In Hell – a Meditation on Understanding God

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. [Mark 9:43-44]

People focus on the first part of this, the part about cutting off the hand. I know a Christian man who turned those words into a sermon on masturbation. Sometimes, it’s possible to take the Bible too literally.

But the second part frightens me: "[H]ell . . . where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."

This frightens me because it's opaque. I wonder, what does it even mean: "Where their worm dieth not"? Some interpreters say that this means that the populace of hell will perpetually be eaten by worms. But that interpretation doesn’t satisfy because it doesn’t fit the actual language well.

Instead, I imagine persons stripped of all that makes them human: all personality, all language, all love, all hate – everything. Imagine Christopher Hitchens without language; Amy Winehouse without music. What’s left is just, well, wormlike – like a worm, without character; like a worm, responding to fierce pain, forever

It makes my mind uneasy.

Genesis speaks of God breathing into man and giving him life. But that in-breathed life, I think, was more than blood surging through veins. I think it was intellect, too, and personality. This idea is captured by another word for breathing-in: inspiration. Without the presence of God, humankind has no inspiration.

God breathed into the world. And the time will come when God withdraws his breath from the world. I think that these worms are immortal humankind without the breath of God.

I expect my New Age friends to here lay down a gripe about God: what kind of a God would cause such suffering to exist, and to exist forever? And I suppose that if God were a kindly old man, it wouldn’t happen.

Tonight I read in the Biblical book of Numbers. I read chapter 11, where the Israelites, freed from slavery in Egypt, bellyache about the good things that they had in Egypt: fish and cucumbers and melons and leeks and onions and garlic. They complain that in the wilderness that God had brought them into they have only manna, provided by God. So God gives them quail – literally tons of quail. But here’s the thing about this concession to their appetites: the quail meat sickens them with a plague while it is in their mouths, before they even chew it.

God to the Israelites: "I’ve had it with your shit."

In the next chapter, Moses’s brother, Aaron, and Aaron’s wife, Miriam, speak against Moses. God gives Miriam leprosy. Moses prays to God to heal her; God does, but first he makes Miriam be a leper for a week.

God to Miriam: (See, God to the Israelites).

So God is no kindly old man. I could more-or-less understand a kindly old man. God is harder to understand.

That doesn’t trouble me. Someone once said that nothing stretches the mind so much as meditation upon God. That might be true, for some. (Regrettably, some people look for God in their mirrors.) Meditation upon God would not stretch the mind if God were containable within our skulls.

We are limited in what we know about God. So, for example, the Bible starts at the making of the universe; it is un-describe: history before the universe was made.

So I compare my knowledge of God to the play Burial at Thebes. Suppose I knew only a shard of that story: that a young woman, Antigone, defied her king. If I knew only that, I might lack sympathy for her.

But if then I actually read the play, I would learn that Antigone’s brother had died a traitor, and that King Creon forbade all persons from burying his body or giving his body the respect due the dead. And then I would learn that her disobedience was in rescuing her brother’s body from its dishonor, and then, discovered, she refused to plead for mercy from the king. Therefore, King Creon ordered her to be shut up in a cave, without companionship, without light, without food, without water, and to remain there until dead. Knowing the whole story, I have sympathy for Antigone.

This informs my knowledge of God. When I come to an un-scalable wall in my understanding of God, I understand that I know only a shard of the whole story. If a day comes when I see God, I will know more; maybe I will know all. And that would make all the difference, like knowing just a piece of Burial at Thebes, versus knowing the whole story.

It would be good for people to know that they know next to nothing. That would provoke curiosity and learning. That would shrink smugness and conceit. That would grow humility; and people are most brave, strong, and wise when they are most humble. This I believe.

God answering prayers for meat with quails that bring a plague; God punishing Miriam by giving her leprosy; God withdrawing his breath from the world, leaving the damned to suffer forever as dumb creatures: these are chilling. They are not pictures of the friendly, happy God sometimes described from pulpits.

This God isn’t easy to understand, especially because the Bible also speaks of his great forbearance and mercy. But like Burial at Thebes, God must be fully known to be fully understood. And I know that when it comes to God, I have only a shard of knowledge. And maybe that’s all I’m capable of here and now.

Ron Paul: Ten Virtues

If Barack Obama were the things my conservative friends say about him, I’d hate him too. But I know too much about the president to see him as a cartoonish villain.

I’m determined not to see the Republican candidates cartoonishly, either. So: I’ve written ten things I admire about Ron Paul. Ron Paul seems to be taking fire from all sides right now.

I’d never vote for the good Congressman. That doesn’t mean he’s without virtues. Here’s my quick list of his praises.

1.  He’s consistent. What he said last year before one audience, he says this year before a different audience.

2.  He’s brave. It takes courage to enter the political arena – particularly at the presidential level. He’s not naive. He knew his past would be pried open. That did not stop him.

3.  He’s energetic. It’s exhausting to run for president. He’s holding up. You never hear of him making an exhaustion-induced flub.

4.  He’s blunt. He has to know that his anti-war stance goes against the grain of the Republican base. He has to know that his belief that the government should not regulate marriage defies the Republican base’s hatred of gay marriage. But Paul doesn’t try to finesse his opinion or equivocate about it.

5.  He’s independent. This is the flip side of being out of the mainstream of his party. He makes up his own mind.

6.  He’s a good father. He must be: one of his sons is a senator.

7.  He’s a good husband. He’s been married to his first wife since 1957. There’s been no whiff of sexual scandal.

8.  He’s smart. Love him or hate him, Jon Stewart is a smart guy. And Paul stays with him in their debates. And Paul holds his own in the candidate debates. Other candidates have shown that that’s not necessarily easy.

9.  He’s financially shrewd. He apparently made millions with his (now controversial) newsletters.

10.  He’s educated. He graduated from medical school, and he’s written six books on economics – albeit his own brand of economics. But six books on economics are six books on economics.

Throw Republican Darwinists Out of Congress

At Denny’s, for $11.83, I get a cheeseburger, fries, and iced tea, and the server calls me "Sir".

Fundamentally, it’s a commercial relationship. I pay money to the server’s employer, and she brings me food and treats me with respect.

Some relationships are mixed. My brother and I pay our secretary, and she keeps the office functioning smoothly. But I think there is friendship there, too. Maybe if she won the lottery, I would loose that illusion. I don’t think so, but it’s possible.

I wonder, were I to count, whether I have more commercial relationships on a daily basis than empathic ones.

Naturally, I value the empathic relationships more. Bonds can be broken, but I value more the people who love me than the people who pay me.

I think this is usual. Men and women sometimes go into the military for the benefits that come with it – education, training, and a chance for a better life. But if a soldier puts himself between danger and his fellows, he does it out of love, not for his salary.

But I wonder if this exaltation of love over money holds true across society. Is it true for the one percent, the very wealthy? They sit at the pinnacle of a pyramid of people, most of whom they might not know; they pay these people to labor to add to their wealth. Is there any relationships they would not give up to stay at the top of that pyramid?

And the Ayn Rand right finds more to admire in this than in supposedly silly altruism – like the self-sacrifice of, say, Jesus Christ. They would not say so, and many of them might not know it, but it seems to me that the right wing in America wants to exalt a Darwinian world of winners and losers over one based on compassion.

This is even reflected in the favored term: "Job Creator". This name is like a magic talisman that is waved before the supposedly greedy and weak, to defeat efforts by them to impose upon the Job Creators any tax for the comfort or benefit of the 99 percent.

"Job Creator", the term, shows the power that the possibility of these commercial relationships has upon modern minds. Never mind that if out of their abundance the one percent gave a little more to put the middle class to work, we would be the Job Creators. If that happened, more of us could earn and spend, and by that spending we could create jobs for others so that they, too, could earn and spend. And never mind that the Job Creators are not, in fact, creating new jobs. In their Darwinian, economic minds, the lack of demand destroys any incentive to invest.

Yet the myth of the right wing is that we should in fact cut the payments that these Job Creators owe to the general welfare of the nation. Then, so goes the myth, the Job Creators will be free to create commercial relationships with the rest of us, and they will blanket the nation with the benefit of their economic largesse in the form of unlimited commercial relationships. From the Job Creators will stretch mystic chords of money from top to bottom.

This is also known as trickle-down economics, re-incarnated for our time.

But it doesn’t work. Taxes are at historic lows, and the economy still struggles.

Historically, in times like these, government becomes the default job creator. When demand is low, government creates jobs.

There’s plenty of work that needs to be done. Our bridges, roads, airports, rails, and schools are crumbling. Paying contractors to fix these problems would boost our economy in the short term, and it would benefit the nation in the long term.

But if we don’t want to increase the long-term debt, the money to fund this infrastructure improvement has to come from tax increases.

Tax increases on the middle class would harm the recovery. The middle class really does spend money that it doesn’t pay in taxes. But the very, very rich – they are just banking money. Putting more money in their pockets just puts more money in their pockets.

Tax ‘em.

The Republicans in Congress fiercely protect the one percent. They do so with a vigor that they don’t feel for the middle class. Congressional Republicans were happy to increase taxes for the middle class until popular outcry made them turn around. That’s the benefit of electoral accountability. But nothing will make Congressional Republicans increase the contributions of their very rich patrons for the benefit of the middle class.

