Elections: Making Sense of the Senseless

I have no profound insight to offer as a result of the election, but was thinking about the main presidential candidates and what they represent.  I read a sapiential comment from the desert fathers which made me think about candidates in the election.  As with many sagacious sayings one has appreciate them by meditating on them.

It is why art museums place benches in the galleries – to give the viewer time to take the art in, to appreciate the details and all that is captured in the art. [Interesting that a bench gives us time!]   Or, it is why one has to sit in the garden for a bit to fully appreciate all the colors, scents, movements of the flowers to truly imbibe all that is being offered to us.

Though I read this some days before the election and I thought it relevant to our election, it didn’t help me decide how to vote for I remained unconvinced that our candidates possessed all the virtues praised here.

An old man used to say, ‘Wisdom and simplicity form the perfect order of the Apostles’ and of those who examine closely their rules of life and their conduct, and to this Christ urged them, saying, Be  harmless as doves and subtle like serpents (St. Matthew 10:16). And the Apostle [Paul] also admonished the Corinthians to the same effect, saying, ‘My brethren, be not childish in your minds, but be as  babes in respect of things which are evil, and be perfect in your minds’ (1 Corinthians 14:20). Now wisdom without simplicity is wicked cunning, and it is the subtlety of the philosophers among the pagans of which it is said, He catches the wise men in their own cunning (Job 5:13; 1 Corinthians 3:19), and again, The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain (Psalm 94:2; 1 Corinthians 3:20).

And simplicity without wisdom is the foolishness which is prone to error, and concerning this also  the Apostle spoke, and he wrote unto those who possessed it,  saying, I fear lest, even as the serpent led Eve into error by his craftiness, so your minds also may be destroyed in respect of your simplicity which is towards Christ (2 Corinthians 6:3). For they accepted every word without testing it, even as it is said in the [Book of] Proverbs, The simple man believes every word “ (Proverbs 14:15).     (adapted from The Paradise or Garden of the Holy Fathers (Volume 2), Kindle Loc. 3403-13)

There is a difference between wisdom and intelligence just as there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.  In the wisdom of the desert fathers there was a recognition that even wisdom had to be combined with other virtues to be of value.  A criminal can be very wise and knowledgeable about his illegal activities.  Politicians can be astutely wise but that can mean only that they are wickedly cunning if they lack integrity and humility.  There can even be a person who has a certain simple straightforwardness but who lacks wisdom – that becomes nothing more than total foolishness.  Folly is sin according to the Bible (Proverbs 24:9; Mark 7:22)

Election Loses and Regrets

This is about all I’m going to say about our current election.  I don’t endorse candidates or political parties.  As a parish priest, my job is to pray for this country, its president, the congress, supreme court, its armed forces, all civil authority and for all its people.  I do this no matter who wins the election.  My prayers are not based on election outcomes, but upon my faith in the Trinitarian God’s love for creation including all people on the planet.

It is no wonder that Americans suffer from election fatigue.  From the moment the presidential election is decided, the political parties and machines begin gearing up for the next election.  Running campaigns has become a full time process, not just once every four years but every day of every year.  The political parties and PACs raise millions of dollars to spend on electing candidates, but how much does anyone invest in actually doing governance?  How much time and energy do the political parties, the PACs, the political pundits put into helping these candidates learn to govern in a democracy in a diverse society?  Precious little, which is part of the terrible money imbalance in American politics.  Political office is treated as “for sale to the highest bidder” rather than as the means to serve the nation and to lead the free world.

As soon as the election is decided, political parties and political fundraisers begin focusing all their time and energy on the next election and getting their party’s candidates elected.   If they invested in good candidates who could actually govern and who could help build American democracy we all would be better off.  They however are really interested in investing in winning and holding on to power, even if they have no wise or virtuous candidates to put forth.   How much better for us all if they focused on how to make the American democratic process work and on how to help our leaders govern our country in the 21^st Century with its diversity, all its many issues and problems and with the world as it is today (not as we wished it were).

