Theology and Philosophy for the Post Modern Age

Why America is still a primitive nation

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment
America will remain a primitive nation until it moves beyond literalism in its creation myths and national identity

America will remain a primitive nation until it moves beyond literalism in its creation myths and national identity

All cultures in the world, whatever their current sophistication, developed around a creation myth of one kind or another. To put it bluntly, the United States of America has not one, but two creation myths around which the cultural debate revolves.

America’s dual(ing) creation myths
The initial creation myth upon which at least half of America depends for its cultural identity is the Christian bible with its creation myth drawn on the book of Genesis, a literal Adam and Eve and the tribal history that followed and has extended into the present.
The second creation myth is the story of the Founding Fathers, upon whose originality America was invented and prospered.
Infallibility and inerrancy
These creation myths are considered by many to contain the salt of inerrancy and infallibility. People who take the Bible literally are loathe to consider that anything in its pages has been contradicted by outside knowledge and history. Similarly, those who abide by a view of inerrancy toward the Founding Fathers also take a dim view of interpreting anything in the Constitution anew. Many would seem happy to eradicate even those Amendments; against slavery, against a woman’s right to vote, against equal rights for all races, with the intent of “restoring” the Constitution to its original and supposedly holy premise: That the Founding Fathers were wiser than us.
A constrained lens
It is no coincidence that a significant part of American culture views both the Bible and the Constitution through this lens of inerrancy. That type of personality that resists change and is more secure with what appears to be clear authority than to sail on the surface of liberality. That is, they don’t want to have to make choices. They prefer a worldview where the hard choices are already made, where God tells them what to do, and where the nation is founded upon a rock of wisdom that cannot be cracked or moved.
Some call these propensities “conservative,” with some pride perhaps, in seeking to protect the founding myths of tradition and cultural orientation. The word “conservative” is defined as follows: conservative; disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
Definitive dangers
The danger of a conservative viewpoint is revealed in its very definition, of course. For the last few words in the definition outline its true character, and that is to limit change. Many conservatives appear bound to protect that last aspect of the tradition at nearly any cost.
To be so aggressively rooted in the past produces, of course, an ultimate fear of anything changing in the present, or likely to produce change in the future. Such fearful thoughts are indicative of a truly primitive mind, one so characterized by fear in fact, that  fear sees evil even where it is not, yet likewise forms additional gods where there are none.
Conflicted at the primitive roots
So let us examine, for a moment, the nature of the primitive or conservative mind, and how it drives what America has become. We shall also learn how and why American is conflicted at the roots and unable to move forward into a future where our creation myths can be reconciled to our progressive natures.
We can begin by examining the definition of the word primitive:
Primitive:
1. being the first or earliest of the kind or in existence, especially in an early age of the world: primitive forms of life.
2. early in the history of the world or of humankind.
3. characteristic of early ages or of an early state of human development: primitive toolmaking.
4. unaffected or little affected by civilizing influences; uncivilized; savage: primitive passions.
A primitive grip
These definitions converge on one thought: that primitivism refuses to be changed from the inside or from without. Significantly, the effort to protect the primitive viewpoint of the world, in America’s case the idea that both the Bible and the Constitution are infallible and inerrant, produces a form of tribalism wound around the core myths like a yarn. Its threads are visible, and can be cut, but the whole remains tightly wound because of its collective grip on the deep inner consciousness of the rod within.
Tribalism
Primitive tribalism is always a defensive posture. The entire history of the world is written around cultures that have built up to grand scales around their creation myths only to be invaded by more powerful cultures less concerned with culture than imperial aims. The Romans wisely made a practice of allowing these creation myths to persist, to some degree, within their empire, so long as tribute was paid and the ultimate loyally was declared to the Emperor.
Yet even the Roman culture ultimately failed, driven perhaps by terror of its own power and pulled apart by external forces that did not respect the core idea that Rome was a superior power, and therefore rightful owners to permanent empire.
Some speculate America as the new Rome, but the analogies only go so far. America’s biggest problem is not its imperialism, which is expressed in another patent belief in its infallibility, American Exceptionalism, which is nothing more than a primitive attempt to justify its own existence in the face of its often egregious acts of tribalism and fear.
America needs a critical review
Yes, this is a criticism of America, and of the Bible, of the Founding Fathers. But it is especially a criticism of the primitive mindset and tribalism that has resulted from a dependence on a literal form of worldview that is holding the nation back. And that has consequences. Deadly consequences.
In the last decade America has seen an increasing number of gun massacres. People armed with powerful murder weapons capable of shooting multiple rounds of ammunition within seconds have stalked into schools and malls fired at anyone who moves. The results are dozens dead from these massacres, and 30,000 people dying each year from gunfire.
Shooting from the Constitutional hip
Yet despite these horrific figures, Constitutional literalists insist that the Second Amendment is sacrosanct. It is not to be interpreted in any other fashion than to be taken literally, that is, no limits on the right to keep and bear arms. Yet there are differences of opinion within the judicial ranks as to what the Second Amendment really means. Justince Antonin Scalia interprets the term “militia” to mean “everyone.” Everyone who handles a gun becomes part of a militia by literal decree. He states
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Heller, stated: As we will describe below, the “militia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the people”— those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the people”.[126]

Meanwhile Justice John Paul Stevens countered in his dissent by arguing that the truth is more subtle, and not literal when defining a militia as anyone who owns and handles a gun: When each word in the text is given full effect, the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia. So far as appears, no more than that was contemplated.

Civilized versus tribal

When it comes to choosing a nation that is able to confine and regulate its internal arsenal, in other words, a civilized nation versus a tribal and lawless nation operating under vigilante justice, Justice John Paul Stevens arrived at the conclusion that the Second Amendment was not meant to be interpreted literally to mean that everyone who wants to own a gun, and use it, is covered by the term “well-regulated militia.”

Justice Antonin Scalia, by contrast, takes the literal, more primitive and more tribal approach of creating opportunity for everyone to own a gun of any type, almost without restriction. In so doing, Scalia and his populist henchmen in organizations such as the National Rifle Association have fostered a tribal culture in which gun ownership literally is the law of the land.

Cowboy myths

This primitive interpretation of the Second Amendment of course fits with America’s treasured Cowboy myths of an unbridled freedom in the Wild West. That was supposedly an America in which everyone carried a gun and settled their differences out in the street, like honest men and women do.

Yet the facts are somewhat different, and cowboy myths are just that, conflated images of relatively rare incidents of either heroic or tragic behavior. Then cannot be taken literally. In fact, our national narrative cannot agree on even the most basic of cherished traditions, including the life and death of men life Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. The lives of these particularly great men were fairly well chronicled, and yet their deaths by gun assassinations have had little if no effect on the primitive fact that they were shot dead by guns.

A deadly and ignored narrative

Instead, America has embraced a primitive narrative that says, in effect, that the deaths of great presidents and leaders, as well as innocent, is the supposed price of freedom to own and use guns any way “the people,” as Justice Scalia so cynically defines it, shall be unabridged.

This is a fatal sort of primitivism, deadly both to the people killed by guns and to the conscience of the nation as a whole. We live in an America where people scream against the right to have an abortion yet tolerates the use of deadly weapons to take life on a daily basis. That is primitive thinking, at best. Irresponsible and irrational, at worst.

Red herrings and mental health

The current direction of the gun debate appears to be steering towards and effort to take guns out of the hands of the mentally ill whenever possible. Yet that approach plays into the hands of the primitivist gun lobby because it defers raising the question on the rights of gun ownership as a whole, and why that interpretation of the Second Amendment by men like Justice Scalia is so wrongheaded and avoids the subject.

All of America has a mental illness so long as we depend on a literal interpretation of our creation myths. The fact that 50% of America believes in a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis is responsible for a deep chasm between progressive education in the sciences, medicine, geology and philosophy ranging all the way to civil rights, including equal rights for minorities, gays and all people. That is the path to civility and maturity as a nation, yet it is being blocked by a primitive religious culture that is prejudicial, aggressive and tribal.

Correcting the mistakes of the Founding Fathers

Likewise on the Constitutional front. America’s creation myth of the Founding Fathers as somehow perfect beings has been contradicted over and over again with amendments to the Constitution delivering equal rights to blacks (which took another 100 years to commence in full) women and now people of all orientations. This progressive tradition is making America a better place for all to live. Indeed, it fulfills the equality so strongly desired by the Founding Fathers in drafting a Constitution that guaranteed equal rights for all people. Yet that equality has been repeatedly and aggressively denied by constitutional primitivists who use the so-called letter of the law to interpret it to meet their tribal desires for power and control.