That’s why we need to vote them out of office. In the primaries, the present office-holders on the right need to be replaced with candidates of more centrist leanings. But if the Republican primary voters won’t supply centrist candidates for the general election, Republicans need to be replaced by Democrats. Because Democrats will impose a modest tax increase on the rich to benefit the middle class in these scraping times.

Aren’t most of us for that?

The Night of the Santa

Tonight, I'm sucking on my Sherlock Holmes pipe.

And I'm deducing the following: clearly, Santa Clause is a vamprire.

Think of it: he does all of his work at night; he's been around for centuries; he lives in a far, obscure, and lonely place, served by his slave minions; he flies through the air. Convinced?

Now that we know, what do we do?

Well, that really depends upon your point of view.

One idea is to cover any cross you have hanging near the fireplace. Simple courtesy, people!

The other end of the spectrum is to trap him and hammer a stake through his heart. Preferably a stake made from a tree that had mistletoe.

But frankly, I favor the first idea. Not that I approve vampires. I really don’t.

It’s this: when it comes to killing vampires, people just don’t know what they’re doing. They think that they do because they’ve watched Blade and True Blood.

But let’s get real. That’s Hollywood. I don’t know about you, but I can’t watch a movie about my own profession without groaning. When I see a law movie, I only actually see ten percent of the movie. That’s because the rest of the time my eyes are rolling up in their sockets.

Is it the same with you?

It has to be the same with killing vampires. I mean, people who really know what they’re doing probably laugh through vampire movies. And those are the very people who don’t get a visit from Santa Clause.

So, as they say: don’t try this at home.

Because you wouldn’t want an angry Santa.

God, Satan, Bets, History and Us

The Book of Job offends some Christians and some Jews. This is because in it, the suffering of Job comes from a bet between God and Satan. Satan bets that the man Job loves God only because of Job’s great riches, and that if these are taken away, Job will hate God. God believes that Job’s love is deep, and that it will survive terrible suffering. God grants Satan authority to afflict Job. And Job suffers. At the end of the book, Job proves God right.

1. The Book of Job as the book of history.

There is wisdom in the Book of Job.

I think that much in the world can be explained as a contest, a bet, between these old adversaries.

Satan bets that strife over slavery will divide America, which will then further divide, until America is only a weak collection of hostile neighbor-states. God bets that the strife over slavery will lead to a war that purges slavery from America and leaves America, eventually, united and strong.

Satan bets that a vigorous young man suddenly crippled with polio will shuck away his life with frivolity and grief. God bets that that man will learn compassion, and that he will become a great American leader in a depression and a world war.

Satan bets that Hitler will rise and destroy the Jews. God bets that Hitler will rise and be stopped, and that the horror of the Holocaust will lead to the Jews’ return to Israel.

Satan bets that centuries of slavery and oppression will make a segment of America bitter, and that they will turn to evil. God bets that this testing will make these same people strong, and that from this testing will rise a wise and round and warm love of God. Sometimes God and Satan both claim victory.

Satan bets that time in a soviet dictatorship will crystalize a young man’s enmity toward America, leading to the assassination of a beloved president. God bets that that time will make the young man realize the beauty of his native land and its freedoms, like the freedom of religion. Sometimes Satan wins.

2. The biggest bet.

We must never forget the biggest bet of all. Satan bet that humankind would reject God’s son; that we would torture and murder him; and that God’s plan for the salvation of humankind would die with the son of God. God bet that his son’s death would permit his son to descend into Hell for three days; then he would rise triumphantly from the dead; that his death and resurrection would be the cornerstone and capstone of salvation; that his death and life would defeat death.

There is regrettable talk of who killed Jesus.

In one sense, you and I did, by our sins.

In another sense, both God and Satan killed Jesus. Satan did it; God permitted it. Both looked to that death for victory. One was right and one was wrong.

3. The Book of Job as the book of our lives.

If we examine our lives, I wonder if we each couldn’t see where the bets have been placed, and if we couldn’t see, as to these bets, who won and who lost.

So: Satan bets that if an ambitious young man’s career were shattered, he would be bitter and he would lose what ethics he formerly had. God bets that the ambitious young man would stop worshiping his career, and he would turn to the One True God, however imperfectly. To give one example known to me.

All bets are not behind us; some lie ahead.

Suffering will come. There is no explanation for suffering that can make that suffering not suffering. That suffering may be as inevitable and as unbearable as death, even as unbearable as the death of a child. It could be the suffering of Job.

In placid times – and perhaps for you now is a placid time – if you pray, you might pray that that time of testing not come; but if it comes, that you respond in a way that you give God victory in the bet that he places on your response to hard times. You might pray that for your loved ones, too.

Victory for God in these bets leads to salvation.

And that’s infinitely better than winning the lottery.

Homage to My Father

My father died a dozen years ago.

He was in good health until he got lymphoma cancer. Chemotherapy cured the cancer, but it disabled his mind. He started to hallucinate. He withdrew from the world. One day he fell and broke his hip. Surgeons replaced his hip, but the end followed quickly.

Those are not my favorite memories of my father.

He was a career Air Force officer. He joined the Army Air Corps in World War II, and he served in Europe. He was lucky: he didn’t draw high-fatality bomber duty. At one point, he was assigned to a night-fighter squadron, doing search and destroy missions behind enemy lines. His moniker was "Intruder Schlueter".

There are good pilots, and there are pilots for whom an aircraft is like a second skin. I‘ve heard that my father was one of the latter.

He could land his Bristol Beaufighter on the runway, touch the wheels to the tarmac, lift up, do a loop, and touch down again. I’m not a pilot, but even I know that there’s no room for error in such a maneuver.

Others in his squadron weren’t worried when he flew like that. They knew his abilities. But one day he did a touch-and-loop maneuver and a high officer happened to see it. That officer ordered Dad’s commander to write up Dad for recklessness. That was a career killer.

Dad’s commander did what he was ordered to do. Then he called Dad to his office. He told Dad that he had done the writeup, and that the only copy of it was in the satchel that he then handed to Dad. The commander ordered Dad to deliver it to where it was supposed to go.

Somehow, nothing came of that writeup.

Dad’s Air Force career led directly to his marriage. After the war, he was sent on a tour of European capitals – a victory lap, as it were. He attended a royal ball hosted by the king of Denmark. One of the young, unmarried women at that ball was the daughter of the Auditor General of Denmark. That was my mother.

Mother was vivacious and outgoing. Dad was the quiet type. They hit it off. After Dad flew out of Denmark, they kept in touch through letters. They were married in Wisconsin, at a ceremony presided over by my grandfather, a Lutheran minister.

When I was nine, Dad was flying four-engine jets. We were stationed in Oklahoma. In those times, the armed forces called "alerts". They put the military on war footing – and they didn’t necessarily tell their personnel whether the exercise was a drill or whether it was war. The Air Force wanted to know what its personnel would do in a crisis. In those times, everyone thought that a nuclear catastrophe might really happen.

We lived on-base, minutes from the runways. One night, Dad was called out: an alert. He left. But later he came back, dressed in his flight suit. He came into our house, solemn, and he looked at us, and then he left again. For his country, he was willing to die; but I don’t think he was ready for his children to die. I think he came back that night, briefly, because he thought that he might not see us again.

Dad retired while he was stationed at Norton. The Air Force had an up-or-out policy. You promoted within a set time, or you retired. Dad was forced to retire when he didn’t promote to full colonel. But he had stayed in long enough to have a decent pension, and he was young enough for a second career.

Dad chose to become a probation officer in San Bernardino. It was a job that he was unsuited to. He had no empathy toward his probationers, and he had no interest in them. Also, I think that he wasn’t savvy with them. So far as I can tell, he more-or-less did his job in an un-inspired way until the county offered him a financial incentive to retire early. He took the early retirement.

Of the things that he did in retirement, the best thing was his artwork. He was a genius with clay. He inspired into his pieces a liveliness and a character that ordinary artists cannot. Dad’s art left his children with artifacts of his talent. I wish he had made more art in his retirement, and watched less television.

His wife died before him. He loved her and depended on her, and he missed her when she was gone.

Toward the end, talking with Dad was hard. This was because of his hearing loss and his addled mind. But before his steep decline, we sometimes had good conversations. One day we were talking about the Book of Ezekiel. I said that, like Dad, Ezekiel grieved the death of his wife. I also said that Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of the Dry Bones and the reassembly of those bones into flesh-and-blood living beings was usually interpreted as a prophecy of the resurrection of Israel. But I told Dad that when Ezekiel saw those dry bones become persons again, he must have thought of his wife, and he must have thought about the possibility of reunion with her. This idea made an impression on Dad. In my lifetime, he was not overtly religious.

Dad’s ashes are in Wisconsin, in a family plot, near his wife, near his mother. He was born in Wisconsin, and his remains repose there.

