General Housekeeping: On Alito; Rove

To Harry Reid, Alito Too Qualified?

The nomination of Samuel Alito for associate justice of the United States Supreme Court occurred moments ago. First impressions yield only this: the guy is incredibly well-spoken. In fact, he might be the most grammatically and syntactically precise speaker I've heard in a long time. Yes, of course, he is an Ivy-leaguer (which is no bad thing), but it is clear he's no legacy child. I'll wager he entered Princeton and Yale on his merits.

Harry Reid, the petulant Democratic senator from Nevada, has already berated President Bush for nominating "another" appellate court justice. To Reid, the court is now looking a bit like a "good old boys club", resembling nothing of America at large. Apparently Harriet Miers should have been confirmed. We must, after all, keep up appearances. (One Democrat has already called Mr. Alito an "extremist.")

McCain Denies Bush/Rove South Carolina "Smear"

In other news, I think many of you will recall that Karl Rove, the wunderkind of the White House, is feared and loathed by his critics for his allegedly heavy-handed schemes and ploys in policy-making and election campaigning. Recall that in the 2000 election cycle it was alleged Republican John McCain was defeated in the South Carolina primary by a Rove scheme wherein phone calls were made throughout the state asking potential voters if they had heard about John McCain's illegitimate child (Mr. McCain has no such child). Though this story was dubious from the start, and has been soundly dismissed by credible analysis, activist Democrats believe the veracity of the story to this day, and believe that Rove is the devil for doing something so unseemly. But what a moment today when Mr. Don Imus (Imus in the Morning, MSNBC) asked Mr. McCain about the Rove-Libby duo, and whether Mr. McCain was glad to see bad luck fall upon his political foes who so abused him in South Carolina. McCain's reply was telling: "I don't think they had anything to do with that." Oiks! There goes another myth. (And it was also telling that McCain reiterated that though he thinks the Iraq War has been badly mishandled, "every intelligence agency in the world" asserted that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction. Thus, McCain defended the Administration's earlier claim that the fact of Hussein's possession of WMD was "a slam dunk." Ouch!)

Lastly, I leave you with this quote from C.S. Lewis' great speech, Membership:

Fruit has to be tinned if it is to be transported and has to lose thereby some of its good qualities. But one meets people who have learned actually to prefer the tinned fruit to the fresh. A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much of his digestion; to ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for the one as the other. But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind–if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else–then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease. [emphasis added]†

Why this quote? Just to remind myself, really, that political thinking is a means, always a means, and never the end in itself. Politics is so much tinned fruit. The man who eats solely from its bounty is sure to go hungry; is sure to fall ill.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
†The C.S. Lewis address may be found in The Weight of Glory, Walter Hooper, ed., MacMillan Publishing, NY. Page 109.

Scootering Towards Sodom

It is no small crime for which Mr. Scooter Libby, right hand man to the Vice President Richard Cheney, has been indicted. If Mr. Libby is guilty, I pray justice is served. I am grieved by the day's news.

But as one Boston commentator stated today (Michael Graham), Scooter Libby has been indicted for lying about telling the truth about a man who lied. In other words, Scooter Libby stated a truth – Mr. Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA agent – and then lied about when he knew and shared that truth in apparent response to Mr. Wilson's own lies about his trip to Niger, his findings there, and who it was that sent him (among other things). On semantic grounds alone, the gist of this story is titillating: lying about telling the truth about a liar. But in the end, at least in the end of this day, no one is indicted for leaking the name of that particular CIA agent. The indictment is all about a post-crime crime. The first "crime" might not have ever occurred at all.

But there is one thing that is more disturbing than Mr. Libby's perjury. I shared this earlier at Occasional Outbursts, a blogging friend of Contratimes. I wrote:

Honestly, I plead ignorant on all counts. I’ve no reference point that is not framed by cynicism. The bottom line for me is this: There is a contradiction in the hearts of Democrats. No, it is not that they supported Bill Clinton when he committed the same crimes as Mr. Libby. It’s that they have wailed and moaned about the reckless, treasonous act of outing a CIA agent. The contradiction? The Democrats (particularly the most left-leaning Democrats) have historically HATED the CIA since time immemorial, seeing that agency as naught more than an extension of American imperialism and hegemony. Shame on the Democrats for this hypocrisy; and shame on the media for not pointing it out.

I am all for Scooter Libby receiving the punishment his alleged guilt deserves. But his treachery hardly bothers me when I compare his acts to the feigned concern for CIA secrecy suddenly sacrosanct among Democrats. Surely their posturing and umbrage is a treason of the mind.

A treason of the mind. That's a scary sort of crime; and it carries a far worse punishment than what faces Mr. Libby.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Newspeak Natterings #2: A Play For A Melting Stage

[Newspeak Natterings: An occasional Contratimes feature highlighting the corruption of language and thought. Today, President Bush and Harriet Miers.]

I am pleased and not a bit surprised that my readers have not inquired as to why I've been silent about Ms. Harriet Miers since her nomination. (I was quite vocal about Mr. John Roberts.) Partly my silence was a mere marketing trick; I wanted to provide readers with something different and unpredictable. Indeed, the blogosphere was trembling under the weight of all the Miers missives.

But I also had a hunch, and at least one reader knows this, that Ms. Miers would not even make the first cut. How could she be acceptable in the eyes of conservatives, when it was Harry Reid, Democrat from Nevada, who told the President that Ms. Miers might make a good Supreme Court nominee? It was doomed from the very first utterance, and one can only speculate about the political and partisan intrigue that occurred in the minds of Reid and Bush. And the James Dobson thing was a whole mind-boggling fiasco.

Predictably, the left is now spinning everything this way: The extreme right has too much power; Ms. Miers was too moderate for those extremists. Willingly ignoring the fact that not one conservative pundit knew a thing about Ms. Miers' positions, Democrats nonetheless shall go trolling with such scrawny bait. And they shall never tell you that the problem for most conservatives was that Ms. Miers appeared to be a judicial lightweight. And that is exactly what she was.

But much of my silence was because of embarrassment. The nomination was so anemic as to appear like a ruse. With the sort of rhetoric President Bush offered in presenting Ms. Miers to the public, I nominate, in a prophetic way, the following dialogue as Newspeak Natterings #2:

President Bush: Today, November 4, 2005, I would like to announce my nomination of Harriet Beecher Stowe Jr. to the position of associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. I find Ms. Stowe Jr. to be supremely qualified ...

David Gregory, NBC News: Excuse me, Mr. President, but did you not say in your announcement in September that Ms. Miers was the "most qualified person" you "could find" for the position?

President Bush: Well, if you'd let me finish, I'd speak to that. What I said was that Ms. Miers was the most qualified person, but I did not say that she was the ONLY most qualified person. You read between the lines, David, and I believe the American people know what I meant.

David Gregory: Yes, Mr. President, but with all due respect, you did say that she...

President Bush: And I meant that she was the most qualified person I could find. I didn't say there weren't other most qualified people. She was just the most qualified person I found. I imagine if I had to broaden my search, if I had looked beyond the Oval Office, the West Wing, I'd have found perhaps a bunch of other most-qualified people too, as well, even also. And since September I've found some others; the American people understand that. And today I have found Ms. Stowe Jr. to be another most-qualified person that I could find. She comes from an important family line, and she, well, the American people understand that this is hard work, and I am working hard with Ms. Stowe, who is a woman of integrity and conviction, to bring before the American people a viable candidate to the Supreme Court ...

David Gregory: Yes, yes, Mr. President that is all well and good, but are you saying that Ms. Miers was the most well qualified nominee you could find that just happened not to be viable? What assurances can you give to the American people that Ms. Stowe Jr. is viable?

President Bush: I just did, I said she was viable, and she is. Let the American people judge for themselves. I have confidence in the American people, and I am confident that when the American people get to know Ms. Stowe Jr. like I do, like I have, through this process, they will agree with me. That she is a good, decent, hardworking woman of conviction. And now I would like to tell you a story about Ms. Stowe Jr.'s childhood, as she grew up in southern Maine, in Biddeford, ...

Ms. Stowe, whispering: That's Baltimore, sir, Baltimore, Maryland.

President Bush: Huh?

Ms. Stowe: Maryland, sir, I was raised in Maryland.

President Bush: Excuse me. Ms. Stowe's childhood in Biddeford, Maryland prepared her ...

Who knows what comes next?

Contratimes

Making Poverty History - An Analysis, Part VIII: The Care Industry and Democrats

[I have made a promise I intend to keep, no matter how trying it is for me to do so. That promise was to analyze poverty and wealth, a huge topic, in a series at Contratimes. There is no small part of me that wishes I had not been so brash; to make a commitment to such a task takes more than a little discipline, it takes a lot of skill. Unfortunately I have little of both.]

Let me stipulate that the Democratic Party, irrespective of its religion-laced rhetoric, is the only political party in the United States that cares for the poor. I so stipulate merely for polemical purposes. I also stipulate that the Democratic Party is the formative force behind the "care industry" in the United States; and I note that the Democratic Party is not itself a party solely consisting of poor people. In fact, where I live, many of the richest people I know are Democrats. And they are really quite rich.

