“What a blessing that the Lord has already put into place the Christian leaders, even though I know it’s all through the grace of God,” she wrote in March 2000 to her former pastor. She thanked him for the loan of a video featuring a Kenyan preacher who later would pray for her protection from witchcraft as she sought higher office.
2. Second, having been made aware of what Thomas Muthee was and what he had done, Sarah Palin chose to attend the Wasilla Assemblies of God on October 11, 2005 to see Thomas Muthee preach about her and the special part she had to play in God’s plan. Read the transcript, or see the video of Muthee’s sermon for yourself:
In that sermon, a sermon in which Thomas Muthee appears to have violated tax laws by telling congregants to vote for Sarah Palin, Muthee makes the following case for the election of Sarah Palin:
A. God needs fundamentalist Christian believers to “infiltrate” and “invade” government;
B. After successful infiltration and invasion of government, fundamentalist Christians should use their positions to put Christian teachings in public schools to counter the social influence of Buddhists, Muslims and Wiccans;
C. Fundamentalist Christians who have infiltrated and invaded government should more broadly use their positions to enact and enforce Christian dominance over business and law;
D. And that’s why the election of Sarah Palin to office is so important.
3. Third, knowing that:
– Thomas Muthee’s mobs had threatened to stone a woman to death, had put local police up to invading this woman’s home and firing shots, had her arrested, and then had her run out of town because there were car accidents near her house;
– Thomas Muthee had violated tax law by endorsing her candidacy from the altar;
– Thomas Muthee had just endorsed her as the perfect opportunity for fundamentalist Christians to “invade” and “infiltrate” government in order to implement Christian theocracy in the areas of education, business and law…
Knowing all this, Sarah Palin chose to take the stage, have Thomas Muthee lay hands on him, and pray with him for his vision to come to pass.
This isn’t a mere matter of “guilt by association.” This is about the active choice of Sarah Palin to come up on stage and pray for the radical and violent theocratic agenda of Thomas Muthee to come to fruition through her.
This is, in short, not simply a matter of “character,” but of a policy agenda that stands in direct opposition to the Constitution of the United States of America.
America needs someone in the media ask Sarah Palin this question, point blank:
“Why, Governor Palin, did you take to the stage of the Wasilla Assemblies of God in October 2005 to pray with Thomas Muthee for your election to office when Muthee had just named your election as the lynchpin of a plan for the Christian ‘invasion’ and ‘infiltration’ of American government?”
It’s being treated as news, but it isn’t exactly new. A classified report is informing the Bush White House that Afghanistan is falling apart despite increased numbers of American soldiers. The Taliban is gaining yet more strength. Opium sales are up. The American puppet government of Hamid Karzai is weak and growing weaker.
Yes, there are important classified details to the story, and yes, the situation in Afghanistan has gotten even worse since the Irregular Times articles were written. However, the essential insight of the report have been known for a long time. Year after year, conditions in Afghanistan have been deteriorating, not getting better.
The tools of war aren’t making it better. The Taliban have never been beaten. The victory we were told was achieved back in 2001 still hasn’t come about. How long will we stand for more of the same?
Sarah Palin has recently taken to referring to America as a nation of “exceptionalism”. To those listening casually, it sounds as if Sarah Palin is merely saying that the USA is a spiffy place to live.
Others, who know something about the history of the use of religion in politics, know that there’s a particular reason that Sarah Palin is using the word “exceptionalism” instead of just calling America “exceptional”. They know that there’s an important distinction. They know that American exceptionalism is a particular religious ideology that goes all the way back to the time of the early colonization of the North America by the British.
Way back then, the first leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, inaugurated the colony with a sermon entitled A Model of Christian Charity. That’s a pleasant sounding title, but the sermon actually established a rather sinister program of violence and repression for the New World. That vision included strict theocratic control instead of freedom, and a harsh separation of rich and poor.
Winthrop’s program of American exceptionalism also included genocide. Yes, John Winthrop’s idea of “Christian charity” included wars with the divine purpose of wiping out entire populations of nonChristians.