"Epistemic Closure": A Strange Phrase and a Real Threat

1. Journey into a closed world.

After law school, after taking the bar examination, but before starting my career, I toured Europe. My tour included Berlin. At that time, Berlin was divided between East Berlin and West Berlin. West Berlin was free. East Berlin was under a communist dictatorship, like the rest of East Germany.

Berlin was relatively little visited by tourists. It sat in the middle of communist Germany. You could fly there from free Europe, but flying there was expensive for a new graduate of law school or others of the young hoards that beset Europe in Summer.

The alternative was to take the train. The train had a downside. I was awoken twice in my night journey into Berlin. The first time, the green-jacketed policeman inspected my travel documents. The second time, he searched my luggage.

But West Berlin - that is, free Berlin - was great. There was a liveliness there. People were exuberant. They welcomed strangers. I had a good time.

East Berlin, under dictatorship, was different. Just on the other side of the checkpoint into East Berlin, the communists had built a modern shopping structure. Architecturally, it was impressive. But I recall that visitors to it were few. Perhaps the locals were discouraged from visiting it. Maybe they could not afford to buy the goods on sale there.

And when you left the lofty architecture of the shopping structure, the city soon became drab and grim. Drunks lay unconscious in gutters.

Yet the people that I briefly encountered seemed content. I bought a glass of beer from a street vendor. It cost the equivalent of twenty-five cents. I was astonished at its cheapness. The vendor was pleased to see my surprise, and she commented on the cheapness of goods under communism. Later that day, I bought a filet-mignon steak dinner, with beer, for about a dollar and a half.

I bought the dinner in a basement restaurant. When I walked in with my friend, the hubbub of the restaurant turned to stone silence and everybody there turned to stare at us. I suppose that their fascination focused more on my friend than on me. She wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt, with a glittery skull and snake. After we sat down, the sound of conversation again percolated though the dining area.

Of course my friend, with her garish T-shirt, would garner attention. She clearly was different from what the East Berliners were accustomed to see. In fact, there was a harsh sameness to everything in East Berlin.

Here’s an example of that sameness. Barber shops all had pictures in the windows. The pictures featured a young man with a trim beard and a trim mustache and combed-back hair. I don’t recall seeing any young man in East Berlin that did not have exactly that combination of beard, mustache, and hair.

The East Berliners that I spoke with claimed that they had freedom to voice their opinion, regardless of what it might be. But that freedom was largely irrelevant. This was true because the East Berliners had no access to opinions or facts that deviated from what they heard from government sources. None. So their political opinions were necessarily as uniform as their hair.

2. Journeys to other closed societies.

I have visited the Soviet Union, when it was still the Soviet Union. I have lived in China. I saw in those places the same limited access to opinions and news that existed in East Berlin. The Chinese government now is laboring to ensure that the internet does not deprive it of its monopoly on information and opinion. Brave Chinese men and women struggle against this information monopoly.

What I saw in East Berlin, the Soviet Union, and China was "epistemic closure". Basically, that means that the people there lived their lives in a mental bubble, with virtually no access to political opinions and political news that did not come from their communist governments.

3. Danger in America.

This concept of epistemic closure is relevant to America, too.

Conservative intellectuals have fretted about epistemic closure in modern American conservatism. They warn that talk radio and certain news outlets have become self-contained, closed circles of information. Talk radio and these news outlets even discourage curiosity about other sources by often and vehemently claiming that those sources are unfair and biased.

That is, these movement news sources seek to impose upon their target audience an embargo on ideas that don't come from them. They do this for the same reason that that communist regimes embargo non-communist points of view. It's a matter of power.

And this has conservative intellectuals worried. Without cross-pollination, without intellectual checks-and-balances, the intellectual vigor of the conservative movement will decline, and its ideas increasingly will become un-tethered to reality.

I have seen this closed-ness. Sometimes I communicate with conservative friends about current issues. In these friendly debates, my friends sometimes seem to think that all they have to do is work "ACORN" or "Solyndra" into a sentence, and then sit back and garner the glory of forensic victory. When I have a response, they sometimes seem surprised. And some of my conservative friends seem truly amazed that anyone might not despise President Obama.

This self-sequestering of information and ideas could lead to a widespread "paranoid style in American politics", to borrow a phrase made famous by Richard Hofstadter. (Google it if you’re interested. Or, there’s a link below.)

In short, epistemic closure exists under communism and in America. The difference between America and communist regimes is that communist regimes impose epistemic closure on their people; but in America, it is self-inflicted.

4. Democracy, heal thyself.

But democracy has the capacity to heal itself. People have natural curiosity that resists complete sequestration.

I saw this even in my China travels. One incident stands out. I was on a train with two American friends, and a small young man crossed the aisle and sat next to me. He explained in his so-so English that he was from North Korea. He vehemently expressed his loyalty to his "Dear Leader". But he needed or wanted confirmation or refutation of what he believed. That was clear in his questions and in his eyes.

For example, he asked our opinion about Kim Jong Il’s then-recent speech on the pillars of socialism. We told him that we had not heard of that speech. This appeared to stun him. But at least he knew. And the yearning for that knowledge had caused him to question us, whatever consequences he  might suffer from reaching out to Americans in the presence of his Chinese hosts.

Any news sequestration in America is self-sequesteration. In times past, clubs and organizations prevented such self-sequestration. All variety of people would belong to such clubs and organizations, and there they would encounter a variety of ideas and opinions.

But the literal public square is little populated in our time. Some commentators have said that membership in organizations wanes in modern American society. Therefore, people are less likely to physically meet with people who can supply variety to one another’s diet of political opinion or political fact.

But even with the decline of such organizations, other forums arise. Chief among these are Facebook. I encounter on Facebook people with opinions far different than my own. And they encounter my opinions.

5. Conclusion.

Will Facebook save American political conversation? Will other vehicles of conversation arise? One would hope.

Otherwise, many of us are doomed to get our ideas from a closed loop of sources. That is to the life of the mind as inbreeding is to genes.

__________________________________________________

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html

Dreaming to Wake Up

A friend, graduate student in psychology, explained to me the interpretation of dreams. He said that dreams come from the subconscious part of the brain. He said that to understand them, you must imagine that your subconscious is a director making a movie filled with symbolism – and that movie is your dream. This director is incredibly brilliant, but he doesn’t have a lot of time, so he composes the movie with whatever is handy.

I've used this explanation, and I find it useful.

1. A friend’s dream in China.

A friend of mine had a prosperous, life-long business in Asia, but the government forced him to sell it to them. He had a wad of cash, but no plan. We met in China. He was studying Chinese; I was teaching international business law.

He dreamed of operating a bakery. Literally. He had this dream as he slept.

He had found a Chinese bakery to buy. It was modern and well-equipped. But the price that the owners demanded was outlandish. And the local Chinese market was flooded with bakeries.

Like me, he was a Christian. We talked about how he could know that his dream was from God. He believed the dream was supernatural, but buying the bakery made no business sense. His business judgment warred with his desire to obey God.

2. Two interpretations.

My friend was inclined to take his dream literally. I don’t recall that I disputed his interpretation; maybe I did. But I warned him against entering into a bad bargain.

I think that his interpretation of the dream gave little credit to the genius director in his head. I think the bakery of his dream was symbolic, not literal. Bread in the Bible is associated with salvation and with Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 11:23-24, Paul says this:

[T]he Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.

In church, people to this day take "holy communion": bread and wine.

So in Biblical symbolism, Jesus is bread, and we must eat that bread. As a Christian, my friend was familiar with this symbolism. In this symbolism, owning a bakery can be spreading salvation.

So perhaps God, through my friend’s subconscious, was telling him to spread the word of God.

He didn’t buy the bakery. I don’t know what happened to him and his family after I returned to America.

3. My own bakery dream.

Twenty years later, I also dream of a bakery. In that bakery, I honor the dead, but I don’t now remember how. Then I’m among the dead – I’m a ghost in the bakery.

In life, I had been a part owner of the bakery. Newly dead, I stay in the bakery. There are other ghosts there, former part-owners. The living owners can see me and talk to me, but they are unaware of the other ghosts.

At one point, I take a ghost's arm and tell him to strain to push his arm up while I strained to push his arm down. I do this to prove to the living that other ghosts are present. In the dream, I think that my straining will show the existence of that which I am straining against.

The ghosts tell me that the living can see me because I’m newly dead; but with time I’ll disappear from the living, like them.

4. One interpretation: a premonition.

The simplest interpretation of this is that I’ve had a premonition or prediction of my own death. The bakery is life; bread – food – is needed to live, so it is associated with living. When I virtually arm-wrestle another of the dead, I am laboring to be remembered among the living. I’m trying to ensure my own remembrance among the living by trying to make them acknowledge the forgotten dead.

5. Another interpretation: salvation and its loss.

But that interpretation is very direct. It doesn’t give credit to a brilliant director. I think the real interpretation is something else.

I think that this dream is about salvation. Just like my friend’s dream in China might have been God telling him to spread the gospel, to spread the bread of salvation, the bakery of my dream might also be about salvation.

I’ve shared before, somewhat, my pessimism about my own salvation. It’s something that I share reluctantly, but I have my reasons. I think this dream expresses that pessimism.

