I'm Done Protecting You.

I'm Done Protecting You. 

(It's late and I didn't proofread this.  I try and be more positive, but I think this needs to be said.  I think Hebrews would back me up.)

I'm tired.  I'm tired of protecting those who don't want to be protected.  I am tired of analyzing those who don't want to be analyzed.  I'm tired of listening to those who don't listen.  In short I am done protecting the remnants of the Republican party.  I suppose, though I am doubtful, that there are those hovering around the outer rim of a party they once believed in; but now feel themselves isolated by a party more full of venom and vitriol than of the great ideas of their forbearers.

It didn't used to be that way.  There used to be a time when the Republican party stood for something worth standing for.  There used to be a time when Eisenhower and T.R. and Lincoln boldly took views that were unpopular with the leading people. There was a time when writers of the party were not afraid to be marginalized by asking deep and important questions.  I know many of my current Republican acquaintances would say, "We still do."  No, not anymore.  there was a time when the Republicans would listen to those answers and thoughtfully disagree.  Now, it is all about thoughtless ignorance of other people's opinions.

The failure of the Republican party wasn't complete for me until just recently.  I have always considered myself a staunch (albeit hard to digest) moderate.  I am a contrarian by nature, so being fully allied and against any party has been an unpalatable choice.  I never thought that I would be so against one of our major political parties.  However, it has become apparent that that day has come.

So I abandon you to the fate that you have proscribed for yourself.  I allow you to wrap yourself in the mantle of hatred and stupidity.  I allow you to hide in the obscure recesses of your self-imposed exile.  I would reach out to you, but you do not wish to hear me speak.  I have grown too tired of talking (me of all people too tired of talking) to try and reason with you.  I am a moderate democrat now because you have left me here behind with your reason and hope and joy.  I will await your return to the land of sinners, which we all must dwell in to be made more holy by grace.

I would not mind so deeply the fact that you had gone were it not for the fact that rather than being people of the city on a hill, you have become pharisees.  You condemn the problems of the world, but do nothing to alleviate them.  So many non-Christians I talk to are amazed that I am a Christian because I listen to them and their problems.  So many non-Christians are amazed that many of us Christians are Christians because of what has happened.

Some facts: Christ never promised that we would not be exploited by poor people who live lives on welfare forever and ever.  Christ never promised that we would control government.  Christ never promised us that we would get a nice house and fancy car if we followed him.  Christ never promised that we could keep guns.  Christ did ask that we pay taxes though.

The fact is I am done protecting the far right, who has unfortunately morphed into the "right" itself, because you are done protecting Christ.  You don't make sacrifices with joy to help people.  When I think of the Christian Conservative, I think of an angry person who clutches to the false straws of "an ungodly president".

I share your blame.  I do not make the sacrifices I should.  I do not help the poor as I should.  I do not volunteer for causes like I should.  I do not even love my neighbor as myself.  But if you do these things without the joy of Christ in you, than you are just as guilty as if you had never done them at all because you are doing them for yourself and by yourself without the love of Christ in you.

I will end with this.  I do not know where my good friends from college stands on his political views, but I can imagine he is a conservative.  He loves God with all his heart, mind, and soul.  I have never met a happier person who loves his wife and child so much.  It would be nice if my friend were the rule and not just a random example I have to give.  I think we would all do our best to remove our sack cloth and ashes and go and live with the happy abandon of Christ's love.  If that sounds a little too drastic for you, than maybe we

The Price We Pay

The Price We Pay 

I've asked around of my conservative and liberal friends.  I have enquired of the internet.  I have even asked my dad.  No one can tell me what these tea parties were all about except that they were protesting taxes.  Now most people I know hate taxes.  It is no fun, kind of like going to the dentist or the doctor's office.  At least that must be what it is like for most people who pay taxes in one lump sum.  However, I have always gotten money back from the government, even when I didn't think I deserved it.  In that way, I actually like paying taxes.

I can hear the hisses and guffaws from my fellow Americans.  They will say things like, "Well, that's good for you; but as for me I want my money."  However, this is a bit of a misunderstanding.  

First off let me explain why I am happy to pay taxes.  I do not live destitute and scrounging around trash cans for my next meal.  I have frozen pizzas, bread baking supplies, and enough Mountain Dew to survive for quite some time.  Yesterday I went out to eat with friends.  I have a bed, a computer, and more books than I need.  In fact, I have a lot.  Now, there are plenty of things I want to buy that I can't afford.  Things like roads, public parks, and a good education come to mind.  Whenever I look at my paycheck and see the money taken out for taxes, I think to myself how privileged I am that I own a stake in this country.  I know that when I go outside I will not need a Roman noble's entourage to ensure my safety as I walk down the street or that if I want to hike somewhere I will not have to pay a fee to roam about public land.

