Donkeys Like Us

Is Barack Obama arrogant? Yeah, probably.

Look. He rose from nothing; became the first African-American editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review; became a law professor at the highly-acclaimed University of Chicago School of Law; made millions from a best-selling memoir; became a U.S. Senator as a young man; and, against the odds, beat the Clinton machine and the Clinton money for the Democratic nomination for President. Then he took the most powerful office in the world.

Would a guy like that have a high opinion of himself?

Might.

1. The donkey.
 
But here’s the thing: arrogance isn’t the only thing about him. He’s also a loving family man; he’s a thoughtful policy wonk; he’s a serious Christian; he cares about the welfare of the humble; he reaches out to his adversaries (too much, say his critics on the left). He takes risks (Osama bin Laden).

Some people won’t acknowledge the bad in him. Some won’t acknowledge the good. Some believe good things about him that aren’t true. Some believe bad things that are lies.

But our political leaders, including Obama, aren’t cartoon villains, and they aren’t storybook heroes.

They’re complicated. Like you and like me.

As Martin Luther (I believe) said, A man is a donkey, sometimes ridden by God and sometimes by the devil.

2. The Word.

  Why don’t we get that?

We’re a nation dominated by Judeo-Christian traditions, a nation of people of The Book.

So we should.

The Bible is unlike other ancient texts of history and origins. It doesn’t photoshop our historical forbears; it doesn’t edit out all evidence of their sin and fault. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, the son of his old age, in obedience to God, such was his faith; but he also sent away his servant girl with his other son, by her, into the desert, where, but for God, they would have died.

Ten of the twelve patriarchs plotted to kill their brother, Joseph, but instead sold him into slavery to a passing caravan of foreigners.

David loved God with his whole heart; but in the book of Kings, he had sex with another man’s wife. And then, when she got pregnant, he killed the husband to hide his own fault.

By tradition, the apostle Peter asked to be crucified upside down, because he felt unworthy to die as his Lord had died; but while Jesus was in custody before his own crucifixion, Peter denied him three times. When Jesus was arrested, all of his remaining disciples fled.

So the bedrock book of our culture is clear: people are complicated. They are capable of greatness and great love; the same people can be cruel or cowardly or foolish. This truth embraces the great men of our tradition.

3. A sports metaphor.

Why can't we see our leaders that way?

Sometimes we seem to think and speak about our leaders with the restraint and thoughtfulness of a sports fan chauvinistically shouting up his favorite team or putting down a rival team.

4. Myself, ridden by the devil.

And I have been guilty of this. When George W. Bush was president, I happily read Maureen Dowd’s book Bushworld. I gobbled down the delicious disparagements of our president. Ditto when I read Shrub by Molly Ivans.

And in these days, I've had the habit to spend thirty minutes four days a week watching John Stewart on The Daily Show as he hilariously explodes the hypocrisy of Republican leaders and conservative media.

5. Ridden by God.

But I’ve stopped.

I don’t watch The Daily Show anymore. I choose not to watch a man, however clever, put other people down.

I’ve tried to be disciplined about Republican leaders. I’ve written essays on the virtues of Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Perry, none of whom I could imagine voting for.

6. The Why of it.
 
If the Bible is believed, to see someone as complex is to see them as God sees them. Why shouldn’t we have the habit of seeing as God sees?

And to see someone as evil and only evil, to cherish our hatred of him or her, is sin. Is Jesus’s call to love our enemies a nice idea from a dreamer of dreams? Then, too, 1 John 4:20:

Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

7.  Practice.

I’m a man of faults and virtues. My friends and family likewise are men and women of faults and virtues. However hard, I try to know that about my adversaries and my enemies, too, when I take wisdom.

And I pray for those I oppose. Sometimes, I pray for opposing counsel in cases I have, even if I lean toward having a low opinion of them.

I think that the Minority Leader of the Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell, would harm the country for the sake of his ideology. I tend not to think highly of John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, but it’s easier for me to see him as complex than McConnell. But I pray for them by name every day, sometimes twice.

It’s easier to think of someone as reachable by God if they are complex, as opposed to evil. It’s easier to pray for someone whom you think is reachable by God.

And praying for persons in high positions, after all, is the will of God. (1 Timothy 2:1-2.)

Or we can do otherwise. It’s our choice. After all, we are complex creatures, sometimes ridden by God, sometimes by the devil.

A Stain on Souls

Many of my friends have a seething hatred of Barack Obama. And they have a seething hatred of his supporters. "Takers" they call us.

I believe that the devil delights in this hatred.

1. My own problem with hatred.

But let me track my own history of hatred before I talk much about others.

When I did not believe, I was a hater.

I judged. When I disapproved of someone, I seethed at them. I expressed my hatred to my circle of friends.

I try to remember the attractiveness of condemnation. I suppose that in scorning others, I felt, by comparison, virtuous. Making judgments on lesser mortals, I was a god in my own mind.

I look back with more years and maturity, and I know that I fooled myself. I was not virtuous because I judged others. In fact, I might have been, on balance, less virtuous than the ones I judged.

2. The problem of judging.

It was not a beautiful quality that I had. I remember realizing this when a younger friend of mine in college adopted my habit of harsh judgment. I realized that of all my qualities, I regretted that he had adopted that one.

I have not after many years completely freed myself of this habit. I still need to pray to God to help me not look down on others.

We are commanded not to judge – judge not, lest ye be judged. With an instruction so clear, it is a wonder that Christians don’t flee from condemning others.

Maybe I don’t understand. But it does seem that it’s important to judge ourselves against our understanding of what we ought to be. And it’s natural apply this knowledge of the difference between "is" and "ought" to others. The ability to tell the difference between "is" and "ought" is a quality that makes us better persons.

Maybe the difference between what we may and what we may not do is the step of lifting ourselves in our own minds above the person whom we judge. Or maybe it’s the step that judging goads us to take. That step is to forget that the person we judge is made in the image of God, and that, God having made them in his image, he also loves them. I could never love and judge a person at the same time.

I hope I don’t look down on those whom I now criticize. If I criticize, I need to recognize myself in my own criticism.

3. Freedom from fact.

It seems to me that this hatred of Barack Obama has a fact-free quality, like bread baked without flour.

The claim that Obama overreaches with executive orders fits well with the president-gone-wild meme; it is largely fact free. For example, people persist in claiming, in defiance of reported facts, that Obama is banning assault weapons by executive order.

My friend believes that Obama is a communist. I don’t know what his proof for this folderol is. I suspect that he’s looked at some minutiae in Obama’s background and, ignoring everything else, lets that tiny fact grow in his mind, like Jack’s magic beans, into a full-fledged stalk leading him up to the heights of Obama-hating.

The birther controversy is famously fact-free. It’s evident that to true believers, no evidence will ever convince them that Obama was born in Hawaii. Their flight from proof becomes ever more fantastical but no less cherished.

I’ve even seen Obama called a "dictator". Now, there are people who resemble dictators who lead nominally-democratic countries. Hugo Chavez so controlled mass media in his country and attacked so relentlessly the economic base of his enemies that elections really were a farce.

But that’s not America. We have a vigorous and squabbling media that feels free both to support and condemn Obama. Nobody who wants to hear hatred of the president ever has to wait longer than the end of a commercial break. So the defects of elections in, say, Venezuela or Russia simply do not exist here. The accusation that democratically-elected Obama is a dictator – the Obama who is subject to Congress and the Supreme Court – this accusation is just bizarre.

4. Fear.

I try to understand. I try to relate the attitudes of Obama-haters to my feeling about the last Bush in the presidency.

I did condemn him during the U.S. Attorney firing scandal. The evidence seemed to show that Bush’s Attorney General fired U.S. Attorneys who did not make criminal prosecutions political hammers. But the idea of using the criminal justice system to imprison political opponents is, to me, genuinely frightening. It was a direct threat to democracy.

So maybe, with Obama-haters, a little evidence bonds with a lot of fear – fear that somehow Obama is going to destroy the country. A perfectly rational friend of mine, a teacher, really does believe that Obama wants to turn America into a third-world country.

And maybe this fear has an avalanche quality. It picks up strength as it gathers momentum. New "facts", new accusations, get added to the deadly wall of roiling dread. The speed of this avalanche of dire fear does not allow each new fact to be carefully vetted, and every time a new fact is added to the avalanche, the avalanche picks up speed. This makes it increasingly doubtful that the next cluster of facts will be examined with any care. It becomes something like unstoppable.