In the dream, I’m dead. I take this to mean that I’m not saved – I’m dead to God. But I can commune with the living – they speak with me and I to them. To commune with the living while dead could represent the condition of physical life but spiritual death.

When I arm-wrestle with the dead, I strain to convince the living that they cannot take for granted their salvation. I act as a conduit of knowledge about spiritual death. I want the living to know that spiritual death is real, and that it comes to people like themselves.

In my dream, I don’t remember that the living were impressed with this demonstration. And, in fact, when I warn Christians about the uncertainty of salvation, I never convince anybody. My friends are mired in the false doctrine of cheap grace and easy salvation.

6. The dream expresses my frustration with the American Christian church.

This dream expresses my anxiety over my own salvation, but it also expresses my frustration with modern American Christianity. The Church doesn’t strive to bring its congregation to salvation. Too much, the Church says that salvation is easy.

Since salvation is all done and taken care of, churches find other missions. Some churches preach the prosperity gospel. They tell their congregations that God wants to make them rich. A church of this kind focuses its members’ attention on riches in this world. This defies the real message of the Bible, which is opposite of what such churches teach.

Some churches are about making insiders and outsiders. The insiders are the right-believing members of the church. The outsiders are those who are gay, or liberal, or who believe in science over a literal interpretation of Genesis and other parts of the Bible. These churches are about being church insiders. Insiders with God? No worries. Call these the churches of the gospel of smugness.

Some churches are about power – the power of the Holy Spirit. I heard of a pastor who boasted that new members of his church chase demons down the street before they learn John 3:16. I believe in the spiritual gifts, but I also believe that they can be a trap for a church, causing division and provoking pride and stirring foolish attitudes.

7. The point.

My point is that churches often are distracted by their particular obsessions. My point is that churches need to re-focus. I would hope that they would become less assured about the salvation of their members. I would hope that they would become more humble and more energetic in their pursuit of God. I think that’s the import of my dream.

Apple and China and the Dark Side

The right wing is filled with glee about a revelation in the soon-to-come authorized biography of the late Steve Jobs. It seems that President Obama sought out a meeting with Jobs. At that meeting, Jobs scolded Obama that it was easier to open a factory in China than in America. Jobs told Obama that he might be a one-term president.

So: Jobs says we should be like China. Should we? Not if it’s the China that I know about.

1. Marriage: it takes bribes (or a lot of travel).

A friend of mine taught college in China, like I did. He fell in love with a beautiful Chinese student, and they decided to marry.

My friend was a man of principle. He was determined to get the signatures and certificates that would allow him to consummate their betrothal, and he was determined to do that without paying bribes. He ended up traveling great distances within China to find officials who would do their duty without demanding extra payment.

Here’s a rhetorical question to my married friends: how many officials did you have to bribe to get married in America?

2. Civil negotiation: theft.

I knew the American president of a Christian trucking company in China. One of his drivers had a collision with a Chinese police officer. The company investigated and found that the officer caused the collision. The officer’s colleagues demanded substantial payment for the seriously injured police officer – enough for him to live comfortably for the rest of his life. The company refused.

But after much pressure, the company offered to pay the officer’s medical bills. This was a compromise, but the police didn’t see it that way. They said that it was an admission of fault, and they continued to demand extravagant payment. The company continued to refuse.

Then one of the company’s big rigs was hijacked at gunpoint. When the company tried to make a police report, the police refused to report the truck as stolen.

And when the company tried to collect on their theft insurance, they were rebuffed again. The Chinese insurance company refused to pay, according to the insurance company, because it was widely known that the truck hijacking was merely self-help by the police to settle the civil dispute.

Here’s a rhetorical question for my business friends: how often do the police steal from you?

3. Opening a business: it takes more than planned.

In a book about doing business in China, I read about of a foreign business in Guangzhoe that made contracts for long-term rent and other necessities for opening their business in China. Then the business bought and installed its costly equipment. With the equipment bought and installed, the landlords tore up the leases and demanded much more than they had agreed to before the business bought and brought in its equipment.

There was no resort to the courts for this foreign business, and they knew it. They were outsiders in the eyes of the Chinese authorities.

4. Criminal conviction: a frictionless conduit to guilt.

An American businessman was at a hotel and fell asleep on his bed while smoking. What should have been a small emergency turned into a life-ending fire because the Chinese fire department took their considerable leisure to respond to the fire call. The American businessman was charged with manslaughter.

He was assigned a lawyer for his criminal case. He was determined to defend himself on the ground that his fault was small compared to the obvious indifference of the fire authorities. But his attorney did not comprehend the concept of putting on a defense. What was the point? she wondered – conviction was a foregone conclusion. She saw her job as pleading for mercy in the punishment phase.

5. Sure: if you’re Apple.

These true stories say a lot about whether China is as easy as Steve Jobs claimed. But, of course, he might in one sense have been right. After all, he was Apple. Apple and other high-tech mega-manufacturers have it easier in China than others might have it.

Famously, China decided to renovate Tiananmen Square by tearing down the old buildings and putting up a new shopping center. Before construction began, China canceled all leases in the old buildings.

One of the victims of this summary cancellation of leases was McDonald’s. McDonald’s, of course, has a high international profile. McDonald’s made a lot of noise, and China relented – no doubt because of the bad publicity that a famous company like McDonald’s could visit upon them. So China agreed to lease McDonald’s space in the new development.

So maybe Steve Jobs effortlessly got fair treatment. Apple is Apple. But in America, we expect that we will be treated fairly, whether we are a multi-billion dollar manufacturing behemoth, or a mom-and-pop daycare center. We are not perfect or close to perfect in that regard. But we are not China.

6. Workers: Suicide.

In 2010, news broke of a high rate of suicide in China’s factory-city that supplied manufacturing and assembly for Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and other big high-tech companies. The factory put a patch on the problem. It hired suicide counselors. And it put up nets so that workers could not kill themselves by throwing themselves off dormatory roofs.

Apple announced that the problem had been solved.

7. America: not China.

So: America should not absorb Jobs’s China-is-easy mentality without serious thought. In America, we have a lot going for us.

We have wage-hour laws to make work humane and reasonably compensable.

We have child-labor laws so that children can be children and not spend dreary childhoods in repetitive assembly-line labor. (When the suicides prompted it to inspect, Apple discovered children working in some of its suppliers’ factories.)

We have courts that more-or-less protect workers’ rights and enforce humane laws against worker exploitation.

We have environmental laws so that we can breath relatively clean air. (This is a genuine problem in China; I know this first-hand.)

So I disagree with Mr. Jobs. Americans have to become competitive and innovative. We need to be smarter and better than the Chinese, not imitators of the Chinese.

There's no easy fix. Restoring our economy has financial, educational, and moral components. The solution will not come from one source. It will take a joint effort of government, industry, and we the people, we the free people.

But this I know: being China is not the answer.

Some Thoughts about my Life

1. I wish I had known more sorrow when I was young. If I had, perhaps I would have lived my life with more wisdom.

2. Only when my co-workers tore my career like dogs did I learn any wisdom at all.

3. People are powerfully driven to be insiders. People will go against their judgment and interests to be insiders.

4. You never are wrong to assume that someone is more complex than you know.

5. Probably, I have never done anything with a pure motive.

6. In hell there is no virtue.

7. If everybody got into heaven who expected to go there, some of the angels would have to be riot police.

8. Whether we call it grace, or luck, or fate, there is something beyond our control that moves in our lives.

9. Trying to know what the present would be if the past were different is like trying to know the future.

10. It’s too bad you can’t live your life twice, and the first time didn’t count. Maybe that’s the idea of heaven.

11. I think of some women that I wanted to marry, and I am thankful that I didn’t marry them. I think of women who I had no interest in marrying, and I am dismayed at my stupidity.

12. It’s hard to convince somebody that they have a fortunate life if they are convinced otherwise.

13. Never bet against the love of God.

14. It is a good phrase, "A severe mercy."

15. If I want my advice heard, first I have to listen.

16. I am still learning about life. And some of the things I am learning seem fundamental.

17. As a lawyer, I spent years learning to attack. Now I’m learning to forebear.

18. I marvel at a functioning democracy, and a functioning economy, of three-hundred-million people.

 19. My parents had a phrase for when a person took a portion bigger than they could eat. It was "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach." I’m that way with books. My bedroom is filled with books that I’ve bought and I’ll never read.

20. I have that relationship to books because I crave wisdom and knowledge.

21. Craving is not having, but craving can lead to having.

22. One of the most important talents in life is knowing who to trust.

23. "Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools." I have remembered this saying as "Do not show your anger." It is important to me. Sometimes I have remembered it too late.

24. I think of those people whom I tried to convince that they had a fortunate life and couldn’t. Perhaps tonight I understand them better than I did then.

25. For a long time I did not pray because praying felt like trespassing. I should pray more.

Communion before Dying

I had a season of madness.

At its beginning, I believed that a particular client and his allies were conspiring against me. As my madness deepened, the conspiracy seemed to widen. Eventually, the whole world was in on it. Before I was seized and confined, I came to believe that I was the focus of a universal conspiracy that had existed for my whole life, and I alone had not known of it.