The political machines pick candidates who can win elections, not necessarily those who are capable of governing.  The political machines spend tens of millions of dollars on getting people elected, but nothing on training them in governace – how to work in, with and for a democracy.   Forget having a candidate be a statesman, as they will have no time for that – their purpose is only to win elections.   Any wonder that the Putins of the world have an easier time being statesmen, being world leaders and getting things done?   The Putins of the world can set goals and accomplish them while American presidential candidates are forced to short-shortsightedly focus on winning elections.  Putins can conquer enemies, American presidential candidates have to conquer the electorate which turns half of the very people they are supposed to serve into enemies of sorts and the rest into the vanquished.  This is why negative elections seem to work so well, in my opinion.  Americans have forgotten that both political parties and all elected candidates are supposed to represent and serve all the people not just the ones that agree with them.

Presidents are said to have about 100 days of their first administration to accomplish anything.  We spend 1461 days to elect a person who apparently is only going to be able to accomplish anything about 100 days in four years.   The rest of the time (935 of their four years) they will spend campaigning for themselves or others in their political party.  The elected politicians have to cater to those who financed their election and to the talk show hosts and their legions who endlessly criticize the politician.  Apparently,  the politicians weren’t elected to lead, but only to cater to money and to continually appease the squealing media wheels.  The “next” election looms over everything elected do not because of the electorate but because of the big money and big voices.

The media superstars, not elected by anybody, dominate the airwaves and the Internet and so it appears also the thoughts of the many who listen to them.  They fire up their base so that the president and congress have to spend most of their time paying attention to the political machines and to the media commentators rather than to issues before them.   The media moguls do not want the politicians to see anything except through their lens.  Don’t pay attention to the issues but only to those who loudly yell about the issues.   But these commentators do not pay attention to or care about  what strengthens democracy in a diverse culture.  Rather they really advocate against democracy and in favor of a one party system, with their own way as being the only acceptable way to see the world.  The word dictator comes from a Latin word meaning  “to say often, prescribe, to speak frequently.”   All talk show hosts are dictators.  Why do we listen to them?  We should favor democracy not dictatorship.  We are addicted to them and the next thing they might say, which is what also comes to haunt and fixate the politicians.

We invest so heavily in the elections but do not invest in governance.  We need to change the system so that it works to strengthen democracy not tear it down like the media people and political chieftains do today.  Their goal is purely to get their people elected.  But that isn’t necessarily what is good for the country or the world.

There is in our country the wonderful freedom of speech, which unfortunately the Supreme Court says includes setting no limits on how much money people can spend or raise on elections.  But we the people should learn “freedom of listening.”  We can turn off all of the political talk show people.  We can stop listening to or watching political ads whether from the airwaves or on the Internet.  We need to find something better to do with our minds, like learning more about democracy and how it works, why it is so important to our lives and what we need to be as voters to make democracy work.  We should shake off our own laziness of listening to dictators and encourage politicians to be statesmen and leaders.  If we don’t like their ideas we vote them out of office.  Those candidates in favor of democracy should also support the idea that they can be removed from office rather than spending all their time and energy making sure they stay in office.

I have never made it my position to comment on “who” to vote for in an election.  However, I do value American democracy and consider it a strength of our nation.  I do think our current election trends and the power ceded to political parties and to media talk show hosts is weakening democracy.  We need to work on changing the system, and then we would get better candidates.

In a democracy, the majority decide which direction the country will go.  Political parties can hold to an ideology, but face the reality that their beloved convictions can’t win a majority of voters.   They can change their position to try to create an alliance of voters to win the election, or they can hold on to their ideology but lose elections.  What shouldn’t be accepted is that they try to buy elections or to have their unpopular ideas win through deceit or negative campaigning.  If they can’t convince us that their ideas are good for the country, even if painful, they need to try harder, improve their message, or find a combination of ideas that convince us to vote for them.  In my opinion as it is they instead just spend all their time and energy trying to get their candidates elected with no regard for how that effects the country. For them the end justifies the means, no matter what price democracy has to pay.   Their goal is to stay in power not necessarily to strengthen the American democratic process.  We voters can changes this, but we have to change our habits to do it.

