A new Contratimes feature? Maybe. But today I submit the first ever Paragraph, or ¶, of the Day.
Check this out from today's Washington Post editorial, "Congress's Iraq Quagmire":
ON TUESDAY nearly every member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warmly endorsed Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, and a number wished him success or "Godspeed" in his mission. Yesterday some of the same senators voted for a resolution that opposes the increase of troops for Gen. Petraeus's command -- even though the general testified that he could not accomplish his mission without the additional forces and hinted that such a resolution could encourage the enemy. Such is the muddle of Congress on Iraq: A majority may soon go on record opposing the new offensive in Baghdad even while encouraging the commander who leads it. [Emphasis added solely to incite incredulity everywhere]
Such fun!
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Post 400: A Simple Milestone
Zebras have stripes and leopards have spots. I, on the other hand, have no obvious marks, save two: this is the first time I've begun a post with the letter Z, and this is the 400th time I've had such a chance. It is not much of a milestone, I know, but I am anagramatically a bit like a leopard: that fast feline might have 400 spots, but I have 400 posts.Curiously, all my posts are so many spots, rendering me nearly invisible in the big world-wide web of cyberlife.
When I began this site in April 2005, I had no idea where I was heading. 400 posts later, I still have no idea; I just keep stroking keys like a crazy chimp hoping that something makes sense. It all reminds me of the little drawings I'd do before I could read or write: I'd crayon little curly wisps suggestive of clouds over a horizon, or smoke billowing from a chimney, and then rush into the kitchen, asking my mother, "Are these words? Am I writing?" I have come a long way since then, no doubt, but I still find myself doodling vapors on paper.
In July of 2005, I believe, I added a stat counter to chart my failures and successes as a blogger. I can think of a handful of critical times in my life when humility was handed to me on a platter; I can think of a few times such lessons left me thinking my head was on that salver. Seeing how few people read one's blog is truly a humbling revelation, and it is utterly life-saving: there is nothing like knowing one's place. But I can at least feel a little pride knowing that without marketing myself at all (I VERY rarely tell people I blog), I have been blessed to have had nearly 20,000 unique visitors come here. Many of them, I am glad to report, return. And a few even become my friends.
I can't remember off-hand when I signed up with Technorati, a blog listing service (among other things) available for free. I do recall that when I first found my Technorati blog-ranking -- somewhere around 335,000 -- I was mildly down-hearted until a Contratimes reader informed me that my station was set against some 55 million listed blogs. Since then this blog has reached its best rating around 37, 5oo; but in recent months I've slipped dramatically. Today, Contratimes is ranked 103,734. I am nose-diving without the slightest understanding how it is I've come to hurl myself headlong into a bay of noses. But I hold onto some small hope that all this will make sense in the end, and that I will find my own nose somewhere in the process.
Many thanks to all of you who have visited. I am especially grateful to all of you who have left a comment, or two, or ten. Thanks. And this goes to those of you who have felt it necessary to set me straight with language that was anything but gentle. Though only a few of you fall into this category, I am grateful nonetheless that you felt comfortable enough to give me a piece of your mind (especially when it was the very last piece I wanted). The most insulting and assaulting personalities, I am glad to report, are not making rounds here, but elsewhere: I am much more likely to get scalded in some other cyber-territory. But perhaps that is why I need the stripes of the zebra and the speedy spots of the leopard. One needs to survive, after all.
Thanks for the kindness.
Peace.
BG
PS. I believe this is not the first time I've posted here at Contratimes the photograph above, but I can't recall where or when. Sorry if you find it at all redundant. But I like it for its sense of transcience, its sense of fragility and time, and for its varied stripes. (In case you're wondering, the photograph was taken in North Eastham, on the glorious Cape Cod, along the bay, just north of Campground Beach.)
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Jamie Glazov & Dinesh D'Souza On Islam, 9/11, And The Radical Left (Updated)
We all hear a lot about "dialogue" and "debate"; about talking together through difficult issues. Currently we are hearing this sort of rhetoric coming from the "new" US Congress; some of us Episcopalians in New Hampshire are STILL waiting for the great dialogue promised three years ago by our controversial bishop.
I must say that the sort of dialogue exemplified between Jamie Glazov and Dinesh D'Souza in their two-part conversation at FrontPageMag is reassuring and inspiring: here are two thinkers, conservative and academic, who disagree profoundly. And yet there is a gentlemanly quailty that prevails throughout; and there is no shortage of interesting parries and thrusts. Both men score points; and I give the win to Mr. Glazov. Part of that small victory, unfortunately, comes as a result of Mr. Glazov slipping into a monologue for which, it appears, Mr. D'Souza is absent. But that hardly matters, since Glazov is amazing on his own.
This really is an excellent series. Take time to read it if you are at all interested in Mr. D'Souza's thesis that it is American liberalism, the radical leftist sort, that led to 9/11 and America's current standoff with Islam. Mr. Glazov issues a very serious and compelling challenge; Mr. D'Souza makes a few worthy rebuffs. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is found here. From Abu Ghraib to sexual immorality, from Moses to Muhammed, this series offers key insights.
And make sure you take time to read Mr. David Forsmark's challenging review of Mr. D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left And Its Responsibility For 9/11.
Peace.
BG
I must say that the sort of dialogue exemplified between Jamie Glazov and Dinesh D'Souza in their two-part conversation at FrontPageMag is reassuring and inspiring: here are two thinkers, conservative and academic, who disagree profoundly. And yet there is a gentlemanly quailty that prevails throughout; and there is no shortage of interesting parries and thrusts. Both men score points; and I give the win to Mr. Glazov. Part of that small victory, unfortunately, comes as a result of Mr. Glazov slipping into a monologue for which, it appears, Mr. D'Souza is absent. But that hardly matters, since Glazov is amazing on his own.
This really is an excellent series. Take time to read it if you are at all interested in Mr. D'Souza's thesis that it is American liberalism, the radical leftist sort, that led to 9/11 and America's current standoff with Islam. Mr. Glazov issues a very serious and compelling challenge; Mr. D'Souza makes a few worthy rebuffs. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is found here. From Abu Ghraib to sexual immorality, from Moses to Muhammed, this series offers key insights.
And make sure you take time to read Mr. David Forsmark's challenging review of Mr. D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left And Its Responsibility For 9/11.
Peace.
BG
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Dear Andy Warhol: You've Got The Wrong Can
After much searching of soul, mind, and heart, I have finally understood why I will never be recognized as a great visual artist. I am too thin.
Not long ago, Luke Buckham and I (see comments thread) speculated on what conditions would need to be met to criminalize the eating of meat. Perhaps both of us should have turned to PETA for help; I turned to the problem of global warming for some assistance, but the payoff was so much gas.
Now comes THIS brilliant work of creativity, this burst of genius, to make me doubt NOT whether eating meat should be criminalized, but whether I shall ever eat a meatball again.
Remember, you can't be a cannibal if you are eating art. And Andy Warhol should have realized that art is NOT in a Campbell's soup can; it's in the artist's own can. In other words, art is not on the vanguard; it's very much a rear-guard kind of thing.
At last, for once I can say that a work of art is not solely abominable; it is also abdominal.
Here's real art: Me sticking my middle finger down my throat. Now, that's genius.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2o07/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Not long ago, Luke Buckham and I (see comments thread) speculated on what conditions would need to be met to criminalize the eating of meat. Perhaps both of us should have turned to PETA for help; I turned to the problem of global warming for some assistance, but the payoff was so much gas.
Now comes THIS brilliant work of creativity, this burst of genius, to make me doubt NOT whether eating meat should be criminalized, but whether I shall ever eat a meatball again.
Remember, you can't be a cannibal if you are eating art. And Andy Warhol should have realized that art is NOT in a Campbell's soup can; it's in the artist's own can. In other words, art is not on the vanguard; it's very much a rear-guard kind of thing.
At last, for once I can say that a work of art is not solely abominable; it is also abdominal.
Here's real art: Me sticking my middle finger down my throat. Now, that's genius.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2o07/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
More Awards; The Empty Keg Award For Story Of The Year, 2006
In keeping with my promise that I shall list my awards for best and worst of 2006 (categories determined on a whim), I would like to announce the winner of the monumental -- and very first -- 2006 Empty Keg Award for Story of the Year. It is a simple award, and it is thoroughly a disappointing one. After all, what could be more disappointing than an empty keg?
Sadly, I have no idea to whom I should give this fine honor. For it has two distinct winners, and yet both stand at opposite ends of the story. On the one end is the main stream media in America (and its European counterpart), while on the other is the Bush Administration. The former deserves accolades for wresting away and gaining control of the most important story of our time; and the latter deserves the award for letting the media get away with it. The story? Well, that is simple: The story is the genesis of the Iraq Conflict. And the Empty Keg goes to all those who repackaged history, who accepted that history, and permitted that history to become normative. Just read this clip from a recent CBS News/60 Minutes interview with President George W. Bush (the president was interviewed by reporter Scott Pelley at Camp David):
PELLEY: You know better than I do that many Americans feel that your administration has not been straight with the country, has not been honest. To those people you say what?
BUSH: On what issue?
PELLEY: Well, sir . . .
BUSH: Like the weapons of mass destruction?
PELLEY: No weapons of mass destruction.
BUSH: Yeah.
PELLEY: No credible connection between 9/11 and Iraq.
BUSH: Yeah.
PELLEY: The Office of Management and Budget said this war would cost somewhere between $50 billion and $60 billion and now we're over 400.
BUSH: I gotcha. I gotcha. I gotcha.
The sentence in bold is highlighted as a perfect exemplar of the Great Revision. To which, incredibly, the president says, "Yeah."
For sheer fun, for the jolly folly of it all, let me remind readers that A) there was not one minute from 1991 to March 2003 that the United States was not in military conflict with Iraq; B) that President Bill Clinton received during his term in office news of a fatwa - drafted by Osama bin Laden in 1998 - which called for death to Americans everywhere; C) that the fatwa placed America's continued oppression -- directed by President Clinton -- of Iraq and the Iraqi people as the primary reason Americans should be killed; D) that in 1998 President Bill Clinton signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act calling for "regime change" in that tired country; E) and that the United States was attacked by Osama bin Laden in 2001 as a direct result of its bellicose posture towards Iraq (throughout the 1990's, the Clinton Administration bombed Iraq nearly every other day).
Thus, two things: The Iraq/September 11 connection is a causal one; and is so utterly credible it is incredible that anyone could be ignorant of this fact; and secondly, it is despicable that these historic facts have been permitted to drift into oblivion by the press and the president. And these are not the only facts in the case!
Nevertheless, because we at Contratimes have been wide-eyed and unblinking as we watched propaganda attain the status of absolute truth, we can with clarity of mind and soul pronounce that the 2006 Empty Keg Award for Story of the Year is well-deserved by many who walk this planet. I think the Empty Keg Award should be passed around like the Stanley Cup: first, it should go to the editorial offices of the New York Times, then to Keith Olbermann, and then to the White House. And I am sure Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean will want to share it with their many fellow revisionists.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
For some further commentary regarding Iraq, 9/11, and the 9/11 Commission Report, go here. Then there is my incomparable "Adam and Eve Must Have Been Neo-Cons."
Sadly, I have no idea to whom I should give this fine honor. For it has two distinct winners, and yet both stand at opposite ends of the story. On the one end is the main stream media in America (and its European counterpart), while on the other is the Bush Administration. The former deserves accolades for wresting away and gaining control of the most important story of our time; and the latter deserves the award for letting the media get away with it. The story? Well, that is simple: The story is the genesis of the Iraq Conflict. And the Empty Keg goes to all those who repackaged history, who accepted that history, and permitted that history to become normative. Just read this clip from a recent CBS News/60 Minutes interview with President George W. Bush (the president was interviewed by reporter Scott Pelley at Camp David):
PELLEY: You know better than I do that many Americans feel that your administration has not been straight with the country, has not been honest. To those people you say what?
BUSH: On what issue?
PELLEY: Well, sir . . .
BUSH: Like the weapons of mass destruction?
PELLEY: No weapons of mass destruction.
BUSH: Yeah.
PELLEY: No credible connection between 9/11 and Iraq.
BUSH: Yeah.
PELLEY: The Office of Management and Budget said this war would cost somewhere between $50 billion and $60 billion and now we're over 400.
BUSH: I gotcha. I gotcha. I gotcha.
The sentence in bold is highlighted as a perfect exemplar of the Great Revision. To which, incredibly, the president says, "Yeah."
For sheer fun, for the jolly folly of it all, let me remind readers that A) there was not one minute from 1991 to March 2003 that the United States was not in military conflict with Iraq; B) that President Bill Clinton received during his term in office news of a fatwa - drafted by Osama bin Laden in 1998 - which called for death to Americans everywhere; C) that the fatwa placed America's continued oppression -- directed by President Clinton -- of Iraq and the Iraqi people as the primary reason Americans should be killed; D) that in 1998 President Bill Clinton signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act calling for "regime change" in that tired country; E) and that the United States was attacked by Osama bin Laden in 2001 as a direct result of its bellicose posture towards Iraq (throughout the 1990's, the Clinton Administration bombed Iraq nearly every other day).
Thus, two things: The Iraq/September 11 connection is a causal one; and is so utterly credible it is incredible that anyone could be ignorant of this fact; and secondly, it is despicable that these historic facts have been permitted to drift into oblivion by the press and the president. And these are not the only facts in the case!