With these stipulations, I want to make one point about someone who remains arguably the figurehead of the Democratic Party, John Kerry. Mr. Kerry, in case you have forgotten, is a member of that class aptly called the super-rich, with he and his wife, Tereza Heinz, worth at least $500,000,000. (That Ms. Heinz' fortunes came through her previous marriage to a Republican is not really germane to this point, though it is curious in a gossipy sort of way.) And we will recall with ease that Mr. Kerry stood for political values that included rolling back the Bush tax cuts. To Mr. Kerry, the tax cuts did nothing to benefit the poor or middle classes. (Remember Mr. Kerry's and running mate John Edward's catch-phrase, "There are two Americas"?)

I am wondering if you knew that Mr. Kerry and his wife chose, in 2004, NOT to pay Massachusetts state income tax at an (optional) higher rate offered by the tax commission for those with high incomes? That this made a few New England papers, and the talkshow circuit in Boston, is about the broadest audience this tid-bit reached. Mr. Kerry, and his wife, no doubt with the shrewdest of accountants at hand, chose to keep some of their earnings to themselves, choosing not to give extra money to the state coffers, money which could have been used, in part, to fund programs for the needy or less fortunate.

Mr. Kerry's actions, or inactions, are applauded by me as actions well within his right. I am glad that he was free to do with his money as he saw fit. But I can't help but note a bit of irony here: The super-rich gave themselves a tax cut though they appear to oppose cuts in government funding.

But there is something much more disturbing about the Democratic Party and its support (and love of) the care industry. There is, after all, such an industry, largely subsidized by government grants (or fully and directly funded as in the case of federal programs) and filled with workers and directors whose jobs and dreams and careers are dependent on government funding. These care industry-types, many of whom are Democrats, not only expect but need taxation to continue in order for their own programs to be maintained from year to year. There is, inherently, a vested interest in increased government spending by these care industrialists; these corporations of caregivers.

Please recall with me two things from the 2004 election. First, that the Democratic Party ran on a platform that included federally-funded healthcare for the 40 million Americans without any health insurance. That these 40,000,000 include 18-28 year olds who generally don't even think about healthcare; the very rich who choose to finance their own medical care; and those folks who simply do not want such insurance is interesting to note: the 40,000,000 is not necessarily replete with ONLY poor people.

Second, recall that John Kerry received over 59,000,000 votes by Americans who shared his views about healthcare for "the poorest among us." Recall too, that as a result of Mr. Kerry's defeat by George W. Bush in that election, many Democratic leaders and pundits rebuked the pro-Bush electorate for being uncompassionate, "un-Christian", and uncaring vis-á-vis the less fortunate. There was from coast-to-coast, from C-Span to lowly newspaper editorial pages, an outrage and disgust at the moral callousness of the Bush administration and the Republicans for cold-heartedness. Many expressed that they wanted to leave America, as it was no longer a kind or generous place: America had closed its doors on the poor. (New Hampshire bumper sticker: Bush/Cheney '04 - Leave No Billionaire Behind.)

But here is the real rub: There is nothing preventing 59,000,000 Democrats who care about the poor from creating a fund, with each person in that 59,000,000 contributing a minimum of $10 to it, with that fund solely earmarked for providing healthcare to the neediest. Trust me when I say that this could have happened, and that many people would have contributed far more than $10. I am bold enough to say that if the Democrats are indeed the party of compassion, then this group could have easily raised close to a BILLION dollars in one year to distribute for healthcare costs.

Of course, no one did this, and no one seems to even think along these lines. Rather, America is deemed by Democrats a bad place because people voted AGAINST having the government forcefully take money from each of us for distribution. America is deemed a bad place because President Bush does not back universal healthcare, and hence Democrats whine about the plight of the poor. Apparently, to Democrats, America is only compassionate, Christ-like and caring when caring is a matter of law.

Does this not bother anyone? Here we have millions of Americans who could help their neighbors via a privately organized and funded agency entirely created by like-minded individuals, built entirely on voluntarism. No, instead we are left with a party that not only demands mandates, but that such mandates be funded by the government by force of law.

I want to conclude this part of the series with this amazing remark by Edward Norman, a BBC notable and Chancellor at York Minster. Mr. Norman's remarks are directed at the increasingly irrelevant force known as the Anglican Church, but they are nonetheless germane to our discussion:

"Back in the heady days of the 1960s the Church of England was insistent that the application of Christianity required believers to be involved in the ways in which society was organized and the state was governed. The simple application of charity as a palliative to social distress was no longer perceived to be adequate; structural solutions were required – political action, that is to say." [emphasis added]†

Norman's point is clear: Loving one's neighbors with true charity has been jettisoned for the machinery of politics and economics, in other words, love has been replaced by industry, the care industry. Nothing is greater proof of this in America today than the Democratic Party's bemoaning the 2004 election outcome, and its increasingly strident calls for income redistribution. Millions of dollars are raised and spent by Democratic candidates and organizations not to give to the poor, but in order to win elections, make laws, and force everyone else, by legislation, to be loving and caring to the poor.

There is emptiness in all of this. I just hope you see it.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

†Citation from Anglican Difficulties: A New Syllabus of Errors by Edward Norman, Morehouse Publishing, London, 2004; page 29.

Fit To Be Tied

Surely you've heard the news: In "honor" of the 2,000 dead American soldiers who have surrendered their lives in the fight against terror, war protester Cindy Sheehan intends to tie herself to the White House fence.

You mean she’s going to tie herself to a fence in protest of the death of 2,000 soldiers? My word, what sacrifice! What passion! What a demonstration of contrition, of sorrow! Who can stand such an act of mourning? Oh, to protest with such power! Where does she find such strength, such creativity; such courage? It is too much to behold: I bow in shame at my pitiable lot.

But alas, what shall I do? For I must learn to genuinely grieve for these dead men and women, but not with a laughable and self-absorbed demonstration like Ms. Sheehan’s. I shall weep in private (and this is as public as I shall be), and I shall honor the dead, not with my tears, but with my gratitude.

Thanks to the 2,000 men and women who have died, and to the parents who raised them. My tears are gratefulness touched with grief. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Déjà vu Is More Than A Rock Album

Let me share with you a passage I recently discovered in a very revealing essay:

"Those of us who opposed such tactics [to oppose the war] argued they would alienate the moderate potential opponents of the war, whose support was needed to bring a change in policy. We argued that to equate [the President] with Hitler and America with Nazi Germany would make it impossible to develop a wide alliance against the war."

Let me add this passage as well regarding war protesters in countries other than America:

"[The war], of course, could justify anything [insofar as protests were concerned]. And yet the same ferocity can be seen in countries such as Germany, Italy, and Japan, which are really scarcely involved, allies though they are in other respects, in our war ... and in a country like France, which actively disapproves of our role. Undoubtedly [the war] has enormously strengthened the movement of antipathy and anger, and not only because our powerful nation was engaged in the destruction–whatever the reasons for it–of a small and poor one."

Why am I so enamored of these passages? Because they were written by a self-described liberal intellectual in 1969.

You see, this (now f0rmer) liberal was Nathan Glazer, and his words appeared in an article entitled "The Campus Crucible: Student Politics and the University" published in The Atlantic Monthly. In his essay he describes, in part, the split that occurred in 1964 between American intellectuals, with radical and liberal split asunder by disagreements over methods of political activism.

How noteworthy is it to learn that 1960s radicals were comparing Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat president, to Adolph Hitler; or the United States to the Third Reich? It is incredibly noteworthy; there is indeed nothing new under the sun. Have you not heard the radicals on the left currently chime in with the same sort of opprobrium and invective directed at President George W. Bush and America, particularly the Neoconservative leadership of America? Were not Rumsfeld and Rove and Wolfowitz and Cheney all described as nasty nationalists, you know, Nazis? (NH bumper sticker outside polling station: Bush-Cheney '04–Sieg Heil!)

But Glazer's descriptions were of Vietnam and the 1960s revolt against that war. Why should we care?

We should care for the simple reason that the Age of Aquarius generation is now at the zenith of its political power, and much of the political activism we saw between young radicals, liberals, and conservatives in the streets and academies in the 1960s is now repeating itself in the baby-boomer, grey-haired sets we watch and listen to on TV and radio; in our artists and pundits; and our professors chairing university departments. We should care because the 1960s are trying to be relived, particularly in the leftist sets pining for the bygone days of grandiose revolts against the status quo. And we are seeing the children and grandchildren of these postmiddle-aged revolutionaries emulating their forbears' political and ideological bliss by trying to create a Vietnam scenario of their own. In short, we should care because perhaps much of the protestation we see today is so much vanity and self-aggrandizement.

It is positively chilling to read Glazer's essay, because it provides more than enough fodder to prove my thesis: the current anti-war movement is about power and nostalgia. It is not about defending Iraqis or American soldiers; it is about using the war to "justify anything" that will shatter the status quo; that will work politically to set the electorate against the "Institution" embodied by Republicans in order to restore Democrats to their lost glory. It is about their "feelings" and "identities." It is about finding a new Rosa Parks (God bless her soul), a new cause célèbre, a new paradigm for which these deliverers can be proud.

And let us be candid: George W. Bush was not ever a 1960s radical. Hence he and his supporters represent that constituency that defies the beatnik, bohemian, counter-cultural hippie leftovers now sitting in high places in the Senate, at the New York Times, and in Hollywood. George W. is a square. He ain't never going to be hip.