I would recommend listening to the TED Talk: Democracy on Trial for further thinking about democracy and its importance and why we need to strengthen it through the election process rather than weaken it by allowing ourselves to become part of the partisan polarity problem.  I think a total reform of the party driven primaries would be helpful.   Let all candidates from all parties be put into a common pool in the primaries, and the voters decide who are the top two candidates – no matter what party they are from.  The general election would have the top two vote winners in the primary face off.  That way all candidates in all elections would have to offer a message that appeals to all or the most voters.  This I think would help end the parties become more polarized through the primaries and then offering no middle ground for voters.  I’m sure this would create other problems, perhaps some unseen at the moment, but it would help change the tenor of the election process now at work in America.

The Power of God and of the State

It is a presidential election year in the United States, which as I’ve noted before tends to cause a fair amount of angst in my fellow parishioners.  This year’s election has been even more troubling.  Often people are afraid what will happen if “the other” party wins the election.  This year people seem anxious and afraid even if their party wins.  Here is a quote from Russian Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov describing what the proper power of government is from a Christian point of view.  All of the things we might think of as the duties of government have a spiritual basis.

“Here there is a direct analogy with evil. God does not suppress it automatically by his omnipotence. Likewise he does not suppress social inequality by force, but makes it a spiritual victory over the passion of possession. In extreme cases, public authority ought to intervene. However, the state is not called upon to realize the Kingdom of God on earth. Its task is to prevent the world from becoming a hell and thus to place limits against the progression of evil among us.” (In the World, of the Church: A Paul Evdokimov Reader, p 88)

 Government, big or small, cannot create the kingdom of God on earth.  As Evdokimov notes God Himself does not “suppress social inequality by force.”  Rather Christ appeals to us to overcome our passions by voluntarily engaging in a spiritual warfare.  As Christians we should strive for a spiritual victory over our self-centered interests by making love our aim (1 Corinthians 14:1).  Sometimes the government has to intervene when social inequalities exceed what is humane, when the powerful behave inhumanly and the poor are dehumanized.  But he sees this as the exception, not the rule.   Certainly in history Christianity changed the all powerful Roman Empire, but did it without violence and without an election.  It was a change of hearts that occurred in enough citizenry to make a difference.

As Evdokimov notes the task of the state “is to prevent the world from becoming a hell.”   That in itself is no mean task.  It is of course made even more difficult if the election itself seems like hell!   The role of the state according to Evdokimov is “to place limits against the progression of evil among us.”   Evil however is not a nation with an army whom we can fight with conventional weapons.

“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints…”   (Ephesians 6:11-18)

What it means for us is that politics is not purely secular with no religious element.  Evil is a theological concept.   Without God we cannot win that battle against evil.  Without God, we will never even be able to agree on what evil is.  But even with God, we are not going to establish Paradise on earth through government or armies.  We can resist the forces of evil.  We can work to make sure the earth does not become hell by opposing evil.

Fearing the Times

Presidential election years seem to bring out a certain darkness in the hearts and minds of those who pay attention to politics.  People are disquieted by the uncertainty of the swirling, sometimes rushing, muddy waters of the election.

My church and my country could use a little mercy now
As they sink into a poisoned pit it’s going to take forever to climb out
They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down
I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now

(Mary Gauthier, “Mercy Now”)

In the 21st Century, or so it seems to me, every four years Americans experience a great amount of angst and anxiety about the present and the future.  Political parties do a great amount of fear-mongering as the presidential election approaches, feeding the fear, dragging people down, rather than giving them hope.  This year seems especially rife and ripe for this descent into despair.

It may be of little cheer, but certainly our country has survived darker and more turbulent times.  1860 comes to mind or 1940.

The Orthodox Church certainly has been confronted with darker times.  The rise of communism seemed to spell an endless and unmitigated period of church suffering and shrinking, and hiding in the darkness which overshadowed everything Orthodox.