Nevertheless, because we at Contratimes have been wide-eyed and unblinking as we watched propaganda attain the status of absolute truth, we can with clarity of mind and soul pronounce that the 2006 Empty Keg Award for Story of the Year is well-deserved by many who walk this planet. I think the Empty Keg Award should be passed around like the Stanley Cup: first, it should go to the editorial offices of the New York Times, then to Keith Olbermann, and then to the White House. And I am sure Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean will want to share it with their many fellow revisionists.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
For some further commentary regarding Iraq, 9/11, and the 9/11 Commission Report, go here. Then there is my incomparable "Adam and Eve Must Have Been Neo-Cons."
A Newbie Attitude
It is a very messianic thing to be. One might wonder whether any deliverer would dare to be anything but; for to be something other than a bridge-builder -- a uniter -- is to be something less than a messiah. Messiahs bring people together; they are conciliatory, appeasing; they understand compromise and concession.
But this is not the least a messiah can do. A messiah can also reveal his or her salvific message once every four years or so, at least in America. He (or she) can remind us all -- once again -- what life can truly become -- if we but believe, if we but thrill in the audacity of hope.
Barack Hussein Obama has lifted his head from his pillow and in the silence of the night, he has heard a call, a voice, the voice of the people; and he has responded. His message? He wishes to bring together that which has been torn asunder; to mend the torn veil; to build on those things which unite rather than divide. In other words, he wants to deliver a message of hope, of optimism in the power of the human will when it works in collective concert. Mr. Obama believes that it is not the enormity of the issues before us, but the smallness of our politics in addressing those issues that has failed us all. Such issues can be rendered small, no doubt, by a politics that is larger than anyone has heretofore dreamed possible. It is all about a brighter vision in a darkness deceptively dark: things are not as black as they seem. Nor are they as white. For such simple distinctions betray us when confronting dire challenges: our tried yet failed policies based on categories of good and evil, light and dark, black and white, north and south, have proven themselves tired, myopic, weak; senescent.
And now, in the juvenescence of the year, in the season of Janus (the two-faced deity that guards against war), Barack Obama is a great light in the deep and lonely solstice of Northern Hemispheric politics. He is the newcomer with the right attitude, speaking new beatitudes. His name means blessed. He brings a message.
Two things, really. First, the message Mr. Obama brings is utterly old and not the least bit spry or sprightly. It is what we have heard in the United States from leaders ad infinitum: we have long been given empty promises that there shall be no more empty promises. We are promised an end to partisan bickering, to gridlock, to more of the same. We are promised the "setting of a new tone in Washington," of "forging a new direction for America," of coming together to "take America back" and building anew a "government for the people by the people." We are promised an end to rancor and discord; we are promised unity in a United States on the threshold of disunion. It is time to cease the fearmongering, the backbiting; the good-old-boy backroom favoritism; the special interest plundering of American goodwill and industriousness.
In short, we have heard all of this before, said the same way, at the same time of year, and even for the same reasons.
But what we have not heard enough is that a real messiah -- perfectly presented in the Christ of the Christian faith -- is the only religious figure in history who built a religion on the self-revelation that He came to divide, not unite; to separate, not combine; to winnow out, and not to blend; to cleave asunder and not to mend. Jesus the Christ is indeed exactly the sort of politician we need to hear from, though not on the airwaves or from the podium, or on the breakfast news shows or a podcast from the Jesus 2008 website. We need to hear from Him in our hearts, if for no other reason than to stop this insanity.
The messiah has already come, and He will come again. But He is not a politician from Illinois, or a president from South Africa, or a megalomaniac from Venezuela. He is not a man with a gun, nor is a he man with a Texas swagger. Nor is he a man with a soft, bipartisan voice.
"I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. ... The poor you shall always have with you. ... I have come to set brother against sister. ... You have no part in me unless ..." This is what a deliverer says; these are the words of a real leader, a real revolutionary. He does not coddle his base, or stroke the hair of those eager to pronounce him god.
Just a few thoughts in this season of Hosanna Politics.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
But this is not the least a messiah can do. A messiah can also reveal his or her salvific message once every four years or so, at least in America. He (or she) can remind us all -- once again -- what life can truly become -- if we but believe, if we but thrill in the audacity of hope.
Barack Hussein Obama has lifted his head from his pillow and in the silence of the night, he has heard a call, a voice, the voice of the people; and he has responded. His message? He wishes to bring together that which has been torn asunder; to mend the torn veil; to build on those things which unite rather than divide. In other words, he wants to deliver a message of hope, of optimism in the power of the human will when it works in collective concert. Mr. Obama believes that it is not the enormity of the issues before us, but the smallness of our politics in addressing those issues that has failed us all. Such issues can be rendered small, no doubt, by a politics that is larger than anyone has heretofore dreamed possible. It is all about a brighter vision in a darkness deceptively dark: things are not as black as they seem. Nor are they as white. For such simple distinctions betray us when confronting dire challenges: our tried yet failed policies based on categories of good and evil, light and dark, black and white, north and south, have proven themselves tired, myopic, weak; senescent.
And now, in the juvenescence of the year, in the season of Janus (the two-faced deity that guards against war), Barack Obama is a great light in the deep and lonely solstice of Northern Hemispheric politics. He is the newcomer with the right attitude, speaking new beatitudes. His name means blessed. He brings a message.
Two things, really. First, the message Mr. Obama brings is utterly old and not the least bit spry or sprightly. It is what we have heard in the United States from leaders ad infinitum: we have long been given empty promises that there shall be no more empty promises. We are promised an end to partisan bickering, to gridlock, to more of the same. We are promised the "setting of a new tone in Washington," of "forging a new direction for America," of coming together to "take America back" and building anew a "government for the people by the people." We are promised an end to rancor and discord; we are promised unity in a United States on the threshold of disunion. It is time to cease the fearmongering, the backbiting; the good-old-boy backroom favoritism; the special interest plundering of American goodwill and industriousness.
In short, we have heard all of this before, said the same way, at the same time of year, and even for the same reasons.
But what we have not heard enough is that a real messiah -- perfectly presented in the Christ of the Christian faith -- is the only religious figure in history who built a religion on the self-revelation that He came to divide, not unite; to separate, not combine; to winnow out, and not to blend; to cleave asunder and not to mend. Jesus the Christ is indeed exactly the sort of politician we need to hear from, though not on the airwaves or from the podium, or on the breakfast news shows or a podcast from the Jesus 2008 website. We need to hear from Him in our hearts, if for no other reason than to stop this insanity.
The messiah has already come, and He will come again. But He is not a politician from Illinois, or a president from South Africa, or a megalomaniac from Venezuela. He is not a man with a gun, nor is a he man with a Texas swagger. Nor is he a man with a soft, bipartisan voice.
"I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. ... The poor you shall always have with you. ... I have come to set brother against sister. ... You have no part in me unless ..." This is what a deliverer says; these are the words of a real leader, a real revolutionary. He does not coddle his base, or stroke the hair of those eager to pronounce him god.
Just a few thoughts in this season of Hosanna Politics.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Replay: Celebrating The Forgotten Martin Luther King
[This essay first appeared here on January 16, 2006]
I don't really care what anyone thinks about the following statement, so I say it without hesitation: The 1960's in America were pretty sick years. I have no nostalgia for them; no awe of their alleged liberation or romance for their upheaval, no glee over the sexual and drug revolutions. I stand in protest of the 1960's and their legacy.
And one salient feature of the illness of the 1960's was the shocking death of Martin Luther King Jr. It is not shocking in that it was unexpected, for even Dr. King anticipated it, I believe, in his very final speech. It was shocking in that it was emblematic of truly profound social conflicts that marred that decade, perhaps the most vulgar and violent one, in America's history. Dr. King, after all, was a pacifist in a tumultuous and vicious fight for equality among the races. That his death, his martyrdom, may have spurred Americans toward a more just and kind world is disconcerting, as death should not be required for what seems intuitively to be a simple lesson: All men are created equal.
Of course, as a man bent toward the philosophical, I ask myself whether it is indeed true that all men are created equal. Is it? If we are strict Darwinists, if we are secularists without appeal to God or some transcendent force responsible for mankind's existence and equality, then we must concede that equality is not an ontological (metaphysical) reality. Evolution, in its dynamic "natural selection" process, abhors equality, as disparate species fight and morph for dominance and survival, with nary a hint of egalitarianism. To the secular mind "equality" must be a religious fiction created by that secularism, for there is nothing in the entire cosmos that even resembles "equality." As I've stated elsewhere, including here at Contratimes, neither "equality" nor "rights" exist in any place other than the faith-based imagination of secularists.
Unless, of course, there really is a God. Then one can indeed talk, not only of "equality" but of "rights" as well, rights rooted in the imago dei, the image of God. And that is why the concepts of "rights" and "equality" are rooted in theological language in the founding documents of America. If there is no God, there is no equality and no rights, except in that fictive realm wherein the secular mind places them. If there is a God, there is at least the potential for there to be real qualities to equality and rights; a real, ontological quality.
Of course, the philosopher in me also sees this astounding problem: If there is indeed a God, then only humans are equal one to another, for God surely is not equal to His creation. In short, a world wherein God exists is hierarchical, with God sitting in the highest seat. With that said, it is no wonder secularists abhor a theological structure for social governance, as God confounds their love of absolute equality.
While today we celebrate the memory of Martin Luther King, I would like to celebrate what is absolutely forgotten about Martin Luther King. And what is forgotten is that Dr. King held no expertise in social or political scheming; he was not trained to be a rebel or a revolutionary. No, Dr. King was first and foremost a Christian theologian and ordained minister. Sadly, in most celebrations of his life, these seem to be the first things that are forgotten about him. I wonder, how would this make him feel?
Today is really a religious holiday, but you wouldn't know it. It is a holiday celebrating the liberating power of the Gospel, the very power that liberated a young Martin King when he first attended church, and when he first attended college. It is a day, not of civil rights, but of the power of love and justice and this wild notion that God loves ALL MEN EQUALLY, which manifests itself in justice and truth in the Christian Savior walking the streets offering a message of hope to the oppressed and harassed: those persecuted by the powerful; those harassed by the terrors of their own sins. It is right to be civil, and it is civil to be right; but neither truth means anything without the civilizing and righteous power of the Christian God who calls all men and women unto Him: that neither Greek nor Jew, neither slave nor free; neither man nor woman nor black nor white, are to be excluded from His banquet hall. This is not unconditional universalism, but that universalism with a caveat: that all invited guests must first accept the invitation, shedding their filthy clothes for the formal clothes that come as a result of God's sacrifice, with all men and all women attired in the grace of God's forgiveness. Those who refuse the invitation, or the forgiveness, remain, freely, outside to dine alone. The maître d' bids them Bon appetit! if they would just humble themselves and accept their reservations.
But this great day is for me in many ways a day of sorrow, for the great man Dr. Martin Luther King is cheapened, gutted and reduced to something other than he was, for he was not a secular member of the vanguard; his power was not intrinsic to him; his cause was a cause that has nothing, ultimately, to do with him at all. For it is God's cause, and Dr. King knew that, and he embraced that powerful fact. How sorrowful that our schools and culture want to forget what ultimately made Dr. King a great man.†
For me, Dr. King represents the fight to keep the cardinal virtues together in harmonic balance. G. K. Chesterton argued that the Protestant Reformation smashed the union of the cardinal virtues, causing them to run amok, befouling the earth with their zeal. Just think of love, hope, faith, justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude helter-skelter on the earth, unbound from each other. Justice untethered becomes a church or legal fund or race riot insisting on its own verdicts, neglecting the temperance which is mercy. Temperance alone turns into flagellation and legalism. Prudence in isolation turns into the idolatry of caution, dreading the imperfect choice. Love runs to and fro without the truth of justice or the restraint of self-control, and blindly affirms acts and deeds that true love, in balance, would not countenance or so casually condone. Today, I can hear Dr. King call for the orthodoxy which holds all of these virtues together, the orthodoxy of Christ. It is this part of Dr. King's message that I remember today with sadness, for it is the part of his message and his life that is forgotten.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
†There are those who don't think Dr. King was a great man, but I think otherwise. His peccadilloes, his sins, do indeed count against him. But all of us have these charges against us. What made him great is that he held to his convictions without being paralyzed by the fact that he was a man of imperfections. Too many of us permit our imperfections to sway us from our course. We fall prey to one of the greatest social evils, which is the fixation on the purity of the messenger rather than on the accuracy of the message. It is the "Who are you?" fallacy. It is the devil's line of discredit.
I don't really care what anyone thinks about the following statement, so I say it without hesitation: The 1960's in America were pretty sick years. I have no nostalgia for them; no awe of their alleged liberation or romance for their upheaval, no glee over the sexual and drug revolutions. I stand in protest of the 1960's and their legacy.
And one salient feature of the illness of the 1960's was the shocking death of Martin Luther King Jr. It is not shocking in that it was unexpected, for even Dr. King anticipated it, I believe, in his very final speech. It was shocking in that it was emblematic of truly profound social conflicts that marred that decade, perhaps the most vulgar and violent one, in America's history. Dr. King, after all, was a pacifist in a tumultuous and vicious fight for equality among the races. That his death, his martyrdom, may have spurred Americans toward a more just and kind world is disconcerting, as death should not be required for what seems intuitively to be a simple lesson: All men are created equal.
Of course, as a man bent toward the philosophical, I ask myself whether it is indeed true that all men are created equal. Is it? If we are strict Darwinists, if we are secularists without appeal to God or some transcendent force responsible for mankind's existence and equality, then we must concede that equality is not an ontological (metaphysical) reality. Evolution, in its dynamic "natural selection" process, abhors equality, as disparate species fight and morph for dominance and survival, with nary a hint of egalitarianism. To the secular mind "equality" must be a religious fiction created by that secularism, for there is nothing in the entire cosmos that even resembles "equality." As I've stated elsewhere, including here at Contratimes, neither "equality" nor "rights" exist in any place other than the faith-based imagination of secularists.
