Ranting and Raving

Learned from level_head who learned it from rowyn that at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, an employee was stampeded to death by a mob awaiting the store's early opening. Do read the story if it is not familiar to you.

Now, where to even begin?

Well, let's see, let's begin on Thanksgiving, when people who were working retail had to be prepared to wake up at 2 or 3AM to be at stores by 4am for 5am openings. Many would have had to have earlier Thanksgiving meals, or given up on it in order to be alert the next day. This was noted by friend Stego.

This is in service of what?

Then there are those 5:00 store openings as well, littered with loss-leaders to entice people into the stores. Heavy discounts on flat screen TV's were common, not just at Wal-Mart, but at Best Buy, and many other outlets across the nation.

This is in service of what?

Then there are the people determined to be first in line, determined to beat their neighbors to those loss-leaders. Instead of getting a good night's sleep and spending the day after Thanksgiving in quality time with family and friends, they're up at God-knows-when so they can get this stuff that no one really needs.

This is in service of what?

There's desperation all over this scenario - the retail worker desperate for a paycheck, the retailer desperate for sales, the consumer desperate for the discount. And all this desperation collided tragically on Friday in Valley Stream, and a man died.

This in service of what?

Ben Zoma would say: "Who is rich, he who is happy with his portion." (Avot 4:11)

If everyone in America followed Ben Zoma, our economy would collapse in a heartbeat. So we live in a world of manufactured need, and discontent with our portion is the engine that drives our economy. And right now, problems in banking and industry are forcing some to learn to be content with their portion, and others to look for bargains that will allow them to assuage their discontent within the constraints imposed by those problems.

Sales like the Black Friday sales are designed to capitalize on the discontent that our culture works so hard to manufacture. And that discontent is a powerful enough force that this year, it killed a man.

I am a person of faith. So are many people, Jewish and Christian, Muslim and Buddhist who read my journal. And I feel that there is a war being raised against some of the fundamental tenets of my faith, from people like the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. (I don't know who the speaker of the House is these days, so upstaged has he been by DeLay).

These people have been seeking to put into law very specific elements of the very specific splinter of Christianity in which they engaged. And every time Liberals talk about "the separation of Church and State," these wingnuts have a cow about how evil secularists and atheists are on a crusade to destroy Christianity in America. Their perception seems to be that they are being oppressed if their beliefs, and their beliefs alone are not being legislated, are not forming the basis for jurisprudence, and are not being enforced at home and on the world stage.

As many conservatives will point out, there is no "separation of Church and State" in the constitution. And they are right - this concept is the result of judicial interpretation. The Constitution gives us the "establishment clause" in its first Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . ."

Let's take a good hard look at this, leaving behind for the moment the notion of "separation of Church and State" and asking ourselves why it is there at all. First and foremost it codifies an important religious sentiment that we find in the Concessions and Agreements establishing the colony of New Jersey, written by William Penn, namely that "that no man, nor number of men upon earth, hath power or authority to rule over men's consciences in religious matters" (Joseph Story). This is an important notion to understand: the establishment clause is there not to prohibit prayer in schools, necessarily, nor to prohibit display of the Ten Commandments, necessarily, but to guarantee the the state does nothing to compromise the individual's relationship with God. Now this remains true regardless of whether that relationship is one of disavowal, a belief in an abstract "creator," or a belief in a personal God or gods.

Justice Thomas Black, writing in EVERSON v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF EWING TP., 330 U.S. 1 (1947) illuminates for us the historical milieu from which the establishment clause arose:

A large proportion of the early settlers of this country came here from Europe to escape the bondage of laws which compelled them to support and attend government favored churches. The centuries immediately before and contemporaneous with the colonization of America had been filled with turmoil, civil strife, and persecutions, generated in large part by established sects determined to [330 U.S. 1, 9] maintain their absolute political and religious supremacy. With the power of government supporting them, at various times and places, Catholics had persecuted Protestants, Protestants had persecuted Catholics, Protestant sects had persecuted other Protestant sects, Catholics of one shade of belief had persecuted Catholics of another shade of belief, and all of these had from time to time persecuted Jews. In efforts to force loyalty to whatever religious group happened to be on top and in league with the government of a particular time and place, men and women had been fined, cast in jail, cruelly tortured, and killed. Among the offenses for which these punishments had been inflicted were such things as speaking disrespectfully of the views of ministers of government-established churches, nonattendance at those churches, expressions of non-belief in their doctrines, and failure to pay taxes and tithes to support them.

What we are witnessing today is precisely this scenario: a particular flavor of Christianity is seeking to forge an alliance with the government, though which it can force loyalty to its notion of "family values" or "morals" or whatever the buzzword of the day happens to be. The first amendment is intended to safeguard the relationship between man and God, such that it cannot be hijacked by any single religious persuasion.

