs, meanwhile, "spoil" people by giving them things they haven't earned and keeping them dependent. The government is there only to protect the nation, maintain order, administer justice (punishment), and to provide for the promotion and orderly conduct of business. In this way, disciplined people become self-reliant. Wealth is a measure of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such government take away from the good, disciplined people rewards that they have earned and spend it on those who have not earned it.

From that framework, I can see why Schwarzenegger appealed to conservatives.

Exactly. In the strict father model, the big thing is discipline and moral authority, and punishment for those who do something wrong. That comes out very clearly in the Bush administration's foreign and domestic policy. With Schwarzenegger, it's in his movies: most of the characters that he plays exemplify that moral system. He didn't have to say a word! He just had to stand up there, and he represents Mr. Discipline. He knows what's right and wrong, and he's going to take it to the people. He's not going to ask permission, or have a discussion, he's going to do what needs to be done, using force and authority. His very persona represents what conservatives are about.

"The Reason for the Season"

2004-12-17T21:09:00.000-08:00

It's December, and so the perennial billboards are up which state "Jesus is the reason for the season", although of late they display the revised "Jesus is the only reason for the season".

Perhaps the addition of the word "only" is to discourage the rampant consumerism we witness at this time of year. Or possibly it's to put a damper on the Hannukah celebrations of Jews. Perhaps it's to shame us for the secularism of our office Christmas parties. Maybe it's a protest against the association between Santa and Christmas.

Basically, I think the message says that if you aren't literally celebrating the (not actual) birthday of Christ, then you have no right to be observing and enjoying Christmas. But how many of us really experience Christmas that way? Certainly non-Christians don't. And even though Bush won and everyone is jumping on the religion bandwagon, let's be honest - many (most?) non-fundamentalist Christians don't experience Christmas as a birthday party for a historical figure.

So all these people who enjoy Christmas but don't experience it as a birthday celebration for Jesus, what exactly are their "reasons for the season"? Why do they feel such warmth and happiness during this season and what are they celebrating?

People have often commented that we see much more "good cheer" and "good will toward wo/men" during this season. Why do people feel so much goodness and generousity of spirit at Christmas time?

My guess is that immigrants to this country who celebrate Christmas enjoy the fun, the gift-giving, the decorations, the time with family and friends. But I think that the rest of us have strong positive emotional responses, in addition. Christmas conjures up feelings of warmth, family bonds, security, and joy (remember the magic of Santa and gifts when you were a child?).

In short, I think that Christmas takes us back to the emotional state we were in as children (assuming we were lucky enough to have been born in favorable family and financial situations). We looked forward to Christmas as freedom from school, a time of gifts and magic (you could even tell Santa what you wanted and then get it), a time when we could spend time with relatives who lived elsewhere, a time when the authorities (our parents) were in good spirits and went easy on us, a time with lots of good food and visitors and pretty decorations and lots of love all around.

Then we grew up and had responsibilities and bills and inflexible work hours and so many other stressors. We had to take care of ourselves and no longer felt the emotional security we grew up with. We got busy with our lives and lost touch with many friends and relatives, maybe even became less close to our siblings and parents.

But at Christmas time, every thing changes and the past returns. We all tend to continue to honor the tradition of reuniting with friends and family. We reach out to our neighbors and co-workers, even if we barely talk to them all year. We feel happy, and we feel a lightness in our heart. Why? I think it's because the feelings of warmth, security, magic, and things being "right with the world" return. Those wonderful feelings from our childhood.

Christianity is the dominant religion in our country, and the media and governmental institutions all recognize it and honor it. The ubiguitous presence of Christmas in our culture at this time of year makes knowledge of the holiday unavoidable. Everyone - observant Christians, people raised as Christian but not fundamentalist in their beliefs, and people not raised in Christianity - all have their own experience of Christmas. And many, many have positive associations with Christmas, emotional reactions not related to a birthday celebration for Jesus.

WWJD?

I don't think that Jesus would want to encourage the use of religion as a tool of divisiveness. I don't think he would want people to focus on his (not actual) birthday, as though religion were meant to be an end in itself. I think he would encourage and rejoice in the spirit of goodwill, of love, of joy, of people reaching out to each other - once a year is better than never! I think he would want religion used as a means to an end, and that end would be love and compassion, leaving tribalism and divisiveness behind. I think he would say that the whole point is love, and it isn't important if it's this or that religion that gets you there, or if it's your strong moral secularist values that get you there, or if it's Santa who gets you there, or if it's colored lights that help you see the world in a more enlightened and open-spirited way.