So what does this mean? What this means is that if George W. Bush wins in Iraq; if he secures a real peace there, establishes a bona-fide government and begins withdrawing troops from the mid-east, the 1960s Age of Aquarius has ended. THAT is what is on the line here: the end of a mythology all tied up in drugs, freedom, and the Vietnam War. Bush will prove what could have been done in Vietnam by manifesting what can be done today, with leadership and commitment, in Iraq.

A Bush victory in Iraq represents the victory of the square. "The man" will have been right.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Nathan Glazer's essay, "The Campus and the Crucible: Student Politics and the University" is excerpted from The Essential Neoconservative Reader, edited by Mark Gerson and published by Addison-Wesley, 1996. Pages 41-63.

I Wasn't That Far Off. I Was?

Those of you challenged by simple math skills will appreciate this story (perhaps none of you is so challenged). One frequent reader of Contratimes is this writer's former junior high school math teacher. That he would like to be publicly recognized as associated with me is doubtful, so I shall guard his name. It was hard enough to have me as a student.

Yesterday I was notified by said teacher of an arithmetical mistake in my post regarding U.S. Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) and his $850,000 lottery winnings. In my somewhat lighthearted rant, I mentioned the percentage return of the Powerball jackpot winner from Oregon. I claimed that his investment of one dollar and the payout of $340,000,000 represented a 340,000,000 percent return. But I was wrong by a factor of 100. The return is actually a 34,000,000,000 percent gain.

But I was also right: It was a 340,000,000 percent gain – and then some. But I didn't say that. The smart aleck in the back of the classroom said that (Hobson or Lebel, no doubt).

Indeed, it appears I need a little after-school tutoring – 32 years after school. In all candor, of course, I am grateful for the gentleness with which I was reminded of my oversight. Great teachers never stop being teachers, nor do they cease being great.

As for the rest of you, I will see you in detention hall (actually, it is much more likely that I will see you from detention hall).

I promise from now on to give 110 percent instead of the 100 percent I've been giving 50 percent of the time.

Contratimes

Newspeak Natterings #1

I've decided that every once in a while, I will post Newspeak Natterings (with apologies to George Orwell). Newspeak, you'll recall, is the innovative, euphemism-driven speech crafted by the totalitarian regime in Orwell's 1984.

Here's a good one. Yesterday (I was invited to watch this TV moment via an email I received from the Democratic National Committee, and I obeyed), Howard Dean, speaking on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, stated (again) that the DNC was not the party of homosexual marriage (he also said it was not the party of abortion). Now, we are not going to debate the issue of gay marriage here, at least not today. I'd rather debate the villainy of Dallas Cowboys Coach Bill Parcells so aptly revealed yesterday when he struck one of his assistants on the sideline during a game against the Seattle Seahawks. But I'm certain I'm not noted for my sports writing.

Dean's words could not be more misleading (he seems to be misleading himself in a pathological, clinical way). How is it that a leader, any leader, could be so candid about his disingenuousness? Why not conceal one's dishonesty with an overtly ambiguous statement? Does Mr. Dean think even his party's members applaud his remarks?

Here's a fact: the DNC has a page on its website devoted entirely to GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgendered) issues, with one story devoted entirely to criticizing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's vetoing of a proposed gay marriage bill. That story includes a statement from Mr. Dean condemning Schwarzenegger's action. In contrast, the Republican Party has no such page on its website.

Could Mr. Dean not know his own agenda? Could he be dumb to his own party's platform?

This is an old bit of propaganda spewed by Mr. Dean. Just look at this commentary written by an African-American writer shortly after Mr. Dean offered the same thoughts on National Public Radio this past June.

Congratulations, Mr. Dean, for making the inaugural posting on Newspeak Natterings.

Contratimes

[I am aware that Newspeak is not the language of any one party. I will look for it, with some vigor, in all political parties.]

Making Poverty History - An Analysis, Part VII

[This series begins here.]

I have floundered about for several posts now gripping for some handhold on the slopes of poverty and wealth. What is poverty and what is wealth? Why do those on the political and economic left who fear a Christian theocracy (on the right) nevertheless invoke religion to inspire state-run poverty relief programs? What are the secular, non-theistic reasons anyone should care about the poor? Why do so many critics of wealth appear to root their critiques, not in justice, but in envy and resentment?

These are some of the questions so far addressed. But we've not asked, "How do we care for the poor?"

Last year the Wall Street Journal ran a massive report on poverty and hunger relief programs. Most if not all of the Journal's report was based on information gathered by the United Nations. One startling fact was that the earth has never seen so many hungry people; simultaneously the earth has never produced so much food. India, for example, now the world's leading producer of wheat, watched helplessly as billions of tons of grain rotted away, unable to distribute that grain to its hungry neighbors. The reasons for this problem are complex, but almost always have to do with the need for infrastructure and laborers (i.e. jobs) to make distribution possible. For years, or so the UN and Journal reported, the mantra heard from relief and governmental agencies dealing with crises of poverty and famine has been, "Send us food! Send us money!" And the noble-spirited who heard that cry did in fact produce food and money for those in need. But the reality is that most of the aid did not reach its intended goal, stalled as it was in red-tape, beauracratic corruption and, most importantly, the dearth of facilities to deliver those goods. The new mantra, again according to the WSJ and the UN, is "Send jobs, send jobs."

You see, it is not possible to bring long term change, or even effective aid, to peoples who do not have the means to distribute what is given them. If there are no roads, and no vehicles for roads (or the equipment and know-how to build roads), there is no distribution industry. If there is no distribution, there is no relief. Hence, the need for developing these poor regions with viable economic programs, not solely for distribution of aid but for the nurturing of industries that generate local wealth, food and resources, is the most pressing need in alleviating hunger and poverty. Merely redistributing wealth does not help; economies need to be born in order to build locally sustainable wealth.

What's the old adage, "Give a man a fish and he'll have food for a day; teach a man to fish and he'll have food for a lifetime"? Well, it's something like that we're talking about.

But too often it is believed that free markets are the easy answer to world economic problems. While I admit that I am over-simplifying, there is nonetheless an almost idolatrous trust that "the market" will bring relief and justice to all. But we all know that the market, based on the idea that only what consumers consume will succeed in the marketplace, leads to all sorts of corruptions, the monopoly being one of them. Of course, there are others. The market currently sustains profits in human slave trade, particularly sex slaves, in various parts of the world. One can't rationalize this immoral reality merely by arguing that certain commodities won't sell if people don't want those commodities: some commodities should never be market commodities at all. In Oregon, the state supreme court has legalized public sex acts (presumably on view at certain bars and bookstores). Again, the rationale is dubiously offered that such acts will disappear if enough people refuse to buy that product. Or there is the exploitation of addiction in the sex, drug, tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries. Each of these, it could be argued, was never meant to be a marketable commodity in the first place, irrespective of how the beloved market flourishes or dies as such commodities are traded. Some things, it seems, should be off limits.

Hence, the role of government, not merely to protect against monopolies and price-gougings, is necessary to contol markets from running pell-mell into the trading of human flesh. Laissez-faire economics are not really desirable.

Of course, the apotheosis of free market power is found in corporations, viewed as demonic forces generally by those on the left of the political spectrum. Corporations embody the very loathsome value of concentrating wealth and power that leftists consider utterly deplorable. That corporations often do great good, like WalMart performed during hurricane Katrina, for example, rarely earns them much favor among their critics.

Curiously, leftists, in conflict with most if not all corporations and critical of concentrations of private wealth and ownership, nontheless support corporations of labor. Unions are after all incorporations of power and means themselves, and they do in fact wield massive power not only over ownership, but over the labor pool as well. And unions are not above corruption; unions also exploit worker and manager. Unions do want money, after all; they are not even above lusting after it. That is why, for just one example, legislation is now on the table in California to give union members the right to decline giving their union dues if those monies are to be used for political purposes contrary to members' personal political convictions.

My point in venturing here is simple: Poverty is not merely solved by distributing wealth, nor is it solved merely by unfettered free markets (which would be undesirable) or the unfettered power of labor-control. Wealth is only generated when ownership and labor dance together in a healthy, balanced and profit-seeking manner, all within the confines of fair and moral (ambiguous terms, I know) rules set by a state which favors the production of private wealth.

Anyone thinking that the solution to either poverty or the imbalance between the poor and the not poor is a simple solution is not paying attention.

Contratimes

Next in this series: Government spending and the care industry.

Blogging With A Short Temper And Lingerie

This is my second post today which, Contratimes readers will know, is an anomaly. Is there something wrong?

Perhaps, but I will permit my therapist to issue what is sure to be a singular diagnosis.

Last night I found this site detailing the five requisite tools for successful blogging. The five tools are pithiness, persistence, anger, snark, and sexiness. My reaction to learning these Five Blogging Precepts? I am damned! There is nothing pithy or terse; there is no brevity here, no matter how much brevity is the soul of wit! As a Seinfeld character might say, "Pith? There's no pith! I'm pithless! I am without pith! I have no pith!" And regarding anger, all I can say is that anger has no place at Contratimes. To suggest that it is required of me to be angry, or to a more civil degree, "snarky", is just so much stinkin' crap! I'd rather floss with flypaper than express anger! Egads, the guy who suggested the Five Blogging Precepts has got to be some sort of verb-challenged jerk.

As for sexiness, well, what is more sexy than heavily-embellished prose replete with explicit images of gratuitous semi-colons; with an occasional albeit prurient shot of a colon or two (::) thrown in? Sexiness? I'll show you some stinkin' sexiness: ;;;;;;;::::::///// Heck, I'll even throw in a few four-letter words, like "heck" and "four." Take that!

