The Lost Member of Spinal Tap

One of the amazing things about Brother Leader Moamar Qaddafiy of Libya is just how dissolute and seedy he looks. I described him earlier as looking like a schizophrenic homeless man. But he also looks like a washed-up and perpetually stoned rocker from the early 1970s. Especially in this poster, which looks more Haight-Ashbury 1972 than Hopey-Changey 2008:

I see a fourth-rate Keith Richard and Bob Dylan in that face. I see no creative energy in that face. I see aging headbanger, someone who always turned his amp up to 11, never saw a line of blow he didn't snort, never saw a nubile young groupie he didn't grope, never slept in a hotel room he didn't trash, and who stopped mattering round about 1977 when he could no longer musically cope with disco and new wave. Maybe his career was briefly rejuvenated in the late 1980s, playing rhythm guitar for the unpainted Kiss, but he's spent his life mostly in a drug-induced fog, playing the same four minor early-1970s hits over and over and over again with the same band of mates for aging fans and confused kids in small clubs and county fairs and watermelon festivals from Poznan to Portland.

Pity he couldn't have overdosed on something substantial in 1973.

The Reach and Limit of the Law in Antiquity

I have sporadically (when I've not been writing and singing songs, leading worship, or watching al-Jazeera on the latest events in Libya) been reading Peter Leithart's Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom. It's a fascinating and challenging read. Leithart so far has not so much "defended" the arrangement between the Church and the Roman state that Constantine made as he has explained what it really was. Which is helpful.

He also takes as a basis for his narrative the fact that Constantine really was a Christian. The question then, for Leithart, is what kind of Christian Constantine was.

The Roman state, by the time of Diocletian, had long been a religious state. Pagan sacrifice was the core of the empire's regular devotional practice. There are some passages about sacrifice which I meant to blog on earlier, and will get to later. Because this is a posting about the law.

In 324, Constantine (according to Eusebius) issued a degree that was "intended to restrain the idolatrous abominations which in time past had been practiced in every city and country; and it provided that no one should erect images, or practice divination and other false and foolish arts, or offer sacrifice in any way" (p. 127, quoting Eusebius' Life of Constantine). He ended the practice of state officials offering regular sacrifices, and was himself militantly opposed to sacrifice. Not long after Constantine died, his son Constans reinforced this with a decree making sacrifice a punishable offense. According to Leithart, this is the point where Christianity could be seen to be the official, established religion of the state, at least in the eastern part of the empire. (Again, Leithart is citing Eusebius here.)

However, Constantine also allowed broad "freedom of conscience" within the empire. Leithart asks how can these two ideas -- the ban on sacrifice and freedom of conscience for pagan worship -- be reconciled? Because of the nature of the law in antiquity. Leithart writes:

Imperial edicts always depended on enforcement by provincial or local officials, who might be too lazy or busy to carry out the emperor's business. A provincial governor surrounded by convinced pagans would be hesitant to bear down. More important, emperors "never expected or intended that their anti-pagan legislation be enforced." [Quotation from Scott Bardbury's "Julian's Pagan Revival and the Decline of Blood Sacrifice," p. 134.] Leafing through the codices, one gets the impression that the decrees of the early Christian emperors were concise and legally framed legislation, but when we examine the full of text of certain decrees in Eusebius, we find that the legislative portion is fairly minor and often concludes a prolix moral lecture. The Codex Theodosianus consists of excerpts from Constantine and his immediate successors, but excerpting changes the genre and tone. In its original setting, much imperial legislation functioned more as mere moral appeal than as law [italics mine] in our modern sense of the term. Given the nature of the "law" in Constantine's empire, there was no necessary contradiction between his "We wholly forbid the existence of gladiators" and his permission to an Umbrian town to honor the emperor with combats. Nor was there any necessary contradiction between a decree suppressing sacrifice and continued toleration of sacrifice. 

Constantine cannot keep himself from preaching. He did it in court, and when he issued decrees in his official capacity he was still the mission-minded preacher. Eschewing sacrifice entirely was the best way to go, so he prohibited sacrifice; yet everyone should be free to follow conscience, so he did not enforce prohibition. He was a politician-preacher ... [and h]is legislation created an "atmosphere" in which sacrifice gradually faded way. (p. 128-129)

The law as moral appeal rather than legislation. This is interesting. It appears to understand the limits of both law and state, something modernity does not appear to grasp (because it wants the law omnipotent and omnipresent, much like modernity wants the state). To an extent, the people of antiquity appear to grasp -- at least in this example (and assuming Leithart and his sources, whose conclusions he draws from, are correct) -- the limits of power and ability. It may even be that the law's primary use is as moral exhortation rather than enforced limit on human activity.

This is not to say law or decree were not taken seriously in antiquity, were not viewed as having real power, or were not expected to be obeyed. Otherwise, no one would take seriously the decree of Augustus that becomes the reason in Luke's Gospel for Mary and Joseph to move from Nazareth to Bethlehem in order to fulfill prophesy. (In Matthew, the move is the other way around, from Bethlehem to Nazareth, and then only because the wrong people rule Judea.) Nor would the Tanakh conclude with the two books of Chronicles, the final of words of which are the decree from King Cyrus of Persia to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem. Powerful words that move people to act, and change the world.

But it seems to me as well part of the power is in their proclamation. If Constantine saw himself as a preacher, then he was exhorting people to act rather than compelling them. Perhaps the distinction is blurry in antiquity between exhortation and compulsion, but it may be there is less an element of raw power (and the modern state, especially the state in the 20th century, seems to be grounded much more on the exercise of raw power) in the state of antiquity because while the people who did rule were conscious of the extent of their power over others, they may also have been much conscious of the limits of their power.

It would be like -- to use a bad but probably appropriate example -- the United Nations. Sometimes, the Security Council (the UN's executive) is truly seized of its power, such as its response to Iraq's occupation and annexation of Kuwait in 1990. Mostly, however, the UN Security Council engages in moral hectoring more than legislating or enforcing (however edifying or annoying that may be). Which may explain why many UN Security Council resolutions read the way they do.

However, we moderns expect the law to be enforced, to be impartial, and to be fair. We have come to believe the law is almost (or should be) mechanical. Perhaps because the law has always held out that promise. But it can't be, and never will be, for the reason Leithart states. It is a human act, and perhaps it is better to consciously live with the tension that the law is better as moral appeal than code of behavior, knowing that it will always be enforced capriciously regardless.

On Aging Revolutionaries and Irrelevant Liberation Theologies

Well, it had to be somebody. So it might as well have been Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega:

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega yesterday confirmed that he spoke with Libya's Col. Muammar El Qaddafi and expressed his support to him and his government during the current political tensions in Libya. "I have been communicating by telephone with him. I've been talking to him, and logically he is fighting yet another great battle in the many battles Qaddafi has had to endure... and under these circumstances they have been looking for ways to engage in dialogue while defending the unity of the country in order to avoid its disintegration and prevent anarchy," said President Ortega. "I relayed the solidarity of the Nicaraguan people to him and the Libyan people, the solidarity of Nicaraguan Sandinistas to him and the Libyan people, and that we were confident that that problem can be resolved... that it is a difficult situation and, God willing, that that situation can be resolved and be overcome." Mr. Ortega delivered his remarks at an event in Managua commemorating Nicaraguan revolutionary hero Augusto César Sandino.