I think he would say that "love is the reason for the season".

Immigrants and the American melting pot

2004-12-14T22:49:00.000-08:00

I've heard many immigrants despair because their children are becoming Americanized and not retaining enough of their cultural heritage. I've done a lot of thinking about this subject, and I don't agree that the original culture is the culture of the children. The children, born in America or raised for most of their childhood here, are obviously going to be, to a great extent, products of American culture. The original culture is something they learn by teaching or example from their parents, not something they experience first-hand. It's only part of their identity because their parents have told them that it is. The culture the children grow up in and experience first-hand is the "American culture".

That "American culture" has been shaped by the influx of immigrants' cultures. Those original immigrants give a little to our culture, and take a little of our culture. In return, we do the same. That's what the American melting pot is. There's some kind of a constancy to being "American", but it is always changing just a little bit with the ongoing addition of the input of immigrants.

But I think this effect is produced by the original immigrants, not by their children. I think that as time goes on, it is always the new immigrants who add a new aspect to our culture. It would be unnatural and probably cruel for immigrant parents to forcibly shape their American-raised children to be just as they would be had they not emigrated to the U.S. Plus, it would be disturbing the give-and-take of the American melting pot, for American culture would change, but the immigrants and their descendents never would.

Subverting the melting pot would lead to a much higher incidence of "foreigners" (for they would be seen as never acclimating) living in separate areas than "Americans", and it would probably lead to more violence between Americans and immigrants, and between different immigrant groups. Plus, in many non-English speaking immigrant households, it's the children who bridge the gap between America and the parents. If the parents did all they could to keep the children tied to the "original" culture, one in which they weren't even raised, the children couldn't bridge that gap very well. What's more, the children would probably feel like they were living in limbo - identifying with a culture/nation in which they had never lived and not adjusting to the culture actually all around them.

So, while I understand that it must sadden immigrants to see their children becoming someone they themselves are not, I think it's the most natural and healthy thing for the children to identify as Americans. Certainly, they will learn about the past lives of their ancestors, but they will integrate that "old" culture into their personalities in a much different way than their parents did.

There will always be new immigrants arriving to keep the "old cultures" alive in America. But second, third, and on generations are naturally going to be of a different culture. This situation is really the best of both worlds, I think - it allows America to give its own culture to the descendants of the original immigrants, and it allows for fresh immigrants to likewise give some of their original culture to America.

(BUT --- I really do wish that immigrant children and descendants would help keep the native languages of their ancestors alive in America. Often immigrant children don't want to seem "different", and they refuse to learn the language of their parents. And I think that's such a shame. Languages are so beautiful, and they're so much harder to learn when you're older. Speaking English *and* the language of their parents wouldn't keep the children from being "real" Americans... )

A great commentary - CSM website

2004-12-14T22:03:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago I surprised myself by finding out I enjoyed reading editorials on the Christian Science Monitor website. They usually tend to be objective, non-judgmental, and non-proselytizing. Here's the url to a recent commentary:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1213/p09s02-coop.html?ref=aol
One Christian feeling hijacked by politics csmonitor.com

The author speaks of no longer wanting to be a "public Christian", because she worries that with the current political climate, that her personal beliefs will be used politically to make someone else feel uncomfortable.

Recycling is the "third R"

2004-12-14T21:04:00.000-08:00

I really like the idea of recycling and I wish more people did it. But mostly I wish that those powers that be which promote recycling would put some energy into reinforcing ALL of the "r's" of which recycling is the last option. The first, of course, is to reduce usage of any given thing. The second is to reuse the item. And only after those options do we then recycle.

To use the example of writing paper, we would first try to use less paper. That paper we did use, we would turn over and use another time. Finally, we would turn the paper into a recycling plant. In this way we use less paper and destroy fewer trees.

We really only hear about recycling in terms of newspapers and soda cans. We could certainly reduce our consumption of them, but it's tough to reuse them. So I guess that's why we only hear about the third r, recycling, in regards to them. But these three principles, or even one or two, could apply to many things we use today. I think that by emphasizing all three principles we might learn as a society to walk a little more softly on the earth, and we might learn to value such an approach to living.