I feared to eat, because I believed that my food was being poisoned to control my mind.

In time, I believed that God was my only friend. But then a cruel voice told me that I was condemned by God. And I believed that voice.

If I had died, I would have died a lonely death – fleeing from my enemies, and my enemies were the whole world, and God.

1. A bad death: Saul.

There are good deaths and bad deaths. The biblical King Saul died a bad death. In the book of First Samuel, King Saul was chosen by God to lead Israel. As king, he fell short, and God repented of selecting him. Then darkness closed in on Saul. At the end, his enemies the Philistines pursued him. The Philistines killed Saul’s sons, and Philistine archers wounded Saul.

Saul feared that he would fall into the hands of the Philistines, and that they would abuse him, so he told his armor-bearer to kill him. But his armor-bearer would not. So Saul died by his own hand. He fell upon his sword.

The Philistines found Saul’s corpse. They beheaded him, and they fastened his body to a wall.

There’s nothing to envy in Saul’s death, save that the prophet Samuel mourned him, and that brave men risked their lives to recover his abused body.

2. A good death: Jephthah’s daughter.

I consider the daughter of Jephthah to have had a comparatively good death. Jephthah was a leader of Israel. Before battle against the Ammonites, Jephthah swore to God that if God gave him victory over the Ammonites, he, Jephthah, would sacrifice to God "whatsoever cometh forth from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon".

God gave Jephthah victory. Jephthah returned to his home. His daughter, his only child, came from the doors of his house to meet him.

Jephthah’s daughter agreed that Jephthah had to fulfill his vow to God. She asked only first to go into the mountains for two months with her companions. She did that, and then she returned to Jephthah and gave herself up to death.

My exposure to "feminist theology" is limited. But I know that some feminist theologians believe that the story of Jephthah’s daughter was designed to terrorize women. There may be much good in feminist theology that I don’t know of, but I think that that complaint misses the point. Jephthah’s brave daughter is a hero of this story.

And she did not die alone. She died after two months of fellowship.

3. An immaculate death: communion and alienation.

I believe that Jesus read of Jephthah’s daughter and was strengthened by her story. In fact, just as Jephthah’s daughter yearned for fellowship before she died, Jesus craved fellowship before he died. Before he died, he had a last supper among his disciples. Also, in the garden of Gethsemane, he yearned for Peter and the sons of Zebedee to watch with him. But they fell asleep.

Then Jesus died a lonely death. He died the death of a criminal. According to Matthew, even the thieves who were crucified with him taunted him. Before he died, he cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

4. My mother’s death.

When my mother died, of brain cancer, we kept her in the hospital long after it was clear that she would not live. We resisted the hospital’s pressure to take her home. That was a mistake. But eventually we did bring her home. She could not speak, but her eyes seemed to seize on the familiar surroundings when we returned her to her home and restored her to the embrace of her family. She died among us, and that was a good thing.

5. Suicide, murder, and the will to die.

The opposite of that good thing is the death of those who murder others before they kill themselves. Murder is the ultimate alienation. It alienates the victim from all they know, all they love, and from life itself.

I used to wonder why some suicides did this. I used to speculate that they were driven by hatred, and that their own deaths were afterthoughts. But I’m not sure of that.

As somebody who has tried to take my life, I know that it’s hard to gather the will to embrace death by your own hand. That I live might show that my dedication to death was not entire.

The last time I tried to end my life, a decade ago, I tried to tie up loose strands of my life to lessen the harsh effect that my death might have. I chose a time when I had no immediate, pressing duties. The only task that worried me was a reply brief for an appeal that I had been hired to do. From my place of slow death by starvation, I hiked to a pay phone and called my brother to suggest who he might hire to complete that task.

But in the end, I didn’t die.

Maybe if I had been less neat in wrapping up my affairs, maybe if I had left my affairs in a mess, then fear of going back to my life might have moved me to go forward and not retreat when my way of death shifted from slow starvation to sudden drowning. Of course, I can’t know that for sure.

But it makes me wonder if people who murder others before they kill themselves commit murder to compensate for a lack of courage. I wonder if these murderers do horrible things to make sure that, at the end, continued life will be less appealing than death. The truth probably is complex. But what I say might have a piece of the truth in it.

It’s horrible to use others for that evil purpose. It’s the opposite of the communion sought by Jephthah’s daughter and by Jesus. It’s like the death of Saul, who was moved to die by the thought of capture and abuse by the Philistines.

6. The principal theme of scripture: breaking communion and restoring communion.

I say this to emphasize the importance of communion. Communion is part of a good death. Alienation comes with a bad death.

In fact, the beginning of the Bible, Genesis, is the story of the breaking of communion between God and humankind. Communion was broken between God and humankind when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were ejected from Eden, and death and suffering entered the world.

The end of the Bible is the restoration of communion with God by the death of Jesus, who took our sins upon himself. By his death, heaven became reachable – heaven, the new, eternal Eden.

Communion was broken by eating from a forbidden tree; it’s restored, symbolically, by eating communion, in remembrance of Jesus’s Last Supper.

7. Communion and the secular world.

Communion and alienation are important themes in our society. That’s true whether you’re a believer or not.

I didn’t take the privilege to serve in the armed forces. But I’ve heard that love of their fellow-warriors can lead warriors to sacrifice themselves. Warriors who sacrifice themselves for others are heroes.

There’s wisdom in Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s archest villains were dividers: Richard III and Iago. Iago had a genius for creating division. At the end of Othello, Shakespeare is so certain that his audience despises Iago that he ends the play on the crowd-pleasing note of Iago being led off to suffer imaginative tortures.

8. Living in alienation and in communion.

Communion and alienation are central to Jesus’s instructions to us. "Love one another" is a call to communion. "Judge not lest ye be judged" is a warning against alienation.

When I was young, I judged harshly and often. I often hated somebody for some moral failing that I spotted in him, and I was vocal about it. A slightly-younger friend of mine adopted my habit of expressive hatred. Even then, before I was religious, I saw this and regretted that of all of my traits my younger friend chose that one for himself.

Judging somebody makes that person an outsider. I made a lot of outsiders in my own young mind. Forgiveness makes a person an insider.

9. Striving for communion.

To sum up, communion is good, alienation is bad, and we should always consider whether our words and acts lead to one or the other.

I’ve put off death, but I’ve not put off death forever. And any death, when it comes, is better if you’re loved than if you’re hated. This might seem obvious. Maybe I’m instructing mostly myself.

But maybe not. To say that America is polarized is to state the obvious. Left hates right, and right hates left. I believe that some organizations strive to stir up hatred among Americans. (To my mind, one organization does this more than any other.) We should strive for common ground, for a respectful restoration of communion among ourselves and with other nations, religions, and peoples where possible.

"To Kill a Mockingbird": A Curmudgeon's Guide

I love To Kill a Mockingbird. I love it so much that a little time ago I watched it several times in a short period. But like a lover in a rushed romance, I’ve started to have questions.

• Those hickory nuts that Atticus got from the farmer, Mr. Cunningham, as payment: Did Atticus declare them on his income tax return?
• If Atticus is so poor, now come he has a full-time housekeeper? And a car?
• In the middle of the night, when the neighbor shot at a "prowler" in his garden, who was really Atticus’s son, Jim, how come nothing happened to him? Like, what’s this lynching thing I hear so much about?
• Why does Judge Taylor come to Atticus’s house at night to appoint him on the Robinson case? Was Atticus's house half way between Judge Taylor's house and a brothel?
• How did Judge Taylor know that the grand jury was going to indict Tom Robinson in the morning? Did he also foresee the Kennedy assassination?
• How come child actors in modern films can’t be as dog-that-talks amazing as the child actors in this film?
• Who ever heard about spitting on a hinge to make it not squeak? Me, I would have urinated on it.
• If this is such a great film, how come nobody’s character has an arc of development, except for Boo Radley, who goes from father-stabber to savior for no apparent reason?
• In the time when this movie was set, did everybody back up a car by looking over their left shoulder?
• Does anybody believe that Tom Robinson died trying to "escape"? 
• Under what circumstances does Atticus take off his tie?
• What’s the point of the woman from across the street, who has breakfast in Atticus’s home? Do they get married in the sequel?
• What does the rabid dog do the whole time that Atticus is coming from work to home? Smoke a cigarette?
• If Atticus needs glasses to see distances, why does he take them off to shoot the rabid dog? If he needs them to read, why is he always wearing them?
• When did lawyers stop spending the night in front of jails, to keep angry mobs from lynching their clients? I assume that the Sheriff was too busy to guard the jail, because he was writing Atticus’s closing argument to the jury.
• Why was Atticus guarding the jail alone? Did everybody expect the "lynching mob" to be a sad poet with a cat?
• And, since he was alone, why was Atticus guarding the jail armed with only grave looks and a basso profundo voice?
• If the jail was made of bricks and bars, and it was locked, how was the lynching mob going to get in?
• How many men from the lynching mob ended up on the jury? As any criminal-defense attorney knows, that’s a genuine question.
• Not a question, but an observation. "Lynching", as a legal term, is the act of taking a person out of official custody. So Atticus faced down a "lynching" mob. But if the African American audience in the balconies of the courtroom had taken Tom Robinson out of the courtroom to freedom, that also would have been "lynching".
• Did the prosecutor need lessons and a license to be so arrogant?
• How did the judge know that Mr. Euel was left-handed, since Mr. Euel wrote with his back to the judge, and the judge’s bench was between them?
• Does anybody else think that the testimony of Tom Robinson was overacted?
• Why is it that when I lose a case, my client’s friends and relations don’t stand up as I leave the courtroom, in mute gratitude?
• I can't get past this "escape" thing. When Tom Robinson "escaped", did the deputies have to use their boots, or could they just push him out of the car? (By the way, technically, after the U.S Supreme Court decided Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985), it might be that the deputies would have to chase him (this handcuffed prisoner) instead of shooting him in the back.)