Ortega and Qaddafiy are among the last two of a dying breed of 1970s revolutionaries. Qaddafiy hasn't aged well, looking (and sounding) more like a mentally ill homeless man in need of a decent meal, a quiet place to sleep and a refilled bottle of thorazine (as opposed to the crack cocaine he self-medicates with) than the leader of an actual nation-state. Time has not been kind to Qaddafiy. It has been kind to Ortega. But maybe that's because he wasn't allowed to be Chairman of the Central Committee/Leader of the Revolution/President-for-Life. No, unlike Qaddafiy, Ortega had to take a few years off and then win a real, live, free election. Maybe that's kept him so youthful looking -- being out of power for a while.

There aren't many of Ortega's and Qaddafiy's pseudo-revolutionary swaggering ilk left around. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe comes to mind, and he and Qaddafiy make quite a pair -- brutal kelptocrats in need of two more for a proper round of no-holds-barred Texas Hold 'Em. ("Loser of the hand has to take the revolver with one bullet, spin the chamber, put it to his head, and pull the trigger!" Oh, it must have made meetings of the Non-Aligned Movement so much fun!) Yasser Arafat is long dead, Omar Torrijos even longer dead. Idi Amin and Mobutu Sese Seiko are are deposed and dead and long disappeared. Julius Nyerere discredited and dead. There are more, I'm sure, swaggering leaders of third world "revolutions" (sic) who strutted onto the stage in the late 1960s and 1970s and promised bold new tomorrows full of liberation and progress, only to bury the people they governed under penury and oppression and bloodshed. And the occasional war.

(They couldn't all be Nelson Mandela...)

So I'm glad that Qaddafiy, in what may be his last days or hours on earth, has one old "friend" he can find some consolation in. Because the rest are all gone. As he will soon be too. And eventually Daniel Ortega will be something Qaddafiy can never be -- a retired, living ex-leader, drawing a pension and making speeches on the umpteenth anniversary of some Augusto Sandino or Sandinista-related activity. Perhaps even something of an elder statesman.

There was a time, and I want to say not so long ago, but 25 years is long ago, when Ortega was hot. Nicaragua was the Kingdom of God breaking in upon the world, and the Sandinista Revolution was the herald of that kingdom for a certain kind of liberation theologian who mistook the predictions of Marx with the prophetic promises of the Gospel, and the pseudo-revolutionaries of the 1960 and 1970s for prophets and saviors. I would ask what those liberation theologians would make of the leader of God's revolution giving comfort to Qaddafiy as he is fighting "yet another great battle" -- because it is ever so heroic to order planes to strafe unarmed people -- but even condemned sinners deserve some comfort, and need confession and absolution. And Ortega, and his revolution, really are irrelevant now. Especially outside Nicaragua. I suspect most liberation theologians today wouldn't know a Sandinista from a sacrament.

And no, they never were the same thing.

Obama the Neocon

Renegade historian Thaddeus Russell about Barack Obama in an interview in Reason, and why he became attracted to libertarianism:

It began with anti-imperialism. That’s what first caught my attention. Particularly during the Obama campaign, I felt like I was on a raft in a vast ocean. I was just the only person I knew in my whole world who felt that Obama was basically a neocon and just terribly reactionary in every single way. There’s not one thing I like about him. He represents every negative strain in American history that I write about.

...

I think what I like most about libertarians is that they are perpetually oppositional. They never merge their identities with the sovereign power. When speaking of the nation-state, they don’t say “we.”

It was Russell who edited Historians Against War, and it this reminding that got him expelled from the website. Because Democrats aren't imperialist warmongers, you know. They espouse change we can believe in.

Conversations With Diplomats

The events in Libya in the last week or so reminds of something that happened when I was working as a reporter at the United Nations in mid-2001.

I was an energy correspondent working for BridgeNews, and my job at the UN was to cover the Iraq Food-for-Oil Program (can I say Food-4-Oil?). At the time, before the attacks of September 11, there was some movement toward a "smart sanctions" arrangement to deal with Iraq, something similar to the technology controls that the Western nations had imposed on some imports to what was once the Warsaw Pact and its allies. I wasn't at the UN often, but I was there for Security Council meetings (sat in on one once) about Iraq, and did get a couple of scoops by cornering Iraqi UN ambassador Mohammed al-Douri and chatting him up in Arabic, something no other American reporters seemed to be doing. In fact, few reporters seemed interested in the opinions of non-permanent members, and they were an interesting font of information.

(Al-Douri was a seedy little man with one bad eye who wore a shiny suit and a very bad comb-over, always fondling his prayer beads, and he reminded me a lot of Larry Storch.)

At any rate, one day, between sessions and stake outs outside the Security Council chamber, I decided to hang out in the diplomats lounge at the UN. The UN is a fascinating building, and it has that wonderful late 1940s feel of progress to it, with the grays and the wood and the frosted glass office doors. (All it needed was ductwork and it would be Brazil.) It was a bit run down, and CNN International was everywhere (this was about a year, I think, after Ted Turner committed his billion), and that's where I learned that CNN International was as good as CNN was bad. I got an overpriced coffee and sat with my book. And watched people go by.

A junior Iraqi diplomat, someone I'd regularly seen with al-Douri as part of his entourage (I don't remember his name, sorry), saw me, said hello in Arabic and asked if he could join me. We chit-chatted a bit -- small talk, I think -- where I learned Arabic and how long I'd been a reporter, how long he'd been at the UN. That kind of thing. Somehow, the conversation turned to medieval Islamic history, and as he and I were talking, we were joined by a man who identified himself as a member of the Libyan delegation. (Had a junior diplomat from Syria joined us, we'd of had our fourth for bridge.) The three of us talked for a bit, about Islamic history of course, but somehow, the discussion veered in the direction of government in the Arab world. The talk started, I think, with the problem of modern Arab governments and how they aren't terribly representative of the will of their people. I responded something to the effect of, "yes, but that kind of thing is true here in the United States too."

"Yes," replied the Libyan a little more quietly. "But it is much, much worse in our countries."

The Iraqi nodded his agreement and then the conversation got silent for a second as the two diplomats looked at each other. The talk then veered in another direction, toward small-talk, and then it became clear we all had places to go and things to do. I think an alarm may have sounded that the Security Council was going back into session.

I never saw the Libyan diplomat again. The Iraqi diplomat I saw later that summer after a member of the Iraqi delegation reportedly defected. He was dealing angrily with the the reporters following him around -- including me -- and not answering our questions. I stopped covering the UN in August, when BridgeNews ceased to be a real news agency. And after September 11, 2001, there was no talk of lifting sanctions on Iraq and replacing them something else.