Unless, of course, there really is a God. Then one can indeed talk, not only of "equality" but of "rights" as well, rights rooted in the imago dei, the image of God. And that is why the concepts of "rights" and "equality" are rooted in theological language in the founding documents of America. If there is no God, there is no equality and no rights, except in that fictive realm wherein the secular mind places them. If there is a God, there is at least the potential for there to be real qualities to equality and rights; a real, ontological quality.
Of course, the philosopher in me also sees this astounding problem: If there is indeed a God, then only humans are equal one to another, for God surely is not equal to His creation. In short, a world wherein God exists is hierarchical, with God sitting in the highest seat. With that said, it is no wonder secularists abhor a theological structure for social governance, as God confounds their love of absolute equality.
While today we celebrate the memory of Martin Luther King, I would like to celebrate what is absolutely forgotten about Martin Luther King. And what is forgotten is that Dr. King held no expertise in social or political scheming; he was not trained to be a rebel or a revolutionary. No, Dr. King was first and foremost a Christian theologian and ordained minister. Sadly, in most celebrations of his life, these seem to be the first things that are forgotten about him. I wonder, how would this make him feel?
Today is really a religious holiday, but you wouldn't know it. It is a holiday celebrating the liberating power of the Gospel, the very power that liberated a young Martin King when he first attended church, and when he first attended college. It is a day, not of civil rights, but of the power of love and justice and this wild notion that God loves ALL MEN EQUALLY, which manifests itself in justice and truth in the Christian Savior walking the streets offering a message of hope to the oppressed and harassed: those persecuted by the powerful; those harassed by the terrors of their own sins. It is right to be civil, and it is civil to be right; but neither truth means anything without the civilizing and righteous power of the Christian God who calls all men and women unto Him: that neither Greek nor Jew, neither slave nor free; neither man nor woman nor black nor white, are to be excluded from His banquet hall. This is not unconditional universalism, but that universalism with a caveat: that all invited guests must first accept the invitation, shedding their filthy clothes for the formal clothes that come as a result of God's sacrifice, with all men and all women attired in the grace of God's forgiveness. Those who refuse the invitation, or the forgiveness, remain, freely, outside to dine alone. The maître d' bids them Bon appetit! if they would just humble themselves and accept their reservations.
But this great day is for me in many ways a day of sorrow, for the great man Dr. Martin Luther King is cheapened, gutted and reduced to something other than he was, for he was not a secular member of the vanguard; his power was not intrinsic to him; his cause was a cause that has nothing, ultimately, to do with him at all. For it is God's cause, and Dr. King knew that, and he embraced that powerful fact. How sorrowful that our schools and culture want to forget what ultimately made Dr. King a great man.†
For me, Dr. King represents the fight to keep the cardinal virtues together in harmonic balance. G. K. Chesterton argued that the Protestant Reformation smashed the union of the cardinal virtues, causing them to run amok, befouling the earth with their zeal. Just think of love, hope, faith, justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude helter-skelter on the earth, unbound from each other. Justice untethered becomes a church or legal fund or race riot insisting on its own verdicts, neglecting the temperance which is mercy. Temperance alone turns into flagellation and legalism. Prudence in isolation turns into the idolatry of caution, dreading the imperfect choice. Love runs to and fro without the truth of justice or the restraint of self-control, and blindly affirms acts and deeds that true love, in balance, would not countenance or so casually condone. Today, I can hear Dr. King call for the orthodoxy which holds all of these virtues together, the orthodoxy of Christ. It is this part of Dr. King's message that I remember today with sadness, for it is the part of his message and his life that is forgotten.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
†There are those who don't think Dr. King was a great man, but I think otherwise. His peccadilloes, his sins, do indeed count against him. But all of us have these charges against us. What made him great is that he held to his convictions without being paralyzed by the fact that he was a man of imperfections. Too many of us permit our imperfections to sway us from our course. We fall prey to one of the greatest social evils, which is the fixation on the purity of the messenger rather than on the accuracy of the message. It is the "Who are you?" fallacy. It is the devil's line of discredit.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
American Moral Imperialism, And Its Western Allies
Only a fool would try to impose democracy on a backward nation. Only a dunce would attempt to impose Western democratic values on a country steeped in tribal strife. Only idiots would think a place like Iraq could ever be Westernized, even civilized.
But apparently it is sagacious to expect that an Iraqi criminal justice system executes its convicts humanely; it is couth and cool to demand that Iraq accepts that even the death penalty is barbarism.
Oh, the tedium of it all. America is grotesque for attempting to Westernize Iraq; while America's many critics laud themselves for attempting to Westernize Iraq. Once again, I am dulled by paradox. But something an Army major told me only days ago gives me some bearing in the whirling, conflicting rhetoric tossing so many of us to and fro. I will speak of that in a moment.
It is clear that the videotape of Saddam Hussein's hanging makes many of us squirm. The cold and impersonal gallows (the very ones Hussein used to execute prisoners); the chatty guards; the informality and undignified quality of it all; all of these combined to make Western observers faint. "Death with dignity" was not merely tossed aside, it appeared to many observers that Iraqis lack such a moral category.
Ever quick with voice and pen, Western human rights groups swiftly charged that Hussein's hanging was a "war crime." Italy, no doubt influenced by the enclave of the Holy See within its borders, called such violence barbaric, a charge that might be entirely true. But what is striking is that such rhetoric comes from people dripping with Western, even Christian values. These are critics quick to proclaim Iraq a lost cause spiralling into civil, tribal war; a place where Western values cannot be imposed; a place where such values might not ever even simply evolve. And yet Iraq should be more squeamish, less violent; in short, Iraqis should behave like Parisians, Londoners, and San Franciscans.
But lost on too many is the glaring fact that Iraq elected a government, forged a constitution, constructed a judiciary, and held a lengthy trial against Mr. Hussein. True barbarism would not have tolerated this for one second; barbarians would have lopped Mr. Hussein's head -- and perhaps other extremities -- from his body within hours of his capture. Instead, Iraq showed a restraint not often seen in that country for decades; and for this they are rebuked by the morally superior consciences of Europe, Washington, Manhattan.
While enjoying a bonfire at a party two nights before Christmas, I had a conversation with an Army major who had fought in Baghdad during its liberation in 2003. When US military personnel were working security in that city, the major revealed, Iraqis would be caught attempting to steal gas.
"We would take their gas cans and punch holes all through them," the major told me. "We'd tell them that they'd all get gas and there was no need to steal, and then we'd send them on their way. The Iraqis saw us as weak for doing this; but Americans would see this as a sign of strength. But it wasn't strong to the Iraqis at all. They would respect us if we had beaten them for stealing; but then, if we did that, we'd have their respect but not the respect of the people here in the United States. So we were constantly battling between whether we wanted the Iraqis to respect us, or the Americans."
Telling stuff, indeed. What is moral to American and Western sensibilities may be seen as immoral in Iraq; our strength is to them nothing but moral weakness. Moral authority that is couched in grace is not one whit authoritative to many in the Muslim world, or so suggests my friend the major.
But what astonishes me most in all of this is how aggressively the critics of "American imperialism" attempt to export American morality. It is its own form of imperialism. Curiously, either they do not see it as such, or they do not care to see it as such.
I guess it all matters on doing whatever is opposite of George W. Bush and his minions, dunces that they are.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
But apparently it is sagacious to expect that an Iraqi criminal justice system executes its convicts humanely; it is couth and cool to demand that Iraq accepts that even the death penalty is barbarism.
Oh, the tedium of it all. America is grotesque for attempting to Westernize Iraq; while America's many critics laud themselves for attempting to Westernize Iraq. Once again, I am dulled by paradox. But something an Army major told me only days ago gives me some bearing in the whirling, conflicting rhetoric tossing so many of us to and fro. I will speak of that in a moment.
It is clear that the videotape of Saddam Hussein's hanging makes many of us squirm. The cold and impersonal gallows (the very ones Hussein used to execute prisoners); the chatty guards; the informality and undignified quality of it all; all of these combined to make Western observers faint. "Death with dignity" was not merely tossed aside, it appeared to many observers that Iraqis lack such a moral category.
Ever quick with voice and pen, Western human rights groups swiftly charged that Hussein's hanging was a "war crime." Italy, no doubt influenced by the enclave of the Holy See within its borders, called such violence barbaric, a charge that might be entirely true. But what is striking is that such rhetoric comes from people dripping with Western, even Christian values. These are critics quick to proclaim Iraq a lost cause spiralling into civil, tribal war; a place where Western values cannot be imposed; a place where such values might not ever even simply evolve. And yet Iraq should be more squeamish, less violent; in short, Iraqis should behave like Parisians, Londoners, and San Franciscans.
But lost on too many is the glaring fact that Iraq elected a government, forged a constitution, constructed a judiciary, and held a lengthy trial against Mr. Hussein. True barbarism would not have tolerated this for one second; barbarians would have lopped Mr. Hussein's head -- and perhaps other extremities -- from his body within hours of his capture. Instead, Iraq showed a restraint not often seen in that country for decades; and for this they are rebuked by the morally superior consciences of Europe, Washington, Manhattan.
While enjoying a bonfire at a party two nights before Christmas, I had a conversation with an Army major who had fought in Baghdad during its liberation in 2003. When US military personnel were working security in that city, the major revealed, Iraqis would be caught attempting to steal gas.
"We would take their gas cans and punch holes all through them," the major told me. "We'd tell them that they'd all get gas and there was no need to steal, and then we'd send them on their way. The Iraqis saw us as weak for doing this; but Americans would see this as a sign of strength. But it wasn't strong to the Iraqis at all. They would respect us if we had beaten them for stealing; but then, if we did that, we'd have their respect but not the respect of the people here in the United States. So we were constantly battling between whether we wanted the Iraqis to respect us, or the Americans."
Telling stuff, indeed. What is moral to American and Western sensibilities may be seen as immoral in Iraq; our strength is to them nothing but moral weakness. Moral authority that is couched in grace is not one whit authoritative to many in the Muslim world, or so suggests my friend the major.
But what astonishes me most in all of this is how aggressively the critics of "American imperialism" attempt to export American morality. It is its own form of imperialism. Curiously, either they do not see it as such, or they do not care to see it as such.
I guess it all matters on doing whatever is opposite of George W. Bush and his minions, dunces that they are.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Friday, January 12, 2007
2007's Early Nominee: Senator Harry Reid
Since I began this day announcing the inaugural Contratimes annual awards (I shall be naming a few 2006 winners over the following days), I can't resist nominating US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, for the 2007 Soggy Turnip for Obscene Doublespeak. Please carefully read below what Mr. Reid said yesterday from the podium on the US Senate Floor. The context for these fine remarks is President Bush's apparently new plan for the Battle for Iraq; Democratic leaders have nearly unanimously rejected the President's plan for -- among other things -- increased troop levels in Iraq, while a few Republicans have expressed their own doubts. And both Democratic majorities in Congress are discussing whether they should not fund Bush's plan altogether.
Here is Mr. Reid's amazing articulation (the full statement is printed here):
"I will not prejudice the outcome of the vote on the President's plan, but I will say this: Putting more U.S. combat forces in the middle of an Iraqi civil war is a mistake."
There are mindbogglers, and then there are true mindbogglers. Though his entire statement is a criticism of President Bush's plan, Mr. Reid is nevertheless able to convince himself that he is not attempting to prejudice his colleagues: In fantasyland, he would never think of prejudicing anyone within earshot. George Orwell could not have written a more curious few lines. Perhaps I will consider Mr. Reid for the 1984 Soggy Turnip Award in Orwell's honor.
To think, George W. Bush can mangle a word or two and still make sense, and then be derided for his imperfect oratory; while Mr. Reid can speak with perfect eloquence and yet make no sense at all. It will be a cold day in hell before the popular press takes note of Mr. Reid's nonsense.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Here is Mr. Reid's amazing articulation (the full statement is printed here):
"I will not prejudice the outcome of the vote on the President's plan, but I will say this: Putting more U.S. combat forces in the middle of an Iraqi civil war is a mistake."
There are mindbogglers, and then there are true mindbogglers. Though his entire statement is a criticism of President Bush's plan, Mr. Reid is nevertheless able to convince himself that he is not attempting to prejudice his colleagues: In fantasyland, he would never think of prejudicing anyone within earshot. George Orwell could not have written a more curious few lines. Perhaps I will consider Mr. Reid for the 1984 Soggy Turnip Award in Orwell's honor.
To think, George W. Bush can mangle a word or two and still make sense, and then be derided for his imperfect oratory; while Mr. Reid can speak with perfect eloquence and yet make no sense at all. It will be a cold day in hell before the popular press takes note of Mr. Reid's nonsense.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Winning High Honors: Let The Awards Begin #1
Today marks the inaugural Contratimes awards celebration. It will be a quirky celebration; there might be nothing at all suggestive of consistency or decorum or excellence. Perhaps the awards will even wallow in mediocrity. Maybe I will fête the fetid and turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the truly glorious. I do not know, for this is all much more whimsical than it is analytical. I choose from the gut; I intuit rather than reason my way to these finalists: my viscera is far more active here than my cerebrum. And surely my vision will be sorely limited, as I can only see so far.
Note that I shall recognize the winners over a period of days.