Free will and choosing grace

America needs to overcome this fearful tradition of literalism and primitivism at its core. Only then will the nation fulfill its true definitions of freedom, and by ironic consequence, also fulfill the meaning of true freedom espoused in the Christian Bible and nearly all faith traditions. The freedom to choose grace, rather than impose will upon others shall not be abridged.

Jesus was particularly unfond of those whose power turned upon a phrase in order to manipulate “the people.” Here in Matthew 15 we find a description of how Jesus handled such challenges.

Matthew 15 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’[a] and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’[b] 5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

8 “‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
9 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’[c]”

Think about the application of this scripture to current day issues in America, in which Second Amendment Constitutional rights are being construed and dispensed in ways  that literally lead to murder and death. We need not ask what Jesus would do in these circumstances.

Instead, we can look in a multitude of places in the Bible, and need not fall back on a literal interpretation to understand that it is our duty and our right to consider a better America, one that is not constrained by primitivism or tribalism the way it is today. We can use this bit of scripture as a starting point of inspiration, to do so:

Matthew 5:20
For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Let’s move beyond the primitivism and the tribalism.

How the NRA is planning its coup on America

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment
The goal of the NRA is a coup on America

The goal of the NRA is a coup on America

The CEO of the National Rifle Association , Wayne LaPierre and his NRA militia hid away for a few days while the shock of the Newtown, Connecticut elementary school shootings died down.

28 Innocent Dead. The NRA does not care. Gun rights are more important than human life.  

But let’s not forget that word, died. Because 28 people died when a young man armed with assault weapons and multi-cartridge handguns trudged through an elementary school shooting everyone he could find.

Makings of a coup

And what is the NRA’s response? They huddled for a few days behind silence and a hurriedly torn down Facebook page to avoid public outrage. In other words, they were afraid to face the immediate consequences of the policies they support. Afraid. Fearful. Fear. That is the method, the foundation, the mission, the policies and the leadership of the NRA. Fearful zealots who cannot think of life without guns. It’s like an addiction, protected by a language of name-calling and hate designed to shout down opponents of the weapons free-for-all the NRA supports. It’s so interesting how fear and aggression fit so well together in the agenda of the NRA.

Out of their foxhole

After a few days spent cowering in their PR foxholes, the NRA finally sent their CEO and spokesman Wayne LaPierre out on the balcony of the weapons palace occupied by the NRA and shouted to the people, (in paraphrase), “The answer to gun violence is more guns! We must put armed volunteers in every school to protect the children. We’ll call it the National Shield!” In other words, the NRA wants to take over control of our public school system from top to bottom. To brainwash America into thinking guns supersede law in providing justice and protection for American lives.

Some supporters screamed back at the figure on the NRA balcony,  “Arm the teachers!” and others yelled “Arm the kids!”

Call it what it is: An attempted coup

In most nations, especially a few banana republics south of North America, this used to be called a coup. All that was missing for Wayne LaPierre to put on the gaudy military uniform with the spangly epaulettes. He could have twirled his mustache a few times, put his arm around a comely companion and shouted, “We are your protectors! Let us rule the nation together! We are the ones who truly love you.”

Huddling behind the banana plants

Behind the scenes at the NRA dictatorship, way behind the banana plants, deep in the back rooms of their stench-filled plantation, that smacks of death, the powers that be must have been fiercely active in planning their friendly-looking coup. And how cynical it is: “Protect the kids.”

You can just hear the conversations as the Duke of Ammunitions and the Esquire of Assault Weapons each made their pitch to LaPierre, the benevolent dictator whose only goal is to carry out their wishes of the weapons manufacturers and protect the cartels now running the gun culture that has supplanted America’s formerly free democracy. It’s almost as bad a lie as the organization called the US Chamber of Commerce, which stands against the very nation and citizens it purports to represent by fostering business practices that abuse the trust and welfare of American Citizens and small business owners.

In the Second Amendment We Trust

The NRA, meanwhile, has completely lost sight of any element of the US Constitution but a literal interpretation of the Second Amendment, and then only does the NRA abide by a part of the phraseology, preferring to conveniently ignore the phrase “well-regulated militia.”

But like biblical literalists who have turned the Book of Genesis into a science textbook and weapon against rationality and science, the NRA has taken the literal interpretation of the Second Amendment and made it into a religion. We might daresay go a step further, and call it a cult of gun worship.

“The Second Amendment is our True Protector,” LaPierre could be heard to preach, based on the idea behind the National Shielf program. “I recommend we use this opportunity of a gun massacre not to retreat, but to charge the front lines of resistance against our holy cause. In fact if we have to knock down the walls of society and take the very children we seek “to protect” hostage, we must do it, because the Second Amendment is our God. Raise these children in sight of guns their whole lives and guns will become normal to them as Jesus and Sunday school. If we can’t require God in schools, we’ll give them guns instead. We’ll put the fear of God into them that way.”

Guns and God. God and guns. The NRA can’t tell the difference. Perhaps they’ll even try to change the Pledge of Allegiance, NRA style: 

I Pledge Allegiance to the Guns,

of the United Armory of America,

and to the weapons for which they stand,

one nation, hiding behind God,

with Second Amendment rights for all.

Every good coup deserves to rewrite history

Yes, every good coup deserves a revised Pledge, to replace the namby-pamby version that went before. The victors do get to rewrite the history, after all.

And if the NRA continues is revisionist stance on America’s history, conveniently ignoring the phrase “well-regulated” whenever they utter the words militia, that’s what we’ll all become in the end. An unregulated militia mimicking a society. Our rights not to own guns will be overwhelmed by their everlasting presence. Even conservative leaders such as George H.W. Bush have been fed up with the NRA for years, as evidenced in this letter of resignation sent in 1995, objecting to the slanderous approach of the NRA in maligning federal agents.

Zealots and their supposed Holy Wars

It’s almost like some Americans can only see God and Country while looking down the shiny blue barrel of a repeating shot weapon. How interesting that the zealots are winning this apparently holy war, when during the day when Jesus lived, he made sure the zealots knew the real kingdom of God was not made for power on this earth, or weapons of murder or destruction, or even political rule.

So the NRA truly is on the wrong side of God, and forever shall be if their method remains to indoctrinate and brainwash the culture at large into weaponry as the holiest of rights.

This has all the makings of a coup, indeed. Unless somebody pulls a coup on the dictators first, before they try to take absolute power.

 

America’s gun problem ultimately requires a peaceful solution

/ Christopher Cudworth / 6 Comments
Guns were designed for one thing

Guns were designed for one thing

Back in 2008, which seems like a couple decades ago in today’s 24-hour news cycle, I published an article titled America’s Gun Addiction on Yahoo!, then waited for the requisite hateful commentary of gun addicts calling me “naïve” and other such nonsense.  I never proposed to take away their handguns and assault weapons, but that’s all they could read from it.

Instead, I was simply asking people to consider whether they are addicted to the notion of owning and using guns. Reasonable question, given the proliferation of gun violence in America. And yet people do not seem to get the message that gun violence has a cause, a purpose and a political consequence. Let’s examine these three notions together, and do so a bit provocatively. This is to draw attention to the fact that we are traveling down the road of an escalation in gun violence that some contend will mitigate itself when we reach some stasis where the number of guns in society simply cancels out its own violence. But at what price, and how many lives along the way? And when that stasis of violence cancellation is reached, what will it truly say about our society when have created a culture where equality is defined by equal threats rather than equal rights?

The realities of gun fascism

To draw nearer the truth of where that journey is taking us, we must indeed go another step further, and add a new proposal.

What we have in America is a growing form of gun fascism wrought by the never-ending cycle of gun violence supported by cries for even more guns to solve the gun violence problem.

“Arm the citizenry!” has become the rallying cry of gun advocates and the NRA, and what a disturbing breakdown in logic that really us. But no real surprise. Yet we need to recognize that democracy has a hard time breathing when the air of logic is sucked out of the room by the irrationality of one cause or another.

Fascism depends on a circular logic designed to suck all the air out of discussion and dissent, you see. The strategy of fascists is simple: win the fight by claiming that the cause of our problems is actually the solution. Then repeat your argument often and loudly enough until people come to believe it.

Unless you don’t choose to.

Radical authoritarian nationalism

To call our gun culture “fascism” might seem un-American given our nation’s history of gun obsession, but the description fits. Fascism is defined as is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism. That describes our gun culture perfectly. Those of us who don’t really feel the need to own guns, and who don’t knuckle under to the hot desire to use them are being told, in so many words, that we are naïve, stupid and un-American for having such rational feelings. We’re told to “get with the program” or get shot. There is no in-between.