So this, then is the right wing War on Faith: If you are Presbyterian, Quaker, United Church of Christ, Reformed Jewish, any kind of Jewish really, Muslim, Buddhist, etc, then according to these people YOUR FAITH IS NOT VALID. And here comes the sticky part: because we are not so prideful as to say "You're wrong because God said so," we do not appear to speak with the moral authority that they do.

So what can we do? For starters, we need to invoke God. Seriously. Even in a war of prooftexting, we can win this thing if we so choose. We tend to be afraid to do this, because we can't know that God is on our side. However, I don't think that's true - I think God IS on our side, and that it can be demonstrated from any holy text we care to cite. I was once asked by a fellow learner in Torah Study "How can we know?"

It's a valid question. The answer is a matter of history and projection - if we examine the pattern that has given us Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and look at what it parallels in the past what do we see? I see a Holocaust survivor in my congregation describing how, upon being seen with a scrap of Army blanket she had found to keep herself warm, she was made to kneel with her arms over her head for five hours, during which she fainted three times. Her treatment was virtually identical to the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as described in a report by the ICRC:

The physical tactics noted by the Red Cross included placing detainees in extremely cold rooms with loud music blaring, and forcing them to kneel for long periods of time. . . .

It's not difficult to see where the policy leads. And as for the notion that it is hyperbole or hysteria to draw on the Holocaust for comparison the only thing I can say is that the notion that the Holocaust was somehow a unique or aberrant evil is the greatest assurance that it WILL happen again. All of us have within us not only a spark of divine goodness, but an evil inclination as well, and when that inclination is appealed to on a national stage, it scales up better that a Linux Beowulf cluster. We insist on believing that the holocaust was perpetrated by inhuman monsters, when in fact is was perpetrated by people JUST LIKE US, to whose worst instincts a simple megalomaniac appealed. When we see a nation being encouraged to vote against granting a right to a particular population, when we see a nation that looks the other way when it's citizens are denied justice and due process, we see a nation that has not God, but the evil inclination perched on it's shoulder.

We need to understand that as people of faith we have the RESPONSIBILITY to invoke God. Because if we do not, then we sell Him into slavery to the false prophets who invoke the divine crown for the sole purpose of increasing their power and wealth.



Works Cited

Story, Joseph. COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES; WITH A PRELIMINARY REVIEW OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE COLONIES AND STATES, BEFORE THE ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. Harvard University, 1833.

This is going to be a bit tricky to write but here goes.

My previous post addressed only half the problem we are facing right now. Now it's time to look at the other half.

If you are one of those Christians - conservative or liberal - who built a web site making the Christian case against George Bush, bravo! If you were out there protesting the war, dressed like Jesus and carrying a sign that says "not in my name!" Bravo.

And if you created or passed around the JesusLand map, or are comparing "Christian" voters to the hillbillies in Deliverance, shame! the_ferrett makes a good point when he says that if one were to say the things some of us have been saying about Christians with regard to say, Blacks, or Jews, or Gays, it would unleash a firestorm.

And please, spare me any crap about how it's impossible, by definition, to oppress the dominant regime. People are people, and whether or not one is part of the "dominant regime" is every bit as much an accident of birth as any other trait they might possess. And derision hurts, regardless of who you are.

In my previous post, I quoted someone very slightly out of context. I'm going to give you a bit more of her comment now, because it raises some important questions:

As a lesbian Catholic, I have not spoken from my religious views on LJ. I'm constantly amazed at what people will say about how it's WRONG to be a Christian here.

Is this what we've done? Have we forced our Christians into the caves? Has the left, with its great claims of "Diversity" been actively silencing the very voices we most need in our choir?

Indeed, we have cultivated a culture in which anyone who is affiliated with the dominant regime is too afraid of giving offense to speak their minds. We have such a great fear of conflict that we let our differences fester without discussion until they explode into major rifts. So now we some sort of holy war raging in our midst between the camps of faith and reason, and we have placed our allies on the defensive against us.

Good Job!

Diversity is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it gives us e pluribus unum, from the many, one. On the other hand it gives us "divide and conquer."

Which one of these things do you think Grover Norquist is counting on?

So, grab that beat-up six string, the one with the sunflower applique around its sound hole and sing with me, folks:

We shall not be, we shall not be moved.
We shall not be, we shall not be moved.
Like a tree planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.

Faith and Science together, we shall not be moved.
Faith and Science together, we shall not be moved.
Like a tree planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.

Randall Terry's son, Jamiel Terry comes out in this month's issue of "OUT!" Magazine. Do let's hope he has a better understanding of the importance of advocacy than Karen Cheney.