In Winthrop’s sermon, he refers to a particularly dark episode from the Old Testament as a model for the religious fervor which he seeks to establish through his government in the New World. It is the story of Saul and Amalek.
Winthrop declared that his government in America had been established through a special covenant with God, just like the covenant with ancient Israel. Such a covenant required absolute obedience, said Winthrop. He wrote, “When God gives a special commission he looks to have it strictly observed in every article. When he gave Saul a commission to destroy Amalek, he indented with him upon certain articles, and because he failed in one of the least, and that upon a fair pretense, it lost him the kingdom which should have been his reward if he had observed his commission. Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with him for this work, we have taken out a commission.”
The divine order to destroy Amalek to which John Winthrop referred is written about in a few places in the Christian Bible. In the book of Deuteronomy, it is claimed that the slaughter of the Amalek people was a holy act because God had promised the people of Israel that they could have the land of Amalek. “In the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it.”
John Winthrop and his followers believed that North America had been promised to them by God, just as Amalek had been promised to the people of Israel. That’s where American exceptionalism starts - with the belief that God had a plan for European peoples to settle North America, and take the land from the native peoples by any means necessary - including genocide.
Consider what the first book of Samuel in the Bible says about God’s command to the people of Israel. The book quotes God as saying, “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
Slay both infant and suckling? That’s not very pro-life, is it?
Let’s go back to that passage from John Winthrop’s sermon, in which he talks about this sacred murder of all the people of Amalek. Winthrop writes of King Saul and his covenant from God, “he failed in one of the least, and that upon a fair pretense, it lost him the kingdom which should have been his reward if he had observed his commission.” What does this mean?
In the biblical story of Saul and the genocide of Amalek, Saul is ordered by God to kill every last living thing in Amalek, even the camels, and even the human babies as they suck at their mothers’ breasts. But, Saul was said to have spared the life of the Amalek king, and some sheep and oxen. Saul had the babies killed, and God approved of that, but because Saul did not kill absolutely every last living thing in Amalek, God decided to punish Saul. Let me be clear about that: God punished Saul for not making the genocide absolutely complete. The moral lesson from this bloody Bible story is clear: When God gives you a piece of land, and you fail to kill every last person currently occupying that land that God says is yours, you are a sinner and shall be punished.
John Winthrop saw himself as in the role of King Saul, and the native people he would encounter in Massachusetts as in the role of the people of Amalek. American exceptionalism started with this: The holy mission of killing every last native American living near the Massachusetts Bay Colony in order to establish the “city on a hill”.
These weren’t just empty words. As Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop sent out his followers to massacre the native Pequot people. Historian Howard Zinn quotes a firsthand account of such a massacre, given by settler William Bradford:
“Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword, some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived that they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.”
“They gave the praise thereof to God” because they believed that their genocide was part of a mission given to them by God, a plan for America in which they and their descendants would rule the continent, and create a nation that would be a special example to all the world, a divinely-sanctioned nation just as with the Israel of old, never faltering in the slaughter of those people who were not so lucky as to be the new select people of God. That is what American exceptionalism means.
The leaders of the American Religious Right have never abandoned this vision of a violently righteous special divine plan for America. To them, Sarah Palin sends a clear signal when she refers to the exceptionalism of America. When Palin uses the phrase from John Winthrop’s sermon, referring to the entire United States of America as a “city on a hill”, she is sending a signal that, as President, she would be right in line with the most extremist, violent theocratic elements of American political history - a history that includes shameless genocide in the name of God.
It is possible, I suppose, that Sarah Palin doesn’t know that this is the signal she is sending to the Religious Right. I have a hard time believing this, given the number of times that Palin has said in public that she believes that God has a special plan for America, and given her own church’s teachings that God has special plans for the USA, for Alaska, and even for Wasilla in an End Times war of Armageddon. The punishing lake of fire that Palin’s church says all non-Christians are destined for is disturbingly similar to the real fires in which John Winthrop’s followers burned those who stood in the way of his “city on a hill”.