At the end of 2006, I heard a radio personality calling out for listeners' nominees for "Jerk of the Year" awards. I found the category thoroughly cruel. And I did not wait to hear what listeners offered as viable winners. But if I choose to ignore "Jerk of the Year" categories, can I at least have something pejorative? How about "The Most Misplaced Scoffers of the Year"? How about the "We Are So Smart We're Dumb" award for 2006? Are these too harsh?
Well, for 2006, the winners -- because we can't name just one -- of the Soggy Turnip Award for Grotesque Prejudice belongs to those folks who don't know English as well as they might claim. These folks have even managed to create a small industry around their colossal ignorance, and they are totally blind to the irony of their actions.
You see, in mid-April 2006, President George W. Bush said the following during a press conference (read CNN's aptly titled article here):
"I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense." [emphasis added]
One would think that President Bush might be derided for admitting that he hears voices. Alas, if it only were that easy. But rather than leaping on the President for his clairvoyance, critics leapt on his much greater offense: He used the word, "decider." Immediately the scoffers raised their voices, and the great thinkers among us set out to prove to the world -- once again -- that Bush was an aphasiac, anomic idiot. Bloggers' fingers were set to typing damnation with great speed; and T-Shirt makers and peddlers of bumper stickers hawked their wares: "I'm The Decider!" almost became a Democratic Party slogan. Not a few voters in this area of New Hampshire had their bumper stickers placed 'just so' in time for the November elections; and even an online linguist analyzed Mr. Bush's anomia, finding Bush's "locution" inexplicably bizarre (and the linguist never notes the following fact).
Of course, reality is glorious: "decider," in case you did not know, is a thoroughly normal English word. In fact, its first known literary usage dates back to 1593, or so reports the Oxford English Dictionary. It is not one whit aberrant, nor did President Bush use it in an odd way. I readily admit that it sounded odd, but that has everything to do with frequency rather than diction or syntax. We all hear new words every day: some are used correctly, others are not. Rarely is a word invented; and even words that are used correctly can sound strange in certain contexts. But "decider" is not even close to being anachronistic, since I can instantly find it in the 2004 dictionary installed on this fine computer.
Hence, the Soggy Turnip for Grotesque Prejudice goes to all those intellectuals out there who did not know that "decider" is as common a word as chooser, picker, and pedantic.
(For a more complete essay on my thoughts regarding sundry Bushisms, see "The Seinfeld Administration".)
Peace, somewhere, if but for a moment.
(PS. Please see the first comment in the comments thread below. Thanks. BG)
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Note that I shall recognize the winners over a period of days.
At the end of 2006, I heard a radio personality calling out for listeners' nominees for "Jerk of the Year" awards. I found the category thoroughly cruel. And I did not wait to hear what listeners offered as viable winners. But if I choose to ignore "Jerk of the Year" categories, can I at least have something pejorative? How about "The Most Misplaced Scoffers of the Year"? How about the "We Are So Smart We're Dumb" award for 2006? Are these too harsh?
Well, for 2006, the winners -- because we can't name just one -- of the Soggy Turnip Award for Grotesque Prejudice belongs to those folks who don't know English as well as they might claim. These folks have even managed to create a small industry around their colossal ignorance, and they are totally blind to the irony of their actions.
You see, in mid-April 2006, President George W. Bush said the following during a press conference (read CNN's aptly titled article here):
"I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense." [emphasis added]
One would think that President Bush might be derided for admitting that he hears voices. Alas, if it only were that easy. But rather than leaping on the President for his clairvoyance, critics leapt on his much greater offense: He used the word, "decider." Immediately the scoffers raised their voices, and the great thinkers among us set out to prove to the world -- once again -- that Bush was an aphasiac, anomic idiot. Bloggers' fingers were set to typing damnation with great speed; and T-Shirt makers and peddlers of bumper stickers hawked their wares: "I'm The Decider!" almost became a Democratic Party slogan. Not a few voters in this area of New Hampshire had their bumper stickers placed 'just so' in time for the November elections; and even an online linguist analyzed Mr. Bush's anomia, finding Bush's "locution" inexplicably bizarre (and the linguist never notes the following fact).
Of course, reality is glorious: "decider," in case you did not know, is a thoroughly normal English word. In fact, its first known literary usage dates back to 1593, or so reports the Oxford English Dictionary. It is not one whit aberrant, nor did President Bush use it in an odd way. I readily admit that it sounded odd, but that has everything to do with frequency rather than diction or syntax. We all hear new words every day: some are used correctly, others are not. Rarely is a word invented; and even words that are used correctly can sound strange in certain contexts. But "decider" is not even close to being anachronistic, since I can instantly find it in the 2004 dictionary installed on this fine computer.
Hence, the Soggy Turnip for Grotesque Prejudice goes to all those intellectuals out there who did not know that "decider" is as common a word as chooser, picker, and pedantic.
(For a more complete essay on my thoughts regarding sundry Bushisms, see "The Seinfeld Administration".)
Peace, somewhere, if but for a moment.
(PS. Please see the first comment in the comments thread below. Thanks. BG)
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Like The Earth Underfoot, Values Divide
Prologue
Episcopal priest and former US senator John Danforth (R - MO) is interviewed by Will Sullivan in this week's issue of US News & World Reports. The Q & A is tellingly titled, "The Values Divide." Indeed, they do. For Mr. Danforth strings together some of the most disheartening -- and empty -- thoughts I have seen in a long time; it is a wonder he has a book published at all (the occasion for the interview). But more importantly it is a wonder he is taken seriously as an Episcopalian, since his theology is utterly naive. And I am not suggesting a naivete reminiscent of child-like faith. I am talking naivete that is ignorant of its own heresies.
I urge readers to read the full text, which can be found at this link. It is a prerequisite for what follows.
_____________________
One could choose to address a myriad of problems -- cultural, political, philosophical and religious -- with Mr. Danforth's comments, but I shall ignore them for what I believe to be the most salient absurdity posited by Mr. Danforth. This is not a foray -- though it could be -- into the contentious and divisive 2003 election of V. Gene Robinson to shepherd the diocese of New Hampshire. That event is no doubt relevant; it is indeed the backdrop for Mr. Danforth's interview (and his book).
When asked what The Episcopal Church (TEC hereafter) should do to bring back the many (though Danforth believes it is only a few) people who have left TEC, Danforth gives us this stupifying answer:
I think to emphasize that we are traditionally a broad church and this has been our glory. I think a lot of people would say, well, the Episcopal Church is wishy-washy, that it doesn't really stand for anything. I think we stand for a lot. I think we stand for the idea that God cannot be encapsulated in our perceptions or in our views of political issues or social issues. It's saying that God is bigger than all these issues and bigger than any of our factions, and the church is big enough to include everything. [emphasis added]
Fortunately, we are spared Danforth's full list of what might be included in his generous use of the word, everything. But we know no such list is even necessary: listing everything is as futile as dividing infinity. Everything is, well, everything, and it is impossible to find any worth in adumbrating the extension of the word: The church, reflecting the glory of God's inestimable bigness, has no rooms, no partitions. It bids welcome to everyone -- and every thing -- without distinction. After all, to distinguish or define is to be small-minded, factious: If God is big enough to include everything, well, let us fall prostrate in adoration of his hospitality.
One wonders if Mr. Danforth is at all sentient of the glaring fact that he has contradicted himself. If his proposition that "God cannot be encapsulated in our perceptions" is indeed meant as something other than a mere theological jest; if it is meant as a premise to Mr. Danforth's argument, then it must be noted that Mr. Danforth has indeed encapsulated God in his perceptions. To Mr. Danforth, God is BIG, really big. So big, in fact, that we should just submit (islam?) to the overwhelming wonders of God's mighty size in blissful nonjudgmentalism.
The pantheism of Mr. Danforth's theology is utterly clear. We see without the slightest obscurity what this all means: God is everything -- at least everything wonderful (which is a vapid tautology). But we also see the inevitable inverse of all of this: If God is everything, he is nothing. It's analogous to a Christmas morning when a child looks with shock as his father announces that he has not given his child a single gift, he has instead given him everything: "My son, there is a bow and ribbon on the whole universe!" It also calls to mind the great Steven Wright quip: "I have the world's largest seashell collection -- I have it scattered all over the beaches of the world." In other words, Mr. Wright has no seashell collection; and the little boy sits Christmas morning without a single gift to open. Mr. Wright doesn't love seashells enough to collect any for his pocket; the father of the little boy does not love him enough to make a distinction between nothing and just one thing, one gift that is set apart, distinct, chosen and shaped specifically for his little child's delight on Christmas Day.
Perhaps I misread Mr. Danforth's expansive theological statement. But I don't think I do. "Everything" can fit into the church, which is exactly why the church is increasingly empty. Mr. Danforth's God is as big as Allah, as undistinct as Buddhism's nirvana, as permissive as the cult of Bacchus, and nearly as much nothing as the atheist's void. Truly we can define this apparently Episcopalian theology as universalistic and tolerant; as syncretistic and postmodern. We might even call this idea of God authentic and accessible and "inclusive." But the one thing we can't call it is Christian. To do so would be factious -- and small.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Episcopal priest and former US senator John Danforth (R - MO) is interviewed by Will Sullivan in this week's issue of US News & World Reports. The Q & A is tellingly titled, "The Values Divide." Indeed, they do. For Mr. Danforth strings together some of the most disheartening -- and empty -- thoughts I have seen in a long time; it is a wonder he has a book published at all (the occasion for the interview). But more importantly it is a wonder he is taken seriously as an Episcopalian, since his theology is utterly naive. And I am not suggesting a naivete reminiscent of child-like faith. I am talking naivete that is ignorant of its own heresies.
I urge readers to read the full text, which can be found at this link. It is a prerequisite for what follows.
_____________________
One could choose to address a myriad of problems -- cultural, political, philosophical and religious -- with Mr. Danforth's comments, but I shall ignore them for what I believe to be the most salient absurdity posited by Mr. Danforth. This is not a foray -- though it could be -- into the contentious and divisive 2003 election of V. Gene Robinson to shepherd the diocese of New Hampshire. That event is no doubt relevant; it is indeed the backdrop for Mr. Danforth's interview (and his book).
When asked what The Episcopal Church (TEC hereafter) should do to bring back the many (though Danforth believes it is only a few) people who have left TEC, Danforth gives us this stupifying answer:
I think to emphasize that we are traditionally a broad church and this has been our glory. I think a lot of people would say, well, the Episcopal Church is wishy-washy, that it doesn't really stand for anything. I think we stand for a lot. I think we stand for the idea that God cannot be encapsulated in our perceptions or in our views of political issues or social issues. It's saying that God is bigger than all these issues and bigger than any of our factions, and the church is big enough to include everything. [emphasis added]
Fortunately, we are spared Danforth's full list of what might be included in his generous use of the word, everything. But we know no such list is even necessary: listing everything is as futile as dividing infinity. Everything is, well, everything, and it is impossible to find any worth in adumbrating the extension of the word: The church, reflecting the glory of God's inestimable bigness, has no rooms, no partitions. It bids welcome to everyone -- and every thing -- without distinction. After all, to distinguish or define is to be small-minded, factious: If God is big enough to include everything, well, let us fall prostrate in adoration of his hospitality.
One wonders if Mr. Danforth is at all sentient of the glaring fact that he has contradicted himself. If his proposition that "God cannot be encapsulated in our perceptions" is indeed meant as something other than a mere theological jest; if it is meant as a premise to Mr. Danforth's argument, then it must be noted that Mr. Danforth has indeed encapsulated God in his perceptions. To Mr. Danforth, God is BIG, really big. So big, in fact, that we should just submit (islam?) to the overwhelming wonders of God's mighty size in blissful nonjudgmentalism.
The pantheism of Mr. Danforth's theology is utterly clear. We see without the slightest obscurity what this all means: God is everything -- at least everything wonderful (which is a vapid tautology). But we also see the inevitable inverse of all of this: If God is everything, he is nothing. It's analogous to a Christmas morning when a child looks with shock as his father announces that he has not given his child a single gift, he has instead given him everything: "My son, there is a bow and ribbon on the whole universe!" It also calls to mind the great Steven Wright quip: "I have the world's largest seashell collection -- I have it scattered all over the beaches of the world." In other words, Mr. Wright has no seashell collection; and the little boy sits Christmas morning without a single gift to open. Mr. Wright doesn't love seashells enough to collect any for his pocket; the father of the little boy does not love him enough to make a distinction between nothing and just one thing, one gift that is set apart, distinct, chosen and shaped specifically for his little child's delight on Christmas Day.
Perhaps I misread Mr. Danforth's expansive theological statement. But I don't think I do. "Everything" can fit into the church, which is exactly why the church is increasingly empty. Mr. Danforth's God is as big as Allah, as undistinct as Buddhism's nirvana, as permissive as the cult of Bacchus, and nearly as much nothing as the atheist's void. Truly we can define this apparently Episcopalian theology as universalistic and tolerant; as syncretistic and postmodern. We might even call this idea of God authentic and accessible and "inclusive." But the one thing we can't call it is Christian. To do so would be factious -- and small.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Episcopalianism
Friday, January 05, 2007
The Grand Vacuity
To my American readers:Have you, fellow citizen, been waiting 200 years for anything? I think not. But what about America? Has it been waiting for some incredible event for over 200 years? Apparently it has been waiting, even chafing at the bit, for one very important thing: the ascendancy of a woman to the position of Speaker of the House.
Of course, I use the word ascendancy with a wink to irony, for to be Speaker of the House may indeed be a descendancy: these allegedly lofty posts supporting the dome of human ambition may actually be dehumanizing idols that mean, ultimately, nothing. To be priest or president, king or queen, may be the least humanizing and wondrous roles on the planet. But I digress.