That conversation stood out in my mind for a long time. I wonder what kind of courage it took for junior diplomats to say what they said about their own governments, given the kinds of governments they worked for? And I wonder what happened to both of them? Where are they now? What are they doing? I hope they are both okay. I hope they and their families are both well.

It doesn't shock me that so many Libyan diplomats have abandoned their government, especially the junior ones. Both the Iraqi and the Libyan were bright, personable, professional, and well-educated. I suspect Libya's current UN ambassador is probably tied up somewhere and locked in a closet.

Here's to the people of Libya as they fight to overthrow their regime. Here's to the Iraqis as they struggle with winning their independence from dictatorship and Americans. I hope that sometime, in the lifetime of both men who sat and shared a short conversation with at the United Nations almost 10 years ago, that it will stop being much, much worse in their countries. I pray and hope that soon it is better. Much, much better.

Some Mixed Feelings

I'm an anarchist, and as a general rule, I am all in favor of protests. The more, the better. (I don't even mind the occasional riot, having started one once.) If those protests can actually accomplish something (like bring a government down), then so much the better.

So, on one hand, I am all in favor of what's going on in Wisconsin -- strikes and protests and a goodly portion of the state assembly absconding to parts unknown to prevent a vote is not a bad thing. I don't like chaos per se, but so long as it keeps government from governing, well, let's have more of it, please.

On the other hand, I can't really say I'm all that sympathetic to the demands of this group of protesters. I believe unions are important and necessary, but I have serious problems with the very idea of public employee unions. There is something that doesn't feel right about people paid by the taxpayers lobbying tax-funded government to tax even more to provide more government. Especially when it comes to bargaining for wages and benefits -- it feels too much like a small group of people holding guns to the heads of all taxpayers. "Gimme more or else!"

I have special problems with police officer and prison guard unions, who have been very successful in the last three decades at lobbying government for more government. Police officers and prison guards should definitely not be allowed to unionize. But teachers have been good at this too. I like most of the teachers I've known, but I have a very special spot of white-hot hate in my heart for the system of incarceration and abuse we rather strangely call "public schools." Defund it all. Yesterday if possible.

So, I guess I'm not really rooting for anyone in Wisconsin. I suspect the governor will eventually win -- even if that means the state police hauling assembly members to Madison in irons (now there's a vision with some appeal!).

UPDATE: Having learned that police officers, firefighters and prison guards are not included in the Wisconsin governor's proposal, my feelings are much less mixed. Go protesters!

The Power of Music

It's time for a cute little blog entry. Today will be a long day, filled with much seriousness. So, time for something not so serious...

I'm a Madness fan. There is no good explanation for this. I just love the way their music sounds, and I love how it is put together. I've seen the band live once, in 1986 in San Francisco during the Mad Not Mad tour, and they were far better live than I expected. I'm not entirely sure why or how their music speaks to me, but I know it does. 

Anyway, I was listening to "The Sun and the Rain" this morning (from the U.S. version of their 1984 CD Keep Moving) and was somewhat stunned to realize than even after 25 years, the string arrangement for this song still has the power to make my neck hairs stand on end. Oh, to write something like that! If only once!

I'm now going to go splash some very cold puddles outside!

On Justice. And Making Someone Walk an Extra Mile

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a fan of the concept of "justice" as espoused and advocated for in the culture of the liberal-progressive West (both religious and secular, since it's basically the same claim). Justice is little more, I think, than a form of social vengeance, a combination of "gimme" combined with "it's not fair" married to laws and guns. Many advocates for "justice" also seem to want to create (or recreate) a world in which there is no need for mercy, and that frightens me no end. A world without God's mercy is a world in which human beings are left to our own cruel devices, one in which our ideological self-righteousness in the name of "justice" is an excuse for unbending and unyielding cruelty.

Plus, there is also the simple desire to wield power, to lord it over others, to bend people and the world to their will. I think that motivates more "justice" seekers than they care to admit.

An important thing to note is that "justice" is not objective, it is very subjective. Two very thoughtful and faithful people can come to some very different understandings of what is "just" and how "justice" ought to work in the world. Even if they start from the same place. (Our vision of "justice" is rooted in notions of political, social and economic equality -- notions almost no one had 200 years ago and notions no one may have 200 years from now.) Thus, all that is left is force of arms, is might, to determine which version of "justice" is "just."

As an anarchist -- as someone who believes quite deeply in the fundamental moral illegitimacy of force and coercion in any form -- I do not believe in engaging much in partisan politics. Politics is about controlling the machinery and meaning of the state, and the state is nothing but force and coercion. I don't so much care about the society (which cannot function without coercion and violence), but I do care about the church (which is called to show the world what a community of non-violence and non-coercion looks like). We as church have no business advocating on behalf of state violence, or taking a stake in state violence, regardless of how just we believe the cause the state is pursuing. That makes us as church complicit in the violence.

The only things we as church should be saying to the state are: "No." "Don't." "Stop."

I've long believed this. I believed this even when I was Muslim, this belief in the non-legitimacy of violence to make changes in the world. (In fact, I came to this belief as a Muslim.) But until recently, I'd never really had solid scripture to hang this upon. But studying the Sermon on the Mount for a song I was writing for the confirmation class, I read this:

[38] “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ [39] But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. [40] And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. [41] And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. [42] Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. (Matthew 5:38-42 ESV)

Yes, I've read that passage a lot. You have too, probably. But as I was working on that song, it occurred to me that when we engage in political activity as Christians, we become the people who slap cheeks, take tunics, beg and borrow, and force people to walk a mile. We become what Christ tells his disciples is clearly evil.

Again, it doesn't matter that we think we're pursuing "justice." We will have to injure someone to get there, and in doing so, we become enamored of our self-righteousness and believe that those injured deserved it. To defend a neighbor with violence means to rob another human being of their status as neighbors. There is no love of neighbor that can ever articulate itself as or in violence against that neighbor. Ever.

(On this point, I realize that I am at great odds with not only the teaching of my Lutheran confession, but also with historic Christendom, which has always given the agents of the state some moral leeway to engage in violence for some ephemeral common good. As much as I appreciate the wisdom of history and of the church, I believe there are some things it got wrong, or at the very least, understood some things -- state and society -- in a way that gives far too much leeway for violence and compulsion. That is another argument for another essay.)

There is one other point that came to me in reading this passage. We ourselves, as good bourgeois American Protestants (progressive or otherwise) are unwilling to live out the grace we seem to demand others live out when we force it upon them. We compel people to walk the mile on our command, grumble that they should walk the extra mile (because Jesus says so!), but we ourselves are utterly unwilling to walk even the first mile, much less the second. Again, a lot of this stems from the Protestant desire to create a world of perfect "justice," a world in which the mercy of God (and human beings) is not needed because all of the systems of the world will be arranged "justly." (This has been an element of Protestant utopianism since the 16th century.) Personally, this articulates itself in a social view that basically says, "If you actually need God's mercy, you clearly don't deserve it."