The not-so-well-regulated militia

We have now reached the point where gun culture has far surpassed the meaning of the Second Amendment with its call for a well-regulated militia. If our so-called “militia” is indeed a force of privately armed citizenry, then who is really doing something about the use of both legal and illegal weapons to shoot and kill dozens of innocent citizens? The gun advocates tell us the cops can’t stop it. They get there after the fact. So the gun fascists tell us the “only way” to stop gun violence is to give everyone a gun. Many would seem to be happy to make it a requirement of citizenship. “That’s taking real responsibility for your own life,” they tell us.

Instead of acknowledging the egregious state of affairs the Connecticut school shootings represent, the gun fascists such as pro-gun Senators just hide away for a few days and then emerging spouting the same gun propaganda they always spew at us. They go on telling us that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

That is a fascist, propagandistic statement designed to control and manipulate the thoughts of a nation by confusing the ability of people to place responsibility where it really lies: on guns as a tool of death and destruction. Such propaganda is a radical controtion of fact that completely ignores original purpose and design of guns, which is to kill.

The fact that we use guns for “sport” is only a deferral of the original design. It does not defer the nature of their original intent. Guns are weapons designed to kill things, and forever shall they remain so. Trying to shift the blame away from that fact is just like saying that people didn’t design guns, the guns designed themselves. We know that is not true.

Literalistic intepretation of the Second Amendment

So how has America’s gun culture become a form of fascism? Our gun culture takes a literal interpretation of the first part of the Second Amendment and exaggerates it to the point of an absurd and often bitter selfishness by essentially ignoring the phrase “well-regulated militia.”

Rather than accepting that “well-regulated” means logical control of those weapons so that the citizenry at large is safe, they cry in fear at any restriction of the so-called freedoms, and then take forceful political action to impose their will on the nation as a collective. “Don’t take away our gun rights!” the gun culture screams. It is the hallmark of gun fascism to hide behind the protection of the Constitution. Yet gun fascisms literally takes away the rights of others every day, with more than 50,000 gun incidents annually in America, and no less than 9,000 deaths a year as the direct product of gun violence. Whose rights are really being violated here?

No less than three 9/11 tragedies per year

We lost over 3,000 people in the 9/11 tragedy. Then our nation’s president (who is known to have ignored warnings about the pending attacks) declared a War On Terror, then proceeded to launch two relatively aimless and unbudgeted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, costing the nation trillions of dollars, many more American lives and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan. America has gone to great expense fighting its so-called War On Terror, yet three times as many people die in America from gun violence every year as died in the 9/11 attacks. What’s wrong with this picture.

The bully pulpit of American exceptionalism

The terrorists who committed the crimes in New York knew they were picking on the world’s biggest bully. America is a bully, yet a rather philanthropic one, if you take into account or practice of nation-building after we whack a few other bad guys. That makes us the “exception” you see.

But according to the rules of bullydom, no one is allowed to hit us first. We’re always the ones who get to hit first. If someone hits us we label it “infamy” or “terrorism” or “an act of war.” Well, duh. Sometimes America can be exceptionally stupid about its place in the world. So yes, we are exceptional in some ways.

That is not hating America, by the way, to criticize our nation’s propensity for stupidity at times. That is giving the nation tough love, and we need a dose of it on the issue that is killing our kids, which is guns.

Let us repeat for emphasis: within our own borders we lose three times as many people to gun violence each year as we lost when terrorists flew planes into buildings on 9/11,.

Meanwhile the gun proponents try to tell us it is all the price of freedom.

Nope. This is fascism and a brand of terrorism on our own soil. If we can’t seem to think of any other way to control it than giving out more guns to our citizenry so they can “defend themselves,” we have literally lost the fight for freedom. We certainly can’t shoot our way out, although some might like to try.

False myths and fascist wishes

How long do we really want to lie to ourselves about the open-ended terrorism of gun violence that rips through the fabric of American culture with a seemingly unrelenting pace? Gun fascists tell us to “wise up” to the fact that things will never change. There are 200 million guns in America now. We can’t get rid of them all.

More fascist mindset. It only wants its selfish aims to be fulfilled and uses the false myth that guns bespeak independence and authority.

A last measure of peace, and why America is not anything like a “Christian nation”

That mindset of current day gun fascists would greatly surprise the person known as Jesus Christ, whose instructions to “love your enemy” certainly did not mean to shoot them first and love them later. Yet that is the message of the gun culture we’ve created, a product of the fascist propaganda pumped out by the NRA to support its own commercial clients. America’s freedoms are being sold up the river so that gun and ammunitions companies can make money, and so that people who own guns, legally or not, can be exonerated from culpability for their misuse, at any level. It’s very sad. America is very sad right now because of it.

So we live with a form of terrorism and a fascist strain of a faux branch of government to boot.

The fact is, the way things are now, we could all be shot, any moment of our lives. The gun culture tells us this is inevitable unless we arm ourselves. Such is their interpretation of “freedom.” But it is certainly not in line with the notion of freedom espoused by Christianity, upon whose values some of our nation’s foundations were partly based. That brand of freedom shows personal discipline in resistance to violence. Martin Luther King, Jr. exhibited Christian resistance to violence. And what happened? It got him shot. But the solution was not to arm protestors. The solution was persistence in the face of prejudice and violence.

“Do not suffer the children to come to me”

If a nation dominated by guns is all we have to offer our children, that notion of a “city upon a hill” is all but lost.

Tell that myth to the little children shot in the latest tragedy, and to the millions of other children now asking their parents whether they will be shot at school next week. If we follow the logic of the gun fascists, our city on the hill must automatically become a fortress. The notion is simply medieval.

Jesus once warned his disciples, “do not suffer the children to come to me.” He wanted all to know the sanctity of true freedom, which is not borne on threat and self defense, but on love, charity, understanding and yes, education to the perils of evil in our world. We do need to watch out. But our first priority should be prevention, not vengeance in return for vengeance.

Echoes of vengeance

Today parents are at pains to explain to their children that the Connecticut shootings were just an isolated incident. That’s the advice being given by psychologists.

Tell your kids it’s okay. Tell them they’re not at risk. Assure them the bad guys will not reach their schools.

In other words, lie to them now, and hopefully you’ll never have to explain why that lie was so false. Some lies appear vital to the sanity of a nation at risk. It’s true in war. It’s true in supposed peace as well.

America was turned rotten from the inside out by people who have gone about preaching freedom while creating an iron curtain of weapons inside our own borders, an imprisonment of our imaginations. We’re all captives to limits placed on our imaginations when it comes to the true meaning of democracy and freedom. Yet nothing can kill the imagination quicker than the report of a gun. I’ve heard it in my own quiet neighborhood, the product of a domestic quarrel down the block. Yet I didn’t run out to Walmart and buy a gun. That’s illogical.

Yet that gun report did rattle the minds of those who live nearby. The sound of that guns has had a chilling effect on the notion that we are free to live in peace and harmony. Guns are everywhere, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

At least that’s what they tell us. It’s up to us whether we choose to listen or not.

Who are my mother and brothers?

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

Mark 3:33 New International Version (NIV) 33 “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

By Christopher Cudworth

It is not often preached from the pulpit that Jesus so profoundly emphasized the isolation of the human condition. In 50 years of cognizant Christian worship, I have not heard this isolation emphasized with much clarity or conviction. It is too lonely a piece of scripture upon which to focus. It can frighten believers and frighten away possible converts.

The power to stand alone is important, but not the point of Christianity.

The power to stand alone is important, but not the point of Christianity.

Yet the Bible clearly shows that Jesus, and God especially, want us to know that to be human is ultimately to be alone.

Part of the plan?

Of course that is what Christian fellowship is designed to conquer. And the Kingdom of God is created here on earth to prevent this form of isolation. From others. Even from oneself.

Yet the undeniable message of Mark 3:33 is this: Even your family and friends can and will let you down. God alone is the ultimate solace.

This isolating message is likely ignored in the Christian church because it flies too near the methods used by cults to trap people into wicked devotion. The famously devious method of some network marketing organizations is to have you try to sell and recruit your friends into the organization. But people are repelled by such efforts. Those who see the folly and the scam are legitimately repulsed. Yet a desperate soul often tarries on, convinced perhaps of possible wealth if only friends and family really understood the potential in the scheme.

The ultimate effect of network marketing schemes is that they can divest people of their human network. Then the “organization” or whatever you want to call it (some call it “my business”) has you dead to rights. Because once you have scared off your friends and family, the network marketing organization (or a cult) sets out to replace that network with whatever they tell you is vital and true.