America yesterday apparently made history. In the United States House of Representatives, a U.S. citizen who also happens to be a woman, was given a gavel, a chair, a title, and the keys to a new house. For 2oo years America has been waiting for Nancy Pelosi to become the first woman to speak in that esteemed house -- with authority and control and dominance.
According to this morning's New York Times, Ms. Pelosi had this to say about her elevation:
“This is an historic moment ... It’s an historic moment for the Congress. It’s an historic moment for the women of America. It is a moment for which we have waited for over 200 years.” [emphasis added]
I wonder if there are any women in America who might disagree with Madame Speaker. I am sure there are not a few. It would be fun to hear from them. But one also wonders where this sudden ebullience over feminism's success comes from. Has there, for instance, been a longstanding movement afoot to have a woman Speaker of the House? And even if there was, is this really that terribly historic? We have women CEOs and women astronauts; we have women university presidents and women surgeons general; we have women attorneys general and women presidential candidates. We have had two women secretraries of state, Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice. OK. So a woman holds a gavel in a house of Congress. Should I care? Should I care as much as Representative Loretta Sanchez, D-CA, who said she voted for Ms. Pelosi “for the empowerment of all women in the world”? (Wow, Ms. Sanchez.) Even Ms. Pelosi spoke of equality with some hyperbole (as reported by the Victoria Advocate), declaring, "By electing me speaker, you have brought us closer to the ideal of equality that is America's heritage and hope. For our daughters and granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling." (Wasn't that ceiling really broken years ago?)
Specifically, should I care about all this if men and women are equal? Are they? How so? If men and women are indeed equal, then why do I care if a woman is Speaker of the House, for is not a woman speaker equal to a male speaker? Moreover, even if I accept that men have far too long forged laws which affect women -- with nary a sense of what women need or want -- how is it any historic gain whatsoever to have a woman forge laws which affect men with nary a sense of what men need or want?
Of course, I am merely having fun here poking at certain American sacred cows. I am grateful that women have found "higher" stations in life. But there is a problem intrinsic to the language we use about equality that peeves me a bit, with such peevishness described more fully in my essay on equality and the former president of Harvard, Larry Summers, posted in 2005.
Other thoughts on yesterday's historic turnings:
- The New York Times' headline today could not be more apt: Jubilant Democrats Assume Control on Capitol Hill. Emphasis, of course, on the word assume.
- Democrat Harry Reid, the new Senate majority leader, said (according to The New York Times), “Guided by the spirit of bipartisanship, Democrats are ready to take this country in a new direction.” The final roll call for the Pelosi-for-Speaker vote in the House? "233 to 202, the 31-seat margin of the new Democratic majority," or so reports the NYT. So much for bipartisan cooperation.
- Since the Democrats "assumed" control of America's destiny, one American soldier has been killed in Iraq. I shall keep count from here on in, since it is clear any death on the Democrats' watch is their fault, no? Don't hold your breath counting on these folks to resolve the Iraq conflict any time soon. They would rather raise minimum wage than lower the death count. Apparently they are concerned our soldiers are not getting paid sufficiently.
Lastly, I am reluctant to ask Mr. Reid if he believes that the "new direction" in which he plans to take America is distinguishable from the old one.
Peace.
PS. What is Ms. Pelosi doing in the photo above? What is she trying to convey, express? Just wondering.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Speaker Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, Equality
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Just Getting Old
I try to be thoughtful. Certainly there are a few of my readers who believe me to be anything but, and there is nothing I can do to prove otherwise. I haven't the energy to presume infallibility, or eternal clarity. I can only aspire, to dream, even to hope. But today is an exception, or so I sense in my gut; for my thoughts are all scattered about.
It may be very much the case that Saddam Hussein needed to die. It has been a long battle with his obdurate spirit, with his intractable ways. Lord knows that had Mr. Hussein shown a smidgen of humility, had he simply opened his country -- without games and shenanigans -- to the West for free and unfettered inspections, the Invasion of Iraq would not have ever occurred. Lord knows that there were countless murders under his regime: he even committed murder in the street when he was young, well before he came to power. He murdered members of his own family though he had promised them no harm. He was anything but charming.
Considering all that (and there is much more to consider), it nonetheless comes as a shock to wake up to news that Mr. Hussein is dead; that he has been hanged during the Muslim call to morning prayer.
Surely my sentiments are born out of my being too Western, or too effeminate, or too squeamish for such news. Surely I am too weak, too soft and pampered, to accept this sad tale. But the fact is that I do accept it. I just don't do so with any sort of elation or any sort of repose. This news comes as a harsh fact. It comes as a sort of spiritual blunt trauma to the soul. One is not to rejoice at the death of one's enemies.
Some of you may recall my argument against the death penalty (at least as it would be enforced in the United States). Some of you may also recall my reaction to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Today, in the quiet of this morning, I am reminded of those somber thoughts. And I am also reminded of what an emergency room doctor said to me when I had an ankle injury (peroneal subluxation) she was misdiagnosing right before my eyes. She told me: "No, no, no. There's no tendon there. You're just getting old."
She was wrong about the tendon.
Peace, somewhere, for but an hour.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
It may be very much the case that Saddam Hussein needed to die. It has been a long battle with his obdurate spirit, with his intractable ways. Lord knows that had Mr. Hussein shown a smidgen of humility, had he simply opened his country -- without games and shenanigans -- to the West for free and unfettered inspections, the Invasion of Iraq would not have ever occurred. Lord knows that there were countless murders under his regime: he even committed murder in the street when he was young, well before he came to power. He murdered members of his own family though he had promised them no harm. He was anything but charming.
Considering all that (and there is much more to consider), it nonetheless comes as a shock to wake up to news that Mr. Hussein is dead; that he has been hanged during the Muslim call to morning prayer.
Surely my sentiments are born out of my being too Western, or too effeminate, or too squeamish for such news. Surely I am too weak, too soft and pampered, to accept this sad tale. But the fact is that I do accept it. I just don't do so with any sort of elation or any sort of repose. This news comes as a harsh fact. It comes as a sort of spiritual blunt trauma to the soul. One is not to rejoice at the death of one's enemies.
Some of you may recall my argument against the death penalty (at least as it would be enforced in the United States). Some of you may also recall my reaction to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Today, in the quiet of this morning, I am reminded of those somber thoughts. And I am also reminded of what an emergency room doctor said to me when I had an ankle injury (peroneal subluxation) she was misdiagnosing right before my eyes. She told me: "No, no, no. There's no tendon there. You're just getting old."
She was wrong about the tendon.
Peace, somewhere, for but an hour.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Waning Towards Waxing
I must take a brief break from my hiatus to bid you all well. Have a wonderful New Year's celebration. I pray that this coming year is the best year of your life. May life vastly exceed your wildest expectations.
And may there be everywhere more joy, peace, and love, and less striving for the meaningless, the vain, the empty. May this approaching year be the Year of Grace, of Kindness, of the Willing Spirit, of the Open Hand.
Blessings all!
BG
And may there be everywhere more joy, peace, and love, and less striving for the meaningless, the vain, the empty. May this approaching year be the Year of Grace, of Kindness, of the Willing Spirit, of the Open Hand.
Blessings all!
BG
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
I bid you each and all a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah. May you find holiness, joy and peace; may you see signs and wonders. May this season touch you deeply; and may you touch the mysteries such a season portends. For me, this is all about rebirth, the promise of redemption. I feel an acute need for both.
I am off for a while, perhaps a long while. We shall see.
Happy New Year!
Bill Gnade
I am off for a while, perhaps a long while. We shall see.
Happy New Year!
Bill Gnade
Monday, December 18, 2006
It's Time To Fix Its
Sometimes little things like this just KILL me. I mean, it sat there for over 24 hours, all wrong and misshapen, and it was just so obvious. I am talking about my headline for Sunday's post: TIME Is It's Own Award. How could I not see that glaring absurdity floating between the t and s in Its? It amazes me how easily some things just elude detection.
Oiks.
Oiks.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
TIME Is Its Own Award: The Beast Is Honored
As you must know by now, TIME magazine has bestowed upon the masses the rather confusing appellation, Person of the Year. Of course, the editors of that fine journal understand their use of the language better than most of us: When they declare YOU, meaning, well, YOU, to be Person of the Year, and yet they mean US, which means, you and me and everyone else who use this medium, then their equivocal language begins to make sense: the Person of the Year is really the Persons of the Year.And yet this is not really true at all; it is not one whit accurate. TIME is not lauding persons; it is not a person or persons who are feted by TIME's inestimable annual award. If TIME is praising or noting anything, if TIME is praising a force or phenomenon or movement or revolution of information, it is really praising personae, or personas. For the WWW is not filled with people (this is hardly a cybernation of real folks). Rather, the WWW is the cult of personaes. How many bloggers (of the millions), for instance, are known by name, by address? Who are the millions of people behind the screen personae we see everyday? TIME would have been nearly as astute in bestowing such great notoriety, even honor, on mere ANONYMITY, for the ANONYMOUS run rampant through this medium. My guess is that among those who are contributors to the "information age", or information deluge, there are far more unknown contributors than known. Only a few of us post our real names, and share images of ourselves, in clear and honest admission: we are not personae, but persons to the fullest extent this medium permits. And yet, though I end nearly every essay posted here with my name, my REAL name, I find that others refer to me as "Contratimes," though I do not refer to myself this way at all. And though I usually paste my initials or name in every comment I leave elsewhere, people seem to miss the self-identification: they refer to the name of my website as if I am the name of a place, or a position.
WHAT TIME HAS REALLY HONORED
But I am not sure that TIME is even noting the unknown users and contributors of the great global gateway. I believe that TIME is actually recognizing the gateway, the web or net or digital neighborhood or whatever it is called, as the Person of the Year. It is the WWW that TIME is honoring, is recognizing. We, mere contributors and consumers, are like the dust of Eden gathered together in so many small bits and bytes; we are giving shape to Adam, to Eve, while TIME, and others, are just trying to breath life into the great PERSON we are all creating: the great IDEA, the great SYNTHESIS and SYNCRETISM; the great nearly all-knowing machine called the Internet. The great BRAIN, the great whistleblower, police officer, guardian angel; even the great provider -- of goods and services and even love and meaning and affirmation and purpose -- that will finally unite us all as family, friends, brothers and sisters. Perhaps someday soon this whole thing will just run itself, and run us. And why not? IT knows our favorite books, our favorite movies. IT knows where we like to shop, what clothes we like to wear, what music we listen to. IT knows which men prefer brunettes, which women prefer Brad Pitt. IT knows who is a Republican, a Liberal, or a defender of the Labor Party. IT knows my religion, and IT even knows why I accept that religion. IT knows your status, your socio-economic standing; IT knows what you can contribute. And IT need not really know who YOU are: IT just needs to feed your IP address -- like any good parent -- with a cookie or two. To IT, you just need to be a number, and IT will take care of the rest. Just type in your prayer, and the answer will appear on your screen or land outside your door in a day or two (assuming you choose Next Day delivery).
Perhaps the single best proof of all of this is to be found in the picture of TIME editor Rick Stengel holding a copy of TIME's "Person of the Year" issue. One look shows something shocking: Stengel's own picture appears on the cover. Has TIME then bestowed the "Person of the Year" honors on itself? It seems so. But does this not suggest that TIME has actually anthropomorphized the Internet: that the Internet is US, is YOU, is all our faces and personaes and fragmented selves wrapped into ONE, one big YOU?
And then, of course, there is this story from TIME, "The Beast With A Billion Eyes: On the Web, anyone with a digital camera has the power to change history." It is this Beast that is referred to as the "Person of the Year" as shown in these two screen captures from TIME's website:
This is TIME's Person of the Year, a thing that is not really a person at all.
(And soon academics will gather to debate what "person" even means.)
Peace to you all, lauded members of the Thing of the Year.
PS. (added 12.18.06): Please note that TIME's cover is a mylar mirror: the idea is that you will see yourself in reflection. Of course, please note too that the mirror is a computer screen. In other words, you will find yourself look at yourself through a machine (which should give the philosophical idealists much to applaud. Go, Fichte! Go, Schelling!) It's all about creating a giant, thinking, feeling Machine -- in your image!!
Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: TIME, Person of the Year, Internet, Blogging, The Beast, The Mark of the Beast, Thing of the Year
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Take A Bow, I Guess
I have no idea what I am going to wear to the awards ceremony. Probably exactly what I am wearing now.
(And when I take my bow, I promise not to bang my head on this keyboard -- cna;kjheylwyru[893u -- Ouch! Like that.)
Peace.
BG
A Shot To The Heart
I may be mistaken, though it is not really the sort of thing that makes me care much for accuracy anyway. But I believe suicide has come close to my household in each of the past four Decembers. And then there was the accidental suicide two years ago on Thanksgiving.
I have written about last December's suicide in three Contratimes' essays, "When The Phone Rings Late At Night," "In Memoriam," and, "Staggering Still." That story remains a difficult one for me; there has not been even a few hours in which I have not thought of my college friend, M.
Yesterday, I attended the funeral service for a local friend, another man named M. This man was not a close friend; he was just a friend and a good guy, someone I liked, someone who laughed with me when we bumped into each other at the store, or when we discussed our various hikes or experiences in the wild. We had met when I was 14 and he 20, some 31 years ago. We had more than a few things in common that had to do with the outdoors, but there were others: I had been friends with his ex-wife, and friends with some of his friends; his sister is one of my neighbors. And we had gone to the same high school though he, 6 years my senior, graduated with my sister (now deceased) when I was in junior high.