Mostly, I don't think Liberal Protestants (particularly their corporate church bodies) really believe in the transformative power of love. They don't see love as an effective way to engage the world. It doesn't change the world in the ways they believe the world needs to be changed (or worse, in the ways they believe God wants the world changed). Instead, they have come to believe in "justice," and have come to invest themselves in the violence and force necessary to be "effective" at "pursuing justice."

But we are not called to be effective. We are called to be faithful, to love as God loves us. And that is all we are called to do.

There Are All Kinds of Revolutions

Matt Stoler over at Yves Smith's Naked Capitalism blog has a fascinating analysis of the Egyptian revolution as a labor uprising. Quoting Gemal Mubarak -- who appropriately enough was an investment banker trained by Bank of America -- about the desire to "improve Egyptians' living standards," Stoler writes of the demonstrators' opposition to the Egyptian government's "familiar recipe" of "[d]eregulation, globalization, and privatization" as authored by and in the Clinton Administration by Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs chief Robert Rubin.

Stoler writes:

That Rubinite rhetoric has been adopted by the children of strongmen shows the influence of Davos, the global annual conference of power brokers. Gamal, far more polished than his father, understood that the profit and power for his family lay in cooperating with foreign investors to squeeze labor as hard as possible.

This strategy was targeted at the global labor arbitrage going on since the 1970s, with Egypt’s role as one cheap labor in-sourcer. It’s no surprise that the Mubarak family has $40-70B stashed away in the global tax safe havens coddling the superrich. This wealth was extracted from the youth and women in Egypt’s new factories making low-cost goods for export. This is why the revolution was spearheaded by youth and women, and why the nationalist business elite, with its deep ties to the military, sided with the protesters. Mubarak’s inner circle aligned themselves with international investors and set themselves against domestic business and military interests.

... 

The political architecture of the Mubarak regime was directly pulled from the neoliberal shadow government model, right down to the political rhetoric of toughness as a mask for theft. Paul Amar has by far the most persuasive account of the Egyptian revolution. Amar goes beyond the absurdist Facebook revolution narrative, and points out that what is going on is in effect a youth-driven labor uprising, combined with fights between Mubarak-centric Rubinite elites and the domestic nationalist business community tied to the military. Mubarak had made tight alliances with the Islamic right, while slashing the social safety net and bringing in international investors to open low wage manufacturing ...

There's a lot in Stoler's piece consider (especially the parallels he inadvertently draws between the replacement of subsidies with debt in Egypt and the replacement of wage increases in the U.S. with debt), but two things immediately come to mind.

First, if this is true, then the grievances of workers and young people (in their 20s) sounds a lot like the grievances of the anti-globalization movement. I don't quite know what to make of that, so I'll let it sit for a bit.

Second, if this is an uprising for greater political representation and accountability on the part of workers and educated young people in a rapidly industrializing country, than what happened in Egypt resembles -- at least on the face of it -- the struggles in Taiwan and South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s to shake off dictatorship and create fully "democratic" polities. It took South Korea nearly 30 years to become a fully functioning democratic state following the first protests that forced the ouster of Syngman Rhee in 1960, though much of the country's most important initial economic growth took place during the dictatorship of Park Chun Hee in the 1960s and 1970s. The military did not give up power easily or quickly (the massacre at Kwangju in 1980 is evidence of that), but by the late 1980s, the South Korean military did give up power without significant struggle. I know less about Taiwan's long march (no pun intended) from KMT dictatorship under Chiang Kai Shek to fully functioning, multi-party state, so I cannot really make a comparison there.

But both these states were becoming industrial economies, moving from the periphery of the global economy in 1960 to very near its center by 1990 and from poverty to wealth (South Korea was a much poorer place than North Korea until well into the 1970s). Dictatorship was deemed necessary to the creation of the industrial economy in both South Korea and Taiwan, both were integrated fully into the American world order and both were former Japanese colonies. Egypt is a very different place than South Korea or Taiwan in 1960, or 1980s. Being part of the American world order hasn't really helped Egypt economically, but then it's not been a place where significant things are made either. But it sounds like things are now being made there. So, who knows.

It suggests there are all kinds of ways to think about the events there in the last few weeks.

It's 2011, Not 1989 or 1848

Leon Hadar has an interesting piece at The American Conservative comparing the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt to the revolutions that rocked Europe in 1848:

The lessons of the democratic revolutions of 1848 may be instructive. The uprisings in Paris, Milan, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Munich, and Berlin, led by members of the middle classes and the intelligentsia, failed to transform the existing order and replace it with democratic and liberal institutions. In fact, the political upheaval helped expose the conflicting interests and values of the intellectuals and professionals who led the revolts and the workers and the peasants whose support they had failed to win. The result was a successful counter-revolution launched by the ruling elites in France, the Austrian Empire, and Prussia. Conservative forces were able to consolidate their power for many years to come and at the same time initiated limited and gradual reforms to placate the restive population.

This is actually an interesting comparison, and may have some merit, but not in the way Hadar thinks.

First, I believe Hadar way over-estimates the influence of Islamist ideology in the Arab world. Second, he misses a greater point about how successful the Revolutions of 1848 actually were: the Orleans monarchy was toppled in France and the Second Republic was (briefly) created before Louis Napoleon seized power and proclaimed himself emperor; the Austrian empire had to redraw how it was governed; Italian and German unity really begins in this period. Europe was radically altered by the revolution, even if it was in ways no one expected at the time. We also don't think of the Crimean War, or the various wars of Prussia and France in the 1850s and 1860s leading up to the Franco-Prussian War and the Battle of Sedan, as consequences of the Revolutions of 1848. And the operating ideology of the social democratic welfare state is grounded in many of the demands of this period, for good or for ill, and while conservatives reformed, they are reforms grounded solidly on the demands of the revolutionaries. Otto von Bismark may not have been one of the '48ers, but he delivered much of what they fought for in Germany. That conservative order built the relatively liberal centralized nation-states the revolutionaries wanted.

Because of that, the Revolutions of 1848 are probably the most successful failed revolutions in human history.

The Middle East could do worse than failed revolutions that create a liberal heritage. Hadar is right to note that the Revolutions of 1848 were also very nationalistic, but that had been building in Europe since Hegel fell in love with Napoleon as an idea and turned him into the World Spirit. Much of the Middle East has already had its bout of nationalism in the aggressive sense with Nasserism and Ba'athism, and while it is possible this could re-emerge, I don't see it (I could be wrong). There was no room for the ancien regime to really reassert itself after 1848*, and the conservative response of centralization, nationalization, industrialization and the creation of basic welfare states was probably correct given alternatives -- poverty and revolution. Yes, the end of proper aristocracy in Europe did give way to many of the horrors of the 20th century, but the Middle East ceased having that aristocracy long ago.

In the end, the decision as to how Arabs govern themselves is not and should not be made in Washington, Tel Aviv, London or Paris, but should -- to the extent that it can -- be made by Egyptians and Tunisians and Palestinians and Iraqis (&etc) themselves. There will be days when, from our perspective, they won't get it right. And they certainly won't govern themselves largely for our benefit. But that is as it should be.