Still, perhaps Sarah Palin has just been repeating the religious terminology of her church without knowing what they mean. Perhaps some cynical Republican speechwriter has inserted the words from John Winthrop’s sermon, and the term exceptionalism, into Palin’s speeches, and she doesn’t realize what they mean.
If that’s the case, I’m even more concerned. It would mean that Sarah Palin is so profoundly ignorant of this history of her own country that she literally doesn’t know what she’s talking about. It would mean that Sarah Palin just says whatever she’s told to say, without thinking about it. It would mean that Sarah Palin is a puppet of political insiders who believe in the brutally violent American exceptionalism of John Winthrop, or are willing to use the religious radicals who do believe in American exceptionalism in order to gain and preserve their power.
Ah, the power of faith to bring us all together in the spirit of community… BOOM! A suicide bomber blew himself up outside of a mosque today, just as Ramadan drew to a close. Then another suicide bomb exploded near another mosque. In Diyala, a small bus was shot to pieces. This came just a day after another suicide bombing at yet another mosque, while the people there were praying. 32 people were killed in another suicide bombing on Sunday.
Last week at the first presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, McCain criticized Obama for saying that he would launch a mission into Pakistan to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. A couple days later, while talking to a voter, Sarah Palin said that she and John McCain would follow Barack Obama’s policy of pursuing Bin Laden into Pakistan, if that’s what’s necessary.
Intelligent voters, and a few reporters, noticed the contradiction between what McCain said and what Palin said. McCain said that it was outrageous to support the very policy that Sarah Palin said McCain himself supports. So, what’s the real McCain-Palin policy, and when was the McCain-Palin ticket wrong - when McCain-Palin opposed hunting down Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, or when McCain-Palin supported hunting down Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan?
In order to try to give a more coherent answer, John McCain and Sarah Palin turned to Katie Couric. Katie Couric had interviewed Sarah Palin last week, and Palin had, unable to answer any of Couric’s questions, been exposed as a babbling idiot.
So, for this week’s interview with Katie Couric, John McCain came along to help Sarah Palin answer whatever questions Couric might ask. Before a minute was through, John McCain was speaking for Sarah Palin, blocking Palin from speaking for herself.
Asking about Palin’s contradiction of McCain’s policy of not entering Pakistan in order to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, Katie Couric asked, “Are you sorry you said it?”
Sarah Palin did not answer. John McCain did. McCain interrupted before Palin had the chance to give an answer, and accused the contradiction of coming out as a result of “gotcha journalism” saying, “Wait a minute. Before you say, “is she sorry she said it,” this was a “gotcha” sound bite.”
Katie Couric pointed out, however, that it was a voter who had asked the question, not a journalist. So, how is it gotcha journalism when a voter asks the vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party, and the nominee gives an answer? Well, of course, it isn’t. Sarah Palin’s ignorance of her own supposed position was exposed by a voter, not by a journalist, and the question wasn’t at all an unfair one.
When Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin what she had learned from the experience, did Palin discuss the importance of carefully studying and thinking before speaking? No. Palin blamed the voter for asking her a question about American foreign policy.
“This is all about “gotcha” journalism!” Palin said.
In the world of John McCain and Sarah Palin, “gotcha journalism” means voters asking questions that McCain and Palin cannot respond to with a coherent answer. I hope we see more gotcha journalism in the weeks to come.
See the interview for yourself, and look carefully - do Sarah Palin and John McCain ever speak at the same time? I’m not saying that Palin is McCain’s ventriloquist dummy, of course. No, no. That would be gotcha journalism.
Last night, I encountered the latest McCain-Palin slogan on their campaign website:
Peregrin Wood has already covered the creepy cult-like aspects of the phrase “Country First.” But what about “Reform, Prosperity, Peace?”
Reform? Under the rule of George W. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress, consumer protections were dismantled, civil liberties squashed, lobbyists hugged, ethics ignored, anti-trust considerations sidelined, environmental science laughed at square in the face. John McCain voted for this Bush agenda 95% of the time.