5. Panic.

And if there was a time when rationality could be applied to the evidence, the growing power of the newly re-elected president makes his detractors panic and leads them to pull fire alarms rather that weigh their worry. They might not see smoke coming from under classroom doors, but they believe that it’s there, and the dread of the country disappearing in a sudden fireball puts them in full freak-out mode.

But, truthfully, "[W]e don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" has logical appeal. It got us into Iraq. If the fear is great, the evidence is judged more leniently.

6. Stain.

And if they were right, then of course our circumstances would be grave.

But if they’re wrong, then this seething hatred is a stain on their souls.

Among Christians, their hatred leads them to hate a Christian brother. 1 John 2:9: "Whoever says, ‘I am in the light,’ while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness." (NRSV.)

Even were Obama not a Christian, his haters who are Christian would have no excuse for the kinds of things said about him. James 3:8-10: "[B]ut no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so." (NRSV.)

7. Challenge to Obama-haters.

So a lot rides on Obama’s nature and our judgment on it.

Either the country is headed into hell, or hatred of the president is a stain on the souls of those who condemn him.

This calls for sober judgment. I invite my friends who are eager to hate our president to enter into conversation. I invite you to explore more than the sources of opinion that confirm what you already believe.

8. Challenge to liberals.

But here’s a challenge to my liberal friends: if we want our conservative friends to examine their beliefs, we must have the courage to examine ours. If we want conversation, it must be a real back-and-forth. We have to go into the woods with them to find together the way out.

Having said that, I also know that I won't necessarily do it. I have a friend who, I now believe, argues for the sake of provoking and angering. It's not my calling to put up with that.

9. Out of our hands.

And, just like I depend on God for my own sanctification, such as it is, in the end God will do his business with our freinds who cling to strange ideas about our president. Who knows what God plans; but in the end he is capable of doing more than we with our mortal arguments and internet fact-checks can.

Arrogance and Humility and America and the President

A friend of mine said that people today don't value humility, at least not in themselves. I wonder if she isn’t right. Yet clearly arrogant is in our ammunition-case of insults, and we are glad to hurl it at people whom we hate. Maybe humility is a quality we value in others, but we don’t value it in ourselves, as if we were saying: "Why should I be humble if I’m perfect?"

In a Facebook discussion-thread, I offered one of my blog posts. A conservative participant in the discussion called it arrogant. That surprised me, because I thought that my post was meek and self-critical. I regret that I did not ask this conservative to point to something arrogant in the post; maybe that would have caused him to read it.

What quality in a person permits him to judge a writing without reading it?

1. Arrogance, Accusation, and Barack Obama.

Arrogant is an insult often flung at President Barack Obama. Here’s a link to a video of Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie accusing the president of arrogance.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/10/22/Chris-Christie-Unloads-On-Arrogant-Obama-If-He-Cant-Change-Washington-What-The-Hell-Is-He-Doing

Christie said:
If you don’t think you can change Washington from inside the White House, then let’s give you the plane ticket back to Chicago you have earned. I mean that is a scary thing for the President of the United States to say, isn’t it? It shows his arrogance. If he really believes that, if he believes that, then what the hell is he doing asking for another four years?"
This is the episode in which Christie said that Obama is like a man in a dark room groping for the light-switch of leadership and not finding it. But now Christie has famously praised Obama for his, um, leadership and for his outstanding service to the people of Christie’s state who were overwhelmed by Hurricane Sandy.

A Google search of the words arrogant and Obama yields 14,400,000 results. That of course is a very loose metric, and naturally I can’t describe the content of the 12,301,404^th result. But even if those numbers are a very loose metric, they might be a good metaphor for some people’s ideas about Obama. Christie’s accusation that Obama is arrogant was well received because it is widely believed.

And here’s the thing: it is widely believed by people who know Barack Obama less well than Governor Christie knew Barack Obama before Hurricane Sandy put them in each other’s admiration. It is widely believed by people who know Barack Obama no better than my conservative accuser knew my blog post before he called it arrogant.

What quality in a person permits him to judge another person without knowing him?

2. Barack Obama and arrogance.

And yet, without knowing Barack Obama, I worry that the accusation might be right.

This worry is not based on any particular action. But I look upon the presidency, and I wonder how any person can hold that office and not be arrogant. It is an office with great power. And the president appears before huge crowds of cheering people. On a whim, a Marine helicopter and an Air Force jet take him wherever he wants to go. Many people look upon him with awe. World leaders crave a visit from him.

Yet I think of Abraham Lincoln as a man who occupied the presidency and remained humble. But Lincoln was an amazing man. And he had known hardship and sorrow, and these imprint humility upon a soul.

Lincoln knew hardship and sorrow before he came to the White House, and he knew hardship and sorrow in the White House. His young son died there. And he was commander-in-chief of a powerful army that bled and failed in battle time after time. I doubt that Lincoln shared the hubris of many Northern citizens who believed at the start of the Civil War that the South would be subdued quickly and easily. But if he had that delusion, events stripped it from him.

Barack Obama has not known the sorrows of Lincoln, nor his hardships. But he must bear the insults and hatred of many people, including a massive right-wing opinion-generating machine, which he has little influence over. Even the liberal press insults him; I think that I have heard few conservative pundits abuse Obama much more than liberal pundit Keith Olbermann did.

And in his first term Obama found himself opposed in almost all things by unified Congressional Republicans who, if you believe Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, made their first priority Obama’s defeat in the 2012 election. Obama was not helpless against their opposition, but strong opposition itself, that you have to struggle against, can teach humility because it makes you to know the limits of your power.

As a lawyer who has been crushed in court, I know this.

And the authority of American citizens to turn Obama out of office must give some humility to a president. And Mitt Romney’s triumph over the president in the first 2012 general-election debate must have humbled the president who came out of it damaged, with his reelection in doubt.

3. And yet.

The humbling experiences of the reelection campaign aside, it must be a heady thing to win reelection. With triumph hubris can come. In that way lies danger.

King David was a king of the ancient Jewish kingdom of Israel. He had been anointed for kingship by the prophet Samuel, and the kingdom was taken away from King Saul and given to David. For many years, David lived under threat of death from Saul, until Saul died in battle and David took control of Israel. In this time he knew that he survived by God’s power. But David forgot to be humble after he came into his kingship.

In addition to being handsome, powerful, rich, and blessed, David was a great writer of psalms to God. I wonder if he had just finished writing a particularly excellent psalm before he committed the moral blunder that gave him great grief and great turmoil in his kingdom for the rest of his reign. This episode is described in the biblical book of 2 Samuel, starting at chapter 11.

David had a romantic relationship with beautiful Bathsheba while her husband Uriah was off at war. She conceived. Adultery was punished by death in that time and place. So David worked to fix the crisis that his hubris had brought about.

He called Uriah back from war on a pretext, and then he encouraged Uriah to refresh himself with his wife’s company. The idea was to attribute Batshsheba’s child to Uriah. Loyal Uriah refused to enjoy himself while others were at war, so David’s scheme failed. So David arranged to have Uriah killed in battle; then he hastily married Bathsheba.

David’s crime was discovered. Hubris became humility. Psalm 51 is David’s plea to God for forgiveness for his crime. It is a model of contrition and hope for we who fall.

I don’t know Obama. He might be humble, not given to ego. Maybe his wife sees and undermines any uprising of hubris in her husband. I don’t know. I know people with opinions about Obama’s hubris or his lack of it, but I don’t personally know anybody with real knowledge on that subject.

But I don’t want the president to have a David-and-Bathsheba moment, in whatever shape it might come.

4. Against arrogance.

So I am thankful for the opposition that Obama faces. It curtails any sense of omnipotence that he might have.

I am thankful that he has opposition in Congress. When the final electoral count is in, the Republican Party stands to lose seats in the House of Representatives, but they will keep majority-control of it. As a Democrat, I regretted this electoral outcome, but I see in it a moral boon for our president.

I am thankful that we have an independent judiciary. In the next four years, the president will be subject to it. One of the president’s controversial plans will likely come before the Supreme Court. Obamacare calls for all employers, including secular institutions run by religious bodies, to furnish, through insurance, birth control to their employees who are women. Some churches that run hospitals and universities cry against this as an invasion of religious freedom.

I support the president’s policy, but I see the boon to his character in the humility of being subject to the last word from the courts. I would regret it if the law were struck down. But were that to happen, it might be blessing to the president to be curtailed in this way, if un-checked power made him think more highly of himself than he ought to.