Who are my mother and my brothers? 

How does that compare to Christianity? To the example set by Jesus in saying, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”

We can take another example from the Bible to examine the issue of isolation. Just before he was taken into captivity by a calculating band of priests from the very faith he had come to fulfill, Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray.

Mark 14:32
[ Gethsemane ] They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”

Of course we know how that segment of the story comes out. His disciples, who are depicted in the Bible as often failing in tasks of devotion and understanding, cannot stay awake while Jesus goes to pray. They fall asleep and when Jesus returns, having prayed to understand the very life he would soon give away as redemption for all, finds his devoted friends asleep on the job.

The deeper meaning of disappointment

It happens often to all of us. People disappoint us. We disappoint other people. And look at the word structure of that word, “disappoint.” To dis-appoint is to disassociate, or to send away either by intent or by mistake.

Jesus tries to warn us that disappointment is a big part of the human condition. Our failures are characterized by many as our sins, or our almost predestined capacity to sin.

Sin is the ultimate isolation from God. It is what separated the proverbial Adam and Eve from God in the Garden of Eden. Another garden. Another time. The garden is supposed to be a place of consideration and worship, our connection to stewardship and creation. And yet here we have two biting examples in the Bible where a garden is a rife example of disappointment. God disappointed in Adam and Eve. Jesus disappointed in his disciples.

And what are we to make of the idea that the world can be such a disappointing place?

Friendship and fellowship

This message seems to run counter from the idea that our fellowship here on earth can be a salve for the soul. Well, it is not wise to give up on friendship and love so easily, now is it? Our relationships are clearly of great value in this world. Love is built around and in them. Our families are designed, both in faith and through nature, to be a sustaining force in this world. The friends we gather around us and trust are people in whom we find joy and support.

None of those truths is undermined by the example Jesus makes in both his statement about his mother and brothers or his disappointment in his disciples. Jesus is master not only of this world in the spiritual sense, but also of necessary hyperbole. His teachings are full of striking examples that cut through our perceptions of what human relationships really are, and what they offer.

Salvation

Our disappointment is our salvation, you see. Friends and family can and do disappoint us, just as we sometimes disappoint them. It is the isolating nature of the human condition to disappoint those we need and love the most.

But the real message of disappointment and resultant isolation is that God provides a model of unifying faith. Because to love is to forgive, even when our friends and family doubt in us, and disappoint. We trust in God because God trusts in us to make choices that reach across that disappointment to heal and forgive. God even asks us to love our enemies. That is a potent message if you want to understand the true “way of the world” through the eyes of God. You cannot ultimately conquer disappointment and isolation if you do not choose to love. You will be alone if you choose not to forgive, or fail in your devotion to a friend.

Yet when hurt comes calling, our natural tendency is to withdraw, pull back, and feel disappointment. We feel it so keenly we can begin to hate. Then we begin to seek targets for our hate because it becomes part of our nature. We look for the disadvantaged and the weak because in our own weakness and fear we want only to feel superior to others, somehow, so that we do not feel put down or pushed away from life itself.

The dangers of prejudice

Those are the foundations of prejudice of course. And of economic inequality, and caring not for the poor. We find the wealthiest among us susceptible to this isolating force of the “other.” Often that sense of disgust toward those we consider inferior becomes magnifying the more life seems to dispense fortune upon us.

Jesus recognized all this potential for prejudice, power and loss of imagination. Because imagining ourselves to be superior to others in any way is the ultimate sin, at least in the eyes of God. That is why Jesus told the wealthy to give away their riches and follow him. That is why it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to gain entrance to heaven. Wealth can be an isolating force.

It can, of course, also be an instrument for good. We see many examples of people who use their wealth for good. Even the robber barons of the early 20th century, who built monopolies and wealth beyond imagination through industry did turn around and do great things with their money. Carnegie. Rockefeller. The list goes on, and continues to this day.

So it is not wealth alone that is a sin, but wealth in some way that combines with isolation that God does not appreciate. Jesus broke through social strata and perceptions that people who were disadvantaged or different were somehow victims of their own sin. He also forcefully resisted the practice by priests of his day (and ever after, it seems) to turn scripture into laws that trap and hurt others. Jesus did not tolerate using God’s word for punishment and isolation. He would definitely not approve of the manner in which so many supposed Christians  use scripture to create false social and economic strata today. The practice of using literalism to ostracize gays and women, for example, is abhorrent by nature to Jesus. The idea that the Bible is somehow a scientific text would also be absurd to Jesus, who taught in organic parables using examples from nature to teach spiritual concepts. Jesus was no literalist. He was no fool, in other words. Jesus disliked the actions of fools like that.

And what do we find as a result of such actions today? An increasingly divided faith, in Christianity. It has been that way since the start, it seems, where zealots who wanted a literal earthly kingdom ruled by Jesus were “disappointed” to find that his kingdom was one of spirit, not earthly wealth and power.

The many kinds of wealth, and corruption

Wealth is relative, of course. One of the catchiest devices of certain political parties is to figure out how to make people feel like they have ownership or a stake in the result of an election simply by making people feel like they will “win” somehow if they cast their vote in favor of the party making the promises. Of course, people can often be found voting against their best interests, be they economic or even spiritual, and voting on a one-issue platform that hands over power to people who pretend to care but really do not.

So we see that it is at times the power of isolating people from their best interests that is the most powerful political tool of all. Politics is the ultimate form of network marketing. It is the cult of all human cults.

Cutting through the lies

Jesus cut through the lies to make us understand that disappointment and fear of isolation is our worst enemy. Yet he calls us to stand alone first, to accept and understand that with the love of God, the grace of acceptance, we are never alone.

So have the courage to stand alone, and not be disappointed to the point of isolation when your friends or family fail you, or your work environment seems poison, or the very church that you attend turns out to be a flawed human enterprise. All these things are to be expected. Jesus and God want us not to be surprised by events like these.

Yes, we can still love the world, our friends and ourselves if we understand that the kingdom of God is made from the commitment to love and forgive. Then we will find and know our mother and our brothers, our sisters and our friends. They will be drawn to us by our humility and our example of faith. That is how it is all supposed to work.

What the neo-Confederacy and biblical literalism have in common

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

By Christopher Cudworth (addition to original post)

In 2007 when I published my book The Genesis Fix, A Repair Manual for the Modern Age, the section on the Liberal vs. Conservative divide contained the following passage, focusing on what I called the neo-Confederacy. The sad truth is that my predictions are coming true before our very eyes. This post addresses that issue and what to do about the influence of an originally corrupted view of Christian faith.  

The Conservative/Liberal Divide

The current-day battle between liberals and conservatives carries the same stridency and stubbornness that marked the American Civil War. The difficult question we must face is whether we can anticipate the rise of a new form of “confederacy” in the modern age.

The original, Southern Confederacy stemmed from dissatisfaction with the state of the Union and the future of government.  It might seem easy to assume that the Union was 100% on the right side of political issues in the Civil War. But no matter how correct the Union cause might appear in retrospect, the Confederacy was not by definition without virtue. As a political entity it may well have been justified in defending itself against economic and military aggression by the Union. And in spite of the notion that the ideology of the Confederacy was purged through the Civil War, the personal and political freedoms advocated by the South are alive and well today in modern society, woven into the politics of libertarians and other conservatives who contend that the best government is that which governs least. These principles the Confederacy sought to defend, and the sense of pride in defending moral principles has never been lost on the South.

However unfortunate it may have been for the Confederate South to secede, one can admire the determination of the movement as symbolic of the American revolutionary spirit. It may still be possible that partisan politics will produce an America divided over ideology, geography, oligarchy, or all of the above.

Perhaps the most likely scenario is the formation of a “neo-Confederacy” around “doctrinal states” or politics focused on “Red” and “Blue” states. Proponents on either side of the political fence have begun to see the value of the “winner-take-all” approach. We are not far from a moment in history when battles over doctrinal authority could lead to a new secession in the hands of the “neo-Confederates” and the states they represent.

But there are other issues afoot as well. The next Civil War may be fought not in the fields and forests of America, but in courtrooms where armies of lawyers battle over the rights of corporations to control America’s life and politics. Corporate lobbies and revenue now influence every facet of American life.  The largest corporations and the individuals who run them have more money and power than many countries in the world. It is not a stretch to say that one cannot become a governor, senator or representative without the backing of corporations. A neo-Confederacy of corporate largess already exists in America, and it is not limited to the Republican side of the political fence.  It may not be long before the power vested in corporations becomes a self-fulfilling mandate and America will be forced to choose between its original model of a democratic republic recorded in the Constitution and a new, corporate society that is ruled by companies who run the business of America. Whether we accept that model, or have the courage to resist this takeover of American life is a question for our age.