Prosperity? Are you better off than you were eight years ago?
Peace? We’ve been at war for six years, with no end in sight.
Voting for John McCain and Sarah Palin under the banner of “Reform, Prosperity, Peace” is like giving an alcoholic a fifth of whiskey because this time, he promises, he’ll stop at the first drink.
Explain, McCain just where is on Earth is Spain? McCain says Spain is somewhere near Fort Wayne. McCain is strained maintaining his campaign. His brain refrains from overseas terrain.
Mother Davis stops on her way out the door to write,
In a time when the Republicans have offered us a vice presidential candidate anointed by a preacher who advocates the stoning of non-Christian women, it seems that one simple lesson has been forgotten: We should be working together toward peace in the world.
Through the action of Million Doors for Peace, a coalition of organizations are encouraging Americans to talk to their neighbors about the serious ongoing problems with the war in Iraq, and gather signatures for a petition requesting legislation in Congress that requires “specific date to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq within a year.” The popular anti-war action will take place this Saturday, September 20, and it’s not too late for you to sign up.
It really isn’t a very radical idea - ending a war over five years old that never should have been started in the first place. Will you give it an hour or two this Saturday?
Going out of doors, Mother Davis
9/17/2008 10:18am
No Corners Left In Sight
Monday, February 28, 2005
First we were told that America had turned a corner in Iraq with "the end of major combat operations". Then, a couple months later, we were told that the insurgent attacks were a sign of desperation, and that America had turned a corner in Iraq by staying put and showing resolve. Then, months later, Saddam Hussein was captured, and we were told that America had turned a corner in Iraq because surely the insurgency would dissolve without the ultra evil Saddam to inspire it. Six months after that, the Bush Administration told us that America had turned a corner in Iraq because a new puppet government with pseudosovereignty had been created. A month ago, we were told that that America had turned a corner in Iraq because of relatively peaceful elections.
Since that time, rebel attacks have increased, not decreased. American soldiers are still fighting, killing and dying. Big suicide bombings are taking place almost every day. Yesterday, rebels destroyed a major oil pipeline in Iraq. This morning in Iraq, a suicide bomber killed 106 people, mostly members of the Iraqi National Guard, and gravely wounded many more. The death toll is sure to rise sharply throughout the day. The Bush Administration has reacted to the news by saying that it will work to reconfigure the Iraqi National Guard, bone by bone...
Life in Iraq continues to become more dangerous, and more impoverished, the longer the American occupation continues. And now that the elections have failed to produce peace, the Bush Administration doesn't have any more ideas about new corners that America might be able to turn in Iraq to make it all better.
And still, the Republicans say that it was worth all this growing suffering to start the war.
Operation A Rocky Freedom Goes International
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Today, some British soldiers were convicted of torturing Iraqi prisoners. One of the convicted soldiers is the fellow wearing camouflage in this photograph. In a white prison hall where the floors are designed so that bodily fluids can be easily cleaned up after an "interrogation", does camouflage keep you well hidden from enemy eyes, or does it just give you permission to treat another human being with extreme cruelty?
It's been a remarkable thing, how both American soldiers and British soldiers have been tormenting prisoners in very similar ways, in places as far away from each other as Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I suppose that George W. Bush really meant it when he promised to increase his efforts at international cooperation. It's a shame that Bush can't gain international cooperation for uplifting humanity instead of finding new ways to undermine the law and inflict pain.
By the way, if you're looking for the Iraqi freedom that has been provided by Operation Iraqi Freedom, you can see it right in the photograph above. What, you couldn't find it? Oh, the Iraqi Freedom is lying cowering in that net, helpless, waiting to get another beating. A lot of people just can't see how we've turned a corner in Iraq. Do you think the fellow on the floor will turn a corner soon too?