And can you imagine that persistence is to be measured in posting on one's blog not once, not twice, but at least three times a day? I am telling you the truth: it is not possible for me to be pithily and persistently pissed off (or snippily snarky) three times a day while tarting up my website in a garter belt and stockings. I'd rather read boxer Mike Tyson's doctoral thesis than get myself all crabby just to prostitute this staid and neo-Victorian blog for the fleeting and empty pleasure of enlarging my stat counter.

Some may call my prose the work of a man clearly cuckoo, but I shout back that it is the work of a man clearly rococo!

Truly I say to you with unrestrained rage: Brevity is the soul of twits.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Making Poverty History - An Analysis, Part VI

[This series begins here, with sheer, inimitable and very sexy brilliance.]

In returning to the series on poverty and wealth, a New Hampshire news story should be highlighted. It has to do with the state's senior US senator, Judd Gregg. Perhaps most of you already know that Sen. Gregg (R), a former governor and very real millionaire, won $850,000 in Wednesday night's Powerball drawing. Local newscasts featured the delighted senator outside Powerball headquarters receiving an enormous (literally) check. He quipped how his wife (who was kidnapped last year in D.C., if you'll recall, but survived her horrific ordeal) did not want him to spend any of it; she had plans of her own.

Let's for a moment be as real and accurate as possible. Judd Gregg is a human being, vulnerable to all the enticements life tosses in each person's path. I confess that I too bought a ticket the other night, hoping for the $300 million pay off. Though Sen. Gregg and I are not members of the "super-rich" – those with assests exceeding mere millions – there is a huge gulf between the two of us, regardless of our being united by dreams for more money, or by our rather simple (and pathetic) gambling tendencies. And even if on Tuesday there was no gulf between myself and Senator Gregg, there certainly was one on Thursday. $850,000 is no small chasm.

Though Senator Gregg may take his winnings and do tremendous good with them (he's a skilled investor, I understand), I can't help but think that his purchase of a lottery ticket will not fare well with his state's constituents. The Gregg family is surely one of the true moneyed families of New Hampshire; Senator Gregg and his wife live in a seaside mansion in Rye and his brother holds some of the best business real estate in the state. Does Sen. Gregg really need to win anything? Does he really need to purchase several tickets at a gas station? Does he really need to keep the winning ticket for himself? (Update: Gregg has announced that he will give a "significant portion" of the winnings to charity.)

Look, I am not against the wealthy gaining more wealth. I am not against any man investing a dollar and getting a return of 340,000,000 percent (like the jackpot winner in Oregon). But I am certain others are against these sorts of things, and I am sure that Sen. Gregg must have known that this news might not play well with those he represents in the U.S. Senate. Again, I am not taking a morally high position here. My own judgments would undoubtedly be so many sour grapes. But I am taking the position that Sen. Gregg's lottery purchase was a political mistake; and that his making a small show of taking the winnings was also a political mistake.

But, and this may seem paradoxical, I am glad that Sen. Gregg was able to experience one of life's rarest pleasures. Unfortunately, because he is a political leader born in a very high caste, he perhaps should have considered a little more carefully whether the lottery is a pleasure in which he should be participating.

Next: Idolatry and the Free Market

Contratimes

Adam And Eve Must Have Been Neo-Cons

Is it OK for me to be peeved, to be churning in my chair, to be seething near the sofa? Yes, yes, I know I am supposed to be continuing my analysis of poverty and wealth. But sometimes righteous anger is borne of responsibility. And I have a responsibility to depart from my poverty/wealth series to state the truth, even when it confounds Don Imus or Senator Dodd (CT) or Donald Sutherland. Plus, it is my moral duty to state the obvious, irrespective of the naysayers with mud in their ears. So hear this: Iraq caused 9/11.

Too bold for you? Too radical? Do you think I'm either insane or too partisan? Well, think again. I shall prove my point. (Again.)

Let us all agree that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11. Let us further stipulate that Mr. bin Laden never once consulted or collaborated with Mr. Hussein or ANY Iraqi. Fine. It is so stipulated.

What did Osama bin Laden tell the WORLD when he declared his fatwa in 1998 against America? Well, let's review. Here is what he said:

"First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

"If some people have formerly debated the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it.

"The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, still they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, in excess of 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. ..."

Does this need explaining? Probably not. Unfortunately, duty calls.

It is undeniable that Iraq is the CAUSAL link in the 9/11 attacks. In other words, it is indisputable, irrefutable, absolute. If I am wrong, then we must reconsider – perhaps even revise – not only Mr. bin Laden's fatwa, but his role in 9/11. With that said, the ONLY thing we should be debating is whether INVADING Iraq is a right or wrong response to both Mr. Hussein's recalcitrance and Mr. bin Laden's vendetta. But if we insist that Iraq is a 'distraction' or a 'tangent' or 'unrelated' or merely 'for oil', then we do so out of ignorance, a lust for power, or out of self-deception.

Moreover, this bold claim also needs to be made: If Iraq had not invaded Kuwait, we would not be having any discussion about the War on Terror or 9/11 or Osama bin Laden. The American/Iraqi conflict began when Hussein chose to annex a small country along the southeast border of Iraq. In short, Iraq is to blame for America's military response, the very response that inspired Mr. bin Laden's virulent fatwa. (OK. I've oversimplified. The causal chain goes back all the way to the beginning of time. Everything prior to the Kuwaiti invasion is to blame for Hussein's emergence. But is that sort of timeline helpful? Hardly.)

Here is a curiosity that leaves me puzzled. Most of the critics of the war in Iraq constantly refer to it as a distraction. They want us to go after the real culprits of 9/11, Mr. bin Laden and his Al Qaida minions. Amazingly, in truly puzzling fashion, these people do not know, or choose not to know, that Mr. bin Laden himself put Iraq in the center of the War on Terror. How can this be?

Lastly, I know that my critics will perhaps accept my observations only to jump to ludicrous heights. They shall tell me that America created Hussein; that the CIA propped him up when he was needed during the Iraqi hostage crisis under the Carter Administration. And so forth. But I will stand intransigent. For I will insist that if we argue that way, we might as well go through every step of human history to fix blame on someone, anyone, for Hussein's evil spirit. And I will also point out that those who may consider my own position an over-simplification are clearly guilty of the same dastardly deed.

Peace to you.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

A Brief Respite

Today I take a break from my regularly scheduled programming. I spent much of the morning drafting an essay for the local papers that will no doubt get me in some type of hot water. It is my wont to be controversial, I guess.

Please note, at least for my enjoyment, that since I tagged a stat counter on Contratimes on July 3, I have had, as of this day, just over 2,000 unique visitors (and since that time I've had a shade under 5,000 page loads). That this is merely a personal note is unarguable, significant to no one (perhaps) but me. One look at Frontpagemag.com with its 60,000,000 hits per month and I can assure you I have things in a healthy perspective.

This all began here upon the inspiration of David Horowitz. He might not realize this, but the first place Contratimes appeared was as a pen name at his Frontpagemag.com when I posted a comment to a political essay. Once I did that, and considering my personal objections to the real psychological and political power of the New York Times, this website became a place for me to tackle large issues.

I have been reluctant to promote this blog, for a host of personal reasons. I've not told most of my closest friends about Contratimes, in part because I wanted to do something on my own, without necessarily falling into the vain trap of trying to appease and impress my friends. Besides, I needed this to be mine, without undue influence from close contacts, solely so that I could prove to myself that I had the discipline to maintain this sort of venue. There are even family members I've not directed here. Furthermore, I know that many of my friends might find my views difficult, frustrating, or just damned wrong. Why introduce that kind of tension between friends and family?

In closing for today, I would like to thank my readers from across the globe for their quiet support, there brief visits, and their occassional emails. Thanks to you in Minnesota and Wisconsin and Colorado and California and Texas and Kansas; thanks to you in Belgium and Kuala Lumpur and Argentina and Great Britain. And thanks to my most devout readers of all: my Delaware friend whose only fault is that he is a Philadelphia Eagles fan; and a science teacher who once removed me from science lab. He, God bless him, considered me a safety hazard. At least he likes the New England Patriots.

Blessings,

Bill Gnade

Making Poverty History - An Analysis, Part V

When I was studying to become an educator, I had a debate with a professor teaching a course called, "The Sociology of Education." The professor had made a bold confession: she said that most of her energies were expended in the eradication of all types of competition in schools, and in the broader society. Needless to say, I found her goals non-sensical and dangerous, and I let her know it. For at the very least, competition bears three important gifts to life. Those three gifts are humility, adaptability, and a higher standard. If, for instance, a school playground is dominated by one particular athlete, his peers are indeed improved by his high caliber of play. But if a new kid shows up, a young Michael Jordan, then three things happen: the former star competes and, in losing, forms a healthy humility which leads to adapatability wherein the former star accepts the new framework and improves within it; and the entire playground moves upward in ability, as the standard has been raised. Yes, some will choose not to compete for a whole bunch of psychological reasons. Some, in fact, should not compete in the playground at all. Such people should compete in other arenas, like mathematics, business, music, theater. Nonetheless, new and higher standards are only born in a competitive environment. And when new standards are set, most if not all people benefit.

Moreover, there is no competition if there is no challenge to improve, adapt, grow; or exceed expectations. Even if just one person is performing a skill, that person must compete against himself in order to improve. The very exercise in surmounting any challenge is a form of competition against the limitations and obstacles created by that very "challenge."