Ancient religions as "myth"

2004-12-14T20:16:00.000-08:00

I've been wondering why we refer to the religions of ancient civilizations (Greek, Egypt) as "myth". We even take classes in high school called "Greek mythology". If someone were to refer to a current religion as "myth", there would be a great uproar. Does the difference in reaction have to do with there being no one left to stand up for the old religions? Is a religion only "true" or "real" as long as there is someone who believes in it literally?

If you were to point this out to a believer in a current religion, I think they would say that the ancient religions were myth and that they were silly and made no sense. I suspect that even the most respectful of religious people would at least *feel* that about even a current religion they don't subscribe to. It seems that each religion on some level must encourage people to believe that theirs is the only "true" religion - in other words, I don't think the average religious person sees religions as different but equal paths.

Really, what would be the point of learning all the intricate details of your particular religion, if it wasn't the true religion? You'd be better of just taking from it the basics that all religions share, principles of goodness, honesty, etc. And you don't need religion to learn those values - so then why would you need the religion at all?

So I'm thinking that any given religion can't survive unless it continues to have people believe that it is the only true religion. Seen as equal paths, I think the different religions would begin to fade. People rarely choose their religion; they are born into it and simply believe what their parents believed. But no one is born into a religion with Zeus et al. anymore - so there is no one to be taught from infancy to believe in it, and there is no one to stand up and say that it is the true religion. So it's okay to refer to those religions as "myth"...

So it seems we're left with two choices - seeing religion as a means to an end (different but equal) and probably having them fade away (supplanted by other forms of "values education"), or seeing religion as an end in itself (believing your religion is the only "true" religion). One of the problems with this latter option, though, (besides not truly believing other religions or the values of secularists) is the amount of violence and war that results. I'm not sure we've made the right choice as a species....

George Lakoff and reframing political discourse

2004-12-12T13:10:00.000-08:00

National Public Radio/KPBS-San Diego has a great weekly program on words, called "A With Words". It can be heard online at the following address:

http://www.kpbs.org/Radio/DynPage.php?id=12
KPBS - A Way with Words

Martha Barnett, one of the co-hosts, told me about a linquist at Berkeley named George Lakoff. His work includes explaining how Democrats have to reframe the issues and not let Republicans define what I've been calling "the value-laden words". He has written several books (see end of post) and a recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle refers to his work:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/12/05/MNGDIA6N3I1.DTL
UC scholar to help Democrats refine message / Party is urged to control policy debate

George Lakoff's books:
Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, (2nd edition, 2002)
Don’t Think of An Elephant (2004)
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About The Mind (1987), Metaphors We Live By (1980; 2003) [with Mark Johnson],
More Than Cool Reason (1989) [with Mark Turner],
Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge To The Western Tradition
(1999) [with Mark Johnson]

Christianity and hell

2004-12-09T21:46:00.000-08:00

Fundamentalists feel that sins weigh more heavily than goodness. They feel that people will go to (a literal) hell if they have an abortion, have sex before marriage, engage in homosexual sex, and many, many more things. Apparently it doesn't matter what else you have done in your life, the number of good deeds, the compassion in your heart, the gentleness with which you walk on the earth. All that matters is if you do something bad.

That just seems to me to be so obviously a ploy the religious people of long ago worked out to scare people into not doing things that they didn't want them to do.

I cannot believe that a god would care more about some (human-labeled) bad things than about good things. This logic of fundamentalists means that a person who didn't do the "bad things", but didn't do much good either, would go to heaven. On the other hand, a person who spent their life helping others, but had sex before marriage and then an abortion, would go to hell.

That's a pretty screwy conception of a god. Seems pretty evident to me that it's a human-made view of god, not what any real god would be like.

Especially since all you'd have to do is repent at the end of your life, reassure an apparently insecure god that s/he is really god and really is "great", and then you could go to heaven.

What kind of a person would make up a god like that.....?

Confirmation and our "choice" of religion

2004-12-09T21:38:00.000-08:00

I was baptized Presbyterian and confirmed Methodist. I remember when it was time for my confirmation, I went from person to person asking why this ceremony marked my "choice" of Methodist, when no one had taught me the other options. How was it a choice? How was it any different than indoctrination? No one cared to answer that for me.