Failing the Duty of National Defense
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
George W. Bush is always saying that his presidency ought to be evaluated according to how well he provides for the national defense. In almost every speech he gives, Bush goes on and on about how the primary duty of the President of the United States is to keep the American people safe.
Of course, Bush is dead wrong when he makes such claims. The Oath of Office that presidents take centers around the promise to defend the Constitution of the United States, not to enact a security state.
But, this morning, I'm feeling a little bit generous. So, for the moment, I'll assume that Bush is right, and that his primary duty as President of the United States is to defend the American people. On that level, how is Bush doing? Lousy.
This morning, we get news about one of George W. Bush's favorite defense projects: Implementing a national missile defense system, which is supposed to protect the United States against nuclear missiles. Ever since the 1980s, the Pentagon has been pushing its scientists to come up with a missile defense system that actually, you know, works. Ever since the 1980s, the Pentagon has failed to come up with any system that comes close to working.
A few years back, George W. Bush got tired of all the failed tests of missile defense prototypes. So what did he do? He ordered the system to be built now, and for the research to come up with a way to make it work to go on in the meantime.
Think about this for a second - President Bush has been spending billions of taxpayer dollars every year to build a system to defend America against nuclear missiles, in spite of the fact that no such system has yet been invented. President Bush might as well order the federal government to spend billions of dollars to build a time machine, and then ask scientists to invent one while it is being built. Could we throw in a personal teleportation device along with it?
This morning's news is about a new test of a new attempt by the Pentagon to invent some kind of device that might have a chance of stopping an incoming nuclear missile before it destroys an entire American city. In the past, the Pentagon tried super laser ray guns, but that didn't work, so now they're trying to invent super defense missiles that can intercept incoming nuclear missiles and blow them up so that, um, a cloud of radioactive debris can descend upon the American landscape, and... um...
Anyway, this new test was supposed to prove that, 20 years after spending hundreds of billions of dollars to invent it, it is theoretically possible to build a system of interceptor missiles that can meet incoming nuclear missiles in the air and destroy them. Sadly, things didn't go quite as the Pentagon leaders had hopes. You see, they couldn't even get the interceptor missile to leave the ground.
This is the second test of an interceptor missile in which the missile didn't even succeed in lifting off the ground, much less destroying its target. So, what has the reaction of the Bush Administration been to the complete failure of these interceptor missiles been? Why, George W. Bush has bought a whole bunch of the interceptor missiles, and has already installed eight of them in missile silos in secret locations around the country. Showing some fiscal restraint, however, Bush declined to order any intergalactic hyperdrives to go along with the missile defense system.
Eight interceptor missiles that aren't even capable of leaving the ground are President Bush's idea of national defense against the threat of nuclear war involving hundreds, if not thousands, of nuclear missiles from Russia and China. George W. Bush says that we ought to judge him on how well he provides for the defense of the United States. So far, it looks like Mr. Bush has been a pathetic, wasteful failure. The only defense that these Star Wars toys provide is financial cover for the executives of big defense contracting corporations - executives who have given handsomely to George W. Bush's political campaigns.
Bush's brand of defense is the sort of thing that America is better off without. Those hundreds of billions of dollars spent on imaginary machines would have been much better spent on foreign aid, helping to repair America's tarnished reputation in the world.
The sad truth is that the only missile defense that works is for there to be no missiles. If America put half the work into global nuclear disarmarment that we put into programs to manufacture military gizmos that never work, we could soon live in a world where we didn't have to worry about nuclear weapons raining down out of the sky at any moment, with nothing to protect us but a handful of broken model rockets put together by big boys playing in the garage.
Alberto Gonzales: the Republican Dream for America
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
The best way to understand what the agenda of the Republican federal government for the second term of George W. Bush is to pay attention to who the Bush Administration's top supporters praise, and how they do it.