I am thankful for international opposition. To be sure, I don’t think America is always right and good, but compared to countries that jail and starve their political opponents, rape with their armies, and ignore or curtail democracy, I consider America to be a bright light. For example, I am proud of the anti-Aids program started under President Bush. It was good, it was generous, it was benevolent, and it will always stand as a credit to him.

As a country, we have done wrong, and we have done right. But the point here is that international opposition, right or wrong, helps to keep us and our president humble.

5. Prayer.

So for the sake of his soul and for the sake of America, I grudgingly welcome hardships for the president.

I also pray for the president. I pray for his family. I pray for his wisdom and his humility, and for other blessings. I would have prayed these things for Mitt Romney if he had won, but Obama won, so I pray these things for him. (I still pray for Romney.)

I hope that my friends and even my conservative friends will join me in that. If we join in prayer for the president to be wise and humble, how can that possibly lead to evil? And much good might come of it.

The Christian Case for Barack Obama

Three Christian principles call for Americans to give Barack Obama four more years.

1. Principle: spirit over technology.

This election presents a clear choice. It's the choice between technology and spirit.

The technocratic candidate is Mitt Romney. He’s the candidate of managerial competence. He proved his managerial competence by making his fortune at Bain Capital, and he promises to bring that same skill-set to the White House. He sloughs off demands for detail and explanation. His answer is: trust me; I know how to do this.

Romney’s history illustrates the triumph of technocratic solutions over spiritual solutions. Here’s a technocratic solution: when you travel to Canada with the family dog, put the dog in a cage on the roof of your station wagon. If distress gives the dog diarrhea, drive into a service station, hose off the dog, and put him back on the roof, still in the wind but now wet.

Barack Obama is the candidate of compassion. Compassion is spiritual. Compassion is passing a law so that sick people don’t die because they are poor, and so that sickness doesn’t send middle-class people to bankruptcy because they couldn’t get insurance because of a pre-existing condition. Compassion is pushing to extend unemployment insurance for the out-of-work. Compassion is making sure that women get equal pay for equal work. Compassion is spending money to educate Americans for high-skill, high-pay jobs. Compassion is risking money to save the American auto industry, to save the livelihoods of many.

2. Truth over lies.

All campaigns step on the truth. But one of the presidential campaigns builds upon a core of falsehood.

The Republican National Convention dedicated a day of its three-day convention to the exploitation of Obama’s statement "If you have a business – you didn’t build that."

I’ve listened to Obama's speech. I’ve read transcripts of that comment and the words that surround it. And so has the Romney campaign. I know and they know that the "that" in that statement was infrastructure and other benefits that businesses get from government. These benefits permit businesses to thrive. These benefits include roads to make shipping easy and efficient. They include public schools that make an educated workforce.

Anyone who listens to any significant chunk of Obama’s speech instead of the famous sliver of it knows what the president really said. The Romney campaign trusted that most people had heard only the exacto-knifed sliver of that speech. The Romney campaign showed the emptiness at its core when it built a day of the RNC convention upon a lie.

3. Principle: the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.

Everyone should want a president who has known hardship. Everyone should be suspicious of a candidate who has led a gilded life. With a candidate who has known hardship, we know that when we go through hard times, he will understand. We can trust that from that understanding action will come.

So it’s a plus that Barack Obama’s father abandoned his family when Obama was a toddler. It’s a plus that his mother was on food stamps for a time. It’s a plus that he made his own way through college. It makes his climb to heights more impressive, but it also gives us reassurance that he knows not only the view from the top down, but the view from the bottom up.

To Barack Obama, hardship is not something he grudgingly studied in an assigned Charles Dickens novel, which he then put back on the shelf.

If you haven’t known hardship, you don’t see problems the same way as someone who has known hardship. If masses of people are losing their homes, that might be alright with you, as it was to Romney. His "solution": let the market bottom out, and have investors buy up homes at a bargain. The people who used to have the dignity of their own homes could pay rent to the investors who raked in their homes at bargain prices.

If you haven’t known hardship, you don’t risk taxpayer money to save the auto industry and to save jobs, as Obama did.

If you haven’t known hardship, you don’t commit money to making educational opportunities for people so that Americans can take the high-skill, high-pay jobs of the future, like Obama did. Your education model is Texas, where the guiding principle is thrift, and the result is a population prepared for low-skill labor.

4. Christians: vote your values!

If you believe in the spiritual over the technocratic, this election should be easy for you. If you believe in truth over lies, your decision is made. If you believe that a leader is stronger for having lived through both good times and bad, you have a candidate.

Crimes of the Imagination

The recent Republican nominating convention had both too much imagination and too little.

1. Too much imagination

There was too much imagination in this sense: the whole convention responded to an imaginary Barack Obama sitting in a chair, an imaginary Obama that holds opinions and does things that the real Obama doesn’t.

For example, a major theme of the convention was that Obama is against small businesses. A fifty-dollar bill with the face of Draco Mulfoy has as much verity as that claim. It ignores Obama’s support for small businesses – like his administration’s loan program for small businesses. This canopy of a theme of the Republican convention came from X-Acto knifing certain words in a certain Obama speech. These words were picked away from the words that came before and after. The claim was not honest.

2. Too little imagination.

But there was also a lack of imagination.

I didn’t see most of the convention, but I trust conservative columnist David Brooks when he says that testimonies there about the compassion of Mitt Romney were moving. So let’s accept that Romney is a compassionate man.

Then how can he link himself by his selection of his running mate to the extreme part of his party that wants to cut away the social safety net? How can he in that way link himself to the members of his party who, as Bill Maher says, want poor people to find their food in the woods?

Mr. Romeny appears to have compassion for persons who stand in front of him, persons he knows. If someone he knew were hungry, he would probably feed that person. If they were sick, he might try to find a way to get them cured.

But if that person is not in front of him, if he doesn’t know them, then he seems unable to imagine the harm he would do by, say, stopping the government food-stamp program. And he can’t imagine the death or bankruptcy that would come with the end of Obamacare.

Make no mistake: without food stamps, people will go hungry. In fact, even with that program, people live in America who are, in sterile social-science speak, "food insecure". Without that program, children will be stunted in their growth. Without that program, adults will die. Particularly the elderly. Particularly the sick.

People will steal to survive. People will pilfer to fill their children’s mouths. Some of them will get caught, get prosecuted, get convicted. With the stigma of a criminal conviction, their ability to feed themselves and their children will be more dire than it was before.

If Obamacare is repealed, people who give birth to children with birth defects will go bankrupt saving their children. That’s because insurance companies won’t sell health insurance for a baby born with a "preexisting condition." The baby’s parents will have to choose between going bankrupt paying for medical care or buying their baby’s coffin. And they might both go bankrupt and bury their baby.

If Romney could imagine this, maybe his compassion would not permit him to allow it. But he can’t or won’t imagine it. So he has embraced the social-Darwinists of his party. He has (literally) embraced the Paul Ryans who claim they want to "free" poor people from dependence on government. This is the freedom to starve. This is the freedom to die. Imagine it, if you can.

So far as I know, no soldier in American history has chosen to put himself in harm's way for the freedom to go hungry. It isn’t much of a freedom. There’s got to be a balance that permits essential freedoms, but which doesn’t convert us to some kind of Dickensian dystopia.

3. Failure of imagination: it couldn’t happen here.

There’s another potential failure of imagination. That’s the failure of the imagination of the electorate. That’s the electorate that might select Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in November.

We human beings typically have a hard time imagining a radical change from what is. I suspect that that’s one reason that a prophet like Jeremiah could prophecy that his countrymen would be reduced to literally eating their own sons and daughters, but the reaction of those countrymen was something like, Yeah, whatever.

This lack of imagination affects us today. There is not now mass starvation. So we can’t imagine mass starvation among us through the policies of a major American political party. The image and idea of mass starvation in America seem incredible, the product of a severe fever, not careful thought.

We often can’t imagine a future without a social safety net, even though it is a marquee idea of the Republican Party. And even if we imagine the dynamiting of our dams that hold back hunger, we can’t imagine the flood of suffering that will flow from that policy.

The practices of our compassionate government rose from the suffering of The Great Depression. The potential repeal of those practices comes at a time when few men and women live who remember the time that gave birth to them. This is probably not coincidental. Perhaps the practices will die with living memory of their reasons.

4. Imagining a worse possibility.

Or it might be worse than that. It might be that small-government conservatism is so appealing that it makes mass suffering tolerable to many people.