I don't understand how people feel so strongly that their religion is the "right" one, when they were born into it. Occasionally a person changes religion, but that's usually due to marriage, I think. The vast majority of people continue in the same religion they were raised in. Which is fine. But how can you think that yours is the "right" one, or that any one is right?

People don't study the different religions when they are of an age with higher mental faculties. They don't make a true choice. They are taught one religion from an early age and are never taught any kind of comparative religion nor encouraged to find the one that makes the most sense to them. Let's face it, they are indoctrinated.

So in these circumstances, knowing very little about anything but their own religion, how can they say that theirs is "right" or "best"? Since they didn't chose it and they haven't compared it, do they think that theirs is inherently the "best religion" and they were just lucky enough to be born into it? Do they even realize that they didn't make an informed choice? That people in other religions feel that their religion is "the best"? Doesn't that say anything to them?

The relationship between veal and milk

2004-12-09T21:28:00.000-08:00

I remember when I was growing up, my mother always said we couldn't eat veal because it was just a baby animal and it wasn't right. And yet she gave us lots and lots of milk. She didn't know that it's the milk industry that is responsible for veal. They have to keep the cows pregnant so that they can keep giving milk. The babies born are then deprived of their own mother's milk, made to live in the dark in a tiny cage for about 3-6 months (so their flesh is tender - lacking muscle - and white), and are then eaten as "veal". So if someone really doesn't like the idea of eating veal, they really should give up milk.

I find it interesting that we're the only species that drinks the milk of another species, and the only species that drinks milk past infancy. The milk of each creature is different, designed for the growing needs of the young of that species. Cows grow very big very fast and so their milk is very high in protein, because the whole point of protein is to make things grow. It's more protein than a human should have - humans take 18 years to reach maturity, not 6 months.

I always worry when I hear that someone I know is going on a high protein diet - our bodies are designed to run on carbohydrates. And those people are cutting out the good carbohydrates and eating the bad ones. Now that there has been time to do some longer term studies on people using these diets, they're documenting the harm that high protein does. They've also found that the short-term weight loss these people enjoy is not due to the high protein, but to reduced calories, which they could have done in the first place with a healthier diet. But people will probably keep doing it, because they want the short-term weight loss, regardless of what long-term damage it does to their internal organs....

St. Francis, patron saint of animals

2004-12-09T21:14:00.000-08:00

St. Francis is the saint you always see as a hooded-monk statue surrounded by birds and little animals. He is the patron saint of animals.

I've looked and looked and I can't find any reference to him being vegetarian.....

I don't understand people who say they love animals, but they wear their fur and skin, eat their flesh, and cause them to live horrible and short lives.... I think what they really mean is that they are "pet lovers", not "animal lovers"...

Cherry picking from the Bible

2004-12-09T21:11:00.000-08:00

The following is circulating on the internet:

Dear President Bush,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law. I have learned a great deal from you and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them:

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not to Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

4. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states that he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

5. A friend of mine feels that, even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there "degrees" of abomination?

6. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

7. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

8. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

9. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev. 24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Lev. 20:14)?

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Signed, Your faithful shee...er servant.

"Merry Xmas" or "Happy Holidays" ?

2004-12-09T20:57:00.000-08:00

Today a woman I know was angry that society expects her to be "politically correct" and to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". She is Christian, a Republican, and she agrees with Ann Coulter that we should bomb the heck out of Iraq and convert the survivors to Christianity.

I told her that I like to say "Happy Holidays" to people when I don't know what they celebrate - Christmas, Hanukkah, the Solstice, Ramadan... in other words, I think I should say to the people the greeting appropriate to their own religion, unless I don't know what it is, in which case I use the general greeting.

She seems to be wanting to give other people the greeting from her own religion, no matter what the religion is of the other person. I don't think that makes sense. That's analogous to us telling people "Happy Birthday", when it's our birthday, not theirs.

Religion and evolution

2004-12-09T20:33:00.000-08:00

Over the course of humans' existence on earth, new facts and understandings come to light and society adjusts the way it views the world around it. Generally this adjustment acknowledges that while we are different, we are also equal. It seems that the more that we learn, the less we need to repress those who are different than we are. That seems to me to be a good thing.

It occured to me today that maybe the reason that fundamentalists have a hard time accepting changes in society is related to the fact that they don't believe in evolution. Perhaps they are so focused on an old, unchanging book that they can't see reality in front of them. Maybe they don't understand that knowledge didn't end with the Bible, that with each generation we learn more and incorporate that learning into our world, making the world an everchanging place.