These days, an immense amount of praise is coming from Republicans, both in Congress and in the White House, for Alberto Gonzales, the White House chief counsel and the man that President Bush has picked to become the next Attorney General of the United States. It is the constitutional duty of the United States Senate to review presidential appointments for cabinet-level positions such as Attorney General, and to deny those appointments if the nominees are found to be professionally or ethically wanting. So, while a few senators have been directing their staffs to investigate the career of Alberto Gonzales, the majority of Republican senators seem to have focused their efforts on finding reasons to praise Mr. Gonzales, and defend him from any possible criticism.
As a result of their defensive efforts, senate Republicans seem to have come up with a battery of standard talking points that they are intent upon repeating, over and over, until the public accepts them as irrefutable facts. Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, for example, declared that the achievements of Alberto Gonzales are the "manifestation of the American dream". Then on the same day, several other Republican members of Congress repeated these exact words, each declaring that the work of Alberto Gonzales for President Bush has been the "manifestation of the American dream".
Well, what exactly do we know about the work of Alberto Gonzales in the Bush White House that could make him a manifestation of the American dream? Well, the truth is that as White House counsel to George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzales has earned the nickname "Mr. Torture". You see, it was Alberto Gonzales who wrote a memo advising the President of the United States that treating prisoners humanely according to the Geneva Conventions was a "quaint" and "outdated" idea. It was Alberto Gonzales who advised George W. Bush that he had the power to overrule American laws that make torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners illegal, whenever Mr. Bush made the decision that torture and cruel treatment of prisoners would be in the national interest. It was Alberto Gonzales who signed off on another memo that made up a new, alternative legal definition of torture so narrow that it would purposefully exclude many methods of torture being planned for use in American prisons by George W. Bush.
So, when Republicans like Senator Bill Frist declare that the work of Alberto Gonzales is the "manifestation of the American dream", what they're really saying is that it is the American dream to torture prisoners. The Republicans are saying that it is the American dream to give the President the power to single-handedly override American and international law. The Republicans are saying that it is the American dream to commit war crimes. This version of the American dream that Republican politicians find manifested in the work of Alberto Gonzales is a nightmare.
So, given the Republican praise for Alberto Gonzales, and their determination to push Gonzales into the position of Attorney General of the United States despite the fact that not one Democrat in the Senate Judiciary Committee saw fit to recommend him for the position, what can we expect during the next four years?
It appears that we can expect the Bush Administration to continue to place itself above the law, especially in matters of war. We can expect the Bush Administration to continue to commit war crimes in the name of the American people. We can expect more torture. We can expect more secret wars, unapproved by the U.S. Congress and unreported by the major television networks, who will be unable to get any pretty pictures of explosions from the Pentagon. We can expect the Bush Administration to conduct more illegal imprisonments, outside of the system of civilized law that dates back all the way to the Magna Carta.
We can expect the Bush Administration to drag the United States of America back into the legal abyss of the Dark Ages, when might made right and nobody dared to question the divine authority of kings.
No more Arafat to Blame Anymore
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
For years now, the Bush Administration has blamed the whole mess with Israel and Palestine on one man: Yasser Arafat. Even as violence escalated between Israelis and Palestinians, George W. Bush sat by with his hands neatly folded in his lap, refusing to lift a finger to stop it. His excuse was that as long as Yasser Arafat is around, there is no hope for peace.
Well, now, Yasser Arafat is gone, and his successor has been elected, and guess what's happening? The same damn thing as before. The Israelis refuse to talk to the Palestinians because the new leadership too has been deemed too bad for negotiation. Palestinians are raining gunfire and rockets into Israeli neighborhoods. Israeli tanks are attacking Palestinian neighborhoods. There is no more peace now than there was before.
The stupidly simple analysis of George W. Bush has always been that single evil leaders are responsible for the bad things that happen in the world. Bush seems to believe that once those bad bad people are removed from power, everything will suddenly get all nice again.
In Iraq, and now in Palestine, Bush's childish theory has been soundly disproved.
It is time that American foreign policy in the Middle East be driven by a more grown-up understanding of conflict. When it comes to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Palestinians and the Israelis both are to blame.