The world is marked by its ever-changing quality – empires rise and fall.   The uncertainty of the world is an ever present feature in the life of millions of people.     Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh spoke uneasily about the church entering a new age in the 21st Century:

“I have a very clear or rather gloomy feeling that as we enter the third millennium we are entering some obscure and complex and, in a certain sense, unwelcome period. As for devotion to the Church, our faith must certainly retain its integrity, but we must not be afraid of thinking and expressing ourselves openly. Everything will eventually settle into order, but if we keep just endlessly reiterating what has been said long ago, more and more people will drift away from their faith (I mean not so much Russia as the world as a whole), not because everything that was stated before is erroneous, but because the approach and language being used are all wrong. Today’s people and the time they live in are different; today we think differently.

I believe one must become rooted in God and not be afraid of thinking and feeling freely. ‘Freely’ does not imply ‘free thinking’ or contempt for the past and for the tradition. However, God does not need slaves. ‘I no longer call you servants, I call you my friends…’ I think it is extremely important that we think and share our reflections with him. There is so much we could share with him in this new world we live in. It is so  good and so important to think openly without trying to conform. Intellectuals with great receptivity must come to the fore by their thinking and writing. The Church, or rather clergymen and some of the conscious churchgoers, are afraid to do something wrong. After all these years when people could not think or speak openly with each other and thereby outgrow, as it were, the nineteenth century, there is much fear, which leads people to be content with mere repetition of what has been adopted by the Church long before and what is known as Church language and Church doctrine. This has to change sooner or later.” (The Wheel 4 | Winter 2016)

The Church unfortunately contracts and becomes entrenched exactly at a moment when opportunity presents itself for moving into a new century, for being renewed by the Spirit.  Fear causes the church to hide behind closed doors as the apostles did after the crucifixion of Christ.  Jesus, however, came into their midst and commanded them to go out into that world which they so feared and from which they wanted to hide.

So while we Americans face another presidential election and the negativity it will bring, we might consider the words of the newly elected president Franklin Roosevelt at his first inauguration.  Spoken in 1933, the problems besetting the nation at that time see very familiar to us today:

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

…rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing.   (Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933)

There is hope.  We are still here, America survived the mid-20th Century and moved into more prosperous times.  The temptations of greed, selfishness and hatred are always there, as they always have been.  On a personal level, we can always choose better, no matter how leadership behaves.

Or, maybe we come to realize that in the world, human problems remain rather consistently – things though incredibly troubling and worrisome are not all that different from past times.  Democracy is a system which every few years calls for an election – because we are electing fellow citizens to lead us, it will always produce anxiety.  It will sometimes produce bad results, and sometimes miraculously, good emerges, nurturing and sustaining us for a life time.

 

Lies, Lies, Lies

I found pretty fascinating a show from the NPR program “On the Media“:  “Lies, Lies, Lies“.  I’m recommending it if you have about 50 minutes to ponder the truth about lies, and lying about the truth.

Inspired by this year’s presidential presidential campaign, it covers recent American history related to lies and truth, politicians and the press.  Though we hate when politicians lie to us (or maybe, more truthfully we just hate when those we oppose lie, we are more tolerant when the candidates we favor lie), the fact is politicians often say things they think that people want to hear.  As Psychologist Maria Hartwig comments:  “People want the truth if it fits with what they want to hear.”  So politicians are tempted by us and what we want to hear.  We like the truth if we agree with it, otherwise we are willing to dispense with it; so too, politicians.  Additionally, as the program points out, truth can become fashionable, or go out of fashion – I found that segment of the show to be fascinating – how the political process treats truthfulness and truthiness.   Politicians are willing to use truth when it is convenient and ignore it when it isn’t, and to twist it when that serves their purpose.  Politicians also know they can be punished for telling the truth as people don’t always appreciate the candor when they want to hear what agrees with their own preconceived ideas.

Is truth self-evident? Or, does the self not rely on the evidence when it comes to the truth?