Perhaps they don't know that those who don't adjust -------- die off....

Taxing meat like cigarettes and alcohol

2004-12-08T23:54:00.000-08:00

Here's a link with more information:
! TAX MEAT !
http://www.taxmeat.com/

I always wonder why as a society we are able to see the justification in taxing harmful products such as cigarettes and alcohol, but we pay no attention to the meat/dairy industry. Besides having an even more powerful lobbying presence in Washington than the tobacco industry, the meat/dairy industry produces products that are more harmful than cigarettes when you consider their impact on health, the environment, the economy of the world's poorer nations, and the sentient creatures we choose to exploit.

I guess it's because only some people drink, and even fewer smoke, but almost everyone eats meat and dairy. I think it's easier for people to point the finger at the societal ills they themselves don't participate in. And yet so many more people end up in the hospital because of their voluntary diet - and it's not asparagus or rice that is sending them there.

I am a vegan for moral reasons. But it's the health argument that meat eaters seem more able to identify with. I haven't eaten meat since 1985, and I haven't eaten dairy since 1997 (apart from the milk protein slipped into the occasional processed food). When you go for awhile without eating animals or their products, and then you go into a restaurant and try to order some food, it bowls you over to read the menu. Virtually every food has meat in it, and as the main part of the meal. If a meal doesn't have meat in it, it has dairy.

It really strikes you that Americans are "addicted" to meat on some level. Americans eat meat for every single meal, and often as snacks. There are people who think they will die without meat - even die if they only occasionally go without it. There are people who think that humans are carnivores - not the omnivores that we are. Omnivore doesn't mean we must eat everything - it means we are capable of eating anything.

Even though we're omnivores, it's harder for our bodies to digest animal products, something which vegans/vegetarians discover if they have a momentary lapse and eat an animal product which their body is no longer used to digesting. They'll be in the bathroom with terrible gastrointestinal distress all night. I always feel bad when I think about that and what we must be putting babies through when we start them eating animal products.

Humans didn't start eating meat until the discovery of fire and the invention of weapons. If we had to eat meat to survive, we would have never evolved - we would have died out before fire and weapons. The countries with the best health are those who largely live on a vegetarian diet. When people from those countries move to America and adopt our diet, their health statistics mirror ours.

It's interesting to me to note that humans survived on the "gathering" activities (collecting fruit and vegetables, etc.) of the women before the days when men became "hunters". I wonder if the emergence of hunting bred in us our propensity to dominate other species and "weaker" or "inferior" members of our own species.

.....different ways to walk on the world....

But I think it would really be more just to tax all harmful things, not just the ones that the minorities participate in..... It's the American way (at least, we say it is) to treat the majority and the minorities alike...

! TAX MEAT !
http://www.taxmeat.com/

Hypenated last names

2004-12-08T23:11:00.000-08:00

I don't understand why women still change their names to their husband's names and lose their identity when they get married. What I understand even less is the more recent use of hypenated names, as when a woman uses her maiden name and her husband's name as her new last name. Usually the children keep the father's name, but sometimes the children have the hypenated name. I always wonder what happens when the one hypenated person marries another. Does the wife now have four last names? This solution seems unworkable to me, and still requires that the wife give validity to the husband's name, even while trying to hang on to her own, and while he does nothing to give validity to her name.

If there must be similarity in names within a family, why must it be the children having the same name as the father? Aren't we beyond insecure men having to prove their paternity? Aren't we beyond only valuing and honoring the "male" side of the family? Right now women's maiden names are from the male side of her family of origin. But if women were to start taking their mother's maiden name and passing it on to their daughters, we would start a tradition of honoring female lineage as we have traditionally only done with male lineage.

Right now last names only tell you the family of the father's side of the family and nothing about the mother's side of the family. If girls had their mother's last name and boys had their father's last name, you still wouldn't have all the facts, but at least we wouldn't be perpetuating the sexist tradition of stripping women of their identity in their own names and in those of their children.