What is most terrifying of all is that Bush seems to accept the same twisted logic that continues to propel the Israeli-Palestinian bloodbath year after year after year: The idea that the only way to get peace is to completely subdue one's opponents through military force. The Israelis and Palestinians both have been propelled forward in a cycle of death and despair by this idea for generations.
The only way that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is for courageous people on both side to demand that their leaders step back from the fighting. Unfortunately, the continued inaction of the Bush Administration, combined with Bush's encouragement of unrestrained military attacks on the part of the Israelis, makes such principled restraint all the more difficult.
Remember Martin Luther King Jr. - And Read!
Monday, January 17, 2005
In the creation of the Martin Luther King National Holiday, initial direct resistance from Republicans has been transformed into a radical reduction of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In the new, politically sanitized version of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, we are supposed to believe that he:
1. Was a really good public speaker 2. Wanted black and white people to get along 3. Shouldn't have been shot
Everything else about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life gets all smudged out in a weekend's repetition of the out of context phrase, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, I'm free at last!"
The life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was too complex to be reduced to such little clips, and I won't pretend to do justice to him here in one small article. However, I will mention three things that are commonly cleaned away from his life:
1. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a strong opponent of war 2. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood up for the principle of freedom and dignity of all people, not just the residents of some "homeland" 3. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. worked to make the government accountable to all the people
On all three counts, we have great cause in 2005 to regard the Martin Luther King National Holiday as a wake up call to the American people. The narrowly-won second presidency of George W. Bush is showing strong signs of continuing the anti-peace, anti-freedom, and anti-accountability agenda that marked the first four years.
A good way to celebrate this holiday, and a good way to spark a movement of nonviolent, principled resistance of the sort that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have admired, is to read a shocking article that was published this very morning.
The article is by Seymour Hersch, the journalist who exposed the torture taking place in the Abu Ghraib prison. Now, Seymour Hersch has discovered what appears to be a plot within the Bush Administration to circumvent the power of Congress and begin a new military campaign against Iran and other nations in secret from the American people.
We'll discuss the implications of this article in greater depth in the days to come. For now, remember the broader character of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and read.
Freedom Isn't Free, but what's the price?
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Since the War on Terror began, we have been besieged with the pro-war slogan: Freedom isn't free!
Well, okay. Freedom is not free. Isn't it funny, though, that the Freedom Isn't Free Crowd never bothers to mention the price that they're asking us to pay?
The pro-war crowd wants us to believe that the inevitable price we all must pay for freedom is war. Well, bull.
No, freedom is not free, but you can't buy it with buckets of blood. Bomb all you want, and it won't make you any more free than if no bombs were dropped. Bullets don't buy freedom, and neither do bayonets.
Freedom is bought with the hard work of peaceful people who struggle to establish a society that values liberty and fairness. For Americans, freedom is established by the U.S. Constitution, not on the battlefield. The Revolution came and went, and yet the Bill of Rights was not yet created. It took the peaceful political process of a new Constitutional Congress to bring true freedom to the former colonies.
Throughout history, war has threatened freedom as much as it has protected it. We will not retain our freedom if we keep on falling back to a default assumption that every war is fought in the defense of freedom.
Buyer beware. Freedom is already ours, if we will protect it from the corrupt politicians who seek to remove it from our society in the cause of fear. No, freedom is not free, but we do not have to pay the price that the pro-war zealots insist upon.
So what’s new?
Last week at the first presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, McCain criticized Obama for saying that he would launch a mission into Pakistan to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. A couple days later, while talking to a voter, Sarah Palin said that she and John McCain would follow Barack Obama’s policy of pursuing Bin Laden into Pakistan, if that’s what’s necessary.
Mother Davis stops on her way out the door to write,
Today, some British soldiers were convicted of torturing Iraqi prisoners. One of the convicted soldiers is the fellow wearing camouflage in this photograph. In a white prison hall where the floors are designed so that bodily fluids can be easily cleaned up after an "interrogation", does camouflage keep you well hidden from enemy eyes, or does it just give you permission to treat another human being with extreme cruelty?