Two Easters ago, morgan1 and I were attending a service at a very liberal baptist church in Minneapolis. That day's sermon was based on something Ghandi said: "worship without sacrifice is idolatry." The overall gist of the sermon was that if the dominant regime isn't shooting you, beating you, or driving tanks over you, you are somehow failing in your duty to God. Morgan, being the Christian in our relationship and having grown up on messages like that, fled the church as soon as the service ended, never to return. As for me, the Jew, I was grateful to have just sat through an Easter service where I was not made to feel that I was having Jesus' death pinned on me. But the sermon itself itself was a valoration of martyrdom. And the fact that Liberals regularly choose martyrdom over victory is the problem with the left.

This is why Dean is losing in primaries. He might just be more electable John "Lurch" Kerry. But leftists don't like his willingness to roll up his sleeves and fight. They don't like a man who who isn't rabidly anti-gun, because hey, in lefty-land guns are what the regime uses to make a martyr of you. The moment you touch one, you become soiled by the power it grants. They don't like a man who can raise a rallying cry worthy of Jesse Ventura, even if his voice cracks at the end. Dean isn't afraid of mustering and using the raw power of the anger shared by many Americans. But the left is afraid of its own anger, afraid that if it gives its anger free rein, it might just do something . . . effectual.

The enmity of the left for Dean can be seen best in Maureen Dowd's articles both on Judy and on the "scream." She goes on like Ann Coulter, enumerating the many ways in which Judy's failure to be the perfect bimbo campaign-prop wife should raise our suspicions. Indeed if what Maureen prescribes for Judy is what she really believes in, one wonders where she finds the time to write her snarky little articles between raising her husband's children and cleaning out her husband's asshole.

So a word to the left: whether you like it or not, many Americans are ANGRY with Bush, and there is no shame in USING that anger. And Kerry -- If you DO win the nomination, offer Dean the Vice Presidency, and get James Carville to manage your campaign, and you might just have a shot at the whitehouse.

France wishes to ban the wearing of headscarves by muslim women, the wearing of yarmulkes by Jews and the wearing of "Large" crosses by Christians. Small crosses will, however, be permitted.


The Article can be found here

When I was a teenager in high school, I worked the desk at the school library. One day a girl came in and asked "Do you have any books on squirls?" She had rescued a baby squirrel that had fallen out of a tree and become injured. And that was the beginning of one of the strangest friendships I've ever had. She was smart, she was pretty, her eyes were like cold, hard diamond chips -- intractable. We spent the next couple of years engaged in what only can be described as a bizarre kind of mutual evangelism, she trying to convert me to her faith, I trying to dissuade her from it. It was through this intellectual exercise that a Jewish boy from New York first became acquainted with the New Testament. We both rather enjoyed these talks even though neither of us had learned to "agree to disagree."

She had solid reasoning ability, designing experiments and evaluating their results. She had a strong command of language, Ivy League grades in Advanced Placement classes, and SAT scores that were through the roof. Intellectually, she was certainly no slouch. When High School Graduation was not far off for her, I asked her what colleges she was considering. I was imagining Cornell, Columbia, Harvard even.

"I'm not going to College," she replied.

To say that my head caved would be an understatement. "What are you planning to do with the rest of your life?" I asked.

"Live on my grandmother's Farm."

"How long do you expect your grandmother to live?"

"Until the End of Days."

And there you have it. Call it the Fallacy of the Immanent Eschaton, if you will; she was making her life choices based on the eschatological vision of a religion which has predicted the end of the world within each decade since 1840. The fact that their vision never came to pass never stopped them believing it. And this belief has a most dangerous effect:

It means we need not consider the future in our choices.

Just as my high school friend did not need to consider her future when planning for college (she eventually went to a local college under pressure from her mother and me) so the current administration feels no need to worry about the deficit, or the environment. All of those problems will be solved by the Rapture. And the faster the Rapture comes to pass the faster all our problems will be solved.

Christianity is hardly alone in possessing sects that believe the end of the world is imminent. Islam and Judaism, too, have their share of wackos. And because all three religions believe that Israel is going to be the stage for the final battle, the intractability of both parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict suddenly makes sense too. After all it is the extremists on both sides who drive that conflict -- people who need not build a better world for future generations because they believe they are living in the generation of the end.

But it is dangerous to live as if there is no tomorrow, as if deficits and global warming do not matter. Because, just in case the world doesn't happen to end this year, we will have to live with the consequences of our choices.

I called my High School friend a few years after she and her mother moved back to North Carolina. Her mother answered the phone. "Oh, she's married to a local gentleman now." When I try to imagine what her life must be like now, I see a tired woman leading a swarm of children through a Wal-Mart. It's sad, but that's what happens when your plans for the future depend on the end of the world.

I'm from New Jersey
I don't expect too much
If the world ended today
I would adjust.
-- John Gorka