The motivation for my professor, I am sad to say, was really borne of resentment: she resented that she had to compete and adapt. And she resented being possibly perceived as unequal to the tasks competition sets. With apologies for drifting perhaps too close to an ad hominem attack when I say this, my professor was an undeniably ugly woman, and she was obese. She was undeniably single as well. And she was not the smartest person in the room. With that said, I can assure you she despised me (it was clear) for being male and perhaps a little too smart. And she resented having to compete with me, or with anyone. Why should she not be honored for merely being true to herself, or kind, or a nice person, or for having "tried hard"? Why should she have to compete for male romantic affections with all those pretty females? Does not the love of beauty prove the shallowness of men, and the women who try to appeal such men? And why should she have to compete to have her opinions respected, approved, applauded?

Here's a confession of my own. I was perhaps the best athlete in my six-room elementary school. But when I went to the seven-town middle school, I quickly learned that I was not the best athlete. The bar was raised; there were new standards. My reaction? I quit sports. (Huge regrets, by the way.)

All this to say that competition in general is a good thing. Would not Darwin agree?

How is this connected to economics, particularly the economics of poverty? Perhaps I can answer this by paraphrasing a quote I heard during Martin Scorcese's film, No Direction Home, a documentary on Bob Dylan shown recently on PBS. I believe the quote is from an Allan Ginsberg poem (and search as I have, I cannot find the quote). Ginsberg said something like this: I look forward to the time in America when I can walk into a market and buy groceries on the strength of my good character.

Now I have intimately known this sentiment, but it is an ideal replete with resentment. It in fact drips with resentment. Ginsberg essentially is giving the middle finger to competition; but more importantly he is giving the middle finger to participation. On the surface, Ginsberg appears to be railing against the injustices of the market place: Why do I need money to feed myself? But in reality he is admitting his refusal to generate wealth not only for himself but for others. He wants to be rewarded merely for being human, for being nice or even a busy poet. Why should he have to adapt (he would say "conform") to earn a meal? And why should others who are not poets, but mere money-grabbing capitalists, get to have three meals a day, when he can't get one?

Why am I talking about resentment so much? Because most if not all of the pushes for socio-economic reform in this country since the 1960s (it began much earlier) are born of resentment, even envy; a resentment against competition and participation, and envy of those who have more than an other. It is not about justice in the pure abstract: it is about the perceived injustice by those who jealously protest against the producers of wealth.

Ultimately, the impassioned goal of those who abhor the injustices of the system is not to make everyone rich, and therefore equal; it is to make everyone equal, and therefore poor. In fact, it is a lot like making everyone "average", which is an absurdity. Make everyone on the planet worth a billion dollars, and everyone is worth nothing. Make everyone play basketball as well as Michael Jordan, no better or worse, and the world plunges into monochromatic poverty.

I am currently reading the brilliant and funny non-fiction work by David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise. Brooks makes an interesting note about America's transcendentalist writers (Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, etc.) who, as intellectuals, chose to embrace simplicity and anti-materialism. I have always found this love of simplicity, a self-embraced poverty, simply infuriating, considering that the transcendentalists all came from wealthy families. It is always easy for the rich to romanticize poverty. But Brooks makes the brilliant observation that when we read the essays by the wealth-producing industrialists who were contemporaries of Emerson and his cohort, we snicker at the ugliness of thought and prose. Brooks wonders how it is that we think the prose of Thoreau, a blue-blood pretending not to be, is somehow more spiritually significant than the words of those visionaries who created an economic infrastructure that benefitted millions.

In closing this chapter (so to speak), let it be noted that Thoreau and Emerson and Ginsberg were only able to be essayists and poets and economic critics precisely because the world was rich enough to underwrite their literary ventures. People in abject poverty do NOT have the leisure to retreat to the forests, or smoke pot in poetry dens in Greenwich Village, all to make a literary name for themselves. Real poverty does not have time or energy for such luxury.

While everyone else was working, producing, and delivering groceries to countless markets, Ginsberg was doing the "real" work of writing poems berating such work.

Ask a rich man to embrace poverty, and you might start a literary movement. Ask a poor man to embrace poverty, and you might start a fight.

Peace.

[The next part begins here.]
Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Making Poverty History - An Analysis, Part IV

[Yesterday's installment of the Contratimes series on poverty and wealth ended abruptly, perhaps too abruptly, with the self-described imposition that "I was a fool." My amputated essay, cut off perhaps right when it was getting interesting, elicited one thoughtful response from a reader. In light of that response, I think I was remiss in ending my essay so suddenly. But the series continues nonetheless and as promised (now that was foolish!).]

I was a fool. Not because of the way I felt about poverty, or because I identified a need and yet felt helpless to do a thing about it. I was a fool because my solutions for the poverty issue were clouded by guilt, born of resentment, and nearly entirely wrong.

Though I mentioned in the first installment that so much anti-poverty rhetoric is imbued with religion, which is unbecoming of an allegedly secular society, I have to return to religion, particularly Christianity, for a moment.

If there is any one thing that Jesus said that suggests his divinity it is this: "The poor you will always have with you ..." For any religious leader to state this without so much as a bat of an eyelash is audacious and telling. (Moreover, for Jesus to complete his thought with, "... but you will not always have me", elevates my conviction that he was a bold figure indeed.) The poor are indeed always with us. Conversely, it would seem, that the rich must also always be with us, which might be a hard camel for some to swallow. Furthermore, striking at the very heart of Christ's message, we learn that God loves all men, all women, rich and poor. The poor are not more beloved by God; God loves all people liberally and equally. This is the Christian message, in part, and it is a message that irks many people to no end, who desire that God prefer one group over another; that God be tribal or preferential.

But my comments are not meant to suggest that God loves poverty or wealth. To do so would be to suggest that God loves murder and theft, since he loves the people who do such things. Nay. God loves people. Rich, poor, Republican, Democrat, good or bad. God loves indeed.

With that said, it is important for me to recognize that much if not all of my rage at poverty is born of a resentment toward others who have more than I possess. I resent that Mr. Jones has two or three homes; I resent that Maggie Smith went to St. Paul's, Harvard and Columbia, in large part because her parents attended those elite schools; I resent that I may be more talented or more gifted or more brilliant than the Vanderbilts, but my strengths leave me without reward.

But my resentment is foolish. It is not the path of love.

Moreover, my belief that my possessing X, or the Vandberbilts possessing A-Z, necessarily meant that someone else could not have X, or even a lowly P, was fallacious to the core. In my zeal, even my desire to be poor so that others might not be was so much wind; my poverty only proved that the poor were indeed always with us. Alas, if I chose not to eat because others were starving merely meant that I too was starving: It did nothing for those who were hungry.

My Interest In Academics, And Resentment

There were only two career paths I considered upon matriculating from college in 1984. One was the ministry, perhaps because there I might do some good, spreading the Gospel of Christ. The other option was a professorship, teaching philosophy and writing dynamic essays that too would change the world. Alas, I've walked neither path.

Why? The answers are complex. But here is part of the answer: I chose not to be a minister/priest or academic because both professions in a sense were inherently parasitic. In other words, I would be dependent on others to finance my way. In fact, an Episcopal priest friend of mine left the ministry for this very reason. He discovered that he had sought the ministry because he wanted to avoid the hard realities of making money on his own. As a result of that decision, he began a publishing business that now employs dozens of people. He felt that moving from college to parish to pulpit was little more than moving from one set of parents to the next.

And I realize the same could be said for a life in academia.

Let me predict what would have become of me in academia, or even the priesthood. For in either profession I would have held the rather lofty conviction that I was doing something that "benefitted others"; that I was selflessly shaping a new, better world. But in a moment's time, resentment would have bubbled forth. Without fail I would have scoffed at those dolts who only attended high school who made millions of dollars annually manufacturing innovative nose-hair clippers. Without fail I would have scoffed at that semi-literate author with a B.A. from Plymouth State College who won a prestigious award for a series of mediocre novels. Without fail I would have snickered at the lowly priest or bumbling associate professor who was offered a better position in an elite parish or university.

You see, my resentment springs from the idea that I am "better," "brighter", or doing "more beneficial" work than others; that I am worthier.

Of course, what I would be blind to as an academic or priest is the very real fact that the wealth generated to support my teaching or ministry is not generated by me, but by the workers and entrepeneurs outside the university or parish that produce wealth that eventually gets passed along to my bank account.

Isn't it at all odd how academia in particular is often now, at least in America, the repository of socialistic dreams, and is considered the great place of ideas and the formation of generations of new citizen-leaders, and yet it is full of men and women who do not know how to produce wealth, but know only how to receive it, or how to distribute it? Isn't it strange that while time is spent in university in preparation for the "real world", so much power is given to those professors who reside in what is considered "not the real world"?

It is easy to be a socialist in university, either as student or professor: Everything is provided for you, each person has his or her place and role; and no one seems to have a clue how the wealth is produced that underwrites the experience. It's all just magic.

I was that kind of fool.

(But there is more. See Part V here.)

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Making Poverty History - An Analysis, Part III

Thus far in our series on poverty and wealth we have noted that A) most arguments posited for alleviating poverty in America through social policy are based on religion, without any strong secular reasons being offered; and B) that wealth (and the contradictions surrounding it) is not only fraught with excess, it is at times grotesque in its blindness. So, too, are wealth's critics.