Ayn Rand has many disciples, and she despised compassion. In a time before he chameleoned himself to blend with compassionate stage-scenery in Tampa, Paul Ryan compelled new employees to read Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand would have kicked into the gutter poor Lazarus, the beggar who Jesus spoke of. The only thing that might have stopped her is if he were already in the gutter. Certainly, she would not have lifted him out of the gutter. She would not have bound up his sores. She would not have given him bread.

(The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is at Luke 16:19-31.)

5. This election.

Imagine a parable of a man beset, not by bandits, but by hunger. Or ill health. Or lack of education. Imagine a priest and a Levite and a small-government conservative who cross the road to avoid that helpless man. (Luke 10:30-37.) Who will be the good Samaritan to help him?

This election is a choice between the candidates who want to cross the road and the candidates who want to help. Imagine the difference that the election of one side versus the other will make. Literally: please imagine it. Because elections have consequences, and this election will make a difference in hunger and in health and in education and in prosperity.

Prayer: Lord, your word says that as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. Let it be so in this debate. And if anyone’s imagination is stimulated by this piece, perhaps their prayers will be, too – including their prayers for me, which I covet, to make my own imagination pleasing to you.

Obama and Strange Fire

Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. [Luke 17:1 (NIV).]

I hope I am not a rock of stumbling. This isn’t for my friends only; it’s for me, too.

1. Obama-hating.

I believe that some people hate Barack Obama more than they love America. When the economy ticks up, they’re not glad. They see America’s climb from this slump through the crystal of Obama’s re-election chances. So good news is, to them, bad news.

Likewise, a friend of mine heard early in the Obama administration that Defense Secretary Robert Gates was going to resign. My friend couldn’t conceal his percolating glee. He didn’t regret America’s loss of a competent leader; he rejoiced in potential disruption of the Obama administration.

2. More Obama-hating.

But it’s more than a willingness for America to sink as long as Obama sinks with it. Recently, partisans have been exploiting Obama’s verbal hiccup in his you-didn’t-build-that speech. In context, it’s clear that Obama knows that people build businesses by their initiative and hard work; his point was that America helps. His point was that the help that America gives includes help from our government. Government supplies (for example) roads, educated workers through free public education, fire protection, and police protection (so that you don’t need an armed posse to keep your business relatively safe). Non-partisan fact-checkers have shown that the partisan attacks on this speech are untruthful.

I have debated what Obama said with my friends. I have pointed out what the fact-checkers say. And I have pointed out other parts in his speech where he pays tribute to the initiative and hard work that business owners dedicate to their businesses.

What amazes me is this: some of my friends now think that context doesn’t matter. If somebody says something that sounds crazy, these friends now don’t think it’s necessary to look carefully at what that person said to make sure that they really meant that crazy thing. It’s legitimate, apparently, to lift a statement out of context, and impose on the speaker a belief that he doesn’t hold, and to judge him harshly if that belief happens to be crazy.

In other words, my friends hate Obama so much that they are willing to abandon logic, reason, and truth in the service of their hatred.

3. Defining evil and good by what Obama is and is not.

I lived in China for two years. A Chinese man compared America unfavorably to China. He said that America is young, implying that it is immature compared to China, who’s civilization goes back thousands of years. When I pointed out that the United States is older than the Republic of China, he missed a beat. Then he rejoined that China is "young and vigorous". In other words, whatever China is, that is good. Whatever America is, that is bad.

I find hatred of Obama is like this. Just like good or bad is defined to this Chinese man by China in comparison to America, so also, to Obama-haters, bad and good are defined by what Obama does or does not do.

No act by Obama is too trivial to overlook in the gathering of scorn. Do Obama and his wife tap their knuckles in exuberance and joy? That becomes a "terrorist fist-bump". Does Obama drink a Budweiser? Budweiser is foreign-owned!

Some hatred is directed at actions not so trivial. Obama kept America’s economy from sinking by bailing out American car companies. This saved jobs not only at those companies, but also at the American companies that supply parts to those companies. Almost all of that bail-out money has come back to the treasury now that those American car companies have regained their footing. Was this a worthy policy? Not to hear some say. To them, it was "socialism".

Recently, Obama expressed solidarity with families of victims in Aurora, Colorado. His said that his daughters like to go to movies; he expressed what it would be like for him if they were harmed in a movie theater. Naturally, this mourning with those who mourn (Romans 12:15) was a bad thing. According to Rush Limbaugh, it was "egomania" because it showed that to Obama the tragedy in Aurora was supposedly all about himself. Limbaugh is widely followed; I assume that that means that his words find many listening ears.

3. Obama-hating as a rock of stumbling.

It dis-eases me a little bit to tease out the implications of all of this. One of those dis-easing implications is this: if my friends hate Obama more than they love truth, then I worry that they hate Obama more than they love the one who is truth personified, namely God.

This is truly a dreadful thought. But it is not shocking.

We love God with our lips, if not with our hearts. Jesus knew this. "But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people." (John 2:24 (NIV).) One evidence of this is our preference for our own comfort. When we cherish our comfort instead of helping our needy brothers and sisters in Christ, we show where our loyalty lies. (1 John 3:17.) I don’t exclude myself from this judgment.

Barack Obama is a Christian. He is a flawed Christian like the rest of us, but a Christian nonetheless. He attended a Chicago church with his family. He professes Christianity. Recently, he recited very appropriate scripture when speaking words of comfort about the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado.

My brothers and sisters stumble over Obama. If we trembled before the word of God, and we don’t, we would tremble before this:

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. [1 John 4:20 (NIV).]

If these words don't stir the waters by themselves, consider them with these words:

Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.  Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.  [John 14:23-24 (NIV).] 

4. Furnaces of hatred.

Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come." Luke 17:1 (NIV)

We spend an hour or two in church; more time in front of the television. Some media companies are in American society great furnaces of hatred. Fox News might as well call itself the 24/7 hate-Obama network. And Keith Olbermann used to hate deeply on MSNBC. (I’ve watched almost no MSNBC lately, so I don’t know any current haters.)

This is the problem: we become what we behold. That’s why we are urged to keep our eyes on Jesus. (Hebrews 12:1-2.) Keeping our eye on the media haters, their strange fire touches us like a profane Pentecost, and we ourselves become little furnaces of hatred.

6. Hatred separates us from God.

As we hate, hatred marbles itself into our psyches. It becomes increasingly ingrained in our thoughts.

Jesus knew the danger of hating. That’s why he warned us not to oppose evil people, but to yield to them rather than to struggle against them. (Matthew 5:39-41.) (Yes, I know it’s hypocritical for a litigator to point this out.)

7. Better fire.

Not to finish down, but up:

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." [John 13:34.]

Also: John 13:35; Romans 12:10; Romans 13:8; Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 4:2; 1 Thessalonians 4:9; 2 Thessalonians 1:3; Hebrews 10:24; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 Peter 3:8; 1 John 3:11; 1 John 3:23; 1 John 4:11; 1 John 4:12; 2 John 1:5 (in case we didn’t get it the first time).

I write this essay as much for myself as for my friends. I will try to regard those I disagree with with sympathy. Maybe this will ripen into kindness, which will ripen into love. By grace.

Gains Under Barack Obama

Barack Obama has a competent record that he can run on. Here are some examples.

1. Economics.

Europe doubled down on austerity as a way out of the on-going recession. Great Britain, under conservative Prime Minister Cameron, made itself a living laboratory for fiscal austerity. Great Britain u-turned into recession, and several European economies are now on the brink.

Contrast America. America, under Obama, spent money to prime the economy. Our economy improved. This meant people continued to work that would have lost their jobs. Many, many people.

We didn’t crash, which had been our trajectory and would have been our fate if we had followed Europe. The economy is slowing down, now. This coincides with the tapering off of the stimulus spending. But that’s the fault of Republicans in Congress, not Obama.

2. Health.

Babies born with serious illnesses were once un-insurable. Before the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare" to its detractors) parents of unhealthy babies had to watch their babies die; or (more likely) they had to take on a debt that drove them into bankruptcy. This deprived them of the small prosperity that they might have built for themselves in their young lives.

And who doesn’t know someone who has a pre-existing medical condition, if they don’t have one themselves? The Affordable Care Act makes insurance companies sell medical insurance to persons with pre-existing condition. This is the triumph of the Affordable Care Act.

And it is the reason for the insurance mandate that makes everyone have health insurance. Without the mandate, if anyone could get insurance, even with a pre-existing condition, people would wait until they got sick to buy insurance, knowing that they could not be turned down. Then insurance would be so expensive that it wouldn’t be insurance. The mandate keeps people from gaming the system to everybody's detriment.