***

It wasn’t that hard to predict the rise of the neo-Confederacy. The thought processes of people with politically doctrinal leanings that are furthermore prone to the more dogmatic brand of religion founded on literally misguided interpretations of the Bible are not that difficult to discern. It’s “their way or the highway” and once challenged on their own public turf, their propensity is not to stand and reason with the enemy. It is first to fight with angry words and name-calling, and when that fails, the primary instinct is to pull back and hide from the truth that confronts them.

And so we find ourselves face to face with the neo-Confederacy. It wasn’t that hard to predict. Honest.

Where do we go from here? 

Since it is not really appropriate to point out a problem––however profound our simple––without proposing a solution, we shall do so here.

The issue of secession in America may appear on the surface to be a challenge of politics, economics and personal autonomy.

Underlying these practical matters is a deeper issue that keeps causing major rifts in American life. That is religion. Specifically, it is the religion of literalism that on the surface seems so absolute and clean. Upon critical examination this brand of religion turns out to be a highly manipulated brand of faith, one concocted of absolutes without support of scripture. At the same time, it is a both a manipulative and aggressive brand of faith by necessity in the greater world of idea. This is because the fundamentals upon which religious literalism are based are at once deep seated and brittle.

Feet of clay and the illusion of strength

One can turn to scripture itself for an interpretation of how fragile the foundations of literalism really are. We turn to the book of Daniel for the principle example of a kingdom (or confederacy) built upon a brittle base. Daniel 2: 31-33 relates the interpretation of a dream by King Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon who was greatly vexed by his vision of a statue, wanting dearly to know its signficance. So Daniel told him:

Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.
This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. (Daniel 2:31-33)

This interpretation pointed out that the character of the kingdom was flawed, built of materials cobbled together to give an impression of great strength, but when examined closely, that strength was in fact an illusion.

Protecting the base

The “base” of biblical literalism is the brittle translation starts with an image of the bible as an inerrant, infallible book, but also incorporates the idea that the words in the book must be taken literally or they would have no meaning at all.

This is the clay at the foot of biblical literalism. Because it is so fragile, defenders of the literal faith must be on guard against any pressures that might cause the statue of literalism to topple over. That is why biblical literalists defend their interpretation of the bible so vehemently against perceived enemies such as science, evolution and social progress. All these knowledge-based (and therefore fluid) worldviews are a constant threat against the fixed worldview of biblical literalism.

But rather than sit back and take the blows, biblical literalists have learned to create a perimeter of defense around their worldview. Then they seek to infiltrate their enemies at every turn with probing attacks into the schools, science labs and government that would dare challenge the imposition of literalism upon the populace.

That is the culture war that drives so much of American politics. This is not one of imagination, but of stark reality. More than 30% of Americans believe the Bible is literally true. Is it actually a coincidence that the Republican base in America is also a relatively fixed percentage between 30%-35% who seem to back the Republican Party and its candidates regardless of their virtues. Immediately upon re-election, 20 states had petitions filed for secession. That’s around 40% of the states.

So we see a pattern of sorts emerging in America, drawn around doctrines that are both political and religious, but that ultimately shrink back to one stark fact: Americans fearful their worldview is too brittle to stand on its own.

How to fix the problem

In the tradition known as Christianity, there is a long history of education as its base. Jesus Christ is known as Teacher, and his instructional methods ranged from teaching his disciples in intimate settings to preaching to thousands on the hillside in the Sermon on the Mount.

As a teacher, Jesus was no slouch. In particular, he was a great defender of ideas that, once introduced, could be easily misunderstood. He repeatedly instructed and rebuked his own disciples on the meaning of his parables which were patently metaphorical. When the 12 questioned why Jesus taught in parables, he called them “stupid” for not grasping their meaning in the first place, and went to great lengths to document the purpose of teaching in parables, so that truth could be revealed through common means to people who have not yet been given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So the teaching tradition of Jesus Christ was not based on literalism, but on heavy use of metaphor. Jesus argued with officials of the Jewish faith, challenging them on their legalism and use of faith to grab positions of high social and political status.

Does there seem to be a pattern here as well?

Modern day legalism

It’s really quite simple to see what is happening in America. Christianity has allowed so many of its sheep to stray from the metaphorical tradition of faith as taught by Jesus Christ that a huge portion of the religion has been permitted to crystallize at its base.

Recall that the entire reason Jesus was not accepted as Messiah in his day was the unwillingness of religious leaders to consider that the kingdom about which Jesus was preaching was not one of political power and control, but of personal revelation and salvation. A few zealots were so bitterly disappointed by this news they resisted Jesus. And the very people who ran the faith upon which Jesus built his ministry conspired to have him handed over to the Roman authorities, who apparently saw no real threat to their own power and authority other than that proposed by the people who feared him most.

Jesus was a threat to no one but those who refused to grasp the real meaning of his presence on earth. Those would be people whose priorities were political and therefore fragile, always threatened by the world of ideas threatening to encroach upon their fixed vision of an earthly kingdom.

And yet the earthly kingdom Jesus proposed was ever more real than that proposed by the zealots. The early kingdom Jesus brought to life was collaborative, loving and supportive. Christians enact that kingdom through they daily lives not by striving to fend off every new idea that comes along, or by trying to impose their faith on the laws of a nation, but by loving better and more often, instilling the benefits of the Holy Spirit and God in this world.

Time for a challenge

So it is time for Christians who understand the real kingdom of God and Christ to challenge the rigid worldview of fixed-faith Christianity. It is time for Christians who grasp the meaning of the parables to be the true disciples of the faith. It is time for Christians who understand that fear alone is not a sufficient foundation for faith in God, and that feet of clay offer nothing to stand upon.

It is time for Christians who believe in the living kingdom of God here on earth to challenge the false premises of biblical literalism. It is time for Christians who believe that a faith can exist freely within a nation without making it the law of the land to demand the absolutists to stand down, back off their arch convictions and open their hearts to faith that embraces science and comprehends the reality of evolution through reconciliation of a metaphorical understanding of scripture, just as Jesus would have us do.

And finally, it is time for Christians who believe in the living kingdom of God to demand that 30% of the Christians who believe in a literal understanding of the Bible to stop acting like Muslim literalists seeking to create Shariah law in nations around the world.

There is no difference when it comes to feet of clay. It happens time and again throughout history that brittle character takes over the faith and lives of otherwise good people.

It’s time to fight back against the secessionists of faith just as it is time to fight back against political literalists who seek to secede from the Union. Because the parallels are too clear to deny.

We close with a prayer, of sorts, from the book of Proverbs, which teaches us how and why we should have courage to rebuke those with an ear to hear.

Proverbs 9:8

Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.

The Godly storm of consternation on Republican losses

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

Did Republican wishes get blown away by God? Painting by Christopher Cudworth

For more than 15 years, my writing partner (www.werunandride.wordpress.com) Monte Wehrkamp and I have exchanged emails over politics, religion and modern culture.

We talked our way through 8 years of a Bush Presidency that shot forth religious triumphalism whenever it did anything, good or bad, on America’s behalf. You could almost feel America sag under the weight of those heavy claims.

Patriot Preachers

Over the years we’ve listened to various TV preachers complain about the supposed downfall of America and the many publicly laments about its causes, especially those they judge to be morally reprehensible. The Reverend Jerry Falwell and the Reverend Pat Robertson in their prime moments have both claimed to be the mouthpiece of God on matters of religious consternation such as abortion, gay rights and evolution, to name a few. These issues they indict as signs of a morally depraved society, therefore deserving of a good whack on the coast by a hurricane sent from God, or an earthquake or two.

 

Does it work both ways? 

So let’s take them at their word, for a moment, and suppose that God really does use natural disasters to correct moral wrongs in a nation. Who has he thwarted most profoundly, and most recently? Here was my friend Monte’s take on the situation, sent to me via email this past Friday:

“There’s a lot of handwringing going on by Republicans, wondering how it was they lost an election they so thought they were going to win.

Some think Romney did a poor job of letting us get to know him, the person. There have been the typical accusations of Liberal media bias by everyone besides Fox News. Then of course the blame might lie in the conflicting messages regarding immigration, reproductive rights, gender equality, and homosexual unions, and what Americans make of the Republican position on those issues. 

But I think the reason for the Romney loss may be more obvious than that. To the party the tries to embrace “God” more than the Democrats (and heck, even the Taliban, for that matter), I would like to suggest that God, Hissownself, is the reason Romney lost.