Emily Salier's lyrics

2004-12-08T22:12:00.000-08:00

1. http://www.indigogirls.com/disco.html

2. Indigo Girls Lyrics - House Of Lyrics

Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls is my favorite songwriter. I think she has an amazing ability to put her emotions into words in ways that allow others to understand and identify with them. I like the music of the other woman in the duo, Amy - her songs have a nice beat and are fun. But half the time I don't even know what she is even talking about, and while I love music, it's really the lyrics that I appreciate most, so I just can't appreciate Amy's work as much as I do Emily's.

I have the feeling that Emily is able to process her emotions and look at them from an objective place and that she only then writes her songs. On the other hand, it seems to me that Amy writes her songs as she is experiencing the emotions, and if she ever gets to a more objective place, it is after the song is written. I think that's part of the reason I don't feel like I understand what she is singing about. Then again, maybe Emily is just the more introspective of the pair.

Here are just a few samples of my favorite lyrics from Emily's songs:

From Let it be me 1992

in the kind word you speak
in the turn of the cheek
when your vision stays clear
in the face of your fear

from a neighbor's distant land
i heard the strain of the common man
let it be me (this is not a fighting song)
let it be me (not a wrong for a wrong)
let it be me,
if the world is night shine my life like a light

From Hammer and a Nail 1990

Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose.
My life is part of the global life
I'd found myself becoming more immobile
When I'd think a little girl in the world can't do anything.
A distant nation my community
A street person my responsibility
If I have a care in the world I have a gift to bring.

From Closer to Fine 1989

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.

From Power of Two 1994

So we're ok, we're fine
Baby I'm here to stop your crying
Chase all the ghosts from your head
I'm stronger than the monster beneath your bed
Smarter than the tricks played on your heart
Look at them together then we'll take them apart
Adding up the total of a love that's true
Multiply life by the power of two

Carol Adams' writings

2004-12-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

My favorite author is Carol Adams. I love her mind. She is an incredibly intelligent and well-spoken woman. I've seen her speak on a couple of occasions and have always been captivated by her ability to identify processes and articulate them so cogently. I just really love the way her mind works, not just the subject matter it focuses on.

Here is a link to her website. This website also includes interviews with Carol Adams.

http://www.triroc.com/caroladams/home.html

She has written many, many books. My favorite is The Sexual Politics of Meat.
Here is a list of her 17 books.

http://www.triroc.com/caroladams/booklist.html

Her website mentions the video "A Cow at my Table". I own and really love this film. It has great interviews, showing many different perspectives of how activists view our society's treatment of animals. It's a very interesting and well-made documentary.

Here are two links to information about this video:

A Cow At My Table - All Creatures Book and Video Review Guide- life, heaven, earth, peace, justice, Bible study, discussion, ...
http://www.all-creatures.org/book/r-cowtable.html

Media Acclaim
http://www.goodknights.org/Abbott/media.htm

"Religion" as a codeword for "Christianity"

2004-12-04T02:36:00.000-08:00

I'm becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the use of the word "religion" in society today. We hear about the issues of religion in the public schools and religion in courthouses. Discussions about bringing religion back into public life attract many people because of their desire to have more decency and civility in our culture. But these arguments are using the word "religion" in a very disingenuous manner; it is being used as a codeword for "Christianity". Do you think that if the Star of David, and only the Star of David, were to be displayed at a courthouse, these people would feel that religion was being allowed back in public life?

Were these "religion in public life" supporters to actually use the word "Christianity", it would be very clear that their main purpose is not to increase people's compassion, honesty, and civic-mindedness, but rather to further proselytize their own narrow interpretation of "the way". That's why they know that the issue must be couched in the rhetoric of "religion" in general, and that's why it's a very specious argument. The generalized use of the word makes the argument seem to be about values, when really it's about ideology.

To those of us who are concerned about values in today's society, let's remember that religion is only one way to build values, and that Christianity is only one religion of many. "Religion", "Christianity", and "values" are increasingly being presented as synonymous, and we run the risk of losing sight of the very values we need to be having a discussion about.

Let's put Christianity aside for the moment. Staying focused on the present day and on what basic values we want to see encouraged in society (honesty? fairness? responsibility?) will make us more likely to stay on track and less likely to get lost in large ideological or historical disagreements between religions. We might actually find common ground and make some progress toward helping our youth and our world.

Morals as an ongoing process

2004-11-26T20:03:00.000-08:00

There are useful lessons to be learned from any religious text. But I think that there is great danger inherent in taking any of them literally, in focusing on the "letter of the law", rather than on the "spirit of the law". I think that if we take these texts literally, then we stop growing because we stop questioning, we stop wondering, and we stop trying to apply basic concepts to our very complicated world.