One referenced quote in the program, I had to look up because it seemed such a classic political twisting of phrases.  The master communicator President Ronald Reagan speaking from the Oval Office:

“Let’s start with the part that is the most controversial. A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. As the Tower board reported, what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages. This runs counter to my own beliefs, to administration policy, and to the original strategy we had in mind. There are reasons why it happened, but no excuses. It was a mistake.”  (March 4, 1987)

His heart and best intentions told him it wasn’t true even though the facts and evidence told him it was true.   A classic case of “never let the facts get in the way of what you want to believe.”  or “Don’t believe everything you think.”   He so interestingly phrased it:  the facts and evidence aren’t giving him the truth, they are telling him what isn’t true.  Not a case that he couldn’t handle the truth, he handled it very well.   Douglas Adams described it well: “I don’t believe it. Prove it to me and I still won’t believe it.”

Reagan masterfully admits, “It was a mistake” which avoids any admission of intentional wrong behavior and also allows him to avoid having to admit he lied.

President Reagan was not the first president to handle truth, facts and evidence, as if it were modeling clay needing to be shaped by the artist.  This year’s presidential campaign shows he won’t be the last either.

“It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”  (Mark Twain)

It’s Only Money

I have through my blog shared ideas – mostly things I’ve read.  I read mostly materials related to Orthodox Christianity, but do peruse other things.  I read the article, “The United States of Insolvency”, by James Grant in the 28 April 2016 issue of TIME.  THE 2016 United States debt is

$13,903,107,629,266.00.

As Grant writes, “Let us pause to reflect that a billion is a thousand million, and that a trillion is a thousand billion – or alternatively, a million million.  It’s a measure of fix we’re in that the billions hardly seem worth talking about.”  Them’s lots of dollars.  The magazine reports that currently every man, woman and child in the US would have to pay $42,998.12 to erase the national debt.  As another comparison, Grant says if the US government were a typical American household it would have an annual income of $54,000/year and it would be spending $64,000 a year and carrying a credit card outstanding balance of $233,000.  Most of us can understand that math doesn’t work.    Grant goes on:

“I merely observe that sound money and a balanced budget were two sides of the coin of American prosperity.

Then came magical thinking. Maybe you had a taste of modern economics in school. If so, you probably learned that the federal budget needn’t be balanced–it’s nothing like a family budget, the teacher would say–and that gold is a barbarous relic. To manage the business cycle, the argument went, a government must have the flexibility to print money, to muscle around interest rates and to spend more than it takes in–in short, to “stimulate.”

Oh, we have stimulated.”

I actually never took economics in college.  The idea of a balanced budget for the government always made sense to me.  But I’ve not found many politicians to vote for, who seemed to share that idea.  Rather what I heard was that President Hoover was criticized for trying to balance the budget at the time of the Great Depression, and his actions are even blamed as the cause of that depression.  When Reagan was president, I heard many say a balanced budget wasn’t needed as long as the economy was growing.  So apparently whether the times are economically good or bad it is never a time for a balanced budget.   That doesn’t make sense to me.

Eight years ago there was all kinds of talk about the growing national debt and what to do to stop it, but this year it has not been the main focus of the presidential candidates.  Candidates probably are glad that Americans have attention deficit minds when it comes to politics.  The hot issues of a few years ago are put on the back burner even if they need to be a main issue for the country now.  Bringing down the debt may be too painful for politicians to advocate for it as it might have noticeable consequences for all of us – higher taxes and fewer entitlements.  The trouble is we manage to postpone dealing with the problem which makes some think it doesn’t have to be dealt with – and currently few are willing to pay the price for the level of government services we’ve come to expect and few are willing to give them up.  Of course if we think again about Grant’s framing the national debt in terms of an average household, we can easily see that what is required is for the the average household to cut spending by $20,000 and start paying $10,000/year on the debt.  Most householders can understand how difficult and painful that would be and probably wouldn’t want to do it either, especially if it seemed possible to keep deficit spending going until some vague future reckoning.