And yet at the end of the film, I am moved.

And when furies whip me, after some provocation, to which I am subject, I tell myself, "Be Atticus."

Rick Perry: Ten Virtues

Make no mistake: some things about Rick Perry burn my beans. I’ve written about that before. ( http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-christians-are-assholes.html )

But I also know that people are complex. I look away from the world as it really is if I choose to see a man as a cartoonish villain or a shallow monster, when he’s really a person with good qualities and bad. And to know the truth is to possess something of high value.

So I take a new look at Rick Perry. Here are 10 virtues that I see in him without having to look too hard.

1. Perry knows that his position of allowing in-state college tuition to undocumented non-citizens will dismay his Republican base. I think his position is a good one and a compassionate one and a wise one; and I admire that he defends it without waffling.

2. Perry knows that his position that social security is a Ponzi scheme will frighten the voting elderly. I think that his position is misguided, but I admire that he doesn’t back down despite the detriments of that position to his campaign.

3. Jumping into a national campaign is intellectually hard. The range of national issues is wide and new to a man who before was focused on state issues. Therefore, to enter the race took courage, knowing that immediately he would have to answer questions on those issues in nationally-televised debates.

4. Jumping into a national campaign, and being a front runner, is hard. You’re the person that rivals and others are eager to tear down and humiliate. That’s another reason that Perry’s leap into the presidential race shows courage.

5. Perry has ramrod-straight posture.

6. Perry is poised in debates.

7. Perry has run into trouble with his Republican base for ordering HPV vaccinations for pre-teen Texas schoolgirls. Michele Bachmann has blistered him on this issue. But his explanation is a compassionate one: he said that he knew a woman who was dying of cancer from the HPV virus; she convinced him to fight that fight, so others might not suffer as she did. (There is debate about when he met this woman; it might have been after he signed the executive order for vaccinations. But his invocation of this woman humanizes him and honors her.)

8. Rick Perry served his country honorably in the Air Force.

9. Rick Perry rose from growing up a tiny town to be the multi-term governor of a great state.

10. Rick Perry knows how to appeal to people on a gut level.

I do this exercise about Rick Perry because he’s now the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. At another time, I might do the same thing for another Republican candidate.

Does this mean that I want Perry to be president? I hate the idea. But this isn’t the time for me to count the ways. This is an exercise generosity toward a foe.

In being generous to Rick Perry, I believe that I’m being generous to my own soul.

Beggars

I feel stupid when I give money to a fat beggar.

And most of them are fat. Their food problem doesn’t seem to be hunger. It seems to be portion control.

So, I usually don’t give to beggars. Even though a person can be needy and overweight.

I don’t give to the beggars who come up to me in the Costco parking lot, neatly dressed, and announce that they’re out of gasoline.

I don’t give to the various beggars who approach me in San Francisco, up to three times in a single city block.

I don’t give to the beggar who wants bus fair to Torrance.

I don’t give to the beggar who wants a hotel room.

I don’t give to the beggar who drives up to me and tells me that her purse has just been stolen, and, as if on cue, breaks out into tearless sobs.

I didn’t give to a wizened old lady in Patzcuaro, Mexico, who was trawling tables in the outdoor café where I was having breakfast. Afterwards, I wondered: why the hell not? I’m not proud of that one.

I know what you’re thinking: "What about Luke 6:30?" ("Give to everyone who asks you . . ..") But if my eternal fate is waterless and warm, it'll be so for bigger reasons than Luke 6:30.

Sometimes I give. There was a woman outside my old office in San Bernardino. She never spoke. She just sat, day after day, outside a donut shop. Her sweat pants had a rip; unless she sat down, her butt was exposed to the wide world. She was mental. Sometimes I gave her a dollar.

Today, an old man came up to me and murmured for money. He wasn’t your stereotypical big-bellied beggar. He was scrawny. I don’t know if it was because he was too poor to buy food, or whether nothing passed his lips that had no alcohol in it. I really don’t know.

But I had no change, so I murmured back a greeting and walked into Trader Joe’s. There was another guy there, a guy I see hanging around the Redlands streets a lot; I don’t know what his story is. He made a hissing, derogatory sound as I walked past the old man. That kind of stung.

On the way out of Trader Joe’s, I saw the old man hitting up a young couple for money. The young guy was reaching for his coin-pocket, but he was hesitating. I gave the old guy my change: fifty-one cents. He took it, but he didn’t say much. I give small amounts, when I give, and expect beggars not to collect their charity from me alone.

At least he wasn’t like the strong young man who asked me for spare change in a gas station parking lot. I gave him a quarter. He gave me a tongue-lashing. But he kept the quarter.

I give a portion of my income to the Salvation Army; somewhat less to the church I sometimes go to. In a lean month, I have to defeat my reluctance to make myself to do that.

I’m no saint; my notion is that God seems to provide for me, so I’d better give a little back. I don’t think that I’m clinging to any so-called "prosperity gospel". I don’t expect God to reward me with riches. I think that he might allow me to get by; and I haven’t "earned" even that by my modest giving.

My modest contribution to the poor gives me a measure of psychic comfort when I pass up the chance to give money to a stranger.

I’m all for helping people. But I assume that most beggars are cons. I suppose I could use my cross-examination skills to test their stories. They’re probably not used to being closely questioned. But instead I just say no, and I remind myself that if they need help, they can go to the Salvation Army, which I regularly contribute to.

If somebody out there has better information about the real neediness of people who come up to you in the street, please share it.

There was a young couple in Pasadena decades ago. The young man would come up to you, dripping with contrition and shame. He said that he was a student at Fuller Theological Seminary, and that his wife was pregnant, and that they’d run out of gas. He asked for help. I knew of this couple by reputation only.

They were prosecuted for fraud. He wasn’t a student. She wasn’t pregnant. They weren’t out of gas. He’d come up with a story that was so good that he figured people would give him money rather than feel guilty by turning him down.

I don’t know what happened with their case.

What does all of this add up to? Maybe nothing. Sometimes I give; usually I don’t. I’ve probably given when I shouldn’t have. I’ve certainly held on to my change when I should have been generous. I hope that my regular giving to the Salvation Army and the church counts for something. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t.

America's Come-from-Behind Victories

Where’s the good story in an early or an easy victory? (Answer: it’s not a good story.) Better stories are reversals of fortune.

So American history is a good story, because good reversals of fortune rise at intervals. Maybe even today.

1. Reversal of Fortune: World War II.

I like the story of the Normandy Invasion in World War II. I like to read about the strong cooperation between FDR and Winston Churchill. I’m intrigued by the infighting about the timing and the location of the invasion of Europe. It’s thrilling to read about the role weather played - the invasion almost didn’t happen because of storms. I admire the courage and strength of those who launched this must-win battle, knowing that some of the men they sent across the channel would never again in this world greet their families. My head is bare before the sacrifice of these brave soldiers, sailors, and marines.

But what makes the story even more special is that it’s outcome wasn’t inevitable. Before the Normandy Invasion came the Battle of Dunkirk, near the beginning of World War II. At Dunkirk, the German forces crushed the Allies. The saving grace was the miracle in which the British evacuated their soldiers from the beachhead over four days, while the Germans planned the final obliteration.

The Normandy Invasion is a great story. It wouldn’t be as great without Dunkirk.

2. Reversal of Fortune: The Civil War.

Civil War: same thing. The Union Army under General George McClellan was wasted. Wily Confederate General Robert E. Lee would watch McClellan build his attack. McClellan built his attacks with the precision of the engineer that he was. Lee knew McClellan, and he knew that McClellan would not launch a battle until it was mathematically impossible for him to lose. Lee knew when that moment came as well as McClellan did. And just before that moment came, Lee’s army would slip away. Sometimes the Union soldiers would come to the former enemy lines and find "Quaker cannons" - logs painted to look like cannons, pointed at the Union positions.

Abraham Lincoln once stood in the midst of McClellan’s army and asked his companion if he knew what surrounded them. His companion answered that it was the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln answered that, no, it was "General McClellan’s bodyguard." The Union almost lost the Civil War by not fighting as the Union’s debt to pay for the war flowed into foreign banks.

And usually when the Union did fight, it got beaten.

Ulysses S. Grant took command of Union forces and won.His victories were all the more remarkable because the Union commanders before him had proved how easy it was to lose.