On Tuesday, M.'s elderly mother died at a nearby nursing home. She had been a loving and lovely woman, mother, grandmother. She had cared for her five children in some of life's most difficult circumstances. And she was adored by all. But her death struck her one son particularly hard: by the end of the day M. would also be dead, his body found in his mother's empty house a couple of miles from where his mom had died, mere hours separating their times of death.
Last year, I grieved a man who died in Colorado. The year before I grieved for Timmy, an old schoolmate, whose alcoholism the two of us often battled together, with me praying for him with all due fervor. He even spent Christmas week seeking sobriety in my house one year, with me and my family making room for him, trying to deny him his love of big bottles of rum. And the year before Timmy died, I grieved my cousin Tom, who hung himself in a bathtub in some Florida apartment while visiting friends. Tom had recently come to New Hampshire to rekindle relations with my mother; the two were thrilled to renew acquaintances after too many years of sorrows and great distance; my mother giddy that someone on her side of the family would want to get close in her waning years. Little did she know how cruelly Tom's heart was tormented. And then there was little, sweet Roland, a learning disabled boy and my nephew's best friend, who accidently drank himself to death during Thanksgiving week two (or was it three?) years ago.
But yesterday's sorrow was not really mine. M. and I were just close enough to like each other, to share those kinds of moments when you wonder aloud why you aren't closer friends. But the tragedy of his death will reach deep, very deep, into the hearts of those he left behind: siblings, nephews, nieces, childhood pals. I cannot know their grief; I cannot really carry it. I can only know my own sorrow at not being able to help those who so carefully conceal their need for help. I can only know my own anger and sorrow in the wake of deaths that have struck closer to my heart than M.'s did yesterday, or today, or even tomorrow. I can only know the emptiness I feel, hiking in the same great woods M. hiked, wandering about in silence, outside in the cold distance, hearing a single report to the heart.
In the autumn of 1978, during the first half of my senior year in high school, I would sit next to a quiet boy named Russell Holt. We were in Contemporary Issues together; he was bright as a star, a stand-out cross-country runner, a kid with long and somewhat greasy hair; he was gentle as a lamb. How could I have ever known that one particular morning would be our last together in our seats in Room 115B? How could I know that he would put a shotgun in his mouth when he got off the late bus that day, having just finished cross-country practice with Mr. Ladue? How could I know that every vestige of memory of me - and all his more popular classmates - would be splashed all over the walls of his family's kitchen wall?
Russell Holt's death shook me to the core, and it all called me toward Christ. My conversion began with a desire to be open to all the horrors and sorrows of the human heart; I did not want to be blind to whatever it was I hadn't seen in Russell Holt as his leg jiggled alongside mine in Contemporary Issues. I wanted to see, to be present: I wanted to believe that there was hope, redemption, joy, and a peace that could heal. That could comfort and console. And I wanted, in accepting Christianity, to embrace a love that could see beyond the end of my own self-absorption; I wanted to notice the forgotten, the forsaken, the overlooked; I wanted Russell Holt to know that I cared, that I was glad that he was alive.
Now, nearly 30 years later, I know that I still can't see even beyond the end of my nose. In fact, it is getting harder to see at all. How I wish this were not so! How my heart breaks over all the noise I've allowed to drown out so many calls for help -- even the one call for help -- I may have heard had I just quieted my mind and my soul. And yet (!), I know how fearful it can be to hear such cries, to be open to the scream: griefs and sorrows can overwhelm us, can reveal to us our weaknesses, often weakening our ability to keep the flame of our good intent burning at all. We often flee such sorrows because we believe they will indeed consume us; will indeed suck the life and marrow out of our own being, leaving us too weak to live our own dreams or to love our own sons and daughters. My heart wants to be bold but not too bold; I want to hear, but not too much: I want to fight fires, but only the safe fires; I want to climb mountains, but only the lower ones; I want to sow love, but only when it is lovely.
The heart is a difficult place to find one's hope, one's joy. It is a hard place to find a foothold. Perhaps that is why I am so eager to fill my day with distractions and sundry trivialities: books, bargains, baseball, beer, and the other banalities of the day. I am afraid to really be what I am called to be; I am afraid of what is true about the nature of even my own need: that I cannot avoid the fact that I am a person very much in need of grace, forgiveness, redemption, and a hope that is not some cheap illusion.
The Physician did not come to heal the healthy, but the sick. And He does not heal the wallet, or the ego; He does not heal with accolades and honors, with awards and Christmas bonuses, with publishing deals or tax write-offs or hot babes or hot sex or cold beer in fast cars or Botox or breast implants or a new kitchen or a well-lauded poem or an iconoclastic rock song or a five-star meal or a bigger church or a bulging credit line or a new gun or a better wife. His healing begins with a broken God nailed to a cross.
The next step is for me to let go of the hammer, to let fall the nails.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
I have written about last December's suicide in three Contratimes' essays, "When The Phone Rings Late At Night," "In Memoriam," and, "Staggering Still." That story remains a difficult one for me; there has not been even a few hours in which I have not thought of my college friend, M.
Yesterday, I attended the funeral service for a local friend, another man named M. This man was not a close friend; he was just a friend and a good guy, someone I liked, someone who laughed with me when we bumped into each other at the store, or when we discussed our various hikes or experiences in the wild. We had met when I was 14 and he 20, some 31 years ago. We had more than a few things in common that had to do with the outdoors, but there were others: I had been friends with his ex-wife, and friends with some of his friends; his sister is one of my neighbors. And we had gone to the same high school though he, 6 years my senior, graduated with my sister (now deceased) when I was in junior high.
On Tuesday, M.'s elderly mother died at a nearby nursing home. She had been a loving and lovely woman, mother, grandmother. She had cared for her five children in some of life's most difficult circumstances. And she was adored by all. But her death struck her one son particularly hard: by the end of the day M. would also be dead, his body found in his mother's empty house a couple of miles from where his mom had died, mere hours separating their times of death.
Last year, I grieved a man who died in Colorado. The year before I grieved for Timmy, an old schoolmate, whose alcoholism the two of us often battled together, with me praying for him with all due fervor. He even spent Christmas week seeking sobriety in my house one year, with me and my family making room for him, trying to deny him his love of big bottles of rum. And the year before Timmy died, I grieved my cousin Tom, who hung himself in a bathtub in some Florida apartment while visiting friends. Tom had recently come to New Hampshire to rekindle relations with my mother; the two were thrilled to renew acquaintances after too many years of sorrows and great distance; my mother giddy that someone on her side of the family would want to get close in her waning years. Little did she know how cruelly Tom's heart was tormented. And then there was little, sweet Roland, a learning disabled boy and my nephew's best friend, who accidently drank himself to death during Thanksgiving week two (or was it three?) years ago.
But yesterday's sorrow was not really mine. M. and I were just close enough to like each other, to share those kinds of moments when you wonder aloud why you aren't closer friends. But the tragedy of his death will reach deep, very deep, into the hearts of those he left behind: siblings, nephews, nieces, childhood pals. I cannot know their grief; I cannot really carry it. I can only know my own sorrow at not being able to help those who so carefully conceal their need for help. I can only know my own anger and sorrow in the wake of deaths that have struck closer to my heart than M.'s did yesterday, or today, or even tomorrow. I can only know the emptiness I feel, hiking in the same great woods M. hiked, wandering about in silence, outside in the cold distance, hearing a single report to the heart.
In the autumn of 1978, during the first half of my senior year in high school, I would sit next to a quiet boy named Russell Holt. We were in Contemporary Issues together; he was bright as a star, a stand-out cross-country runner, a kid with long and somewhat greasy hair; he was gentle as a lamb. How could I have ever known that one particular morning would be our last together in our seats in Room 115B? How could I know that he would put a shotgun in his mouth when he got off the late bus that day, having just finished cross-country practice with Mr. Ladue? How could I know that every vestige of memory of me - and all his more popular classmates - would be splashed all over the walls of his family's kitchen wall?
Russell Holt's death shook me to the core, and it all called me toward Christ. My conversion began with a desire to be open to all the horrors and sorrows of the human heart; I did not want to be blind to whatever it was I hadn't seen in Russell Holt as his leg jiggled alongside mine in Contemporary Issues. I wanted to see, to be present: I wanted to believe that there was hope, redemption, joy, and a peace that could heal. That could comfort and console. And I wanted, in accepting Christianity, to embrace a love that could see beyond the end of my own self-absorption; I wanted to notice the forgotten, the forsaken, the overlooked; I wanted Russell Holt to know that I cared, that I was glad that he was alive.
Now, nearly 30 years later, I know that I still can't see even beyond the end of my nose. In fact, it is getting harder to see at all. How I wish this were not so! How my heart breaks over all the noise I've allowed to drown out so many calls for help -- even the one call for help -- I may have heard had I just quieted my mind and my soul. And yet (!), I know how fearful it can be to hear such cries, to be open to the scream: griefs and sorrows can overwhelm us, can reveal to us our weaknesses, often weakening our ability to keep the flame of our good intent burning at all. We often flee such sorrows because we believe they will indeed consume us; will indeed suck the life and marrow out of our own being, leaving us too weak to live our own dreams or to love our own sons and daughters. My heart wants to be bold but not too bold; I want to hear, but not too much: I want to fight fires, but only the safe fires; I want to climb mountains, but only the lower ones; I want to sow love, but only when it is lovely.
The heart is a difficult place to find one's hope, one's joy. It is a hard place to find a foothold. Perhaps that is why I am so eager to fill my day with distractions and sundry trivialities: books, bargains, baseball, beer, and the other banalities of the day. I am afraid to really be what I am called to be; I am afraid of what is true about the nature of even my own need: that I cannot avoid the fact that I am a person very much in need of grace, forgiveness, redemption, and a hope that is not some cheap illusion.
The Physician did not come to heal the healthy, but the sick. And He does not heal the wallet, or the ego; He does not heal with accolades and honors, with awards and Christmas bonuses, with publishing deals or tax write-offs or hot babes or hot sex or cold beer in fast cars or Botox or breast implants or a new kitchen or a well-lauded poem or an iconoclastic rock song or a five-star meal or a bigger church or a bulging credit line or a new gun or a better wife. His healing begins with a broken God nailed to a cross.
The next step is for me to let go of the hammer, to let fall the nails.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Blazing To The Top Of The Charts
Just a hasty observation, but if I was, let's say, Hillary Clinton, I would be delighted with the early excitement over Senator Barack Obama. In fact, I would be fueling it at every turn. I would even attempt to move the media towards Mr. Obama. Why? Because I would want Mr. Obama to peak too early. And it is, quite likely, exactly what he is going to do. People in New Hampshire gathered on Sunday to see the man, to touch the hem of his garment; and I mean people gathered by the thousands. Over 100 reporters captured his every move and jotted down his every word. And all this -- all this money and hoopla and passion -- for a man who has not even announced he is running for president. The only other phenomenon in New Hampshire's primary history that closely resembles the Obama-Nation† was when John F. Kennedy announced his candidacy for president while standing on Main Street in Nashua.
And all this for a man who is, to be honest, utterly unseasoned, with nary a stitch of experience. That some critics of George W. Bush like to point out that he himself was hardly a fireball of political activity prior to his 2ooo run miss several points, the most salient of which is that many Republicans were utterly aware of Bush's lack of experience. In New Hampshire, at least, George W. Bush was hardly a Republican favorite. But at least Bush had some experience simply by being a President's son. I might have this wrong, but George W. actually worked in nearly every office of the White House during the Reagan-Bush years. This qualifies for something, though it does not entitle any man to have the Oval Office.
But I will not detract from Mr. Obama's popularity by suggesting he is too inexperienced. I will merely point out that those who also seek the office can only be encouraged that Mr. Obama is peaking early.
Or so they hope.
THE CULT OF PERSONALITY
I think it is important to note how many folks are indeed already committed to voting for Mr. Obama should he run. How can this be? He is hardly known, he is hardly seasoned in the public eye. On what are his enthusiasts basing their enthusiasm? I have already heard much about his charm and charisma. Is that it? I have heard Harold Ford Jr. describe Mr. Obama as brilliant. But is that all? And I know Mr. Obama has written a couple of books. But is that enough? Is this, at least right now, merely the cult of personality, the adoration of persona? Surely it is not the cult of substance, or the cult of strong political record, right? It is something other than these things. Is it more hosanna politics?
I wonder.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
†I note the word the term Obama-Nation for a host of reasons. Obviously, no supporter of Mr. Obama could ever refer to his followers as Obama-Nation, largely for its homophonic cousin, abomination. Moreover, yesterday I saw the word "obamanible," penned by an Obama defender upset by criticisms over Mr. Obama's middle name (which is Hussein). But Mr. Obama's name will no doubt lend itself to all sorts of wild headlines in the Daily News or New York Post: "Barack Star!" "Running Out Of Money: Barack's B-roke!" "Obama's Meandering State of the Union Speech: Barack's Baroque!" "Southern Vote is Clear: A'bama Says No To Obama!" "Barack Urges Kids: Obey Ma!" OK. These are foolish and, I dare say, unfortunate. But the reality is not to be denied: Headline writers are going to have a field day. "O-BAM!- A: Barack smashes O'Reilly's fastball in Factor interview."
Technorati tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, New Hampshire, Cult of Personality
And all this for a man who is, to be honest, utterly unseasoned, with nary a stitch of experience. That some critics of George W. Bush like to point out that he himself was hardly a fireball of political activity prior to his 2ooo run miss several points, the most salient of which is that many Republicans were utterly aware of Bush's lack of experience. In New Hampshire, at least, George W. Bush was hardly a Republican favorite. But at least Bush had some experience simply by being a President's son. I might have this wrong, but George W. actually worked in nearly every office of the White House during the Reagan-Bush years. This qualifies for something, though it does not entitle any man to have the Oval Office.