In the 23 May issue of TIME a new analysis of American capitalism is offered by Rana Foroohar excerpted from her book, Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business.   Foroohar says there is a reason why American capitalism is sick:

Debt is the lifeblood of finance; with the rise of the securities-and-trading portion of the industry came a rise in debt of all kinds, public and private. That’s bad news, since a wide range of academic research shows that rising debt and credit levels stoke financial instability. And yet, as finance has captured a greater and greater piece of the national pie, it has, perversely, all but ensured that debt is indispensable to maintaining any growth at all in an advanced economy like the U.S., where 70% of output is consumer spending. Debt-fueled finance has become a saccharine substitute for the real thing, an addiction that just gets worse. (The amount of credit offered to American consumers has doubled in real dollars since the 1980s, as have the fees they pay to their banks.)

As the economist Raghuram Rajan, one of the most prescient seers of the 2008 financial crisis, argues, credit has become a palliative to address the deeper anxieties of downward mobility in the middle class. In his words, “let them eat credit” could well summarize the mantra of the go-go years before the economic meltdown. And things have only deteriorated since, with global debt levels $57 trillion higher than they were in 2007.

Easy money and debt maybe just too tempting for Americans to resist – the instant benefits have fed a monster whose insatiable appetite keeps demanding more.  And we become slaves of feeding the monster because it seems to perpetuate the system.  Maybe we really do believe the myth of the ouroboros  and believe the system is self-perpetuating.  We will be surprised to find it really is a myth and not sustainable at all.

 

 

 

Lessons Learned

The rise of Islamist terrorists has prompted many Muslims to claim these terrorists do not represent Islam.  The terrorists are accused of having hijacked or distorted Islam.

These claims have been met with some skepticism among non-Muslims who readily point out that even if the Islamist terrorists are Muslim heretics, their inspiration derives from Islam and the Quran.  Many feel the Muslim communities are not doing enough to convince their own membership that Isalmist terrorism is not Islamic.  So the critics of Islam feel justified in continuing to point a righteous and accusing finger at Islam itself as being responsible for the problem.  In this view Muslim terrorist are in fact Muslim until the Islamic community can completely disown them and treat them as a non-Islamic religion which threatens Muslims and Islam.  It will never be enough to say they distort Islam – Muslims are going to have to show by their expelling such folk from their mosques and communities that the terrorists are not Muslim.  As long as mosques turn out people who join Islamist terrorists, the Islamic communities can be rightfully seen as part of the problem.   Muslims will have to show that such terrorists and the communities which produce them are in fact not Islamic.

Then, along comes Donald Trump.

Many Republicans are now trying to distance themselves from Trump claiming he does not represent Republican or American values.  House Speaker Paul Ryan said about Trump’s recent comments:  “This is not conservatism.  What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for and more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”  (BTW, I agree with Speaker Ryan).

While Paul Ryan can claim that Trump doesn’t represent the true values of the Republican party, the fact is that not only is Trump a Republican presidential candidate, he leads in the polls among Republicans likely to vote.  Obviously Trump does represent the values of many in the Republican Party.

It will be as difficult for the Republican Party to disassociate and distance itself from Trump as it is for Muslims to distance and disassociate themselves from terrorists.  This is especially true since the Republican candidates thinking they could cleverly force Trump’s hand demanded that all candidates pledge to support whoever becomes the GOP nominee.  Trump the front runner might become Trump the candidate and all of the other candidates will be held to their pledges to support the nominee, whoever he might be, whatever his policies and ideology might be.  How can any of them say Trump doesn’t really represent GOP values when they all have pledged to support him should he win the GOP nomination?

Perhaps we can see through this the dilemma Muslim communities face.  Not that this frees them from responsibility.  It only shows how difficult the problems.

There are lessons to be learned.  As Jesus said, “He who has ears, let him hear” (Matthew 13:9).

And if all you get from this is, “Is he comparing Trump to terrorists?”, then you haven’t heard a thing.