_______

* Even had the Bourbons returned to rule France in the 1870s after the fall of Louis Napoleon, restored France would most certainly have looked more like the Third Republic than the France of Charles X.

Not Yet Spring

It is nice that it is warm enough for snow to start melting. Because there are some pretty large piles of snow out there:

But as welcome as this warmth, and the disappearance of the snow is, it's not yet spring. The air doesn't smell like spring. And yes, spring has a smell, just as autumn does, just as summer does, just as winter does.

I will take warm winter days over cold ones. But *sigh* it is still winter.

The Success of the West. And It's Irrelevance.

Ever since the demise of communism as a competing ideology to the liberal-social democratic West in the late 1980s and early 1990s, those liberal-social democratic ways of organizing the world have become the world's values. It isn't the end of history, but it is -- for the time being, the end of a somewhat contrived ideological battle between what really were two "sister" world views (social democracy's governing ideas are best most earliest reflected in the Communist Manfesto). There are no real competing world views: Revolutionary Islam has no mass appeal, and what military or party authoritarianism exists in the world today somehow justifies itself by appealing to liberal-social democratic values.

I cannot imagine millions taking to the street anywhere for a restored Caliphate. But an end to dictatorship, and the accountability of government to the "will and needs of the people"? That will get millions into streets across the world.

I have struggled to find a term to describe the kind of governance and ideal society that inhabits the minds on many of the world's educated people (and that is a huge number, counting even the marginally educated). Which is why I have decided to use the term "liberal-social democracy." It is liberal in the sense that it takes 18th century liberal ideas (sovereignty rests in the people, government power is exercised on behalf of the people for the benefit of the people, elections are the best way to constrain government power and hold government accountable, the people are all equal citizens and all have equal responsibility to participate in the exercise of power, the individual human being matters in the context of the society that is governed) with 19th century social democratic values (the economy should be accountable politically to the people, the state is the organizing purpose of the society, the people acting in and through the state will to a certain extent provide some very basic services to all in the society as a way of fostering equality and looking after the well-being of both individuals and the society at large) and 20th century ideas of human rights to create a kind-of body of beliefs and practices that constitute the good society. Liberal-social states are reasonably humane, efficient, look after the well-being of the weakest by fostering social obligations, empower individuals to live up to their intellectual potential and foster their individual talents, do not unduly dominate others while at the same time promoting the universality of these ideals.

These values, these ways of doing things, come out of Europe and North America, and are definite products of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolutions and the problems they set before humanity. These values seek to use the intellectual tools of the Enlightenment and the material tools of the Industrial Revolution to ameliorate (if not end) the inequality, exploitation and misery created and exacerbated by the Industrial Revolution.

And they have become universal. The West can say it has truly succeeded in conquering the world.

What is interesting, however, is that as these values have become universal -- and they have -- the West has become less central and even less essential to the promotion of the very values it birthed and currently lays claim to. The West, in its victory, is becoming irrelevant.

The West has always lived uneasily with its proclamation of universal values. Because they have not always been universal. The statement in the American Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" was never really true -- the long history of American racism at home and abroad clearly shows that Americans never really meant it. The French proclaimed a universal civilization, but decided very early that Muslims were not eligible to Frenchmen so long as they remained Muslim. In this, the West has been at its worst because what is has said about itself how been so at odds with how it has acted. Dominating others while proclaiming liberty. It is our least appealing quality.

One way Americans at least have dealt with this is to embrace a kind-of incarnational ideology -- we are the embodiment of these very values, and so we cannot truly be judged by them. This continues to be the approach of the ideological right (especially in its support for Israel, which is also an incarnation of liberal-social values, and thus cannot be judged by them) and of course America's ruling elites, who bristle at the very notion that they will be judged by the same standards they judge others. By incarnating these values in themselves, Americans (and to a lesser extent Britons) hope to control them. We are freedom. We are democracy. We are accountability. We are progress. We are the good society. We judge you because you hope to be just like us someday. You are even in the process of becoming like us. But you aren't yet. So you cannot judge us.

But judge the world does. Because these ideas don't incarnate. They aren't embodied. And as these ideas spread, the West -- especially its elites -- are losing control over them. As the world becomes liberal-social (and that is what it is becoming), there will be other centers of gravity and opinion that will not mistake the exercise of power by Washington as liberal-social merely because Washington does it. As Malays and Brazilians and South Africans and Indians and Chinese embrace these ideals (and graft them on to local religions and local nationalisms), they will reshape them. The core hopes of government in the name of the people and for the benefit of the people, of economic progress shared relatively equally, of the rights and well-being of individual human being as a part of the society respected and fostered will remain, and they will be the way all governments for the foreseeable future will be judged as successes or failures. These things, I believe, have legs that will transcend local conditions (even as they are affected by them).

A liberal-social democratic world does not need America, however. It does not need its army, its economy, its banks, is intellectuals, or increasingly even its sclerotic example. America will grow -- is growing -- as irrelevant to the future of humanity as France, or Portugal, or even Britain. America is evolving from the first, to first among equals, to just another nation-state. My hope is Americans would embrace this future, but only a few will at first. This evolution is, will continue, to provoke a huge crisis of identity among American ruling elites (and even in the heartland), where so much national identity is built on the global domination and importance of "we're number one!"

But do not forget -- the irrelevancy of America and the entire West is predicated entirely on the success of Western values as promoted largely by the United States in the decades following the Second World War. Americans should be proud of that accomplishment. Instead, too many of them are frightened. And angry.

Brilliant Observation

I don't often agree with Nicholas Kristof -- there's too much of the moralistic crusader in him, and moralistic crusaders can too easily make war the means by which they achieve their aims -- but he said something brilliant in his Sunday New York Times column:

We need better intelligence, the kind that is derived not from intercepting a president’s phone calls to his mistress but from hanging out with the powerless.

Kristof doesn't say why Washington doesn't have better intelligence, but that's because Washington (and this includes not just government but also hangers on, such as DC's incredibly servile press corps) doesn't believe the powerless contribute anything. They are to be governed. Well perhaps, kindly maybe, but still governed. What people say, believe, think and feel doesn't matter anywhere near as much as what governing elites say, believe, think and feel and can communicate to those they govern.

And Western elites have governed this way for so long they forget that the people can often times feel things their leaders believe they shouldn't. And act upon them too.

A Request

As long as I'm asking for such things, more Alessandra Torresani please. (Though not as Wonder Woman. Sorry. That's just wrong.) And more Magda Apanowicz too.

Covenant With Whom?

Jeffrey Polet over at Front Porch Republic reviews a book I clearly need to read -- Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenantal Theology by Glenn Moots. I won't comment much, since I've not read the book (I thought our seminary library might have it, but alas, since it's clearly not by a Frankfurt-school inspired wanna-be liberation theologian, they don't). But I do have something to say about covenantal theology.