So the insurance mandate is necessary, but it is unpopular. Without it, sick people would be un-insurable. Treatable illnesses would kill or bankrupt them. The Affordable Care Act compassionately ends that hard choice between insolvency and death.

3. Terrorism.

Osama bin Laden loathed America. He continued to scheme to murder Americans until the time of his death. Under the previous president, interest in finding him had fallen off. But under Obama, America actively sought the bloody-minded enabler of the terrifying crushing of three-thousand innocent American lives. Bin Laden doesn’t scheme any more.

The decision to send special forces into Abbottabad was hard. In America, among citizens of a certain age, the memories of the catastrophic Iranian hostage-rescue and Black Hawk Down are still green. And it was not clear that the occupant of the compound in Abbottabad was even bin Laden.

Defense Secretary Gates, a hold-over from the Bush administration, opposed the special-forces mission to take bin Laden. But Obama overruled his own defense secretary, and he ended the sinister schemes of an evil man.

America continues to incinerate our enemies with drone strikes, and at a much greater pace than under the former administration.

4. War.

Wars are costly, and when we go to war our brave young men and women, bless them, suffer and die. In Iraq, we lost almost 5,000 of our young people and a trillion dollars. In contrast, Obama removed a brutal dictator in Libya, Muammar Qaddafi, with zero loss of American lives, and at a cost of one-billion dollars. This was infinitely fewer deaths, and one one-thousandth of the cost, compared to Iraq.

5. Diplomacy.

Nations engage in diplomacy so that they don’t have to go to war. In contrast to the go-it-alone, screw-the-world attitude of the previous administration, the Obama administration has re-engaged with the world. America has engaged the world with a considerable skill last seen in the George Herbert Walker Bush administration. Our standing in the world rises.

6. Energy.

Under Obama, domestic crude-oil and natural-gas production have increased, and oil imports have decreased. There has been substantial government encouragement of alternate, sustainable energy. This is important, because the kingdom of King Oil is shrinking and will one day end.

7. Education.

Obama’s program Race to the Top encourages and funds improvement in education. Contrast this with the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind had an inspiring name, but it put burdens on local school districts and never helped them with those burdens.

8. Fiscal responsibility.

Compare two programs: one from the Bush administration, one from the Obama administration. The Bush administration pushed the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act. It pays for prescriptions for seniors under Medicaid. But it provides no funding for this benefit. It blows a huge hole in future budgets.

But the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act is paid for. In fact, the act, if fully implemented, will draw down federal red ink. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, it would save over one-hundred billion dollars between 2010 and 2019. Between 2020 and 2029, it would save over one-trillion dollars.

9. American auto-industry rescue.

And at comparatively little cost to taxpayers, Obama rescued the American automobile industry. This saved a huge number of jobs, both in the companies that directly were assisted, and in companies that supplied those companies. America would be gasping if Obama had not shown leadership in this.

Obama’s present opponent for the presidency opposed the government rescue. He wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times against it. But it worked. And America is better off for that.

10. Conclusion.

We often overlook the good that Barack Obama and his administration have done. My Democratic friends, it is easy to be disappointed with getting over the last three years a perceived half-a-loaf. Sure. But things could be far, far worse. And, in fact, Obama has done well.

Let’s work to give a competent president four more years.

Four more years is not assured. The race is close now, and this is before the Citizens-United-funded swift boating has begun in earnest. What we will soon see will make the original swift-boating seem like a toy ship in a sudsy bathtub.

We have a lot to lose. I’m giving. I hope you do, too.

Prayers for Mitt Romney

I’m a sinner. I mean that sincerely. I won’t elaborate.

But a few days ago, I had a worthy thought. I decided to pray for a man I oppose: Mitt Romney. He’s a sinner, like me. It’s right that I pray for him.

I also pray for Barack Obama. What I said about Romney and me is also true of Obama.

I pray for Obama more than I pray for Romney. But I pray for both of them. And I pray for their families.

This is for my friends who are believers: will you join me in praying for these two men and their families? Maybe you already do. And, whoever wins in November, will you continue to pray for the winner (and the loser)?

No person has the wisdom and the knowledge and the humility that it takes to preside over America. Whoever occupies the White House needs our prayers.

1. The "why".

And maybe the prayers that we don’t want to pray are more fragrant to God than the prayers that we are eager to pray. Who knows? In praying for our enemies, maybe we are helping ourselves.

In this, we would follow a man greater than any of us, who suffered more from authorities than any of us ever will. Five times he was flogged with forty lashes less one. His back from neck to waist must have been all scar tissue. He was also beaten and imprisoned (often). But his is what he told his disciple Timothy (1 Tim 2:1-32 (NRSV)):

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.

This, of course, was the apostle Paul.

2. Suggestions for prayer.

I suggest praying for leaders the things that we ourselves need: wisdom, humility, strength. Especially wisdom. Wisdom is keenly needed.

Many remember that that was the quality that Solomon prayed for himself. God came to Solomon and told him to ask for what God should give to him. Solomon said:

Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people: for who can judge this thy people, that is so great? (2 Chron 1:10 (KJV).)

God gave him that, and more.

How can we possibly do wrong by praying for wisdom for somebody? And godliness? Even for our enemies? (To be clear: I don’t think Romney is my "enemy". But I oppose him in this election.)

3. Imprecatory prayers (curses).

There is deep wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. I acknowledge that, and I admit that there are prayers of harm in it ("imprecatory" prayers). King David, for example, was pursued by his usurping son. He prayed that his son’s wise counselor would be confounded. He prayed: "O LORD, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness." (2 Samuel 15:31.)

If I’ve moved anyone to pray like that, I’ve done more harm than good. I will only say that if we want mercy from God, we should show mercy to others. Who among us doesn’t need mercy from God? A prayer of hatred is a somber thing, and nobody should undertake it with giddy pleasure. But that’s between every person who so prays and God.

4. Praying for ourselves and each other.

In praying for wisdom for our leaders, we might remember to pray for wisdom for ourselves and for each other. And for a spirit willing to submit to that wisdom.

The other thing that lately I have prayed for myself is humility. Pride, I now know, has been my lifelong adversary. And vanity. And conceit. They always tug at me.

So I try to think of the men that Jesus spoke of: one prayed thanks that he wasn’t like the sinner next to him. The sinner next to him prayed for mercy. The story is worth quoting:

And [Jesus] spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. [Luke 18:9-14 (KJV).]

God save you and me from pride. God grant us the gift of a broken spirit.

5. Closing prayers.

God bless Mitt Romney with wisdom and godliness and a humble spirit. God bless him and protect him and also his family.

God bless Barack Obama with wisdom and godliness and a humble spirit. God bless him and protect him and also his family.

Capsizing

1. Ships that can’t be righted.

A large capsized ship can’t be righted.

As a wave pushes a ship over, it’s crew might hold their breath in mute terror, waiting to see if the ship reaches the point of no return, the point when all is lost. Sometimes the ship returns to upright to take on the next wave. Sometimes it doesn’t.

I say this because the right wing in America risks to capsize the country. It risks this for political gain. The odd thing is that they seem to think that when they capsize the country, only the Democrats will get wet.

2. Capsizing the economy.

So with the debt ceiling.

The dollar is the world’s premier currency. It has rivals in the yen (Japan), the yuan (China), and the euro (Europe). China, particularly, agitates for countries to "balance" their foreign reserve holdings with other currencies aside from the dollar. China hopes to start a trend that ends the dollar’s supremacy.

China has allies in America. They aren’t moles in banks who cut secret, treasonous deals for their own enrichment. They are the Republicans in Congress.

Congressional Republicans are holding the debt ceiling hostage to their own uncompromising position on debt. They use the vote to raise the debt ceiling as leverage to get their way -- and get their way 100% -- on the budget.

The debt ceiling is the legal amount of indebtedness that America can have. If we reach our statutory debt limit, we cannot borrow more. Then, we cannot pay our debts. We’ll default on something: our sovereign debt (what creditor countries lend to us); soldiers’ salaries; social security checks. The damage from this will ripple through the economy.

Ripple might not be the right word. Tsunami might be more correct.

The Economist is a socially-liberal but fiscally-conservative magazine ("newspaper" in British English). They champion debt reduction. They have criticized Obama for not doing enough about debt. Even this week they said, "Mr. Obama had been deplorably insouciant about he medium-term picture, repeatedly failing in his budgets and his state-of-the-union speeches to offer any path to a sustainable deficit."

But here’s what The Economist says in an article in this week’s magazine called "Shame on them."