3. Reversal of Fortune: The War of Independence.

So with the War of Independence. America lost the Battle of Long Island. The British out-generaled us, and Washington blundered. The British took New York City.

After we were humiliated in New York, one thing that restored patriotic confidence in the revolution was a booklet written by Thomas Paine called The Crisis. The Crisis begins with these gleaming words:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

These words strengthened the spirits of discouraged patriots. But also, there was Washington’s surprise Christmas victory over Hessian soldiers at Trenton, New Jersey, and there was Washington’s victory a few days later, after the New Year, at Princeton. These boosted patriot courage and resolve.

They were a needed reversal of fortune.

4. Today: Barack Obama.

Is this Barack Obama’s arc?

Make no mistake: Obama has had his victories. The passage of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare" to its detractors) and the repeal of "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" are the most high-flying examples of legislative triumphs for Obama’s administration. Then Obama sent special forces into Pakistan to pluck Osama bin Laden out of this world. These were great victories.

But many of Obama’s early supporters are downhearted. The Congressional mid-term elections were a rout. Special elections to fill Congressional vacancies have gone badly. People perceived Obama as caving to Congressional Repubicans in the budget-ceiling debacle. They saw House Speaker Boehner humiliate Obama by turning down Obama’s choice for the day to address a joint session of Congress. The New York Times started to speak of Obama as a "weak" president. Former Vice President Dick Cheney started a conversation about how much better it would be with Hillary Clinton as president.

Then something happened.

Today, September 19, 2011, Obama drew his sword and scratched a line before his adversaries. He announced a plan to trim three-billion dollars from the deficit with a combination of cuts and tax increases. The tax increases fall almost entirely on big corporations and on the very, very rich.

Obama is playing a strong hand. The very rich have not suffered in this recession like the middle-class and the poor have. I think people think that it’s fare that our present suffering be shared by all. I think that people, or most people, think that the very rich should pay their fair share. Deep down, we think it’s wrong for a billionaire to pay taxes at a lower rate than his secretary.

So Obama proposes to lay extra tax on The Big. And he has said that he won't cut the deficit only by cuts. He won't only alter Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and not also raise new revenue by higher taxes on big corporations and the very rich.

The Republicans have drawn their own line in the sand. They won’t raise revenue, even from the very, very rich. Tax loopholes on corporate jets are, to them, sacred promises of government to the wealthy. All savings must come from cuts - like cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

And Obama has sworn to use his veto pen.

Obama has launched his ships. The battle’s just begun. But I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful that Obama knows that he has a winning hand in the eyes of the only ones who count in this controversy - the American people. I expect him to keep his focus like Atticus Finch aiming his rifle at a rabid dog.

And like the Allies in World War II, like the Union in the Civil War, and like the patriots in the American War of Independence, I expect Barack Obama to fight back to win.

Do Liberals Resemble Jesus? (Yes, but Very Imperfectly.)

In The Whites of their Eyes, historian Jill Lepore tells of her experience with the Tea Party. Her book is in no danger of being sold at Tea Party rallies, but Lepore sometimes speaks warmly of the people she met, and she credits their sincerity.

But at one point, she writes, a Tea Party woman asked her if she was a liberal. Before she could fully answer, the woman grabbed her and demanded fifty dollars. This was because, according to that woman, liberals give money to everyone who asks for it.

Ms. Lepore didn’t say what she said back. But she might have said, "You’re thinking of Christians". (See Luke 6:30.)

In what ways do liberals imitate Christ? I can think of ten ways.

1. Liberals care about the poor.

When someone takes up the cause of the poor, it's usually a liberal.

See Matthew 25:40,45. ("[W]hatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.") See also the story of poor Lazarus and the rich man. (Starting at Luke 16:19) The story ends happily for Lazarus, not for the rich man:

"Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.’"

2. Liberals sit down with sinners.

Republicans agitate and foment about Bill Ayers. Their claims about Ayers and Obama are greatly exaggerated. But this guilt by association is a uniquely Republican argument, like what the Pharisees said about Jesus. And, of course, conservatives, more than liberals, berate criminals and those who defend them. Criminal-defense attorneys skew liberal.

Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" [Luke 5:29-30.]

3. Liberals care about health care, even health care for the poor.

I can hunt down many, many cases in the Gospels of Jesus healing - the blind, the leprous, the paralyzed, the chronically bleeding. Jesus might have performed healing miracles more than any other kind.

Liberals passed health-care reform, with help from Democratic moderates. Health care reform will mean that sick will not die because they are poor.

4. Liberals believe in paying taxes.

Conservatives seem to want to throttle government by cutting off revenue to it. Liberals typically believe in paying for programs through funding that includes taxes.

Jesus approved paying taxes, and he paid taxes. Matthew 22:16-21:

“Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are.  Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”

But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?  Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius,  and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

  “Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then he said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

Also Matthew 17:27: Jesus pays the temple tax with a coin from a fish’s mouth.

5. Liberals believe in reasonable restraint on business.

Under the rubric of "free enterprise", conservatives beat the drum of repealing virtually all regulation of business. Liberals believe that reasonable regulation is necessary.

Jesus didn’t have an idolatrous regard for free enterprise. See, Matthew 21:12:

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.

6. Some liberals are rich, but, like Jesus, they don’t adulate the rich.

Jesus wasn’t real crazy about the rich. I referred to the story of Lazarus and the rich man already. Also Mark 10:25: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God."

And Matthew 19:30: "[M]any who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first."

7. Liberals believe that the poor, if they contribute little, are equal to the rich who contribute much.

Liberals believe in the progressive income tax. Conservatives often want a flat tax.

Jesus believed that the poor who contributed little were entitled to more honor than the rich who contributed much.

Luke 21:1-4:

As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. "Truly I tell you," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

8. Liberals are open to other cultures and nationalities.

Conservatives often hate foreigners. (Lately, especially the French and the Mexicans and the Muslim.) Liberals, not so much.

Jesus loves all nations. Matthew 28:19: "[G]o and make disciples of all nations . . .."

 9. Liberals believe in mercy.

Liberals, more than conservatives, believe in second chances and mercy. Liberals, more than conservatives, oppose California’s Three Strike law, under which a man with two serious prior felonies can get a life sentence if he steals a packet of aspirin for his ailing wife. Liberals, more than conservatives, oppose the death penalty.

The mercy of Jesus breaths in the Bible.

His life was mercy.

John 8:1-11 is the story of the woman caught in adultery, who was about to be killed. Jesus wrote in the sand, and the crowd peeled off until they all were gone. Jesus asked who was left to condemn her. She said nobody. Then he told her: "Then neither do I condemn you," . . ... "Go now and leave your life of sin."

He told the criminal dying on a cross next to him: "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43.)

Matthew 9:13: "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Luke 11:4: Jesus teaches us to pray: "Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us."

Luke 7:3-4:

"If a brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them."

In the story of murderous Saul called to become an apostle to preach the gospel, mercy is huge. (Acts 9.)

10. Liberals believe that private property can be appropriated for the common good.

Conservatives consider private property sacrosanct. Liberals, within reason, not so much.

And Jesus: not so much.

Matthew 8:28-32:

When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. "What do you want with us, Son of God?" they shouted. "Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?"

Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, "If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs."

He said to them, "Go!" So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water.

Of course, one of many differences between Jesus and liberals is that liberals have to compensate owners who’s property is taken. (They know they’re not Jesus. And they aren’t.)

Honestly, I've listened to conservative preachers and liberal preachers, and I prefer the conservatives. But there's something in liberalism that imitates Christ.

Now, I'm only half-serious here, so I assume that my conservative friends will be only half-angry. (If that.)

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Biblical quotes are from Today’s New International Version.

Rick Santelli versus George Bailey

"All I want is freedom and community."

Francis Carney was a great professor, and I took every course that he taught. I have quoted him here, but that quotation was not his opinion. He himself quoted a former student, but only to mock him. To Professor Carney, freedom and community were opposites, and they were mutually exclusive. You could have one or the other, he told us, but you couldn’t have both.

1. Rick Santelli: apostle of every-man-for-himself.

CNBC on-air editor Rick Santelli famously condemned the economic bailout and the Obama administration. He asked people around him if they wanted their tax dollars to pay for their neighbors’ mortgages. His point of view, his choice between freedom and community, was as clear as natural gas.

Santelli is an apostle of every-man-for-himself. His rant was the spark from which the Tea Party exploded.

Here is that rant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQQfzXQ6UjA&NR=1

2. George Baily and community.

But Santelli’s point of view is not the only light in the American political sky. There is an anti-Santelli. His name is George Bailey.

George Bailey was Jimmy Stewart’s character in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. At a climactic point in the movie, Bailey’s savings & loan was threatened. His depositors - his shareholders - panicked and thought they’d loose all of their money. They crowded Bailey’s saving & loan and demand to withdraw their savings. In a Santelli-like assertion of every-man-for-himself, they sought to exercise their freedom.