Do not forget that the Republican Convention was washed out in the early days by a hurricane named Isaac, who rose from the sea and flooded asunder the introduction of Romney, the candidate. The subsequent rearranging of the program for the TV audience meant the highlight of the convention fell upon a senile, rambling, incoherent, spaghetti western actor talking to an empty chair. That certainly sounded like an act of God. Or someone talking to God. Only God did not appear to be listening. 

And then, during the critical election period, another hurricane – nay, a super-frankenstorm  named Sandy roared up the coast and threw fury and water upon all those Republicans who would have cast votes for Romney, were they not cowering in shelters or their homes.

So in the beginning, and at the end, God’s wrath upon Republicans was evident. He sent the Holy Spirit in the form of Isaac and Sandy to do His bidding, and that was to secure President Obama’s second term. Oh, and keep a Democratic majority in the Senate. Knock off a couple House seats as well.

The Republicans should stop for a moment and think about that. I await Pat Robertson’s comments regarding God’s wrath upon the Republicans and why God has felt it necessary to choose a black, socialist Muslim from Kenya over the all-American, magic-underweared, private schooled, Bain Capitalized, Wall Street annointed, 5-point-planned, Tea-Party vetted former Governor, Mitt Romney?”

Good questions all. The answers don’t seem to be clear even to the supposedly God-fearing announcers on Fox News, who certainly appeared like they’d seen a Holy Ghost of some sort when their own station called the race for Obama. Shock and Awe came home to roost.

God beats the crap out of Karl Rove

Karl Rove seemed the most stunned of all, as if the nickname Turd Blossom given to him by former President George W. Bush has literally come true, right there in his pants. Rove spouted excuses like diarrhea, a political scoundrel exposed by the prodigious amounts of closeted money he spent to win the election, only to lose to big, and lose often. And what did Rove have to say about Hurricane Sandy?  To quote the Turd Blossom himself, this is what he said:

“The president was also lucky. This time, the October surprise was not a dirty trick but an act of God. Hurricane Sandy interrupted Mr. Romney’s momentum and allowed Mr. Obama to look presidential and bipartisan.”

Even the candidate himself, Mitt Romney, a devout man by all reports, seemed confounded by God’s abandonment of his campaign in his hour of need. As a story on thinkprogress.org shared, “Mitt Romney reportedly told donors at a Wednesday breakfast that Hurricane Sandy hurt his momentum.”

Thinkprogress.org also reports that MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews also credited the storm with “possibilities for good politics,” though he later apologized.

Rove and Romney never went quite so far as to suggest that the so-called ‘act of God’ in Hurricane Sandy was in fact intentional. But by the line of reasoning given by so many other Republican leaders claiming that God is on their side, perhaps nothing the Republicans could have done would have helped them win this election. The handprints of God Himself were all over this race, dumping buckets of rain and throwing gale-force winds at everything the Republicans did.

Getting real

Honestly, none of us rational types really thinks God threw those storms at the Republicans. A mature faith knows that it is our response and support for each other in the face of such threats that truly defines the kingdom of God. What we witnessed instead was the will of an American people suspicious and fed up with  the false righteousness of Republicans convinced they can do no wrong. Because the Romney campaign barely disguised the fact that they would double down on the policies implemented by George W. Bush, tossing our weight and defense budget around in foreign policy while gutting the help and human services of domestic policies back home. Everyone sensed that this was a far worse prescription for disaster than the organization challenges of figuring out how our health care system can work more compassionately and efficiently. That and taxing the rich were the only two things the Republicans had to complain about leading up to November 6, 2012. They knew in their guts their own policies were the cause for the Great Recession and resultant slow growth of the economy.

So it really was like God calling their bluff on the Big Lie that Republicans offered the better alternative. Sorry GOP boys and girls. You were not David to Obama’s Goliath. More like Noah being puked out of the whale. You have not learned your lesson yet. Your skin is still bleached white and you have to learn to pay attention to God’s real orders, like loving your enemies, before you’ll be allowed to inherit the kingdom of God here on earth. Which you call America.

It certainly is interesting to note from a biblical perspective that very few Republicans have offered to don the sackcloth and engage in real repentance before the Old Testament God they like to enlist whenever it suits their political aims. Taken at their own word, it would appear that the latter day Republicans only believe in a God of justice when that God abides by their politically selfish desires.

But as they recently learned, that kind of God is tough to rely upon. Especially in an election year.

 

Paul Ryan’s confused effort to interpret America as a Christian nation

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

VP Candidate Paul Ryan

November 5, 2012:

Republican VP hopeful Rep.Paul Ryan (R-Wis) saved an impassioned pitch to religiously motivated voters as a last-minute attempt to sway potentially independent voters by using faith-based fear tactics to accuse President Barack Obama of undermining religious freedom in America.

“This is a huge election,” Ryan is quoted in a Huffington Post story. “Please know that Mitt Romney and I understand the stakes. We understand the stakes of where this country is headed. We understand the stakes of our fundamental freedoms being on the line, like religious freedom — such as how they’re being compromised in Obamacare.”

One issue. Dueling topics. 

Notice that the desperate candidate cannot manage to stick to one topic at a time. He is objecting to a provision in the Obama Health Care plan that requires religious-based organizations to offer coverage in their health plans for birth control.

The Supreme Court already decided these issues

Those arguments were already decided and elevated to the Supreme Court, which ruled the health care provisions in Obamacare to be consitutional. The Supreme Court further denied hearing a specific case (SOURCE: ACLU) ‘that the ACA’s individual mandate provision violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a statute that precludes federal laws from placing a “substantial burden” on religious exercise unless the government has a compelling interest in enacting the law.

The courts determined there was no substantial burden placed on any faith-based organizations by the requirement to include birth control in their employer-managed health care plans.

So Paul Ryan’s argument is with the Supreme Court, not Barack Obama. The Supreme Court is notably more conservative in its leanings than our current President, so if Ryan wants to complain about the impingement of health care laws on religious freedom, he should castigate the same court that upheld a case in the Citizens United ruling that corporations have the same free speech (ne: spending rights on political campaigns) as people. Or perhaps it is time for Ryan to parrot the statement of Mitt Romney who said, “Corporations are people” with a related version that says “Churches are people too.” That would follow the same false logic in contending that religious freedom is not an individual right but a corporate right of churches and religiously-based organizations to wield in the administration of individual rights. In other words, individuals have no access to rights accept those determined by the corporations or faith-based organizations for whom they work. And frankly, that is where we are in America, right now.

Which is really ironic, because that brand of thinking places specific organizations as moderators of access to individual rights, which is a far worse (and currently real) form of rights infringement than government standards, which at least apply to all citizens equally.

A calculated misdirection of anger

But Ryan chooses to misdirect his anger at Obama, for politicl points. The Huff Post story says Ryan “added that Obama’s vision was “a path that grows government, restricts freedom and liberty and compromises those values — those Judeo-Christian, Western civilization values that made us a great and exceptional nation in the first place.”

Nutspeak and dog-whistles

That’s just nutspeak and dog-whistle threats to rally the GOP’s religious base, which is so confused by its own interpretations of the United States Constitution that many Americans are driving around with bumper stickers that show the Statue of Liberty holding up a Christian cross as a symbol of protecting religious freedom.

America’s so-called religious base is confused

That’s as confused as you can get. That bumper sticker alone shows that a big chunk of Americans do not even understand the concept of religious freedom, much less its interpretation in the public space.

Which is why thousands of churches still flaunt their political leanings, preaching to parishioners to “get out the vote” with tricky little conservative videos and thinly disguised pulpit talks throwing words around about abortion, gay rights and even the right to fight wars as real Christian values.

On the face of his statements, Paul Ryan seems confused in his inability to keep his political views separate from his religious desires. “President Obama used his health care plan to declare war on religion, forcing religious institutions to go against their faith,” said the narrator in a Romney campaign ad in August. “Mitt Romney believes that’s wrong.”

Here Ryan likely is obscuring the real defense he is trying to make. Ryan’s own source of faith is the Catholic religion, a tradition that has publicly stated that all other churches and faiths pale in comparison to the one true faith. Coming from such a doctrinal tradition, it must be difficult for a conservative Catholic such as Paul Ryan to bite his tongue in public on a number of issues. The most significant may be his proposed partnership with devout Mormon Mitt Romney. Catholics are far from reconciled to Mormonism even as a brand of Christianity, much less one on par with the Roman Catholic tradition, for instance.