But I will not detract from Mr. Obama's popularity by suggesting he is too inexperienced. I will merely point out that those who also seek the office can only be encouraged that Mr. Obama is peaking early.
Or so they hope.
THE CULT OF PERSONALITY
I think it is important to note how many folks are indeed already committed to voting for Mr. Obama should he run. How can this be? He is hardly known, he is hardly seasoned in the public eye. On what are his enthusiasts basing their enthusiasm? I have already heard much about his charm and charisma. Is that it? I have heard Harold Ford Jr. describe Mr. Obama as brilliant. But is that all? And I know Mr. Obama has written a couple of books. But is that enough? Is this, at least right now, merely the cult of personality, the adoration of persona? Surely it is not the cult of substance, or the cult of strong political record, right? It is something other than these things. Is it more hosanna politics?
I wonder.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
†I note the word the term Obama-Nation for a host of reasons. Obviously, no supporter of Mr. Obama could ever refer to his followers as Obama-Nation, largely for its homophonic cousin, abomination. Moreover, yesterday I saw the word "obamanible," penned by an Obama defender upset by criticisms over Mr. Obama's middle name (which is Hussein). But Mr. Obama's name will no doubt lend itself to all sorts of wild headlines in the Daily News or New York Post: "Barack Star!" "Running Out Of Money: Barack's B-roke!" "Obama's Meandering State of the Union Speech: Barack's Baroque!" "Southern Vote is Clear: A'bama Says No To Obama!" "Barack Urges Kids: Obey Ma!" OK. These are foolish and, I dare say, unfortunate. But the reality is not to be denied: Headline writers are going to have a field day. "O-BAM!- A: Barack smashes O'Reilly's fastball in Factor interview."
Technorati tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, New Hampshire, Cult of Personality
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Call Me An Ismist
In several recent emails I have received, and in one particular on-line discussion, it has been suggested that my use of words like 'liberals', 'conservatives', 'progressives', and even 'atheists' (in another discussion), is too vague, too broad, even too mindnumbing. Not a few writers might further suggest that such words are without meaning. One writer might even liken such terms to bombs, to mere invective.
Because of the apparent need for clarity (though only partially), and even more because of the apparent insensitivity such terms suggest (being so much meanness), I am proposing a halt here at Contratimes in the use of any descriptive that applies to a person or persons. For instead of using the word 'liberals' to denote a particular set of people known to embrace a particular set of ideas and values, I am going to use the word 'liberalism.' Similarly, I shall say 'conservativism' instead of 'conservatives.' And instead of the shocking use of the word 'atheists', I shall refer to mere atheism. In other words, I will try to refer to sets of ideas; I shall label groups of thoughts, and not groups of people.
Of course, I am sure there are a few ever-vigilant souls who will rise up to protect, in a very abstract way, the much maligned and abused bundles of ideas I shall lasso with certain suffixes. No doubt 'isms' will become as malignant as '-ists' or its equivalent.
How this will play out, well, I have no idea. It will all be a difficult adjustment to make. 'Right-wingers' will become 'Right-wingism', and 'Nut-job' -- a word I've never penned here -- will have to become 'Nut-jobism'. 'Anarchists' will become 'anarchism', or, perhaps, the more awkward, 'anarchistsism.' And 'Maureen Dowdists' will have to become the more complete and kind, 'Dowdowism.'
But I have no doubt that I will eventually figure this all out. Whether my efforts will reward any of us with more clarity or more kindness is probably rather doubtful. But I will try to be less sweeping in my language; though, of course, there are some of you who don't find me sweeping enough.
How to please everybody? The answer to that question can only be found, I am certain, in the answer to a different question: How do you please anybody? If I can answer that then, well, I am on my way.
Peace, this day and always.
BG
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
PS.To slake your thirst with some real bombast, read this scathing correspondence by the First Lady of Political Polemicism.
PPS. I note that 'Ismist' is associated with some sort of Burning Man festival event in 2000; I further note that it has something to do with quasi-underground music. I use the word freely, without association to anyone else. My Google search for the term may show that others have used it first, but I claim it here, for myself, with no reference to anything to do with a dead lake or a little known musical revolution.
Because of the apparent need for clarity (though only partially), and even more because of the apparent insensitivity such terms suggest (being so much meanness), I am proposing a halt here at Contratimes in the use of any descriptive that applies to a person or persons. For instead of using the word 'liberals' to denote a particular set of people known to embrace a particular set of ideas and values, I am going to use the word 'liberalism.' Similarly, I shall say 'conservativism' instead of 'conservatives.' And instead of the shocking use of the word 'atheists', I shall refer to mere atheism. In other words, I will try to refer to sets of ideas; I shall label groups of thoughts, and not groups of people.
Of course, I am sure there are a few ever-vigilant souls who will rise up to protect, in a very abstract way, the much maligned and abused bundles of ideas I shall lasso with certain suffixes. No doubt 'isms' will become as malignant as '-ists' or its equivalent.
How this will play out, well, I have no idea. It will all be a difficult adjustment to make. 'Right-wingers' will become 'Right-wingism', and 'Nut-job' -- a word I've never penned here -- will have to become 'Nut-jobism'. 'Anarchists' will become 'anarchism', or, perhaps, the more awkward, 'anarchistsism.' And 'Maureen Dowdists' will have to become the more complete and kind, 'Dowdowism.'
But I have no doubt that I will eventually figure this all out. Whether my efforts will reward any of us with more clarity or more kindness is probably rather doubtful. But I will try to be less sweeping in my language; though, of course, there are some of you who don't find me sweeping enough.
How to please everybody? The answer to that question can only be found, I am certain, in the answer to a different question: How do you please anybody? If I can answer that then, well, I am on my way.
Peace, this day and always.
BG
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
PS.To slake your thirst with some real bombast, read this scathing correspondence by the First Lady of Political Polemicism.
PPS. I note that 'Ismist' is associated with some sort of Burning Man festival event in 2000; I further note that it has something to do with quasi-underground music. I use the word freely, without association to anyone else. My Google search for the term may show that others have used it first, but I claim it here, for myself, with no reference to anything to do with a dead lake or a little known musical revolution.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Oiling The Palms
A few posts back I mentioned that Hugo Chavez, the incomparable president of Venezuela, had not only called the President of the United States the devil from the podium at the UN, he also called for the death penalty for the Chief Executive. It would be hilarious if it were not so intrinsically evil. I mean, last year we all heard great remonstrances against a TV evangelist who encouraged the assassination of Mr. Chavez. But judging by the way the media responded to Mr. Pat Robertson, one would have thought that Robertson, a mere leader in the evangelical church, had issued an astringent fatwa on Latin American decency. The relative silence in the major media in the wake of Mr. Chavez' many rhetorical offenses is disconcerting; for here is a man - aiming to succeed Fidel Castro among Latin American leaders - who denounces America at nearly every turn; a man who controls not merely a church but instead vast oil reserves. Robertson, by and large, is taken seriously; his rhetoric is declared dangerous to American security and interests. But Mr. Chavez' obscenities? Dismissed as the utterances of a whacko.
Mr. Chavez, as you know, is offering the neediest Americans home heating oil at massive discounts through Venezuela's CITGO. Such beneficence is an apparent attempt to free some of us from President Bush's alleged tyranny and oppression.
What startles me the most is that a former US congressman -- and yes, a Kennedy -- is leading the way in New England for Mr. Chavez' program. Massachusetts Democrat Joseph Kennedy, who is running TV commercials promoting his similar beneficence, is helping Americans by distributing discounted oil that belongs to a rather poor Venezuelan citizenry. This oil, as you know, is not Hugo Chavez'. It is the Venezuelans'. And yet Mr. Kennedy is willing to take it for his Citizens Energy Corporation, at significant savings, to add to his list of good deeds.
But you should read all of the Wall Street Journal op-ed about the affair posted at this link. It is quite revealing.
And now a little note about the commercial mentioned. I cannot help but laugh at the video of an allegedly 84-year-old woman yanking a bed frame into her kitchen so she could sleep near her kitchen stove. Such a fact is not at all funny: there is tragedy, sorrow, and tremendous need in many American homes. But what is amazing is that the film crew is making this woman drag her bed across her floor -- again!? -- in an apparent reenactment. Can you imagine? What the hell were they thinking as they shot this, and what is Mr. Kennedy thinking using this as a promo? My laughter is not born out of insensitivity. Just the opposite. I laugh with incredulity, at the absurdity of it.
It all borders on the surreal. Unfortunately, this is all too real.
(Recent reports, by the way, show that the Citizens Energy Corporation is filling homeowners' fuel tanks with Number 2 snake oil.)
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Joseph Kennedy, CITGO, Chavez, Pat Robertson
Mr. Chavez, as you know, is offering the neediest Americans home heating oil at massive discounts through Venezuela's CITGO. Such beneficence is an apparent attempt to free some of us from President Bush's alleged tyranny and oppression.
What startles me the most is that a former US congressman -- and yes, a Kennedy -- is leading the way in New England for Mr. Chavez' program. Massachusetts Democrat Joseph Kennedy, who is running TV commercials promoting his similar beneficence, is helping Americans by distributing discounted oil that belongs to a rather poor Venezuelan citizenry. This oil, as you know, is not Hugo Chavez'. It is the Venezuelans'. And yet Mr. Kennedy is willing to take it for his Citizens Energy Corporation, at significant savings, to add to his list of good deeds.
But you should read all of the Wall Street Journal op-ed about the affair posted at this link. It is quite revealing.
And now a little note about the commercial mentioned. I cannot help but laugh at the video of an allegedly 84-year-old woman yanking a bed frame into her kitchen so she could sleep near her kitchen stove. Such a fact is not at all funny: there is tragedy, sorrow, and tremendous need in many American homes. But what is amazing is that the film crew is making this woman drag her bed across her floor -- again!? -- in an apparent reenactment. Can you imagine? What the hell were they thinking as they shot this, and what is Mr. Kennedy thinking using this as a promo? My laughter is not born out of insensitivity. Just the opposite. I laugh with incredulity, at the absurdity of it.
It all borders on the surreal. Unfortunately, this is all too real.
(Recent reports, by the way, show that the Citizens Energy Corporation is filling homeowners' fuel tanks with Number 2 snake oil.)
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Joseph Kennedy, CITGO, Chavez, Pat Robertson
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
"Don't Eat The Meat": Passing Gas At The Butcher's
In a casual on-line conversation this past week, I made mention of the Biblical prophecy that proclaims -- in the end times -- that eating meat will be forbidden. There was a small scrum over this, with one writer doubting that the world could ever become -- by law -- a strictly vegetarian planet. Of course, none of us in our conversation were talking much about the end of the world; nor was I hurling Biblical verses about with attendant claps of thunder.
But I just picked this off of the FoxNews website. It is, at least apparently, rooted in some fact, namely a United Nations report. Moreover, I have seen a few other news reports over the last few days discussing the same matter. And the matter is hardly new. I mean, even Canada's legendary singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn referred to the cattle industry as the harvesting of "methane dispensers" in a song, If A Tree Falls, nearly 20 years ago. But this news clip is so gloriously interesting I can barely contain myself.
Read the brief report for yourself:
But I just picked this off of the FoxNews website. It is, at least apparently, rooted in some fact, namely a United Nations report. Moreover, I have seen a few other news reports over the last few days discussing the same matter. And the matter is hardly new. I mean, even Canada's legendary singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn referred to the cattle industry as the harvesting of "methane dispensers" in a song, If A Tree Falls, nearly 20 years ago. But this news clip is so gloriously interesting I can barely contain myself.
Read the brief report for yourself:
Livestock Worse Than Humanity?
A report by the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization says cattle and other livestock cause more greenhouse gases than cars, planes, and all other forms of transportation put together. Britain's Independent News says the report blames cow flatulence and manure for one-third of all methane emissions — which warm the earth 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.
The world's 1.5 billion cows are also blamed for everything from acid rain to desertification and the destruction of coral reefs. And while cows are taking the heat in one U.N. report, another says humans are doing less harm to the environment than previously thought. The Sunday Telegraph says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reduced its estimate of human affect on global warming by 25 percent. And it has lowered its prediction of how much sea levels will rise by half. The Panel cites improved data for the revisions.
So much for hamburgers, bacon, leg of lamb. We're talking about a world where mint jelly is all that's left on one's dinner plate (assuming, of course, that there were no insects involved in the process).
As one restaurateur said to me, her face turned up in a sneer when I asked her for some honey, "Der! Bees aren't vegan!"
Please, pass the methane dispenser before it is all gone.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Ideas About Ideologues
I know more than a few people who often dismiss certain folks as "ideologues." It is almost said reflexively. At times it seems a curious habit. The disparagement is always done with great facility and, perhaps, felicity. And I never quite understand it. Definitions in some of the older dictionaries I own show that, first and foremost, an ideologue is an expert in ideology, which is defined as "the body of doctrine, myth, symbol, etc., of a social movement, institution, class, or large group." The secondary meaning is that of a person who deals with systems of ideas. And the tertiary meaning describes a person "who advocates a particular ideology." (The Random House College Dictionary, 1975).