Is it a perfect system?  No, of course not.  There are areas that need streamlined.  American politicians, like Jeff Flake of Arizona, have it exactly right when they back their convictions up with real action by not accepting earmarks and pork.  However, this is a responsibility more of the voters than of the politicians.  If we really want less spending on waste, we'll vote for the right things. We don't, so we have  a lot of pork.  Simple as that.

Secondly, I should ask this question: did you print that money?  I mean, perhaps it is government interference that prohibits us from going to our basement with a printer and green ink.  If so, well that is fine by me.  I am reminded of something a wise man once said, "Give to Caesar what is his."  Many of us Christians seem to forget this.  It is ironic because conservatives and especially Christian Conservatives tend to lament the loss of classical Western thought.  If you understand Aristotle properly, than money is merely a form of order.  It isn't something in and of itself, but rather it represents the interaction of human beings and the world in which they live.  

The purest sense of economy is therefore not capitalism but bartering.  I raise a goat and you give me some apples.  Merits and fortune are at their peak in this form of economy, but nothing truly great is accomplished.  The individual is at the mercy of the fates to a greater degree than anywhere else.

In a completely free capitalist economy we run into pretty much the same thing.  Countries with less government interference in one way or the other don't really exist and perhaps there is a reason for that.  Human beings are hardly smart enough to create a worldwide cabal that prevents such libertarian countries from emerging.  My theory is that such economies exist under the aegis of larger economies, so let us look at those.  Such an economy is hardly autonomous but rather useful as a piggy bank for the larger economy and in that economy the average human being is unable to pursue happiness.  (In fact in modern America happiness is usually forgotten in the pursuit of success.  If success makes you happy, that is well and good but please leave the rest of us alone.)

Also, as was pointed out by one of my dad's friends, why is that in countries with limited government we see less stability and poorer people?  Areas with little central government usually push up the worst of society.  In fact I believe that Navy Seals had to rescue Americans from people living in a country with virtually no centralized government.  I am of course speaking of Somalia which is controlled not by enlightened Randian entrepreneurs; but by thugs, warlords, and the occasional pirates.

So, I think that paying a few bucks each week for a stable and relatively happy society is a good deal.  I like looking at roads and schools; and thinking that while things can always be made better, my country is still the best in the world because people take an active part in each others' lives be it by themselves or by simply paying taxes.

The Writer's Block

The Writer's Block 

Best books ... chosen by James Toback 

Its late, but as many of you know, this is when my brain functions at its best.  Usually my papers are churned out at the hours between twelve and three.  There is fervent praying, reading and re-reading, and of course caffeine consumption.  However, I was just reading through the magazine The Week and decided to comment on books chosen by this week's selector of must read books, director James Toback.  I don't think I will be viewing Mr. Toback's upcoming film; and to be honest I am not sure I am interested in his previous work.  However, it is impossible for me to overlook his taste in literature.

But, I am getting ahead of myself.  Let me explain about all of this.  The Week is a magazine that attempts to synthesize and paraphrase the news reporting from the week.¹ Among its articles is a section where a personality (usually an author) describes his or her favorite books.  This week's picks were selected by the afore mentioned James Toback, who is directing the upcoming film "Tyson".  His selections were of works that he had used in his movies.  While he never goes into depth about what each and every book is about, he takes a different tack and shows how he used them in his film.

I personally am a fan of four of the six author's mentioned, but I have only read two of the works mentioned.  These authors are Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William Shakespeare, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Oscar Wilde.  Their selected works are Notes From Underground, Hamlet, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol respectively.  I am not trying to say anything here except this.  You should go and read these works.  (I know I should.)  Life is too short to read the average stuff.

Between Hamlet's indecisions about life and death (and the innumerable other questions found in this brilliant work) and the Tractatus's exploration of humankind's relationship to language and words (as well as the innumerable other questions found in this brilliant work); we find authors trying to come to grips with the unknowable answers.  Perhaps they are answers that we will never ever know fully.  I believe they are beyond our grasp.  To some this would cause fear and because it is fear, it is best left unsaid.² Yet, one cannot totally ignore these questions and so we disdain those who ask them.  We hope that maybe if we insult, cajole, and intimidate enough; the questioners will go away and with them, maybe, just maybe, so to will the questions.

However, our hatred for the questions shows our contempt for our own lives.  In cursing the unknowable we are cursing the very universe in which we live.  You and I do not have the answers, we just have the questions.  What the questions mean is as useful and necessary as our daily job.  Each day we will have to struggle at our jobs.  We are defined by what we do in large degree, but at the same time we should be judged by what we think.  If we think great thoughts, there is no guarantee we will be great; but if we think small thoughts, it is fairly assured that we will be small.