 

 

 

2014 Voter Lookup

While I admit I really dislike negative campaigning, robocalls, and campaign advertising, I do make the effort to vote each election.   We have an ability to influence the politicians in our country and if more of us would get out and vote we could even offset the effect that big money has on the elections.

War: The Primary Cause of Big Government?

 I do in this blog write about things I’ve read that interest me or give me pause to think.   I read an article in a recent issue of The Wilson Quarterly which to me came at an anti-war argument from a different point of view.

Ivan Eland, director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute writing in The Independent Review, Fall 2013, “Warfare State to Welfare State” makes the case that conservatives who favor small government need to have a stronger anti-war sentiment since wars have been a major cause of an expanding U.S. government and the growth of taxes that go with it.   The American reliance on the military to do its foreign policy causes a need for bigger government especially in benefits given to entice people to serve in the military.  Historically, the expanded government caused by war never is completely rolled back to pre-war levels, and it tends to create new populations of special interest within the country which are dependent on the expanded government and who defend the bigger federal budget to protect their own interests.

In 1795, James Madison, an architect of the U.S. Constitution, wrote:

“Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few…. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

Ivan Eland writes that

“conservatives should be more leery of jumping into wars.” War, he argues … inevitably leads to a larger government, requiring new taxes and vastly expanded powers that are only partially rolled back in peacetime. The Founding Fathers were wary of foreign entanglements, and many bridled at even the notion of a standing army. “War is the parent of armies,” said James Madison. “From these proceed debts and taxes.”

James Madison quote

Eland claims that “pensions offered as an inducement to soldiers during the Revolutionary War … eventually led to the 20th century’s massive federal retirement programs.”  The Civil War further expanded the federal government so that by “1910, forty-five years after the end of the war, about 28 percent of American men 65 years of age and older were receiving federal benefits.”

The income tax was introduced first to help pay for the war debt from the Civil War and then was revived just before WWI.  By the end of that war it was the main source of income for the federal government.  Eland argues that “World War I was transformational in bringing about permanent ‘big government.”  He claims that after WWI the government expanded its role by helping provide housing and employment opportunities for veterans.  Eland claims the government began in this time period to intrude in every aspect of American lives.  Eland claims the “the Vietnam War directly contributed to the expansion of Medicaid.”  

Eland has a long list of other war-related expansions of government, including bank bailouts (the War of 1812); price controls; government takeovers of industry; Daylight Savings Time (World War I); and subsidized child care (World War II).

The lesson, Eland argues, is plain. “Traditional conservatives recognized in the past that war is the primary cause of big government in human history, so they promoted peace. . . . That important lesson needs to be relearned.”

Maybe such thinking will help break the logjam in Washington political thinking and liberals and conservatives will find an issue they both can agree on.

In 1821, John Quincy Adams  said America’s “glory is not dominion, but liberty.”  Something for all of us to consider – maybe we’ve come to think that America’s strength is purely found in her military power whereas the true strength we have in the world is not in dominating other nations militarily but in our citizens having a liberty free of centralized government dominion.   America was not the world’s military power in it’s first hundred and fifty years of existence but it grew and became an economic power in the world while military might existed in other parts of the world.  That is an enviable history that America might want to try to regain; for in recent years we seem to think our military domination is our only glory in the world.   It is a tail wagging the dog scenario.

The Statue of Liberty is our national symbol, not the Statue of Domination

American Dysfunction and the Government Shutdown

I read the following excerpt in Stephen Muse’s worthy book of anecdotes from his own life and experience,  BEING BREAD.   The quote below has value in and of itself, and is especially thoughtful for any persons in an intense personal relationship.   First, just read Muse’s own comment, and then read through the poem by R. D. Laing.  Find what wisdom you can in the quote for your own life.  I’ll make more comments following the quote about other things to which it led my thoughts.

“When couples get in emotional negative feedback loops arguing in their relationship where each is trying to change the other in order to feel better, they frequently can’t stop and inevitably begin to suffer more, going round and round, louder and louder like in a squirrel cage.  psychiatrist R.D. Lang wrote a book of poem called “Knots‘ celebrating the intricate emotional pretzels he found that painfully tied unhappy couples together.