I've been thinking about how we all approach questions of morality. I think that when contemplating morality and fairness, it's possible to go back to the basic values that the bible and other institutionalized moralities started with. In other words , I don't believe I have to start my moral questioning by accepting the precepts of any particular religion. To me that's starting my questioning too late because I've already limited myself with someone else's interpretation.

I'm an agnostic. I don't know if there is a god. And I don't think it's within my power to know. I think this is particularly true if there is a god, because s/he made us mortal, "human", and fallible. It is our essence to be imperfect, according to religions. So, I actually think that if there is a god, s/he never meant for us to make texts and believe them literally. I don't think we were meant to assume that we now "know it all" - we're imperfect and mortal! I think that if we are created by a god, s/he absolutely wanted us to spend our lives contemplating morality, making decisions based on general and inclusive principles of fairness and goodness, facing each new situation with a fresh and open mind.

I definitely do not think s/he meant for us to have a rigid, unchanging, hateful, and discriminatory approach to the world. I think taking a text literally (based on whatever translation/interpretation you have been raised on) and then assuming that you have the answers and have no need to contemplate anymore about what is right and what is wrong, is rather like acting like a god yourself. And maybe rather lazy and insecure, too.

And while I'm at it - I really, really don't think that if there is a god, s/he really needs to have people jump through hoops in order to get goodies later. If god needs people to tell her/him who or what country to bless, s/he is not as perfect as religions would have us believe.

Furthermore, if god will only be nice to people if they constantly praise and tell her/him how great s/he is, then I think god needs a good therapist.

Abortion and gay marriage

2004-11-25T22:00:00.000-08:00

In her Nov. 22 column http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?next=1&ColumnsName=dpr, writer Deb Price suggests that we should get politicians to vote on particulars, such as "whether to protect gay families from job bias", "whether it's moral to leave gay parents especially vulnerable when a child needs emergency surgery", and others. She points out that it would be tough for them "to claim, 'I don't have anything against homosexuals', if they had to defend such votes as continuing to allow Social Security to exclude elderly gay couples from its protective safety net."

I think this is so on the money. I think it amounts to the same thing I've been writing about, that we need to break down the buzz words if we are really to have a discussion about our values as a society. Let's break down and discuss "gay marriage", "democracy", "patriotism", "being American", "civil rights", and even "abortion".

Let's have a societal discussion about what abortion means to us all. Abortion foes like to portray abortion as people murdering fully developed fetuses, using photos of the very rare late-term abortions usually done to save a woman's life, implying that all abortions look like this rather than the tiny minority they actually represent. I think the discussion on abortion needs to be about women's lives. If this has to be a discussion about rights, then let's do it. Let's put the rights of women, fully grown humans with feelings and lives and needs, against the rights of undeveloped cells in a women's womb. Let's throw the buzz words aside and actually look at the issues.

Without abortion and contraception, women - the majority of people in the world - are put at an unfair disadvantage next to the minority, the men. Just because women have the incredible ability to create life, a gift which men lack, does not mean they don't have the same right to an education, a career, or freedom from a life of parenthood. It's society that has said that once pregnant, a woman must forfeit all dreams in order to raise a child. If men were able to have children, they would have made sure that society was formed in such a way that they weren't tied down to homemaking. Even the responsibility for contraception was always left up to women - until AIDS, when men suddenly found a reason to use condoms. And let's face it - abortions have always existed. By outlawing it, you are only ensuring that women will risk their health and lives seeking abortions from unregulated abortion providers.

All those women who voted for Bush, when it was common knowledge he would be going after Roe vs. Wade - have you noticed that they have already attached an attack against abortion rights in a spending bill? Left unchecked, I'm certain the fundies to whom Bush is indebted will be going after contraception next. Do you have any idea what life is like for a women with no protection against umlimited pregnancies? Do you have a college education? Do you have a career? If you voted Republican, you voted to deny those things to your daughters, because it is incredibly tough to obtain those things with continual pregnancies. As far as I'm concerned, you voted against life.

So, yes, let's break down the issues in "gay marriage", let's talk about the particular rights we are denying to our gay sisters, brothers, children, parents, and friends. Let's throw away the buzz words and openly discuss what we're really talking about...