We talk as if we are great innovators and adventurers who push the envelopes of science and the humanities, but our fear of being wrong often relegates us to the weaklings of history.  We are afraid to take the serious questions as seriously as we should; that is with the smile and joy that we approach our daily job.  I think that is what Mr. Toback was trying to get across.  Great novels, tracts, essays, poems, and cetera don't exist in a vacuum and never were meant to do so.³ They are to remain accessible to us at all times.  We should feel a joy at being able to bring a work into the thread of a conversation.  We have, so to speak, brought another voice into the the story we are trying to tell; the story of our lives.

Perhaps one of these days I'll get around to writing my top must read books, but for now I am content to give kudos to other people's selections.  After all, it is very late and while my mind does work at its best during these hours, I never said it worked for very long.

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1. Much like the fine, and now quasi-defunct, World Press Review.  While the World Press Review still exists in a way in cyber-space, it ceases to exist as the magazine that would arrive weekly in my mailbox at college.  I'll never forget the day it stopped being printed and I was given U.S. News and World Reports in its stead.  This is partially the reason why, to this day, I cannot tolerate U.S. News and World Reports; but most of that hatred is because the magazine finds better use in starting grill fires or composting mulch beds than as a credible periodical.
2. If death were sitting before us at the dinner table we would not desire to acknowledge that he was there.
3. If a book is built to stay in some lofty ivory tower, than the author is a fool. The purpose of a work is not to show what you know, but what you've learned. It should be the secret hope of every author that his or her work is surpassed and never surpassed by a member of a succeeding generation.

Today

Today

I called up one of my friends today to wish her an Happy Good Friday.  "Happy Good Friday?" she asked, "Happy Easter I can get, but not happy Good Friday!"  Good Friday doesn't make a lot of sense.  Its the day we Christians celebrate our leader being executed like a common criminal.  Quick, quick name a religion where the hero so thoroughly loses.  I know my friends who aren't Christians don't get it.  That's fine.  I'm cool with that.  It doesn't really bother me too much.

But it means a lot to me.  Good Friday is the day Christ was hung on the cross.  It has a deep metaphysical reality.  All the sins past and present and all the promises past and present met in and collapsed on that one point in space time.¹   It is a very weighty experience and goes beyond words.  We Christians tend to pass over it and rush onto Easter with lilies and bunnies and eggs and Jesus rising from the dead again.  We don't meditate on the cross nearly enough.

What does it mean to be a Christian?  What does it mean to have faith in a God like the one we have?  How can we share such a ludicrous message to a world that doesn't think it's sick?  Or if does, it thinks its "only a flesh wound"?  Being a Christian is impossible if you think you can do it on your own steam.  I've tried and I'll keep on trying; but I find that I see the most success when I'm not the one in charge.

We all know there is a God.  Logical dead ends come when we pursue each point to its conclusion, but which God is it?  To say that it is the Christian God is a bold absurdity.  Which probably makes it either completely true or completely false; a black and white demarkation.  It seems to me that it is true because ... well ... can you offer a better alternative at how the world can change?  We live in a world that is full of fallen people and the only way for things to be okay is if that outside force makes it okay, obeys the obligations of wrath, and thus with the stakes high enough bets everything.  I don't know.  I don't get it.  Thats part of Good Friday though.  You don't have to get everything for it to be true.  And the truth and falsity isn't what gets people, its the cost.  Free?  What's the catch, what do I have to do?  The cost of free is too high for people want.  So let them pay.

So its Good Friday and I am left with no explanations and I ask the same questions everyone else does about it.  I come back with the same answer all the best theologians proffer, "I don't know, its a mystery."  The payment is made and the cost is free.  I'm willing to hedge my bets on that, and that is what makes it an "Happy Good Friday;" the exhilaration of the unknown.

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1. The irony is that even though all of existence seems to be compressed onto that one point; that one point exists in a multiplicity.  To God all time is now and so all the sins: past, present, and future are not only on that one point in time; but due to God's perception of time being something that exists within atemporality, Christ has died, is dying, and will die yet.  Concurrently to be both separate and with God at the same time is something that is truly painful and human.

Today

Today

I called up one of my friends today to wish her an Happy Good Friday.  "Happy Good Friday?" she asked, "Happy Easter I can get, but not happy Good Friday!"  Good Friday doesn't make a lot of sense.  Its the day we Christians celebrate our leader being executed like a common criminal.  Quick, quick name a religion where the hero so thoroughly loses.  I know my friends who aren't Christians don't get it.  That's fine.  I'm cool with that.  It doesn't really bother me too much.

But it means a lot to me.  Good Friday is the day Christ was hung on the cross.  It has a deep metaphysical reality.  All the sins past and present and all the promises past and present met in and collapsed on that one point in space time.¹   It is a very weighty experience and goes beyond words.  We Christians tend to pass over it and rush onto Easter with lilies and bunnies and eggs and Jesus rising from the dead again.  We don't meditate on the cross nearly enough.