This newspaper has a strong dislike of big government; we have long argued that the main way to right America’s finances is through spending cuts. But you cannot get there without any tax rises. In Britain, for instance, the coalition government aims to tame its deficit with a 3:1 ratio of cuts to hikes. America’s tax rate is at its lowest level for decades: even Ronald Reagan raised taxes when he needed to do so.

Here’s more from The Economist:

And the closer you look, the more unprincipled the Republicans look. Earlier this year House Republicans produced a report noting that an 85%-15% split between spending cuts and tax rises was the average for successful fiscal consolidations, according to historical evidence. The White House is offering an 83%-17% split (hardly a huge distance) and a promise that none of the revenue increase will come from higher marginal rates, only from eliminating loopholes. If the Republicans were real tax reformers, they would seize this offer.

The Economist expects serious damage to the economy when America defaults on its debt.

The Obama administration proposed an 83%-17% ratio of cuts to increases. They basically said Yes to the Congressional Republicans’ own proposal. But The Republicans wouldn’t take Yes for an answer. They walked out of discussions.

The New York Times speculated that the Republicans might want to exploit, for political gain, the economic turmoil that will come after a debt-ceiling default. That might be. They might stick to that plan, unless they can get something better. If they follow that plan, then they are making all of us – all of us who aren’t rich – unfortunate pawns in their grand strategy to rise to the top.

3. Capsizing political debate.

The Russian-roulette game over our economy isn’t the only way that the right wing gladly risks disaster.

Political debate is in recent years sullied. But Republican leaders and Republican media reached a new low by whipping up fervor against "death panels" in the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare" to its detractors).

Nobody can point to death panels in that bill, because they aren’t there. The closest thing to that was a part of the law (taken out) that paid doctors to do what they have been doing for free: advising patients about end-of-life choices.

Most people don’t want to be irretrievably comatose and on a feeding tube or a heart-lung machine. Advanced directives that come from these doctor-patient discussions keep a patient’s children or spouse from being burdened with the guilt or expense of making that decision without a clear statement of the patient’s preference.

Accusing the Democrats of legislating "death panels" to "pull the plug on grandma" so poisoned political conversation in this country that I don’t know that it ever can recover. It went far toward capsizing political debate.

4. Capsizing the legitimacy of the Republic.

And Republican media and Republican politicians take aim at the Republic itself. Republican governor of Texas Rick Perry talks about seceding from the Republic. Here’s a guy who literally would fight to keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance; "indivisible"– not so much.

This attitude has trickled down. On Facebook, I have seen a post that compares democracy to two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

It’s funny in its way, but it’s more frightening than funny. After all, democracy is fair, and fair is the opposite of wolflike-ness. It’s the ultimate way that a government can have legitimacy. Democracy reflects the will of the people – or at least most of the people. That’s right and just. It’s more right and just than any other form of government.

And there are safeguards against the so-called tyranny of the majority. Under the Constitution, majority rule is subject to checks and balances. The Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional – as might happen to the Health Care Reform Act, which will one day come before the Supreme Court. And before a bill can become law, it has to pass in the House of Representatives (where congressmen are elected by districts that have roughly equal population to each other – this give more power to large states); and the Senate (where each state gets two Senators – this gives more relative power to citizens of smaller states). Then, usually, the President has to sign a bill into law (but Congress can override his veto).

This is the most perfect (but not perfect) form of government. Other forms are less fair.

And we have a vigorous press in which all opinions can be expressed, And, compared to most of the world, we have little official corruption.

But the right wing is revving its chain saw at the base of the living American tree – disputing the fairness of our democracy – because they aren’t happy with political outcomes. When they do that, the right wing risks much to our Republic. Because when people dispute our Republic’s legitimacy, when they urinate on our Constitution, they weaken the Republic. But the right wing seems willing to risk this capsize.

5. Capsizing justice and political restraint.

As much as the right challenges the legitimacy of government under Obama, the real scandals of governance have taken place under Republicans.

In the Bush administration, U.S. Attorneys asserted that they were fired for partisan reasons. David Iglesias, for example, refused to politicize prosecutions. He said under oath that Republican politicians directed him to target Democratic officeholders because they were Democratic officeholders. When he refused, he was fired. The U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General backs his assertion.

An official from the Bush administration asserted her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself in the investigation of the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal. After getting immunity, she admitted to feloniously using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs. She also testified that many Bush-administration officials had lied under oath about the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal.

The Wisconsin Republican governor and the Wisconsin Republican legislature passed a law to weaken public-employee unions. Now, there is in Wisconsin no counterweight to corporate money. Other Republican states are following.

Under Bush, America was Ukraine. And under Republican governors, Ukraine continues among us.

6. Capsizing freedom of speech.

A former ambassador investigated the charges that Iraq had sought uranium yellow-cake from Niger. He published an editorial in the New York Times that accused the Bush White House of knowingly lying to the American people. In fact, the Bush White House did not know of his report; the report didn’t travel up from the CIA, which had sent him on his fact-finding mission.

But that’s not the point. The point is that high Bush-administration officials swiftly retaliated against the former ambassador by disclosing to several reporters that his wife was a CIA employee –Valerie Plame. Right-wing columnist Robert Novak outed her. In fact, Valerie Plame was a covert operative who specialized in nuclear proliferation. America became less safe after she could no longer do her job.

7. Speak up!

Some of my right-wing friends are adamant that Muslims must renounce the terrorists who share some form of their own religion. Where are my right-wing friends when their political brethren threaten our welfare and disparage our Constitution?

Unless you hate Obama more than you love America, speak up.

________________________________

Selected sources.

A conservative columnist for the New York Times says that Republicans should shake hands with Obama and declare victory on the budget. He says they’re nuts not to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opinion/05brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

A neutral referee discusses so-called "death panels" in the Health Care Reform Act. It’s hogwash:

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/palin-vs-obama-death-panels/

Governor Perry wants to lower Old Glory in Texas forever:

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/04/17/0417gop.html

U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General report on the firing of U.S. Attorneys. It says Rove and others wouldn’t cooperate with investigators about the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias:

http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0809a/final.pdf

See, especially, p. 186-187; 190

U.S. Department of Justice official Monica Goodling invokes the Fifth Amendment in Congressional hearings.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600935.html

Monica Goodling admits using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052300728.html

The outing of Valerie Plame (Book):

James B. Stewart, Tangled Webs (The Penguin Press 2011)

Back Off, Olbermann

Liberals like Keith Olbermann and Paul Krugman are screaming and spinning about President Obama's tax compromise with the Republicans. They forget that compromise is fundamental to American politics.

We owe our existence to it. Many of the men who signed the U.S. Constitution had mixed feeling about it. Why? Compromise.

I’m reading Pauline Maier’s Ratification, about the, well, the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Sixteen of fifty-five participants in the Constitutional Convention did not put their names on the Constitution. Of these, many rejected some of the compromises that were needed to break the Convention’s gridlock. Some felt that safeguards were missing from the Constitution. Some of these men became powerful anti-ratification forces. They did their best to bring down the Constitution that probably saved our republic.

These opponents of the Constitution wanted to allow state ratification conventions to propose changes to the Constitution. They hoped in those state conventions to re-fight the battles they had lost at the Constitutional Convention.

Their idea to allow the state conventions to propose changes sounds reasonable. But here is the problem. The Constitution was a carefully-calibrated compromise among the interests of the various states. This compromise was possible because each delegation to the 1787 Constitutional Convention was free from instructions from their states. Their hands weren’t tied. They had the ability to compromise.

But at the state ratifying conventions, each state would amend the Constitution to suit their interests. So each state ratifying convention would propose different amendments than other state ratifying conventions would. The plan was that a second constitutional convention would iron out these differences. But the state delegations to the second constitutional convention would go with state-dictated instructions. These instructions would have destroyed the delegations’ ability to compromise.

The proposed second convention almost certainly would have ended in failure. And it wouldn’t have improved the product of the first convention.

The U.S. Constitution became the law of the land because the states accepted what was to them an imperfect federal government. Our nation survived because the states were willing to give a straight up-or-down vote on what they believed was a flawed document. The world was forever changed because the states accepted what was good, and did not hold out for what was perfect.

And that’s Obama’s take on legislation. He lives the old adage: You know a good deal because each side walks away a little bit unhappy.

But well-known liberal pundits are very unhappy to be a little bit unhappy. They expect Obama to beat the Republicans bloody in every contest. To them, legislation isn’t log rolling. It’s a Rambo movie. They would rather go down in defeat than compromise. Maybe they really do expect an action-adventure plot to unfold in Congress: the hero gets beat up by the bad guys at the beginning of the movie, and he beats up the bad guys at the end.