Polet writes in his review:

Stanley Hauerwas has complained that in America the object of theological reflection is America itself – a criticism that has some truth to it, but may not be as big a problem as Hauerwas assumes it is. A lot hinges here on how one sees the theological relationship between creation, redemption, and sanctification. Much can be made of the idolatrous nature of America seeing itself as a “Redeemer nation” – and indeed, this will be a problem if one assumes God’s holiness is communicable. Surely Americans have been susceptible to this temptation. But I’m not so sure that this provides an adequate theological framework for understanding America.
...

Moots operates at all three levels of the theological enterprise: descriptive, critical, and apologetic. Even if the concept of covenanting may seem like a narrow part of the theological enterprise, Moots carefully unfolds the full range of its political and ethical implications while at the same time remaining firmly grounded in Biblical religion. With scholarly precision, Moots unfolds the process by which representative thinkers figured out how best to balance the twin problems of the relationship between individual and corporate responsibility with the reality that God is somehow present and active in the historical process.

...

By carefully unraveling the various threads and types of covenanting, Moots shows how theology shaped relationships between civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the crucial period between 1500 and 1700. Significant in this regard was the development of the idea of a “covenant of works” which would be binding on all persons regardless of their state of ecclesiastical fellowship (the covenant of grace). “Just as these two covenants worked together in the economy of salvation, so the civil and ecclesiastical could work together in the polity.” (80) This, coupled with a deeper understanding of the role of conscience in the process of redemption, allowed for a greater understanding of how to balance the public and private elements of religious belief and its foundational role in creating public order.

I am a self-confessed Hauerwasian, so any attempt to convince me that there are "two covenants" -- one with the church and another with the society/state -- is going to have to work hard to accomplish nothing. Since a "covenant" is a product of revelation, and since no one can produce any evidence that God has made a covenant with the state (in this case, it would be the American state), I do not and will not believe that any covenant with the civil order exists. The only covenants that God has made are with God's people Israel and with the church (and they are one in the same). At least Moses came down from Sinai with tablets and Jesus actually called disciples. But the American sense of callenness and chosenness is merely a self-assertion. Heck, the very Calvinist notion of covenant is a self-assertion grounded in nothing except a transference of "Israel" to the Calvinist polity.

What is the point of the separation of church (one of modernity's greatest moral claims) if church and state are to share the same purpose and work toward the same ends? Is the church not then vested in the state -- and (as I always note) its violence -- to achieve the shared outcome? This has always been a problem in Christendom, and one reason why I believe this assertion of separation has never been what its defenders have claimed it be. Even in the Enlightenment and even with liberalism. Perhaps especially with liberalism.

But this is not an argument to have with Polet and his book review. This is an argument to have with Moots and his book.

Not Quite Correct

Juan Cole says of Barack Obama:

He just seems to lack empathy with the little people and is unwilling to buck the rich and powerful, even though they all opposed his run for the presidency.

The first part of this is quite true. Obama is not very empathetic with "the little people" because he believes in, and is so thoroughly a product, of the American meritocracy. You can make it on your own, through effort and brilliance, to become a lawyer, a corporate CEO, president of the United States. Wealth and power are things one can earn, and with the relatively open nature of the American elite (to borrow from E. Digby Baltzell's writings 50 years ago). Meritocracy -- even the progressive American version -- is somewhat cruel and heartless, since anyone can, in fact, achieve in the American system (look at Obama!), then no one has any excuses for not achieving.

The result sounds a lot like what I heard conservatives say growing up -- if you don't make, if you aren't successful, then it's your own damn fault. And that basically is what this meritocratic class says, the story it tells itself.

But it absolutely incorrect for Cole to say that the rich and powerful opposed Obama's candidacy and his election. Obama is one of them! How could they oppose their own? If this were true, why did so many investment banks raise so much money for Obama's campaign?

University of California	$1,591,395
Goldman Sachs	$994,795
Harvard University	$854,747
Microsoft Corp	$833,617
Google Inc	$803,436
Citigroup Inc	$701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co	$695,132
Time Warner	$590,084
Sidley Austin LLP	$588,598
Stanford University	$586,557
National Amusements Inc	$551,683
UBS AG	$543,219
Wilmerhale Llp	$542,618
Skadden, Arps et al	$530,839
IBM Corp	$528,822
Columbia University	$528,302
Morgan Stanley	$514,881
General Electric	$499,130
US Government	$494,820
Latham & Watkins	$493,835

The truth is, Obama doesn't care about the poor, the powerless, "the little people," any more the George W. Bush did. And the policies and politics of his regime aren't going to be any kinder.

On Liberal Conceits (Part 1 of an Occasional Series)

Some years ago, when reading an interview in Salon with French intellectual (sic) Bernard-Henri Levy, I developed the notion of something I called "the liberal conceit." I think it was the cognitive dissonance in Levy's insistence that killing people is wrong (thus his opposition to the death penalty) and yet his support for liberal/humanitarian intervention and war (because allowing people to live under dictators is immoral). It seemed to me Levy did not get that humanitarian intervention is war, and therefore killing, but perhaps this is why I am an neither a neoconservative nor a French intellectual (sic).

(In fact, I wad going to write the first of these essays based on the Levy interview, until I went back and reread it to discover it did not say what I remembered it saying or quite what I thought it had said. What he said was annoying enough, however.)

At any rate, I am going to write these essays over time, in no particular order. But first, I need to define what I mean by liberal. Liberalism is is the governing mindset of modernity. It is individualistic (that is, focuses on the well-being of the individual, even if it is collectivist), optimistic about the moral and material condition of humanity (always improving, and human beings are essential "good" when allowed to be), focuses on emancipation (liberty and social equality), and that the final "meaning" of human life is determined collectively in and by the state and society (society being that community which is bounded by the state).

(Conservative readers should not get complacent. These are your values too, generally speaking.)

It occurred to me a couple of weeks ago, as I was preparing to preach a sermon on Matthew's beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-11) that liberal Christians, as a general rule, tend to see these blessings applying only to those who are "unfortunate," to those who ended up on the "wrong side" of life's lottery. That is, those who aren't rich and powerful, but only through no fault of their own. This little phrase came to mind:

The mercy of God is for the guilty, and not merely the unfortunate.

When Jesus tells his disciples after he goes up the mountain, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3 ESV), he doesn't qualify that statement. It may be the "poor in spirit" are that way because they've never gotten an even break or anything remotely resembling justice in the world. But it may also be that the "poor in spirit" are the authors of some, much or even all of their misfortune.

To be a liberal is essentially to divide the world up into three categories of people: the unfortunate, who are unable to secure justice for themselves and thus need people to secure justice for them; the virtuous, who do the actual securing of justice; and the evil, who are largely responsible for creating or perpetuating the condition of the unfortunate and thus also need the intervention of the virtuous in order for justice to prevail.

The key liberal notion is justice, which is a kind-of social vengeance. Justice for the unfortunate means ending their misfortune. But they cannot do it themselves, so they must be empowered or guided by the virtuous, who will use power wisely and fairly to empower the unfortunate and bring the evil to heel. Justice for the evil means anything from their re-education to their annihilation. But the evil deserve only justice, and not mercy, because the right ordering of the world -- the just ordering of the world -- demands it. The mercy of God has no place in the just ordering of the world. The guilty and the innocent, the evil and the unfortunate, receive justice and only justice. For the unfortunate, that justice is their elevation at the hands of the virtuous. For the evil, that justice is their being brought low at the hands of the virtuous.