What does it mean to be a Christian?  What does it mean to have faith in a God like the one we have?  How can we share such a ludicrous message to a world that doesn't think it's sick?  Or if does, it thinks its "only a flesh wound"?  Being a Christian is impossible if you think you can do it on your own steam.  I've tried and I'll keep on trying; but I find that I see the most success when I'm not the one in charge.

We all know there is a God.  Logical dead ends come when we pursue each point to its conclusion, but which God is it?  To say that it is the Christian God is a bold absurdity.  Which probably makes it either completely true or completely false; a black and white demarkation.  It seems to me that it is true because ... well ... can you offer a better alternative at how the world can change?  We live in a world that is full of fallen people and the only way for things to be okay is if that outside force makes it okay, obeys the obligations of wrath, and thus with the stakes high enough bets everything.  I don't know.  I don't get it.  Thats part of Good Friday though.  You don't have to get everything for it to be true.  And the truth and falsity isn't what gets people, its the cost.  Free?  What's the catch, what do I have to do?  The cost of free is too high for people want.  So let them pay.

So its Good Friday and I am left with no explanations and I ask the same questions everyone else does about it.  I come back with the same answer all the best theologians proffer, "I don't know, its a mystery."  The payment is made and the cost is free.  I'm willing to hedge my bets on that, and that is what makes it an "Happy Good Friday;" the exhilaration of the unknown.

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1. The irony is that even though all of existence seems to be compressed onto that one point; that one point exists in a multiplicity.  To God all time is now and so all the sins: past, present, and future are not only on that one point in time; but due to God's perception of time being something that exists within atemporality, Christ has died, is dying, and will die yet.  Concurrently to be both separate and with God at the same time is something that is truly painful and human.

Populism Is Not The Answer

Populism Is Not The Answer

In a recent show Bill Maher, a television personality, recently said that we should kill executives who got money for nothing.  It is was an unintelligent and irresponsible thing to say, and at best it was just a scramble for ratings.  However, that is Mr. Maher's way.  But, as we have learned from history, psychology, and plain human experience: words have powerful meaning.¹              His argument, if real is part of a growing trend among many in America, both on the right and left, to appeal to populism.  However, populism at its best, had a checkered past.  An history of populism has demonstrated that it can be even more concerned with manipulating government for personal ends than its other tyrannical cousins.

My best friend Andrew and I got into a very insightful discussion about the importance of not being carried away by populism and I am glad to see that he and many Americans still have a good head on their shoulders about all this.  However there is reason to fear that a small and vocal few may usurp the passions of the people to their own ends.  This is not to say that the general populace is completely blameless.  (Recent stories of squatters staying on at houses they couldn't afford in the first place shows a disregard for the laws of the state, the laws of economics, and the laws of nature.  If an agreement is reached by the two parties involved, that is fine though.)

The dark history of populism is well-documented.  A good example of this is the story of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.  When I was younger I adored the story of the Gracchi brothers.  I thought they were good people who wanted to help the poor of Rome by giving the poor farmers land they had been promised and grain that they needed.  However, it was only later that I learned that they were only interested in garnering the support of the mob for their own selfish power grab.  Caesar and others would do this later on too.

In the early days of our republic the situation had a chance to happen once again.  Many in America believed that freedom meant abandoning the laws of the parent country.  At the head of these "Republicans" was Jefferson.  Jefferson is the poster-child for the aristocrat who appeals to the masses.  Happy to have yeoman farmers till their plots while he enjoyed a comfortable life built on the backs of slaves, Jefferson fought with true Republicans like Hamilton and Adams who knew that order in economics and law (respectively) was the only way to ensure real and lasting freedom.

You see freedom is a lot like the earth itself.  Freedom is ordered and organized but it is separated and etched out from the deep waters of chaos all around it.  However, our postmodern Americans either don't know this or don't want to know this.  We have been told that we can get everything for nothing or everything if we just work hard enough; and frankly, it isn't true at all.  It is sickening that we scream and squawk now, but when we were reaping the benefits of the shady business practices, we let them slide.  Wrong is wrong no matter if it is beneficial to us or not.

The history of populism is not all bad though.  During the 1930s, Roosevelt bound the people's desire for jobs with governmental organizations that would provide work.  The people and the country had something to hold onto while the rest of the world drifted from selfish despair into self-righteous anger.  We didn't look for scapegoats as much; and we emerged a better country in the end.

But false populism is to be feared because it shows that we have become a culture not of laws and of order, but of expediency and personalities be they the personality of blow-hards (Bill Maher or Rush Limbaugh) or of our own myriad desires.  If we were to hang or shoot every person whose hands were sullied in this economic crisis, we would be left with an empty country.  The answer is to forgive and move on.

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1. Perhaps I will talk about that at length some other time, but most of you know the very real importance that I place on words and language.