Curiously, more recent definitions are rather blunt. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary is utterly matter of fact:
ideologue (noun): An advocate of a particular ideology, especially an official exponent of that ideology
And the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary gives us this definition for ideologue:
1 : an impractical idealist : THEORIST
2 : an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology
It is interesting to note how unnuanced these online definitions prove themselves to be. I wonder if this is the trend in computer age diction, where words become more rigid, lacking subtlety, posited in all their raw black-and-white glory. Computer users are, after all, in a hurry.
My observation -- provincial as it is -- about the word in question is that the man denouncing another chap as a "mere ideologue" is usually himself something of an ideologue. With that said, I, of course, admit that my comment lacks subtlety. I promise to make amends in a forthcoming essay on the topic.
For now, two things. First, I would love to hear what you think "ideologue" means: what does it connote and who does it denote? Second, I urge you to read one of my all-time favorite essays (fragmented as it is) by C. S. Lewis. After reading his capital essay, Bulverism, this morning, I am reminded -- again -- how careful I must be.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes -- All Rights Reserved.
Curiously, more recent definitions are rather blunt. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary is utterly matter of fact:
ideologue (noun): An advocate of a particular ideology, especially an official exponent of that ideology
And the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary gives us this definition for ideologue:
1 : an impractical idealist : THEORIST
2 : an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology
It is interesting to note how unnuanced these online definitions prove themselves to be. I wonder if this is the trend in computer age diction, where words become more rigid, lacking subtlety, posited in all their raw black-and-white glory. Computer users are, after all, in a hurry.
My observation -- provincial as it is -- about the word in question is that the man denouncing another chap as a "mere ideologue" is usually himself something of an ideologue. With that said, I, of course, admit that my comment lacks subtlety. I promise to make amends in a forthcoming essay on the topic.
For now, two things. First, I would love to hear what you think "ideologue" means: what does it connote and who does it denote? Second, I urge you to read one of my all-time favorite essays (fragmented as it is) by C. S. Lewis. After reading his capital essay, Bulverism, this morning, I am reminded -- again -- how careful I must be.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes -- All Rights Reserved.
Come Unto Me, All Ye Who Are Heavy Laden (with explosives), And I Will Give You Rest
They are neighbors. They pass each other on the street; they breath the same dusty air. And yet … and yet.
This morning, a large crowd -- men and boys searching for work -- gathers together to fight despair, anxieties subsiding a bit in such company. There is strength in numbers, target strength.
Suddenly, a wave of optimism, some cheering, some shouts of incredulity. Hope. "Follow me, I'll hire you!" The group moves this way, then that. Men press forward to get a chance at something. They gather round a minivan, a truck. Some get in.
"Yes! Yes! I have work for you! I will hire you. Come, come closer."
In a sadistic suicide flash, 60 people are dead. Over 200 are wounded. Shiites, the poorest, lay bleeding in a Baghdad street, their ears deafened by the sound of more bad news. All in a day's work.
These are the people we all hope to help in a very different way than the man with the van full of lies. Sadly, near yet another crater in the ground, day laborers will indeed gather for work, their compensation coming in bits of flesh. They pray for peace with their neighbor and yet only find a piece of their neighbor.
It is, really, a job that cannot possibly be done in a day.
(Today, prayers for lost sons, husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, daughters, and hope.)
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Baghdad, Suicide bomber, Peace, Day laborers, Iraq
This morning, a large crowd -- men and boys searching for work -- gathers together to fight despair, anxieties subsiding a bit in such company. There is strength in numbers, target strength.
Suddenly, a wave of optimism, some cheering, some shouts of incredulity. Hope. "Follow me, I'll hire you!" The group moves this way, then that. Men press forward to get a chance at something. They gather round a minivan, a truck. Some get in.
"Yes! Yes! I have work for you! I will hire you. Come, come closer."
In a sadistic suicide flash, 60 people are dead. Over 200 are wounded. Shiites, the poorest, lay bleeding in a Baghdad street, their ears deafened by the sound of more bad news. All in a day's work.
These are the people we all hope to help in a very different way than the man with the van full of lies. Sadly, near yet another crater in the ground, day laborers will indeed gather for work, their compensation coming in bits of flesh. They pray for peace with their neighbor and yet only find a piece of their neighbor.
It is, really, a job that cannot possibly be done in a day.
(Today, prayers for lost sons, husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, daughters, and hope.)
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Baghdad, Suicide bomber, Peace, Day laborers, Iraq
Year In Review: Speak Your Mind (If You Wish)
As the end of 2006 approaches, I wonder about the year's most important stories. Were I to review the year at this website, I might find myself unable to pin down the year's big news. Of course, I have a hunch or two. But what do you think? Why?
Sound off if you wish. I urge you to speak freely, even passionately. I am listening. This is about your opinions, not mine.
Blessings.
BG
Sound off if you wish. I urge you to speak freely, even passionately. I am listening. This is about your opinions, not mine.
Blessings.
BG
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
He's No Common Tater
Contratimes' friend, The Commentator, who hails from the great land of Canada, has published his most recent installment of "Five Q's" wherein he asks five questions of a featured guest. I cannot thank him sufficiently for deeming me worthy enough to participate. Our interview, brief as it was, can be found here. If you are at all interested, I urge you to give The Commentator a visit. He is an entirely decent chap, and he deserves your attention (which explains why, since he introduced himself to me, he's been listed in my blogroll for months).
Here are the five questions I was asked and, I pray, answered.
1) Why do you blog?
2) How would you rationalize the blogging phenomena in society?
3) In the realm of religion, are we witnessing a "Great Awakening" in America? If so, does this mean a radicalizing of America? If not, is religion on the run so to speak?
4) Does theology have a place in the realm of political discourse and debate when it comes to forming public policy?
5) Is there a liberal bias in your opinion?
The Commentator's first "Five Q's" featuring freelance journalist J. M. Berger, contributor to National Public Radio, The Boston Globe and others, can be found here.
Here are the five questions I was asked and, I pray, answered.
1) Why do you blog?
2) How would you rationalize the blogging phenomena in society?
3) In the realm of religion, are we witnessing a "Great Awakening" in America? If so, does this mean a radicalizing of America? If not, is religion on the run so to speak?
4) Does theology have a place in the realm of political discourse and debate when it comes to forming public policy?
5) Is there a liberal bias in your opinion?
The Commentator's first "Five Q's" featuring freelance journalist J. M. Berger, contributor to National Public Radio, The Boston Globe and others, can be found here.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Building Better Brain Bombs
[Every once in a while I post an essay that is really a reply to something that happened off-stage, so to speak. This is one of those moments.]
The other day I received an email from someone who felt that she knew me, my opinions, my own sense of what is true, right, wrong. I shall name no names, and I shall give nothing away here. But the writer suggested that I was being, well, dishonest; and if not dishonest, I was being inaccurate, even, perhaps, revisionistic. What startled me most, of course, was the intimation that someone I barely know knows me better than I know myself. And what I apparently did not know without the help of this particular interlocutor is that I have always supported the Iraq invasion spearheaded by George W. Bush.
It's curious what people claim to know. I can assure you that my wife took this bit of news as a surprise; she recalls trying to get me to change my mind about Iraq, insisting, for example, that I should read Why We Fight by Bill Bennett (she insisted again Friday night that I need to read it). I have not read that undoubtedly fine work, largely because I already have far too much to do as I promote war at every turn. But what I think is clear is that people mistake my strident defense of President Bush as somehow support for everything he stands for; but my defense is really a critique of the junk hurled his way. I have never been pro-war, but I have been very much anti-crap. And I believe this fact with all my heart: the leftists are the revisionists when it comes to the genesis of the Iraq invasion.
Some people cannot believe that Michael Richards is not, in fact, Jerry Seinfeld's fictional neighbor, Kramer; Mr. Richards created such a convincing character one is tempted to conclude that he and Kramer are identical (how jarring it is to learn that they are not). Great actors who loathe serial killings nonetheless convincingly portray serial killers. Great novelists who are anti-war nevertheless portray war in all its brutal accuracy, even without having actually served a moment in battle. Great defense lawyers posit great apologies on their clients' behalf, leading jurors towards a "not guilty" verdict that the defense lawyer himself would not ever reach. You get the point. Merely because I have argued against the arguments proffered against the war, it does not follow that I am for the war. I am merely against bad arguments.
I would urge readers, who are interested in my feelings about the war against Islamic fundamentalism, to read what I believe is my definitive statement as presented in my series, "The Most Important Question: On Inevitability And The War On Terror." Readers will discover what I believe is really at stake; and readers will note, too, that I was far ahead of the pretentious and leftist billionaire George Soros, underwriter of the Democratic National Committee, who -- in a silly essay I discussed here -- called for a change in metaphor when discussing the war on terror. (And as for the attempts by linguist George Lakoff to redefine the Iraq War as an occupation, see my comment #2 at MadMike'sAmerica in this thread.)
I have been quite consistent in challenging bad arguments. I have challenged the idea that pacifism is strictly forbidden in Christian orthodoxy. I have challenged the idea that peace is attainable in "Oscar Wilde, Seinfeld, And Peace That Eludes." I have challenged arguments that suggest that only liberal dissent is deemed unpatriotic. I have criticized arguments that the war in Iraq is a quagmire, or that its difficulty proves its foolishness, or that American troops would fare better with more armor. I have criticized Madeleine Albright. In fact, I have criticized many things here. But I have never opined that I support war.
Sadly, my critic(s) will probably not read my definitive series "The Most Important Question", no matter how much I implore them to. Nor will they probably bother to read my lengthy but sincere letter to America, drafted mere days after 9/11 (and posted at a new Contratimes auxiliary), to judge its consistency with the series mentioned above. They are free to define me as they deem most expedient for them. I offer no definitions about their personal beliefs, since I hardly know these folks. I shall respectfully leave them alone.
Lastly, the emailer described me as a bomb thrower. You know, a sort of intellectual terrorist, a kind of Molotov cocktail-tosser in the brain. I stand, apparently, in the same company as Ann Coulter or, well, no one else. My rhetoric is shaped merely to detonate in the midst of irrefutable logic (or so it is suggested).
I find the 'charge' amusing.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes -- All Rights Reserved.
The other day I received an email from someone who felt that she knew me, my opinions, my own sense of what is true, right, wrong. I shall name no names, and I shall give nothing away here. But the writer suggested that I was being, well, dishonest; and if not dishonest, I was being inaccurate, even, perhaps, revisionistic. What startled me most, of course, was the intimation that someone I barely know knows me better than I know myself. And what I apparently did not know without the help of this particular interlocutor is that I have always supported the Iraq invasion spearheaded by George W. Bush.
It's curious what people claim to know. I can assure you that my wife took this bit of news as a surprise; she recalls trying to get me to change my mind about Iraq, insisting, for example, that I should read Why We Fight by Bill Bennett (she insisted again Friday night that I need to read it). I have not read that undoubtedly fine work, largely because I already have far too much to do as I promote war at every turn. But what I think is clear is that people mistake my strident defense of President Bush as somehow support for everything he stands for; but my defense is really a critique of the junk hurled his way. I have never been pro-war, but I have been very much anti-crap. And I believe this fact with all my heart: the leftists are the revisionists when it comes to the genesis of the Iraq invasion.
Some people cannot believe that Michael Richards is not, in fact, Jerry Seinfeld's fictional neighbor, Kramer; Mr. Richards created such a convincing character one is tempted to conclude that he and Kramer are identical (how jarring it is to learn that they are not). Great actors who loathe serial killings nonetheless convincingly portray serial killers. Great novelists who are anti-war nevertheless portray war in all its brutal accuracy, even without having actually served a moment in battle. Great defense lawyers posit great apologies on their clients' behalf, leading jurors towards a "not guilty" verdict that the defense lawyer himself would not ever reach. You get the point. Merely because I have argued against the arguments proffered against the war, it does not follow that I am for the war. I am merely against bad arguments.
I would urge readers, who are interested in my feelings about the war against Islamic fundamentalism, to read what I believe is my definitive statement as presented in my series, "The Most Important Question: On Inevitability And The War On Terror." Readers will discover what I believe is really at stake; and readers will note, too, that I was far ahead of the pretentious and leftist billionaire George Soros, underwriter of the Democratic National Committee, who -- in a silly essay I discussed here -- called for a change in metaphor when discussing the war on terror. (And as for the attempts by linguist George Lakoff to redefine the Iraq War as an occupation, see my comment #2 at MadMike'sAmerica in this thread.)
I have been quite consistent in challenging bad arguments. I have challenged the idea that pacifism is strictly forbidden in Christian orthodoxy. I have challenged the idea that peace is attainable in "Oscar Wilde, Seinfeld, And Peace That Eludes." I have challenged arguments that suggest that only liberal dissent is deemed unpatriotic. I have criticized arguments that the war in Iraq is a quagmire, or that its difficulty proves its foolishness, or that American troops would fare better with more armor. I have criticized Madeleine Albright. In fact, I have criticized many things here. But I have never opined that I support war.
Sadly, my critic(s) will probably not read my definitive series "The Most Important Question", no matter how much I implore them to. Nor will they probably bother to read my lengthy but sincere letter to America, drafted mere days after 9/11 (and posted at a new Contratimes auxiliary), to judge its consistency with the series mentioned above. They are free to define me as they deem most expedient for them. I offer no definitions about their personal beliefs, since I hardly know these folks. I shall respectfully leave them alone.
Lastly, the emailer described me as a bomb thrower. You know, a sort of intellectual terrorist, a kind of Molotov cocktail-tosser in the brain. I stand, apparently, in the same company as Ann Coulter or, well, no one else. My rhetoric is shaped merely to detonate in the midst of irrefutable logic (or so it is suggested).
I find the 'charge' amusing.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes -- All Rights Reserved.
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