But this is not Commando. This is Congress. And Obama is operating in the American tradition. It isn’t flash-and-bang stuff. It’s the prose of politics.

So back off, Olbermann. Take a deep breath, Krugman. Obama is doing what he’s supposed to do.

Obama's problem: he was elected to be the cool friend; but he's governing as the responsible adult.

Eliminating Bigotry for a More Perfect Union, Part 2

(Part 1 below.)

Bigotry against Muslim Americans is headline news, even if the bigotry is not the headline. In contrast, bigotry against Roma makes little news, but it also is not usually recognized as bigotry.

1. Bigotry and Muslim Americans.

Bigotry against Muslim Americans comes from a mix of political calculation and public ignorance. Politicians and pundits exploit ignorance to incite hatred of Muslims. They do this to gain advantage over their political opponents.

                    a. Politically purposeful bigotry.

Politicians and pundits eagerly condemn the planned Muslim mosque in Manhattan near the site of the former World Trade Center. They  assert hateful accusations against Muslim Americans, gaining political capital while our peaceful Muslim neighbors pay the price. They assert that the promoters of this Manhattan mosque are "insensitive" to the victims of 9/11, even though some 9/11 relatives support the mosque, and even though the mosque is intended in part as an interfaith meeting place. They assert without evidence that the mosque is intended to be a terrorist command center.

These politicians, pundits, and most of the public do not distinguish between the responsible, decent Muslims behind the Manhattan mosque and the deeply-evil mass murderers who piloted planes into buildings nine years ago. I discuss other defamations against Muslim Americans in my September 4, 2010 post, "Not Enemies but Friends", in the section called "Wedge issues".

To these cynical politicians and pundits, the Muslim American victims of their political opportunism are mere collateral damage. They victimize Muslims, but to them this is an un-intended but un-important byproduct of their political exploitation of the pain and anger over the events of September 11, 2001. The purpose behind perpetrating hatred of Muslims is the accumulation of political power.

This lingering pain and anger from September 11, 2010 puts most Americans out of sympathy for the rights and well-being of Muslim Americans.  So demagogues enhance their political standing by telling lies about Muslims that the public is eager to believe. And this public anger means that when demagogues denounce Muslims or their freedom to build places of worship, they inflict harm on any adversary who dares to defend Muslims, tolerance, and religious freedom. Any opposing politician or pundit pays a price for appealing to the better angels of our nature.

The political boon of anti-Muslim bigotry goes even further than that. Some eighteen percent of Americans believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, up from eleven percent in March, 2009. Politicians and pundits disseminate this disinformation hoping to politically damage the President. This is a new incarnation of an oldest, simplest political argument: "He’s not like us." This is the very base of bigotry.

As Republican former Secretary of State Colin Powell stated on Meet the Press, leaders in his own party encourage people to believe that Obama is a Muslim. As Powell points out, this is wrong-headed on two levels. First, there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim; there is no reason that a Muslim child should not be able to grow up to be president. But the accusers insinuate otherwise. Second, Obama is not a Muslim.

                   b. Ignorance as the agent of bigotry.

Eric Sevareid was a television essayist for CBS News. In his 1977 farewell broadcast, he articulated certain self-imposed "rules". Among them: "Not to underestimate the intelligence of the audience and not to overestimate its information." Politicians and pundits know that rule too, not so much honoring the intelligence that Sevareid spoke of, but manipulating the lack of information. They manipulate broad swaths of the American public who never thought about Muslims until planes flew into buildings in New York and Washington; nor learned more about Muslims thereafter; or, if they did, only fitted the information into a template of anger and hatred formed on that day.

Hatred of Muslims as a group is wrong, but I am not completely out of sympathy with my countrymen-and-women who harbor grudges against Muslims. I express this and the reason for it in my August 28, 2010 post, What the Islamic Community Center Controversy Teaches Me about Loving My Country. I also talk about the need for Christian humility among Christians: Muslims are better than we tend to think, and Christians are worse than we tend to think. I note thriving Muslim democracies, and I list relatively recent atrocities committed by Christian countries. I won’t repeat myself here, but if you want to see those positions argued, you know where to go.

On some level we tend to know that it is wrong to judge a group by its most perverse members; we ourselves could not emerge upright from such judgment. But the present political climate makes us overlook that simple truth. Leaders appeal to our baser judgments, counting on a feeble push-back, if any, from a public largely preoccupied with their own anxieties, affairs, and entertainments.

2. Bigotry against Roma.

Roma is the name for the group formerly known as Gypsies.

I’m not aware of national news concerning Roma, like news about African Americans, Latinos, or Muslims. But I have personal knowledge of bigotry against them.

More than other groups that are discriminated against, I find that there is no self-consciousness about holding against Roma the fact that they are Roma. For example, when I was a prosecutor in Alhambra, California, there was a sandwich shop run by Roma. Their sandwiches were good, made with fresh-baked bread. I once invited a detective to go there. He immediately said, "But it’s run by Gypsies – they piss in the bread!" Whether he literally believed this or not, his immediate, un-self-conscious response was a racial put-down. Having almost daily contact with this detective for two years, I never heard him speak that way about any other race or group.

On another occasion, I represented a Roma man in Monterey, California. He was accused of theft; having a loaded firearm in his car; and child endangerment. (The child-endangerment charge was because the children were young, and the gun was loaded and under a seat.)

The theft consisted of money taken for repairing a damaged fender. My client’s repair of the fender was, in the vernacular sense, a "rip-off", because he did a poor repair job. A poor repair job is not a crime, however; but it was treated as such. The officer wrote in his investigation report that this was a scam perpetrated by "Gypsies" all over California. To this day, I have no basis to believe that the officer had actual information to back up that statement; none was stated in the investigation report.

But, true or not, that statement was inappropriate and prejudicial. It was like saying that an African American must have intended to sell the drugs he had (a more serious crime than mere possession) because that is what African Americans do.

Character evidence is frowned upon under California law – generally, in a court of law, you can’t hold against somebody his own prior bad acts. But this was worse than character evidence. This was tarring my client not with his own prior bad acts.  It was tarring him with alleged prior bad acts by others over whom he had no control, and for whom he had no responsibility.

Among the prosecutor, the judge, and me, I was the only one who seemed to perceive the inappropriateness of this statement in the officer’s investigation report. Only after hard bargaining and aggressive argument, I got the theft and child-endangerment charges dropped.

Bigotry against Roma is not inconsequential, even though it is not national news. Hitler persecuted Roma, as he did Jews, Slavs, and homosexuals.

3. Conclusion.

In part 1, I examined bigotry against African Americans and Latinos. Here, I examined bigotry against Muslim Americans and Roma. In part 3, I will discuss how bigotry saps America’s strength and afflicts bigotry’s perpetrators, and what we should do about it.

Sources:

9/11 families who support the Manhattan mosque: http://www.peacefultomorrows.org/

The truth about the promoter of the Manhattan mosque: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/nyregion/22imam.html?_r=1

An article about the promoters for the Manhattan mosque, and the plans concerning it: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/bf1110d8-a5b0-11df-a5b7-00144feabdc0.html

18 percent of Americans think Obama is a Muslim: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1701/poll-obama-muslim-christian-church-out-of-politics-political-leaders-religious

The complexity of characterizing the "typical" Muslim: an article about the Sufis: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opinion/17dalrymple.html

An homage to a great, tolerant Muslim elected leader: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704842604574642353284811682.html?KEYWORDS=wahid

YouTube video of John McCain refuting a supporter who calls Obama an "Arab": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzoyADkoFUk

YouTube video of former Secretary of State Collin Powell on calling Obama a Muslim and patriotism among Muslim Americans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYELqbZAQ4M&feature=related

YouTube video of Eric Sevareid’s 1977 farewell broadcast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHGHm8iPeUY

Eliminating Bigotry for a More Perfect Union, Part 1

America requires a fearless moral inventory of herself – fearless and cleansing. No person ever uplifted his character by presuming his own perfection. A nation is not different.

As part of that American self-examination of America, I want to examine bigotry. Bigotry is mainstream – not universal, but widespread. I’ll demonstrate that, and I’ll describe how it hurts us, and what we can do about it.

This first part will briefly review recent manifestations of bigotry against African Americans and Latinos. The second part will do the same with Muslims and Roma.

All of this is in the spirit of making America a better, mightier nation. As Abraham Lincoln said, "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it."