It seems Paul Ryan is cast with a dual or triple role on his hands. To reconcile his idea that religious freedom is at risk is to simultaneously an attempt to justify that his own church accepts the religion of his future superior, Mitt Romney. Some argue that Romney’s own faith requires him to place religious ideals before all other duties.

Never a clear case. On purpose. 

So we might forgive a little confusion on Paul Ryan’s part, acting his role as altar boy on a national stage that is far too complex for even he or Mitt Romney to handle. That is why that cannot make a clear case, or else they refuse (the most likely scenario) to make a clear case for all that they oppose. Because deep down, they oppose each other.

But rather than admit these deep inner conflicts in their personal and professional ideologies, they prefer to use the general confusion of the public’s lack of religious sophistication along with their own twisted brand of obscured political ideology to confuse people into “voting their values” whatever those may be.

So we find out a strange truth: This isn’t religious freedom they’re worried about, but religious differences they are afraid to expose, and the intolerances lurking just below the surface.

They use this confusion and fear to bury the public’s ability to distinguish truth from the fiction Ryan and Romney are trying to sell.

It’s too bad so many people are confused enough to buy it. Because America’s ultimate value as a nation is not so much its exceptionalism as its acceptionalism. That is real religious freedom. Freedom for all, not just the noisiest, most powerful Christians, and the Mormons they conveniently include when power is at stake.

Mitt Romney’s half-assed plan for America

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

The half-assed logo of Mitt Romney

If you haven’t noticed the similarities, the logo for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign looks a lot like half an ass. Which is fairly prophetic, because Mitt Romney’s campaign has been pretty much half-assed from the start. And it appears his Presidency would promise much of the same.

We’ve all been privy to Romney’s speaking gaffes, his propensity for lies and distortions and his inability to provide any detail or prove any benefits that would come about through his economic or tax policies. The gaps between his claims and the facts are starting to look more and more like a giant plumber’s crack into which the truth always falls.

Precursor: The half-assed legacy of the Bush Doctrine

America barely survived the half-assed antics of the last Republican President and Vice President. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney led the nation into an economic freefall produced by prodigiously cutting taxes on the richest Americans, starting two illegal, unbudgeted wars and ignoring the warning signals on national crises including 9/11, in which the Bush administration had fair warning and chose to ignore advice about terror threats.

That is the factor in the 2012 election that economists seldom mention. It was the half-assed approach to national security founded on an obsession with ideological wars that caused Bush & Co. to allow America to be attacked. That resulted in a weakened society and a weakened economy. In other words, Osama bin Laden’s stealth terror strategy worked against America because our own prodigious arrogance and exceptionalism made us vulnerable. That is a half-assed way of governing the nation, and from his threats toward Iran, Mitt Romney appears headed on a similar, yet far more dangerous course of foreign policy. He has chosen many members of Bush’s former advisory crew to run his administration. That’s good news for nobody.

Let’s say it loud and clear: Had Bush not been selfishly focused on his strange fixation of taking over the Middle East for oil and/or religious glory, the 9/11 attacks indeed could have been prevented.

We know that outgoing President Bill Clinton and the standing National Coordinator of Security Richard Clarke both provided plenty of warning about bin Laden, and Clarke sought an audience with Bush up to the day before the attacks. Yet Bush and Cheney were too busy plotting their pretty little war with Iraq to bother about the real threats to America. So we got hit, and hit hard.

Once the attack occurred, Bush promised with all the bluster of a military general to hunt down Osama bin Laden. Somewhere along the way during his distracted presidency, Bush openly complained it was too hard to search for America’s #1 terrorist threat, and that as president he never really thought much about bin Laden anymore.

Bush never finished either of the wars he started during his presidency. That is the sign of half-assed leadership. No plan = no victory, despite his claims of Mission Accomplished.

Half-assed victory

To make matters worse, the pet war started by Bush and Cheney was run in a half-assed manner from the moment they attacked. Principally, they could not be bothered to consider the cultural, social and tribal implications of taking over a country with a complex history. So instead they tried to gratuitously install an American-style government as if it were a turnkey operation. The first half-assed mistake was the failure to protect any of the nation’s cultural assets when Saddam Hussein fell from power. The only thing Bush and Cheney did think to do was grab the reigns to Iraq’s oil production, thereby promising that the proceeds would pay the cost of the war. That never happened of course. All these gaffes led to an influx and creation of more terrorists within the country, a phenomena the Bush crowd tried to quell by resorting to torture. It was an ugly scene, made worse by the fact that we were also neglecting responsibilities in Afghanistan. But that’s the half-assers way.

It all proves that an ideologically-driven foreign policy leads to a half-assed foreign policy, because having been conceived at 30,000 feet in the rare air of wishful thinking, it cannot envision or accommodate realities on the ground. It was simply unacceptable to conquer a country and let it fail so miserably from lack of planning.

A half-assed religious agenda

Worse yet was the fact that hidden agenda behind the war in Iraq was an apparent religious agenda to use the Mideast as some sort of launching ground for the Apocalypse. It seems that no matter what conservatives do in the modern age, the same sort of literalistic, legalistic and forceful brand of religion is hidden behind its motives.

What we might face with Mitt Romney in charge, an avowed Mormon, no one really knows. Even right wing leaders are suspicious of Mormonism. A casual visitor to the faith is often perplexed if they pick up the Book of Mormon, which appears to have been created sans historical fact, written from the vapors and produced out of whole cloth. Invented in other words, for some purpose that has little to do with the other major religions of the world. Jews, Muslim and Christian believers all share some of the same apparently historical foundations in their faith. Mormonism grabs those foundations and runs with them, claiming there was a race of people in North America about which there is no historical record. Which is rather a half-assed way of starting a religion.

Hence many religious leaders remain skeptical of Mormonism, while non-religious people think the whole religious trade a farce, half-assed in its assertions of an invisible deity running the world’s affairs. One can’t blame them at times. While the source of religious faith may be essentially invisible, the actions of the world’s religious leaders often aren’t; those being discrimination, intolerance, war-mongering, hatred, bigotry, torture, inquisitions, witch hunts, religious in-fighting and crusades of all manner and types.

Let’s face it, religion is pretty half-assed about its claims to bringing about world peace and harmony.

Romney is the New Bush. But not quite the same as the old Bush. 

Now we’re faced with the apparent king of all half-asses, Mitt Romney, the Mormon candidate who can’t even stick to one subject without lying his ass off or telling half-assed stories about why he thinks this or that is true. His performance in the presidential debates was cheerleadered by many conservatives who care not one whit whether anything he says is true. Yet even Fox News was slow behind the man until he was the nominee. That should tell you something.

What Fair and Balanced really means

The faux news people at Fox News no longer cares what Romney says, just that he wins. That is the summation, in fact, of the whole Fair and Balanced mantra. Fair means believe what we say. Balanced means conservatives should get what they want. So Fox plies that strategy by pumping out all sorts of single-message promises to constituencies concerned about gun rights, abortion, contraception, gays, religious freedom and legal decisions that favor these causes. There is no single narrative connecting these sundry causes, just the idea that Fair=Believe What We Way and Balanced = You Should Get What You Want.

How Fox News unwittingly created Mitt Romney

Fox News therefore deftly delivers exactly what the most selfish and fearful of Americans want in their media and their politics. And Mitt Romney, it turns out, is the perfect product of the whole Fox ideology. A religion no one can touch without being castigated for being harsh or bigoted. An economic philosophy that is entirely ideological in nature, with no math attached, and therefore unassailable. A general ability to take the Etch-A-Sketch approach to thought leadership that closely aligns with the Fox News approach of issuing opinions on the new rather than reporting the facts. Mitt Romney was made for Fox News and made by Fox News.

Don’t bother me with the truth

The Romney campaign can’t even be bothered to tell these truthes to its American supporters. When fact-checking organizations take Romney to task his campaign replies that they cannot and will not be controlled by the facts. Now, even their own ads depend on lies layered with lies to make the points Romney is trying to make. Which is to trust him over Obama.

Romney’s half-assed approach to politics is the change positions all the time so that no one can hold him accountable for absolutely anything he’s ever said. His flip-flops are so profound they cannot even be grasped by a rational mind. He is literally debating himself in public. It is no wonder Barack Obama was so befuddled and depressed-looking in the first debate (which Romney supposedly one.) What is the right behavior when faced with a bald-faced liar in public? Obama took the high road in many respects, considerately reviewing in his mind just what was going on. That is what we expect a President to do with foreign leaders who lie in public; figure out what their real agenda is, and not call them to account until you can sort out the facts. So Obama treated Romney like a lying dictator. But Obama was publicly castigated for his debate Rope-A-Dope. And Romney took the lead as a result. What a sorry commentary on the naivete of our country and the half-assed abilities of half of Americans to figure out what’s really true.