George Bailey talked them down. He talked them down by explaining that they were invested in each other. He explained that their money wasn’t sitting in a safe: it funded the mortgages of their friends and neighbors. (That’s why George Bailey’s speech is so easy to contrast to Rick Santelli’s.) Bailey persuade his shareholders to take small portions of their savings instead of trying to draw out all they had, and he won for his savings & loan a reprieve from the forces that want to crush it, represented by the odious Mr. Potter.

Community scores.

Here’s a piece of George Bailey’s speech to his shareholders. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Er69b4HMl8 Here’s a longer version, giving the context of the first clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu2uJWSZkck&feature=related

3. American politics and striking the balance.

I have argued before that politics in America is largely a calibration of the balance between freedom and community. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-we-think-when-we-love-health-care.html

Fundamentally, I think that’s correct.

In 2008, America favored the balance suggested in the candidacy of Barack Obama over what John McCain offered. In 2010, the balance shifted away from community toward every-man-for-himself.

2012 is upon us. Campaigning has started. Once again, candidates take their place on a continuum between freedom and community. To me, all Republican candidates (except perhaps John Huntsman) represent an extreme argument against community and for every-man-for-himself. They want to arrest regulations. They want to return us to the days when corporations regulated themselves. Ron Paul goes so far as to call for the end of the Department of Homeland Security: let airline companies themselves take responsibility for their own security and the safety of their passengers.

Which is pretty much what we had on September 10, 2001.

4. Santelli and the world of tomorrow.

To foretell the future that the Republican candidates would propel us toward is as easy as looking at the past that was.

For example, at the outset of the 20^th Century, the federal government started to regulate food production because of scandals in the meat-packing industry. Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel The Jungle provoked public outrage. The Jungle led to not-so-surprise inspections by Teddy Roosevelt’s administration that revealed the wretched, filthy, disgusting conditions of meat-packing plants. The only one of Upton Sinclair’s claims that inspectors could not find evidence to support was the claim of a man falling into a vat and being sold as lard.

Regulation of the food industry is community, and I don’t want to return to the freedom that existed before Upton Sinclair’s exposure of that industry’s filthy practices.

Those filthy practices arose from the pursuit of profit. That same pursuit led to the implosion Enron. And it led to companies like Goldman Sachs selling investments to their customers that were so bad that Goldman Sachs, for itself, made financial bets that those investments would stink and sink. Which they did. Goldman Sach’s customers were financially flayed, and Goldman Sachs made huge profits - profits from selling terrible investments to their customers, and profits by betting that those investments were the financial equivalent of bad meat.

That happens when a balance is struck too much toward freedom and too far from community.

5. Striking a balance.

I disagree with Professor Carney. I don’t think that freedom and community are mutually exclusive. But I think that it takes hard work to find the ideal balance between them. I’m suspicious of those that think that community - represented by regulation - has no role in a free society.

To see the future with the extreme embrace of freedom and the extreme rejection of community, you need only look at the past. And the past is the domain of poison, poverty, and Thalidomide babies without arms or legs.

And that sucks.

Michoacan: Ten Truths

My brief journey to Michoacan, Mexico is almost done. Here are ten ideas I take home with me.

1.   Mexican children, like children all over the world, can be completely delightful or totally annoying. But they are more often delightful than annoying.

2.   Dogs in town centers always look hungry.

3.   The people don't look hungry. Like Americans, most of them seem far from hungry.

4.   The exception to number 3 is certain wizened, ancient women, who trawl outside tables at restaurants, hoping to scrounge coins. (I hope that America never abandons social security. Otherwise, some of our wizened ancients will have to live on scrounged coins.)

5.   You see more on foot than from a bus. You see more from a bus than from a taxi.

6.   It's good to tip, but it's bad to tip too much. I tip the standard American 15% at restaurants. I believe this is extravegant by Mexican standards. I returned to a restaurant where I had eaten before, and the young waiter's new attitude, in some indefinable way, made me uncomfortable. After the meal, I paid with a 200 peso note. The young waiter gave me change as if I had paid with a 100 peso note. I had to "remind" him that I had paid with a 200 peso note. Maybe I'm paranoid.

7.   Knowing some Spanish is highly useful in Mexico, as it is in most Hispanic countries that I've visited. Nobody at the (relatively) upscale hotel I'm staying in speaks any English, and I've found that often to be the case. But people surprise you, like a small-town taxi driver, or a bread vendor on a bicycle, who speak (some) English.

8.  Newspapers and other news media made me uneasy about traveling to Mexico, and Michoacan, with reports of violence, kidnappings, and beheadings. I have had no problems and have never felt in danger here.

9.   For me, it's harder to adjust to the time change than to the fact that communication is labored. The language tangle is a challenge and an adventure.

10.   The artisan-copper trade in Santa Clara del Cobre is ailing. Compared to a few years ago, I saw almost no foreign tourists this time. The manufacturer and shop that I traded with before - a substantial business - is gone. And after I showed interest in a piece at one shop or another, and decided not to buy, the sales person looked downcast, almost desperate. When I finally bought a piece, that purchase brought visible joy to my vendor. Times are hard here.

Rolling Over in their Graves

We join a congress of the Founding Fathers, called from their graves to debate an Issue of Current Importance.

George Washington calls the congress to order. He says, "Gentlemen. In Harrison County, West Virginia, a school board has been sued by a civil rights group to take down from a school corridor a portrait of Jesus Christ. We are here to vote on whether we shall turn in our graves."

Thomas Jefferson speaks up. He says, "Mr. President, I again go on record to say that it is unseemly that we are again pulled out of our graves to answer a new controversy - or an old one."

Washington nods courteously. "Thank you, Mr. Jefferson."

Jefferson continues, his voice rising a little. "And as I said in life, and as I have said before in these congresses . . ."

Somebody groans. "Here we go again!"

Jefferson continues: "In my life, when I was asked about how to discover the intention of the writers of the Constitution, this at a time when many of my fellows had died (and they sworn to secrecy about the debates of the Convention, besides), this I answered: "laws and institutions must go hand and hand with the progress of the human mind." And this I also said, "This they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead."

Another delegate grumbles. "Yet here we are."

John Adams clears his throat. "Some among the living say, Mr. Jefferson, that you are not in fact a Founding Father."

This provokes Jefferson. "Who says that?" he demands.

"Tim LaHay, a well-known writer of religious books."

Jefferson glares around the room. "Who was the principal writer of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the republic? Show me your hands!" He raises his hand.

Washington clears his throat. "The president will conduct all polls."

Jefferson takes his hand down.

Washington speaks again. "We will now vote. Who, concerning this controvesy, chooses to turn in his grave?"

Some delegates raise their hands.

"Who chooses to remain in repose?"

Others raise their hands, Thomas Paine among them. Some abstain, Jefferson among them.

John Adams murmers, "What a surprise. The usual suspects."

James Madison murmers back, "The Religion of every man must be left to the conscience of every man."

To which Adams replies, "You've said that before."

Washington cleares his throat again. "It seems that once again we have no unanimity."

Someone says, "Not in school prayer, not in income taxation, not in health-care reform."

"Health-care reform!" John Adams thunders.

"This again!" someone says, despair creeping into his voice.

John Adams continues, "Every time that issue comes up, some among the living assume - assume! - that we opposed health care provided by government! Do they not know that I signed into law . . .."

Adams is joined by a chorus of weary voices as he says, "an Act for the relief of sick and disabled Seamen?" He continues speaking alone: "That act taxed shipmasters to pay for construction of hospitals and give medical care to merchant and naval seamen."

Benjamin Franklin grins slyly. "Socialist", he says.

"What's that?" John Hancock asks.

"I'll explain later."

John Adams sighs. "Once again, no unanimity. We haven't been unanimous since women were empowered to vote."

"Almost unanimous," corrects Benjamin Franklin. "And it hasn't turned out badly."

John Adams addresses Washington. "Mr. President, your voice might break this impasse in this congress. How do you determine this issue in your mind?"

Washington answers, "The president does not vote and the president does not debate. The president presides."

John Adams persists. "But Mr. President, you prayed with your troops."

Washington replies, "Yes, but also, as I died, slowly, I declined to call for a preacher."

John Adams says with resignation, "Well, the living will just have to say that only some of us are rolling over in our graves, and some of us are not."

Somebody murmers, "Yes, and what are the chances of that happening?"

Washington then concludes the congress.

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This, of course, is a speculative piece, meant in fun. I honestly have no idea whether John Adams would roll over in his grave if a portrait of Jesus were taken out of a school under compulsion. He was deeply religious. But that doesn't necessarily speak to whether he personally approved the First Amendment, or how he would have interpreted it if he did. I suspect that he approved, because being religious isn't the same as wanting government to promote religion. Historians might have a better answer than I do to these questions.

Nor do I know that Benjamin Franklin would have approved women voting. It just wasn't an issue in his day. Women didn't vote, and for a long time few male adults voted, because of property qualifications. But I happen to like Franklin, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. Call it poetic license.

But much of what I have written is based on history. For example: where I quote Jefferson quoting himself, I quote from history. And Washington did decline to call for a preacher as he died.

I can't strongly enough recommend the book The Whites of their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History, by Jill Lepore. It shines a light on Revolutionary times, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and the present debate about original intent. Lepore is a good writer and a great story-teller, besides.