Let me admit right away that I am no economist. Far from it. But I have a general sense of how things work, and I want to share one thing that does not work.

What does not work is guilt.

I remember the first time I walked through Harvard Square in 1980†, a mere freshman. It was the last days of August: the streets were alive with vendors and musicians, jugglers and mimes. There were countless students milling about, many from countries I'd never see. Many students zipped through the Harvard Coop grabbing up books; others slipped into the Wursthaus for a Bavarian draft or bounded down the stairs to 33 Dunster Street for a pint of Guinness on tap. There was wealth and ambition and genius and haughtinesss everywhere – outside WordsWorth or Algiers or Grendel's. In many ways, it was the coolest place on earth (at least to me).

But there were also the signs of abject poverty: the man with no legs begging by the newsstand; the Vietnam veteran absent-mindedly rubbing his crotch on the platform of the T. Just walking the block from Church Street down Mass. Ave to Brattle Street was a reminder of disparity between the haves and the have-nots as numerous beggars loitered in wait of a handout.

Of course, I was vulnerable. I often felt waves of shame and guilt come over me for having money. Not loads of money, mind you. I felt shame for having any money. Months would eventually pass before I could harden myself to these alms-seekers, having too many times emptied my pockets of coins to a hail of alcohol-misted praise, "Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir." I was not the only one to steel my heart against them.

But my inner torment was powerful. In fact, it would reach such fervor that I imagined giving everything away, tossing even my dreams aside to help the homeless, the drifters, the alienated. My sense of injustice was heightened; my sense of economics black-and-white and simplistic: Surely we can all get on to help these people. If I could have, I would've become poor myself in order to alleviate poverty, convinced, as I was, that my having X meant that someone else could not possess Y. I was idealistic, passionate, righteous, and angry. There were reminders of my guilt everywhere. And I could hardly have fun in a place that was considered by many to be the cultural center of North America.

I even recall asking God to come down and smash the lot of capitalist looters that left in their wake the detritus of so much poverty and aimlessness.

My guilt knew no measure. I was a fool.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

†It should be noted that I did not attend Harvard. I'd hate to mislead anyone. But I did frequent Harvard Square as often as possible.

(The series continues tomorrow, in Part IV, I promise.)

Making Poverty History - An Analysis, Part II

Let's talk poverty, shall we?

In Part I of our poverty series, we noticed that leftists, who generally decry religious conviction in the public square or in the shaping of public policy, nonetheless are quick to cite religion when it comes to caring for the poor. We duly noted this infatuation with religion by those progressives who make a big show of their secularism. And we were left with a serious, unanswered question: What are the secular, a-theistic reasons for caring for the poor?

With this in mind let us take a brief tour through the neighborhoods of wealth, the metaphorical gated communities, if you will. And there can be no more obvious place to look at wealth than here, in America; in the land of opportunity. Of course, what I am about to say is as evident, perhaps even more so, in places like Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan. But I will confine myself to this land, to the land of the free, where so much is not free at all.

Let us begin by listing some facts:

1. Right now, in countless malls and boutiques, there are designer shoes "living" in luxurious environs, surrounded by careful staffers intent on maintaining the proper lighting, humidity, shelter and security for shoewear. In contrast, most people living on this planet have never experienced (nor will they) this sort of luxury. And let us add to the list the following: house pets, guns, cars, horses, jewelry, tools, stamps, storage boxes, bottles, books, magazines, baseballs, golf clubs, cosmetics, newspapers, compact discs: Most of these things have better "lives" than millions, perhaps billions of people on this planet. Just take a moment and think of all the human and natural resources being used right now to house and maintain new books, or new CDs. Think of the luxury in which new skis or new lingerie exist, each in perfectly controlled environments. There are garbage bags stored in handcrafted drawers made of finer materials than most homes in dozens of countries. Horses and goats are housed in barns that are warmer, cleaner, and more weatherproof than countless human shelters.
2. Right now, Hollywood movie producers and TV directors are making sets of the finest materials only to blow them up in fireballs, or to leave them in so much empty darkness when shooting stops. There are gorgeous apartments built solely for fictitious TV characters. On Broadway, while homeless people mill about New York, there are stage managers building million dollar sets: offices, castles, courtyards, living rooms - all to be used for high-priced games of make-believe.
   
3. Right now, the Rolling Stones are touring America erecting elaborate stage displays for effect only, displays carried about in 80 or so tractor-trailer units.
4. Right now, there are people who have spent more money on leather-backed Bibles than they've spent for shoes for a homeless child. Meanwhile, countless American drivers sit on leather-covered seats in German luxury cars without once thinking about the people on this planet who have never had a piece of leather clothing, or who have not eaten a decent piece of meat.
5. Right now, some Americans are appearing on TV proud of having consumed a record number of cheeseburgers, hot dogs or meatballs at some state fair.
   
6. Right now, there are environmental activists using countless laptop computers to berate the abuse of the environment, apparently oblivious to the fact that, according to a compelling NPR story last year, the computer industry is the most environmentally toxic and energy consumptive industry on the globe.
7. Right now, there are Democrats and Republicans retiring for the evening to their suburban and urban homes, which are perhaps thousands of miles from their second and third homes, all of which sit empty for most of the calendar year.
8. Right now there are Democrats who still seethe over the fact that President George W. Bush spent 40 million (private) dollars for his inaugural parties in January 2005, wondering aloud why that "money could not have been spent on other things." Curiously these same people are silent about the production costs of TV's "The West Wing," "The Daily Show", MTV or Link TV, never wondering - not for one second - whether the money spent on these shows, or the production of ANY Michael Moore film or even the production of the New York Times might be better spent elsewhere. Surely the money spent on "Queer Eye", PBS' Frontline, and The DaVinci Code could have been spent on the homeless?
9. Right now, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of empty parking lots, paved with so much spilled oil, that are illuminated from dusk to dawn by millions of streetlights. This energy is expended solely to alleviate people's anxieties about injury, theft and liability. In other words, 99% of the ambient glow (wasted energy) seen bouncing off night clouds along the corridors of metropolis is caused by fear.
10. Right now, another self-storage complex is being erected somewhere so that people can house, not their homeless neighbors or even themselves (it is SELF storage, after all), but the stuff that can't fit into their own homes.
    

Forsooth, I could go on about yachts and vacation homes and art museums and sporting events and heated toilet seats: the list is endless. There are things, mere things, considered of infinitely more value than 100 human beings. There are poets/singers making millions of dollars (they are rare, but they exist) who lament the exploitation of the worker, or the oppression of the arts. There are people who spend more money on birdseed for their window feeders than they spend on food for dying African children. There are excesses in materials on the outside of just one Borders Books building - with its faux and empty towers reaching skyward - which could easily have been driven to the nearest Habitat For Humanity project and erected as a nice home for a few families. In fact, just look at architecture everywhere: there are excesses of design that are strictly for design; for embellishment. Surely those materials could be used in some other way?

What I am saying here is nothing partisan: I am stating a set of facts. Nor am I making a value judgment here: I have not said a thing about whether wealth is good or bad. What I've tried to show are the contradictions and blindnesses of wealth and wealth's critics.

Lastly, this is not an American thing. This is a fact in nearly every country on this planet. And you know what? It's not going to change.

(More on poverty forthcoming in Part III.)

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Jewels In The Night

Let this be a little diversion. Perhaps diversions from the serious task I've set before myself – addressing poverty – should not be permitted. But even the most serious enterprise requires a recess. I've often opined that the U.S. Congress should be forced to recess twice daily, with each representative and senator sent out to the playground for mandatory carousel time. Can you imagine how different things might be if we all had swing-sets in our yards, and at work? Oh, to have required teeter-totter time (that's see-saw time, for those of you unfamiliar with such colloquialisms)!

Two nights ago, I went outside into the moonless night (the waxing crescent had already fallen below the horizon), wearing my headlamp. As I gamboled about the meadow, I kept spotting little jewels in the grasses, little flecks of brilliant, clear vibrancy. I would spot these gems every dozen or so feet: There's one beneath the blueberry bush! There's another in the fallen maple leaves! Here's one aside the boulder! Some I'd see at a glance, disappearing if I'd move more than a tiny bit, only to reappear if I'd move just so.

At first I thought they were drops of dew, though I knew that such random droplets were unlikely considering the warmth of the night air. Besides, dew would be everywhere, consistent, and not hither and yon. Next I thought they were fireflies settled for the night, though these lights were brighter, clearer, sharper than the fuzzy phosphorescence of that common, mid-summer bug. With that, I turned off my headlamp and – bing! I had a clue.

With the lamp turned on again and after several minutes of half-minding these little beams, I finally decided to get a closer look. And what do you think I found?

I found that in every instance what I was seeing was utterly new to me. I was seeing spiders' eyes.

My head is still spinning.

Enjoy the day, the earth, the invisible power of breath.

Peace,

BG

[The photo was taken in 1985 with the camera of a childhood friend. It was taken during a lunch break when the two of us were painting a white picket fence in a tiny New Hampshire village. It is the first picture I ever took of flowers. Eventually, my dear friend, apparently recognizing that I had an "eye" for things photographic, bought me a camera of my own (a Canon AE-1P). Less than two years after this picture was taken, I was the staff photographer at a newspaper. Strange how things work. I do know this: the original image was made on Kodachrome 64. And there is one valuable lesson hidden behind the history of this picture: Whatever dollar amount you think is a fair price to charge for painting a picket fence, quadruple that figure.]