Dog whistle racists and ungrateful Americans. What a party!

The heartfelt goal of most Romney believers seems to be supporting their candidate against all evidence of fact or fact-checking. America can’t get any details on the what the man really wants to do. But the dog-whistle racists and ungrateful Americans who won’t credit Bush for any of the harm he caused the nation but seek to blame Obama for a slow recovery feel that Mitt Romney will somehow do a better job than Obama has done.

And that’s a pretty half-assed philosophy given a complete lack of evidence that Romney and his running partner Paul Ryan have any clue at all what they’re doing, or about to do if they get elected.

Sure, they’ll move to slash taxes. And further impoverish the nation. They’ll cut programs, and send millions of people into poverty and at risk for loss of health coverage and even death. They’ll privatize Social Security and give billions over to Wall Street brokers who frittered away America’s wealth once before. And they dump Medicare for a voucher program that old people will not comprehend or be able to manage. And people will die.

That’s Mitt Romney’s half-assed plan for America. But it will make complete asses out of all of us if he is elected.

So consider: Romney’s campaign logo shows an R that looks like half an ass underlined by the tagline: Believe in America. Yes, that’s really what it says. And now that you know that a liar is behind that logo and that slogan, what are you going to do, believe in him?

That would be a half-assed decision, for sure.

He’s changed my mind. Why Mitt Romney should be king.

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

Yes, Mitt Romney has finally changed my mind. After campaigning for what, 4 long years, or maybe 8, he has convinced me that he wants and deserves to be King. Of somewhere at least. We’ll talk about that later.

Clearly, he has all the qualities that the great kings in history have exhibited. He is clear about his convictions, despite the fact that they are prone to change at the drop of a hat.

The red hats of Bartholomew Cubbins vexed the King

In fact, do you remember that Dr. Seuss story Bartholomew Cubbins and the 500 Hats? Bartholomew was a humble kid who showed up at the court of the king and was instructed to remove his hat. But when poor Bartholomew tried to do so, another hat popped up in its place. This happened over and over again.

The king thought Bartholomew was being disrespectful in not removing his hat in the king’s presence. So the king ordered Bartholomew to be taken away and have his hats removed while the scribes kept track of all the hats that came off the head of Bartholomew.

If you think carefully about the core of this story, it is all about the perceived value of social rank and class. After all, does it really matter if one person takes their hat of in the presence of another? Only if we allow social rank to rule our conscience. Yes, in many circles, removing our hat it is a sign of respect. We all take our hats off at church, or when the Pledge of Allegiance is recited or the National Anthem is played. But it’s not that common anymore to remove our hats in the presence of another person. Unless they want to be considered royalty.

But poor Bartholomew had no control over the circumstances of his supposed show of disrespect. He tried desperately to remove his hat(s) before the king, but to no avail.

The king showed little compassion for poor Bartholomew. Rather than take an interest in the process by which the hats kept appearing, as would a scientist, for example, want to know how it works, the king simply grew impatient with Bartholomew and had him hauled off for disobedience and insubordination.

I won’t spoil the ending of the story for you. It’s always fun to dig up and read a little Dr. Seuss on your own. And while you’re at it, give The Lorax a try too.

Was Dr. Seuss a bleeding heart liberal?

But perhaps some people might label Dr. Seuss a liberal for writing a story about the apparent lack of respect Bartholomew Cubbins showed for tradition and authority. Yet that seems to be a common theme in America today. So maybe Dr. Seuss is just out of touch with today’s more sophisticated partisan politics.

But just for fun (in the spirit of Dr. Suess) let’s flip the tale of Bartholomew Cubbins around for a moment, and consider the behavior of the king from a metaphorical perspective. The king, after all, already had all the authority he could ever want on his side. He could do anything he wanted with Bartholomew the moment he saw that the young man could not, or would not, remove his hat before the king. In fact the king could order the executioner to cut off the head of Bartholomew Cubbins if he wanted. Kings have been known to do just that. Or have people tortured in an attempt to get at the truth. The king could have put little Bartholomew on the royal rack and had him stretched like a rope until his bones cracked and his joints popped like water balloons. Kings have done that as well to people over the ages. They have done so in full compliance with the church, in fact. And the church itself with its inquisitions and witch hunts has behaved in royally brutal fashion.

Romney does his angry King impression

Authority when tested gets testy. Hence the angry looks given by certain political personalities when their authority and worldview has been challenged. King Romney cast just such a look during the political debates.

Interestingly, King Romney in a strange, reverse twist seems to have much in common with a certain Bartholomew Cubbins, who could not remove his hats before the king. King Romney, by comparison, seems to take great delight in donning hats for a moment to please his subjects, then casts them off without a thought. He seems to care not whether the hats he dons represent the true nature of his beliefs. They are hats of convenience, suitable for a moment’s impression before his partisan and loyal subjects, or those he seeks to make into peasants for his policies, then thrown away without a thought. These hats are often the products of lies about King Romney’s true intentions. But appears not to care about that. King Romney has one mission and one mission only: That is to attain the status  King, when he can no longer be questions or held accountable to anyone.

His own campaign refuses to allow facts to get in the way of his efforts to be King of America. That is a clear sign of a lack of confidence in the King to be truthful with his targeted subjects. Romney has developed the art of laughing off his critics and fact-checkers to a royal degree. His self-proclaimed attitude toward 47% of America is that they are lazy, unmotivated slackers who have no place in his kingdom.

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it — that that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. … These are people who pay no income tax. … [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

That is the language of a man who wants to be king, the man who literally states that there are 5% or 10% of the population with which he concerns himself, not the 47%.

Oh, sure, he backpedaled that comment later on, in full view of the public. But by then he was an Emperor With No Clothes. Because people saw how the king actually regards his intended subjects, with disregard for their humanity.

Yes, it is possible for a religious man like Romney to lose sight of his own core convictions when tempted with the potential to be king. He may have done great things in his life; rescued a fiscally trouble Olympics, crafted a health care policy based on practicality and compassion, and raised a family with full love and care.

But he has also disowned those very accomplishments, traveling overseas to criticize the London Olympics organizers, while also disowning the very structure of the health care policy that he helped draft in Massachusetts that provided a foundation for Obamacare. As noted, King Romney has also criticized millions of good citizens and family leaders with his disparaging statements about the “47” percent.

For Mitt Romney is a king who would rather knock the hats off people with whom he disagrees rather than consider the reasons they might need or choose to wear a hat in the first place.

King Mitt has clearly labeled the hat of Social Security an “entitlement” when in fact it is an investment-based insurance program. But King Mitt wants to hand over all that government-managed money (in other words: safe) to risky Wall Street Dukes who frittered away half of America’s wealth in the last great financial crash.

Or should we say financial crass? Because that is the plan behind the plan of Mitt Romney. Crass strategies hidden behind smiling facades of royal promise. American Recovery indeed. King Mitt has nothing but plunder and riches on his mind, the same manner of governance he applied at Bain Capital, that pillar of Social Darwinism and capitalistic gluttony. Steal the wealth. Dump the workers. Sell off the assets for a profit. Then claim you did it all for the good of the company.

He’ll take the same approach to running the nation as he did to running Bain Capital. Prince Ryan is is hopeful heir to the kingdom. They’re lining themselves up and even cheating the election process by buying voting machines, stifling votes among the poor and elderly. Anyone who stands in the way of the King and his murderous soldiers; men like Karl Rove, John Bolton, the whole lot of them.

We are all Bartholomew before King Romney. Our liberal hopes of social justice and economic parity are just so many hats the king wants to see knocked off our heads. And when the hats do not satisfy him because our mouths keep on talking, King Romney will let the executioner do his work. Cut programs. Slash budgets for Medicare and the EPA,

King Romney has already threatened Big Bird

public radio and the post office. Mitt hates hats. You can see the red glare in his eyes. He wants to be King. And that’s that.So let’s let him be king somewhere. He likes to store his money offshore, so let’s let him be King of his own little island somewhere. It can be a pretty place. He can have all the toys he wants. Ann Romney can play with her precious horses and Mitt can give his kids all the funny names he likes.

Just don’t elect him President. He’d rather chop off all our heads than listen to what Americans have to say about social justice and equity. And went he’s done he’ll pillage the countryside looking for the last person who thinks they’re entitled to hoe their own garden and sell their produce at a roadside market. Because we all know vegetables are too well-loved by liberals. Real Americans keat red meat and live in red states. The King says so. Long live King Romney. He sure acts the part.