It is my experience that most liberals, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, see themselves as "virtuous," as seeking obvious good for the unfortunate. There is significant disagreement on who the unfortunate are, or how the nature of the justice the virtuous should pursue on their behalf, but the basic belief is the same. And the basic desire to wield power, even an allegedly disinterested power (there is no such thing, since power always seeks to aggrandize the self; empowering others is a form of self-aggrandizement), is the same as well. A lot of power given to the virtuous in this scheme. A lot of power they give themselves.

The virtuous rarely if ever question their own virtue. Their motives are not subject to review or conscience nor is the destruction they wreck upon the earth -- and much of the violence and injustice done in the 19th and 20th centuries has been done by the virtuous wielding state power in the name of justice and good (at least for someone). And they rarely question what constitutes justice. Because they (at least to themselves) so obviously embody all that is good and noble and pure in human aspirations and divine commands.

But in the end, the virtuous in the liberal scheme of things seek a world in which God's mercy is no longer necessary because there is perfect justice or at least justice striven for.

This is why I am so militantly (and yes, I use that word on purpose) opposed to the language of justice used by the social democratic left and its fellow-travelers in the liberal and progressive church. (The right doesn't use the language very much but pursues the same kinds of ends.) There is no mercy in justice language, and the aspiration for justice is really a grab for power in the name of virtue, power unchecked by other power, and unlikely to be checked effectively by conscience. I don't think there's even much "justice" in justice language, since it seeks power, and any power that can be used for good will be used for evil. Just as sure as the sun rises in the east every morning.

Only the virtuous almost never see the evil they do in the pursuit of justice. Or even care.

The Limits of Democracy

I read Front Porch Republic on a regular basis. I find the idea of localism attractive, but as both a regular reader and a rootless cosmpolitan, I will also be the first to note that the local is not an idea, it is a place. And Jennifer and I have not yet found the place where we are willing to call our home.

Mostly I love the site for its suspicion of the big, whether that be the big state or the big corporation. But I also like its intellectual suspicion of ideology, especially democracy, and John Medaille (in an otherwise somewhat silly posting on Egypt) says something better than I have been able, so far, to say:

We in the West have a mythical belief in the power of democracy to cure kleptocracy and to bring peace. These myths are held in the face of the facts. Far from being peaceful, the 20th century, the bloodiest in history, was characterized by a series of wars to make the world safe for democracy. Which we did, but we made democracy unsafe for the world. And it is true that we have very little criminal corruption in this country for the simple reason that we have legalized it. The backward politicians of the Middle East take bribes; our enlightened politicians take campaign contributions and plush jobs on retirement. Getting caught with your hand in the till is a sign of low imagination, since there are plenty of legal ways to accomplish the same thing.

Democracy legitimates the ruling class in a way that no other form of government can. But it is not necessarily “democratic” in the sense of expressing the “will of the people,” assuming they have a unified will.

Medaille hints at, but fails to really say, that both world wars were the product of "popular" governments -- that is, mass government done in the name of "the people governed." Dictatorship in the 19th and 20th century is always done in the name of "the people," and has always justified itself that way. (Americans, because of our heritage, confuse monarchy and dictatorship.) The First World War especially was a conflict of relatively democratic societies (Germany was as much a democratic state as Britain, as much a monarchy, and in the contingency of war, as much a dictatorship), a war of democracies against each other (with the exception of Russia). He also notes that the economic problems prompting the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt are simply insoluble through political means. I've long noted that the promise made by social democracy that the economy would be politically accountable is a false promise, one of many made by social democracy that is so beguiling that reality itself cannot even begin to scratch at the promise itself. Much less dent it.

(His jibe at "legalized" corruption, however, skirts the matter -- if it's legal, is it corruption?)

But there are days when it is good to know that I am not alone in my deep and abiding suspicion of democratic governance.

On Gods & Cylons

Jennifer and I have been watching Caprica on DVD, the prequel series to Ronald Moore's reimagined Battlestar Galactica. I'm intrigued by where the show is taking its mythology, having the sentience of machines originate in conscious programs of two disembodied teenage girls who have only a slight idea of what has happened to them.

I appreciate Moore's treatment of religion as a serious subject, and it was his influence (I think) on the last few seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine in particular where religion was taken seriously. I always found Gene Roddenberry's combination of materialism and triumphal humanism to be both insufferable and unrealistic. Much better was Moore's darker vision of the human future -- one in which our essential human problems aren't solved because they aren't really soluble.

But as much as BSG was interesting, its treatment of religion generally fell flat. For Moore, I think, religion was an attempt to deal with naturalistic phenomena (like Bajor's prophets as entities residing in the wormhole), a way to introduce the magical and supernatural as part of the story, rather than about meaning and sacred story themselves. I found machines believing in One True God to be an interesting idea, and the implications of sentient, God-worshiping machines with a morality and ethic derived from that belief to be an idea worth exploring. But Moore and his people didn't do the job real well.

A couple of things were missing from the religious vision.

• It didn't seem like sacred story mattered much. I got no sense that the sacred stories of the colonials were anything other than "real" history, as opposed to "serious myth." In fact, aside from some convenient prophesies (Pythia) and a really neat map of Kobol's capital city (why?), I got no sense from the show that religion for either the Colonials or the Cylons were stories that told them who they were. Moore and his writers stole from several polytheistic mythologies, and they could have run wild with stories of gods and goddesses and heroes and the leaving of Kobol and the settling of the colonies. (As a founding myth, the last bit would likely have been the most important to the colonials, since it would have told them the most about who they are; why would the twelve tribes of Kobol have even cared that a thirteenth tribe went in another direction?) Most intriguing would have been the stories Cylons told themselves, how they would have mythologized their rather short history as sentient machines and given their existence individual and collective meaning. 
• There was an utter lack of curiosity among both the Colonials and the Cylons. It always struck me in BSG that the human beings never seemed really interested in the fact that the Cylons were utterly devoted to the worship and service of One True God. It may be that, because of the events in Caprica, and the low regard the Colonials held monotheists, that they already knew of and dismissed Cylon monotheism without a thought. But this was never alluded to during the course of the series. It is strikes me as strange that no human being ever asked the Cylons, "Why do you believe?" or "How do you know what God wants?" Not really. Even given the nature of the disaster, someone would have asked -- Baltar never really asked Six and Adama could have asked Boomer but never did. The Cylons never engaged in much contemplation either, never really asked "how do we know what God's will is?" Maybe it was so obvious to them, but Cavil's semi-cynicism was not the same as contemplative inquiry. 
• Where was revelation? The show's monotheism was also a stunted monotheism, basically a series of ethical injunctions distilled philosophically. It's more like the monotheism of the Greeks or the henotheism of Sol Invictus, based on human reasoning about who and what God might be. And not God's revealing God's-self. There was no revelation, no overwhelming experience of God, no encounter. I don't think the temple on the algae planet, Kara Thrace's mandala, the Bob Dylan song, Virtual Six and Virtual Baltar (of Virtual Kara) really count. There was no "evidence" that God loves, and I'm not sure the notion that God loves God's creation can be distilled logically or rationally. There was a lot about God's will but little encounter with God to determine what that will actually was. Revelation wasn't even really alluded to, and that's all that would have been necessary. I don't really get a sense as to why the monotheists believe -- their faith, aside from a place to ground their objection to the hedonism of the Colonial order, makes little or no sense. Overall, in the context of the BSG universe, God was a machine, and a barely conscious machine at that, acting only to make sure Colonial and Cylon could get to Earth so that Hera could become the mother of humanity. 