Making Poverty History - An Analysis, Part I

This might be a stupid question, but what is poverty? Is it the inability to purchase? Is it a dearth of choices? Is it a lack of education?

If it is a lack of education, was King Solomon or Julius Caesar poor since most of us, if not all of us, are better educated than either man? If poverty is the limiting of choices, is Bill Gates on a life raft in the middle of the Indian Ocean a poor man? Was Henry David Thoreau poor in his Walden Pond cabin, blue-blood as he was, even though he couldn't purchase anything on-line?

Or is poverty some combination of factors, some aggregate of 4 out of 10 criteria, or 6 of 7? Is it a mental condition – a mirage of the mind – or false perception based on the illusory promises of economics? Surely there have been millionaires who have lived as paupers, locked away in shacks or tenements: Is the miserly millionaire trapped in self-imposed squalor poor? Is the penniless pauper living in the king's castle as apprentice to the blacksmith poor? Is the young man who holds a Master of Arts from Syracuse poor merely because he chooses to live in the city's homeless shelter as a protest against the expectations of capitalism?

I've asked too many questions. But there is no doubt in my mind that poverty is an elastic, fluid or even vaporous thing. I know that I am poor in the eyes of the Vanderbilts, but I am rich compared to my neighbor. A homeless man in San Francisco is wealthier than a Haitian who has a home. Who then is poor? Conversely, who is rich?

For now, I will not answer these questions. Instead, today begins a Contratimes analysis of poverty and wealth in America; and of the ideas espoused to correct or eradicate that poverty, and, in some cases, that wealth.

***

Let me begin the analysis proper with this simple question (no question is simple, at least here): Why should anyone "care for the poor?"

The other day, during a televised press conference, President George W. Bush was asked the following question by a reporter addressed by the President as "April." I assume this is April Ryan of the American Urban Radio Network who covers the White House (please correct me if I am wrong). "April" asked:

Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, the Bible speaks of goodwill towards the least of these. With that, how are you going to bridge the divide of poverty and race in this country beyond economics and home ownership, that after Hurricane Katrina and also the Bill Bennett statements? And also, how can the Republican Party gain the black vote -- more of the black vote in 2008, after these public relations fiascos?

Please note something really important here (ignoring that the question is a fallaciously loaded question): The reporter unabashedly refers to the Bible – primarily Jesus' claim that His followers must serve "the least of these" as if each person is Jesus Himself – and thus refers to that Bible as a moral compass that should direct public policy. Problem?

Yes, there is, and it is a clear one: Arguments posited for "caring" for the poor, particularly arguments posited by leading Democrats, are religiously-based arguments. Hence, caring for the poor via public policy is a religious practice; and the justification for it comes directly from religious ideals, particularly Judeo-Christian ideals.

If you were paying close attention to the post-2004 election diatribes delivered by disappointed Democrats, you would have heard scripture cited repeatedly by such notables as Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Howard Dean. References to being "Our brothers' keeper", "Doing unto the least of these," "Turning the other cheek", and "Loving one's neighbor as oneself" came trippingly off the tongues of progressives everywhere. And these were offered largely as criticisms of Religious Right voters who, as you will remember, were blamed for turning out in droves to vote against the alleged compassion and social conscience of the Democrats' John Kerry. In light of the Religious Right's anti-Kerry votes, the Christian Right was not "very Christian" at all, or so judged leading Democrats.

Curiously, these Scriptural citations by Democrats were used politically to suggest that the Democratic Party was the "true" Christian party (you've heard them say this re: defense, healthcare, welfare, education, and civil rights) at the very same time Democrats were insisting that George Bush and Co. were attempting to establish a Christian theocracy!

In short, then, let us rip off the veneer and get to the heart of today's point: If separation of Church and State is so critical to leftists, why do they attempt to impose Judeo-Christian morality upon an apparently secular political state when it comes to poverty? Answer: they have never even thought about it.

Most of us haven't.

Why care for the poor? Who says we have to care for the poor? Who says "tax cuts for the rich" are unjust? Where, in this discussion, do we find our moral inspiration for fighting poverty in a secular state? Why should government be "our brothers' keeper"?

No one seems to notice that a reporter asked the President of the United States to use religion as a means to fight poverty through the vehicle of the state.

That is truly curious.

[Here endeth Part I. Part II begins here.]


Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Fit For A Padded Room?

In reference to my first post today: The writing is indeed on the wall. I've lost my mind.

How can it be that I have descended to such a low place? How can it be that I have actually written a piece about – – WalMart?

For the first time since the beginning of Contratimes, I have contemplated deleting a post. Honestly, you couldn't entice me with a magic Zamboni that coats the streets with gold to care one whit about WalMart. But, there it is, an essay proving that I do care, that I am a man of intense contradictions, estranged from my own being.

If there is a theme to the political essays posted at this site, it is this: I despise criticisms that are unjust, unfair, or motivated by some hidden (or even known) bias or predeliction. I despise criticisms of the President that are based on fabrications of fact and Straw Man fallacies; as I hate them when talking about war, abortion, art, literature or Michael Moore (even though Mr. Moore is perhaps the most unfair critic I've ever read). And since I am of the conviction that most of the media are dominated in the West by critics of all things Right, the Leftist critics generally receive my ire.

WalMart is no doubt flawed. Is there nothing that isn't? I am all too aware of those who boycott it and deride it at every turn: the leftists who abhor corporations and economic behemoths. I am sure a strong case can be made that WalMart cheats its employees with low wages; just as a strong case can be made that the marketplace sets the value of wages, and people are worth what they are willing to be paid (and others are willing to pay them). But my issues with critics of capitalist machines like WalMart is, as some of you know, rooted in the very fiber of Ayn Rand's incisive Atlas Shrugged. Critics of wealth are rarely generators of wealth; they, in fact, are not only wealth's beneficiaries, they are often subsidized as critics by the very wealth they loathe. But more importantly there is something else that even Ayn Rand ignores: critics of wealth are almost always motivated, not by justice, but by envy.

Lastly, let it be noted: To whom does everyone turn when there is a crisis, particularly a costly one? Does everyone turn to the poor? Or do they not turn to the rich? Why, because they are bad? What if there were no rich people? To whom would we turn then?

In the same vein, who did the left immediately blame for the Katrina crisis? Well, if you were paying attention, you know that the left blamed the rich: If the rich had not received their absurd tax cuts, there would have been money to protect New Orleans. And on it goes.

And so I begin a series on wealth. It begins tomorrow. I hope I can pull it off.

Contratimes

Private Efficiency

Since Hurricane Katrina devastated America's Gulf Coast, there have been reports of the outstanding efficacy of one relief agency: Wal•Mart.

The private sector, it hardly needs mentioning, is not as fettered or burdened as the public bureacracies of FEMA, The Army Corps of Engineers, or The Dept. of Homeland Security. Each of these has been tripped by knots of red tape. Even the American Red Cross, a well-respected albeit private charity, has hit hard times, admitting that the size of the devastation exceeded the agency's worst-case scenarios. The Cross has similarly received criticism that it placed beauracratic priorities above relief work.

The whole thing about aid and efficiency reminds me of a large house fire I photographed in the early morning hours one autumn. The beautiful home was "fully involved", at least one wing of it, and the house sat alone, atop an open ridge, with a driveway at least 1,200 feet long.

As firefighters struggled up the hill, laying lines to draw water from a street-side hydrant, the homeowners and their guests were hindering the firefighting efforts by at times direct interference. You see, the fire chief (in charge of the situation), ignored the fact that directly outside the house was a beautiful in-ground swimming pool full of water. Dismayed at this oversight, the homeowners screamed at the firemen, at times getting directly in their faces, even, at times, directing hoses and nozzles in directions they thought most effective. Eventually the police were brought in, removing several people from the scene. The house was a total loss.

But unknown to the homeowners was that there are rules firefighters must follow when engaged in firefighting, and drawing water from a swimming pool is not permitted. In part, the problem is that a swimming pool is a limited source: if a pumper sets up to use a pool, it remains useless once the water supply is depleted.

Irrespective of the rules, there was one overwhelming fact which I witnessed: the house would have experienced less damage had the family not interfered with the process. And their interference was based on an ignorance or rejection of the rules dictating firefighters' behaviors.

Red tape slows down nearly everything, but not all red tape is bad. The worst cases are like those which dictate, at least in this state, the rules surrounding a motor vehicle accident in which resuscitation of a victim is instantly deemed impossible. I've seen traffic re-routed for hours as a corpse lies in a car, 30 feet off the road, while rescuers wait for a medical examiner to travel from some distant spot solely to declare the dead officially dead (there are decent reasons for this, but some are absurd). The best cases are those which I've witnessed when protocol is followed to the Nth-degree at a fire scene, for example, and though the whole crowd of witnesses is screaming at the apparent absurdity of the firefighters' staging, a raging fire that looks foregone is suddenly knocked down so spectacularly one might think a miracle occurred (and all this to the sudden applause of the once bickering crowd).