Sources are listed at the end.

1. Bigotry and African Americans.

Bigotry against African Americans is resurgent . In its usual current form, it no longer contends that African Americans are inferior. Bigotry against African Americans has reconstituted itself as a sense of White victimhood.

                    a. Bigotry: the old-fashioned kind.

But old-fashioned bigotry still rises from the grime, of course, sometimes among prominent public figures. New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino emailed associates a video clip of an African indigene dancing exuberantly; he said that the dancing indigine was an "Obama Inauguration Rehearsal".

This was bigoted on two levels. First, it equated the new (African American) leader of the free world with an African indigine. Second, it assumed that an African indigene moving exuberantly is innately comical, in ways that a White American doing the same thing is not. To Paladino, it matters, apparently, whether the exuberance is filmed by an anthropologist or by Dancing With the Stars.

Paladino also forwarded an altered photograph depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as a pimp and a prostitute, an invidious stereotype of African Americans.

                    b. Shirly Sherrod and White victimhood.

But bigotry against African Americans has evolved. It now paints Whites as victims. A conspicuous example is the hue and cry about an out-of-context video clip of a minor Agriculture Department functionary, Shirley Sherrod, an African American. This clip was posted by a conservative blogger. The out-of-context portions posted created the impression that Sherrod was a racist. In fact, the speech was an homage to overcoming racism and reaching across racial divisions.

The publicity that this story received was grossly disproportionate to the relatively modest government position that Mrs. Sherrod occupied. But the story had wide appeal, because it nourished White America’s sense of victimhood.

                   c. Glenn Beck and our perfidious president.

Media star Glenn Beck also appealed to White America’s sense of victimhood. He claimed that Obama has a "deep-seated hatred of White people." He said this without apparent proof. Obama’s loving mother was White, and his adoring American grandparents were White. But that did not stop Beck.

And Beck proclaimed that Obama’s policies are driven by "Obama’s thinking on . . . reparations" and a desire to "settle old racial scores". In other words, "Be afraid, White America, be very afraid."

                    d. Dr. Laura and marrying out of one’s race.

Syndicated radio celebrity Dr. Laura Schlessinger stoked the sense of White victimhood. An African-American radio caller expressed her dismay to Dr. Slessinger about her husband’s White friends. Apparently, they make remarks demeaning to African Americans. Dr. Slessinger responded with offensive, racially-charged language. At one point, she chided her pained listener not to go "all NAACP" (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – a renowned, venerable civil-rights organization). Schlessinger hung up on the caller and commented that people lacking a sense of humor should not "marry out of their race." Dr. Schlessinger remarked that African Americans use their "power" not for good, but to demonize Whites.

                    e. Newt Gingrich and the ghost of Obama’s father.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, proclaimed that to best understand Barack Obama, you have to consider Obama’s dead father. Obama knew his father slightly, his father having abandoned Obama and Obama’s mother before Obama could remember. Despite the virtually non-existent relationship between Obama Sr. and Obama Jr. – they met twice after the abandonment – Gingrich proclaimed that Obama had absorbed his father’s "Kenyan, anti-colonial [i.e. anti-White] world view". White victimhood is once again proclaimed over a mainstream megaphone.
                  
                    f. Congressman Ford and fear of miscegenation.

African American Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. of Tennessee encountered White victimhood in his race for the United States Senate. He had attended a party at the Playboy mansion. His Senate-race adversary ran a television political commercial that featured a young White woman, dressed and behaving to insinuate loose morals, importuning the Congressman: "Harold, call me." This was a course appeal to White dread of African American sexuality, preying on fears of miscegenation.

2. Bigotry and Latinos.

Bigotry against Latinos usually multiplies in a fact-free petri dish.

                    a. Latinos, jobs, and crime.

 Immigrants – legal and illegal – create as many jobs as they occupy, maybe more. But this doesn’t stop the snarling about illegal immigrants "stealing our jobs".

And remember Jan Brewer, candidate for Governor in Arizona, claiming that illegal immigrants are drug mules, and that they leave decapitated corpses in the Arizona desert? And John McCain claiming that Phoenix is the number-two kidnaping capitol of the world, behind Mexico City? Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Brewer, McCain, and other Arizona politicians are alarmist and wrong about immigrant crime.

They resemble popular Los Angeles radio-show hosts John Korbylt and Ken Chaimpou, who waive a bloody shirt when an illegal immigrant commits a heinous crime, as if that behavior were typical of illegal immigrants. This incites hatred.

Yet these falsehoods masquerading as fact are the foundation of Arizona’s enacted law SB1070. SB1070 compels police to inquire about a person’s immigration status if the officer "reasonably" suspects that they are in the country illegally. And to seize him if he cannot prove that he is legally in the country.

To be clear, Arizona police officers were given the right to roust illegal-immigranty-looking persons (Latinos) based on unsubstantiated assumptions about immigrants and crime – maybe jobs, too. In this rush to persecute Latinos, the Arizona Legislature and its governor did not pause to determine the truth. The truth was not the point. Bigoted beliefs about Latinos were the point.

Would the Arizona politicians do a thoroughgoing and painstaking investigation of their presumptions about crime and immigrants before opening their mouths about it? And certainly before empowering police officers to demand papers from a person apparently guilty of strolling-while-Latino? Apparently not.

The lazy legislative investigation that failed to deflate disinformation about immigrants, crime, and jobs is disturbing. Equally disturbing is the political appeal of this disinformation. This disinformation crossed the finish line ahead of the facts, because condemnation of Latinos has a cultural head start.

That’s the point. AB1070, and proposed legislation like it in other states, is a manifestation of hostility toward Latinos. In a word, bigotry.

I speak of hostility toward illegal immigrants and hostility toward Latinos as the same phenomenon.  This is because the hostility toward illegal immigrants is so un-tethered to fact that I perceive beneath it a racial hostility.

                    b. Puzzling contradiction.

Opposition to illegal immigrants is based on inherently opposite reasons.  The anti-illegal-immigrant agitators claim that two negative characteristics typify illegal immigrants: they steal our jobs, and they commit atrocious crimes. But people who work hard typically don't commit crimes. And hardened criminals – the kind who carry drugs into the country and leave decapitated corpses in the desert – typically don’t hold jobs. The anti-immigrant agitators should make up their minds.

                    c. "Anchor babies".

 "Anchor babies" is an urban legend that illegal immigrants give birth in America to manipulate immigration rules, clearing an easy avenue for the parent to remain here. The manufactured horror of this invented ploy has led to talk among leading politicians (Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham look up) about amending the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship.

But the path to citizenship cleared by an American-born child is lengthy and uncertain, so it undermines belief in this supposed anchor-baby scheme. No child may sponsor his or her parents until he or she is 21. And then the parents must return to their native country for 10 years before realizing any immigration benefit. Those who claim that this far-fetched scheme is widespread provide no proof.

                   d. Bigotry and the mask of policy.

These myths, about crime, jobs, and anchor babies, demonstrate antagonism toward Latinos. The transformation of this misinformed antagonism into policy-talk demonstrates the ability of bigotry to disguise itself as serious policy.


Sources

Carl Paladino’s racist emails: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/Carl-Paladino-Distances-Himself-from-Racist-Sexist-Email-Forwards-90684749.html

Recap of the accusations against, and vindication of, Shirley Sherrod: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-07-21-usda-racism-resignation_N.htm

Glenn Beck on Obama and reparations, settling racial scores, and "deep-seated hatred of White people". http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/magazine/03beck-t.html?_r=1&hp
　
Laura Schlessinger, bigotry, and African Americans supposedly demonizing Whites (transcript and recording): http://mediamatters.org/blog/201008120045

Gingrich and Obama’s "Kenyan, anti-colonial world view" http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/246302/gingrich-obama-s-kenyan-anti-colonial-worldview-robert-costa

Harold Ford, Jr. and the "Harold, call me" political advertisement. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/us/26adbox.html

Immigrants create as many jobs as they occupy, maybe more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5312900
http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=737
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/14/why-americans-think-wrongly-that-illegal-immigrants-hurt-the-economy.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/09/column_the_payoff_from_immigra.html
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2010/09_immigration_greenstone_looney/09_immigration.pdf

Jan Brewer and other Arizona politicians are alarmist and wrong about immigrant crime in Arizona. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/09/AR2010070902342.html

Reason behind Arizona’s SB1979 anti-immigrant law: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1984432,00.html

Analysis of the anchor-baby controversy: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/aug/06/lindsey-graham/illegal-immigrants-anchor-babies-birthright/