We're about halfway through season 1.0 of Caprica, and the treatment of religion might change, though I doubt it. I don't know if the BSG mythology has legs for another redoing (I have an idea bouncing around in my mind). Partly Moore's treatment of religion is so disappointing because he made the mystical experience so central to the show. And yet the human beings didn't do much time considering what it was they had just experienced, or showed from previous examples that they could contemplate mystical experiences. I like the way Moore ended BSG. But it also left me unsatisfied. Without stories of meaning, it makes perfect sense that Cylons and Colonials could plop themselves down on Earth 100,000 years ago and leave no trace (save language and genes) because they would have done nothing to preserve any of the stories that told them who they were. Especially the story of how they came to be there, together, in the first place. This is what troubles me. Even over 100,000 years, something of this story would have survived in myth or the deep recesses of memory.

On Persecution & Church Leadership

Diversions, diversions, diversions! So many interesting, fascinating books to read and so little time!

This week, it is Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom by Peter J. Leithart, and it looks set to shatter some preconceptions of mine in regards the church's relationship to the state in the "Constantinian deal." But that is always good, always valuable and always enlightening! He writes this about the persecutions of the Christian church in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries Roman Empire:

Persecution also had the unfortunate but obvious consequences of weeding out some of the most determined leaders from the church. Persecutors targeted bishops and priests, and bishops who capitulated survived to rule the church once persecution had ended. Those who did not cooperate often died. It is hardly surprising that, with a few exceptions like Athanasius, the church leaders of the fourth century were not men of the strongest character.

Actually, not obvious to me until Leithart pointed it out. By emphasizing just how horrific the persecution of the church was under Galerius, he also has much to say about why Christians were so willing to welcome Constantine's embrace:

Eusebius exaggerated Constantine's virtues and ignored his vices, but his attitude toward a Christian empire makes more sense once we realize that he had personally witnessed some of the horrors of persecution in Palestine. Christians delivered from persecution would regard Constantine the way Poles or Czechs regard Ronald Reagan or John Paul II. These early Christians had survived through the gulag, and they were profoundly grateful to the skilled ruler who led them out.

As I said, interesting.

What Exactly is Aggression, Anyway?

Mitt Romney, the Republican former Massachusetts governor who pioneered the ridiculous notion of forcing people to buy health insurance as a way to solve the health care situation, recently spoke about the need for the next president to have "CEO experience" (getting government bailouts and rigging markets?) and whining about a "militarily aggressive China."

Militarily aggressive China. His words, not mine.

A question for Mr. Romney -- how many countries has China invaded, attacked, occupied, bombed, threatened and stationed over the last 10 years? Or 20 years? Or even 30 years? How many fingers do you need to tally that count? How many countries has the United States done the above to over the same periods of time? What understanding of the word "aggression" is Romney using? Or do I even want to know?

Struggling for Dignity

I never quite know what to make of David Brooks. He's a fool, but sometimes he's a very insightful fool. Today's column in The New York Times is one of his more insightful ones as he compares what is happening in Egypt to other "democratic" revolutions that have happened over the last two decades:

I’ve covered some of these marches over the years in places like Russia, Ukraine and South Africa. While there are vast differences between nations, the marchers tend to echo certain themes — themes we are hearing once again in the interviews that reporters are doing in Cairo.

Protesters invariably say that their government has insulted their dignity by ignoring their views. They have a certain template of what a “normal” country looks like — with democracy and openness — and they feel humiliated that their nation doesn’t measure up.

Moreover, the protesters tend to feel enormous pride that they are finally speaking up, even in the face of danger. They feel a surge of patriotism as the people of their country make themselves heard.

This quest for dignity has produced a remarkable democratic wave. More than 100 nations have seen democratic uprisings over the past few decades. More than 85 authoritarian governments have fallen. Somewhere around 62 countries have become democracies, loosely defined.

He also notes this:

The other thing we’ve learned is that the United States usually gets everything wrong. There have been dozens of democratic uprisings over the years, but the government always reacts like it’s the first one. There seem to be no protocols for these situations, no preset questions to be asked.

Policy makers always underestimate the power of the bottom-up quest for dignity, so they are slow to understand what is happening. Last week, for example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the Egyptian regime was stable, just as it was falling apart.

Then their instinct is to comfort the fellow members of the club of those in power. The Obama administration was very solicitous of President Hosni Mubarak during the first days of the protests and of other dictators who fear their regime may be next.

The reason for this wrong-footedness on the part of the United States is fairly simple. We do not truly understand the quest for dignity (especially on the part of the world's poor) and too often American policy makers are on the wrong side of this from the beginning -- that we are the people robbing others of their dignity, and almost never empowering them. Egyptians are scraping and clawing their dignity back from a government that was entirely backed, supported and subsidized by Washington because American policy makers saw no choice. If anyone denied Egyptians their dignity, it was Americans.

The reason American elites (mostly) do not understand dignity is that it is not part of their materialistic worldview.  What matters is the material improvement of life, not a moral self-understanding. Americans also seek to organize the world to their benefit, and in doing so, they empower foreign elites who serve American interests over the interests of the people they govern. American elites are deeply self-centered, so much so that they cannot conceive that anyone would honestly and sincerely seek ends that aren't in America's interests.

Brooks could afford to push his thesis, though he won't. When he says a government has ignored the wishes of the people they have governed, and that a normal country is democratic and open, he is also critiquing how politics and policy operate in the West -- especially the United States. How long before Americans begin to ask such question and make such demands of their government. I believe the Tea Party is an inchoate expression of this anger, of this sense of powerlessness. It is a beginning of sorts. 

But aside from its exceptionally silly name, the Tea Party, however, is still far too willing to believe too much nonsense of the American narrative -- such as exceptionalism, militarism and empire. As long as Americans and America thinks so highly of itself -- indispensable nation and all that idiocy -- and act upon that, we will never be a normal country and can never have a normal politics. Instead, all we will have are lies and more lies, words from the powerful that belie the reality of daily life. I'm not optimistic about the ability of Americans to peacefully change how our country is governed, especially our willingness to let go of our empire. I'm still convinced it will have to be pried from our cold dead hands, since too many people -- liberals and conservatives -- are too enamored our alleged power and goodness.