That Wal•Mart could perform similarly spectacularly should not surprise anyone, despite the incredulities that I heard muttered this morning by such notables as Don Imus and Sen. John McCain (on Imus in the Morning). Every second of the day a business like Wal•Mart works at perfecting the distribution of goods as efficiently as possible, with fiscal responsibility. Wal•Mart, being private, can on the fly change certain rules in order to meet needs when crises hit, mindful that their actions must remain within the law. But the public sector is neither so practiced nor so free: The public sector is always a second-responder to any crisis, with the first-responders being the private citizens who are in crisis. This is not to say that the public sector must always fail, or be second rate. I know I am far less able to extinguish a fire at my home than my town's fire department is, though I would argue that I, in my privacy, am far better equipped to prevent a fire here than anyone else on the planet.

Kudos to Wal•Mart for doing something well. And kudos to all the private and public agencies that try their damnedest to please everyone – and they do please – within a quagmire of regulations.

Contratimes

The photograph above is of a Wood Duck drake, North America's most gloriously plumed indigenous water-fowl.

Post 111: Thinking Again About Being

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

–T.S. Eliot, excerpted from Choruses from 'The Rock'

After I left college, I lived alone for a year in a cabin on a mountain. It was a simple, lovely little place, completely rustic save for some basic electricity and running water. There was a very passive solar-heated outhouse; a Jötul woodstove, a screened porch. During winter I would park my car at the base of a nearby ski area and hike in along cross-country ski trails. The rest of the year I could park some 700 feet downhill on an old logging road and make my way along a grassy and rock-strewn path.

At night, when I would arrive at my woodland parking spot, I'd give a whistle to let Chinook – a German Shepherd I'd inherited – know that I was home. Most nights I'd simply feel my way up the path, listening for the crunch of leaves or the snap of twigs, indicators that I had wandered astray. At the top of the path, Chinook would greet me, tail whapping things in the night.

I never felt more alive than when I would wend my way along that path, or any path, in darkness. That familiar path homeward was, of course, one that I would memorize. But there were nights – when the moon was new and the fog deep – that I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. Strange how much life, power and even bliss can be had in that sort of blindness, temporary and voluntary as it was. And often, when I would arrive home, I'd keep the lights off, or use only a candle for reading, wildly aware of the dangers of an open flame.

What I loved most about the time in that cabin is that mere living was an adventure. In other words, adventures were not something I enjoyed as recreation or holiday distraction. My very life was an adventure, dusk to dawn. I miss that.

Perhaps that is why last night, again with the new moon hidden behind the earth's shoulder, I went out into the dark and hit a golf ball with my sand wedge. The air was cool, the sky was utterly clear, and drifting about my body was a star-lit fog, hanging a few feet over the dampening grass. I had no lamp with me, and there were no streetlights or floodlights anywhere nearby. And I was amazed, not solely that I could see the ball at my feet, though dimly, but I could hear the ball's flight: I could hear it drop, and I could even find it, all so I could hit it again. The stillness of the night was an astounding backdrop for me to enjoy the power of my own senses, with the very power of consciousness faintly ringing in my ears.

Strange, though, that the only thing I could think about while I walked through my misty yard was this essay.

You see, this is post 111, one of more than 100 of my posts which is a complete essay, and not a mere musing of my daily actions (like some diarists post on their blogs). And I have reached a point where I need to make myself a bit more transparent to you, my loyal reader.

I have some deep reservations about the Internet as a tool, a resource, or as a medium for building community. OK. That is not much of a statement. Why then would I say it? Well, I say it because there is for most of us a casual acceptance of the Internet's presence in our lives; we take it as a thing of mere utility, a tool that can be used for good or ill.

To me, the Internet is becoming, rapidly, the digitized collective consciousness of humanity. Of course, this also means that it is the digitized subconsciousness of humanity, replete with all the things repressed and suppressed, rightly or wrongly. If I think about my own soul – my own mind, spirit, or whatever one might call it – I recognize there is a whole mix of things, some good, some bad, some very bad, that dwelleth therein. There are all sorts of things in my heart (and I know that they are the sorts of things in my neighbor's mind) that ought never see the light of day. Sometimes I have shockingly pornographic thoughts that seem to emerge ex nihilo in my mind; as do images of violence, deception, thievery, lust, power.

Two hundred years ago, had I lived then, there was no place I could go to find mirror images of the darkest, and the brightest, thoughts and images passing through my mind. But now I can. I can click on-line and find deeply moving religious confessions, or reports of truly sublime acts of kindness. I can find breathtaking prose and poetry, or photographic images that push me toward praise. Or, I can find images and thoughts and ruminations and celebrations of all sorts of perversity – moral, sexual and intellectual perversities. I can find heinous sexual images. I can find scatological images, or images of abuse, or essays on how to build bombs. I can watch a beheading if I so choose. I can find conspiracies, and conspiracy-theorists; I can find injustice and hate and paranoia and depression. In short, I can find everything that is right and wrong with my soul amplified beyond measure. And I can bring it all right into my house.

***

There is something awesome about going into a store and choosing from a pile of tomatoes the very tomatoes I would like to eat. But there is a strange distance, an estrangement really, about purchasing and eating food the growing and harvesting of which I had no direct involvement. There is the lack of adventure; there is little thrill or risk in going to market. But there is adventure in tilling land and sowing seeds for myself, and there is risk abundant in growing my own food.

Something, somewhere seems lost in the simplicity of even an electric light switch. The electric light switch is now used to illuminate our future: we take the surprise and adventure out of walking up the stairs to our bedrooms. A hundred years ago, if you lived then, a candle was lighted, and you carried it around from one scene to the next, illuminating your present in a small, dangerous circle of illumination. The candle would light the desk at which you worked, and only that desk. The candle would light your path up to the loft, and only that path. And the light was never thrown ahead of you to chase out the darkness and the adventure from every corner of your room.

But the electric lamp does indeed chase out the darkness ahead of us. It expells the darkness even before we get there: It lights up our future so that our arrival there will be easier. Thus, the adventure is cast out; it is banished. As a result, those who permit adventure in their lives do so solely on their own terms, purchased in package deals of white-water rafting trips or heli-ski getaways.

There is a loss in knowledge.

***

Do you know that there are children alive today who have never slept in complete, natural darkness? There are perhaps even older children who have never seen the night sky without the constant blare of city lights. And there are children who have never, nay, there are also adults who have never heard a natural silence: They've always heard the din of motors and engines and the hum of electric generators. In fact, there are flowering plants and trees in cities all over America (for example) that have never experienced a truly dark night. Plants, animals, men and women --- millions of living things that live in a perpetual mercury vapor twilight.

Why am I saying all this?

My blogging is a participation in a medium I fundamentally oppose. I do not think that the Web, aka the 'Net (just think of these terms!), is ultimately a good thing for living organisms, namely the organisms who click and read and download and chat and blog. Moreover, I am acutely aware that I am one of too many voices vying for your attention, your notice, even your praise. In fact, I am aware all too well of the human vainglory perhaps inherent in every blog: notice me! remember me! let me impress you! I am reminded of something utterly brilliant once penned by my favorite writer, G. K. Chesterton: I never said a thing because I thought it funny; I thought it funny because I said it. Chesterton's quip cuts to the heart of my own conceit, my own pride, the vanity that assails me and against which I feebly fight. There is vainglory in the most altruistic of my acts, I sadly confess.

Related to this is my clear understanding that I am a voice crying in the wilderness: there are so many bloggers doing what I do that there seems no sense in being superfluous. I am largely a redundancy. And I feel a bit like Hosea, the prophet who married a woman who had had many lovers before him: What, in heaven's name, can I give you that you've not gotten already? What can I give you that is not available elsewhere? What can we enjoy that is a surprise, singular, and not dried up in the excesses which breed boredom, despair, depression?

And where is the adventure here, when there is so much that is more interesting, more lovely and beautiful scurrying about our own front yards, or floating across the very surface of our eyes?

Yesterday I visited a couple of websites where I did battle against the arrogance of presumption, if I can call it that. One battle was against those who think they have all the answers from a supposedly superior scientific framework; another was with a theological critique disguised beneath the veneer of a scientific document. I did battle with those who believe in the primacy of reason, blind as they are that they use reason to prove reason's superiority, thus committing the fallacy of circular reasoning: the premise is the conclusion. But my visits and battles have made me feel less human, less alive, than when I am hitting a golf ball in the dark, or striking a match in a cabin. For there is futility in the enterprises in which I engage, bearing no fruit other than alienation from what IS.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

I will continue to do this, for as long as I can. I am wary of drawing people into the Web, distracting them from the abundant life that is outside the realms of electricity, gasoline, technology. My role, perhaps, is to help people caught in the 'Net escape its sticky temptations. But that will be hard if I am caught in the 'Net too. And I am.

Once, while I was about to sing a solo in a church, I sat in the front of the sanctuary and noticed something: there were electric cords everywhere. The church, it seemed, had lost its capacity to worship God without electricity and amplification. How did humanity ever worship before electricity was harnessed? Needless to say, I never sang in that church again. Similarly, I am tempted to silence myself here, solely because I do not want to give the impression that I think that the Internet is a good thing, in total, in the long run.

Peace to you all,

Bill Gnade

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes

[Yesterday I should not have titled my post "Aborting Bill Bennett." It was too subtle and perhaps too clever, or not subtle at all and rather stupid. Whichever, it should not have been posted with one of my favorite photos, the birth of a child. It distracts too much from the beauty, no matter how jarring I wanted the juxtaposition to be between birth and the word "Abortion."]

Today's photo is of curled ferns damaged by a killing frost. It was taken in my own backyard. Click on it for a larger view.