How can she be happy when the man she loves is unhappy?

He feels she is blackmailing him by making him feel guilty

because she is unhappy that he is unhappy.

She feels he is trying to destroy her love for him by accusing her of being selfish

when the trouble is that she can’t be so selfish

as to be happy when the man she loves is unhappy.

She feels there must be something wrong with her

to love someone who can be so cruel as to destroy her love for him

and is too guilty to be happy,

and is unhappy because he is guilty.

He feels that he is unhappy because he is guilty to be happy when others are unhappy

and that he made a mistake to marry someone who can only think of happiness.”

(BEING BREAD, pp 117-118)

While I think the whole quote is quite profound and brilliant when applied to any couple, it led in the meanderings of my mind to our American government shutdown and how we got to this point in our history.  Muse refers to the “emotional negative feedback loops” between partners in a relationship which are so destructive.  That seems to be an appropriate phrase describing the relationship America’s two main political parties.  Their mutually destructive feedback becomes a paralyzing force in their dysfunctional relationship and it is the entire country which suffers.

The job of congress is to legislate in order to run the government.  In a democracy where more than one opinion exists on any issue, functioning – aka ‘running the government’ – means considering the main ideas that are being offered and then working together to hammer out a solution.  Cooperation in a democracy means compromises must be made and reached.  We don’t have a one party system of government – like exists in North Korea, and did exist in Libya and Syria and Iraq.  These are each governments we don’t seem much to admire and in fact have worked to replace.  So we are forced to deal with messy disagreement.

Lang’s poem with its twisted logic may even present an amusing account of two lover’s tortured efforts to shift blame for relational failures on each other.   The political party’s inability to communicate and the level to which they play twisted blame games is not amusing.  And while the political parties can hardly be compared to lovers, they are both supposed to love our nation, which means they should be able to find a way to cooperate with each other since both parties are made in the USA.

I find particularly offensive those politicians who claim the ‘other side’ is  engaging in partisan politics.  The political party’s are not there to agree on every issue, but they are there to work together for the common good, to promote the general welfare.

They have to find a way through their differences to come to a solution to our nation’s problems.  When I read Robert Caro’s book four in his epic biography of Lyndon Johnson,  THE PASSAGE OF POWER,  it seemed to me that the ability and willingness to work compromise in the congress is a great strength that LBJ brought to the Kennedy administration.   It was a skill that neither JFK or RFK seemed to possess.

Political commentator George Will said in an NPR Interview that the current standoff really is the messy part of how democracy is to work in America.  The balance of power between the branches of government was designed to limit the power of government.   Will thinks President Obama forgets that at points:

This is the Madisonian scheme. Each institution shall be the jealous asserter of its prerogatives and try to maximize its power. I sometimes think that when he was at Harvard Law School, Mr. Obama cut class the day they got to the separation of powers, ’cause he seems to consider it not just an inconvenience but an indignity that although he got 270 electoral votes and therefore gets to be president, he didn’t get everything. The Madisonian scheme is for the government to be hard to move. It’s supposed to be. People look at Washington and say, oh gosh, this is so difficult. It’s supposed to be difficult.

There is a difficulty built into the system.  And while I think Will’s comments are fair enough, the President is the only person elected by the entire nation, so his interests cannot be that of senator or congressmen who respectively represent  states and then smaller districts.   In America today voters send different messages to Washington  on the national, state and district level in the very different voices they elect.

 Part of the problem is we are a diverse nation with a strong polarizing political tendency at the moment.  While the political parties can choose to cater to the polar extremes of their respective parties, in Washington they are supposed to be working for the nation not just for their political party.  The president, the house of representatives and the senate are to figure out how to best represent American interests and the interests of Americans.  We have all of the complexities that Lincoln faced in his own days as President of a badly divided country.  He prayed for wisdom, and so should we all ask God to give our country’s leaders the wisdom and discernment for how to move ahead in the 21st Century.