Minnesota Theologian Gary Boelhower: Marriage Equality Is About Equality

And from Terry Weldon's outstanding Queering the Church blog yesterday, powerful testimony from a theologian, Gary Boelhower, teaching at St. Scholastica College in Duluth, Minnesota.  Terry links to an op-ed statement Boelhower wrote Monday for the Duluth News Tribune as the proposal to revise the Minnesota constitution to ban same-sex marriage, about which I blogged yesterday, goes to the legislature. 

Gary Boelhower prefaces his testimony by noting that the Minnesota constitution explicitly states, "No member of this state shall be … deprived of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen."  As he notes, he and his fellow citizens who are also gay or lesbian are asking merely to enjoy the rights and privileges afforded by the state constitution (and the national one) to all citizens--by virtue of the humanity they share with other citizens.

Boelhower notes that there is a range of viewpoints among faith communities in his state about same-sex marriage and the morality of homosexuality.  His own union with his partner will be celebrated in a United Church of Christ later this year.  

But neither he nor other LGBT citizens of Minnesota who are asking for a right afforded to all other citizens--the right of civil marriage (which brings with it a significant number of rights and privileges from which gay families are excluded prima facie when civil marriage is denied to gay couples)--are proposing that any faith community be forced to accept same-sex marriage.  This is a debate about the human rights afforded to all citizens in a civil context, in the context of pluralistic secular societies in which the religious viewpoint of any group should not be enshrined in civil law:

I am not asking your church to change its teachings. In the U.S. we are free to express a diversity of spiritual traditions. Religious marriage will justly remain the prerogative of each faith tradition.

But the state of Minnesota is constitutionally bound to treat all citizens equally; that includes civil-marriage equality.

Last Tuesday, Republicans in the Minnesota Legislature announced plans to put a gay marriage ban before voters in 2012 (“Minnesota lawmakers push for gay marriage vote,” April 27). To ban gay marriage would institutionalize injustice in our constitution, which wisely emphasizes the rights of all citizens and protects against the discriminatory reservation of certain rights to only some citizens.

As we know from our history, it is not unusual for those in power or those in the majority to reserve certain rights and privileges for themselves. Not until 1920 did women have the right to vote. Not until 1967 were laws criminalizing interracial marriage ruled unconstitutional. It is not coincidental that strong religious arguments were used to enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships.

In seeking marriage equality, I am not asking for special privileges; I am simply claiming the same protections and responsibilities as my heterosexual married neighbors.

This is an admirably clear statement.  And, reading it, I have to wonder why some U.S. citizens and members of faith communities still don't see the point that is so clear here: this is a cultural debate about something that has happened over and over in American society as the foundational principles of our democracy are extended to groups that have been excluded from full participation solely due to indefensible discrimination.  The cultural discussion in which we're involved right now in American society, vis-a-vis marriage equality, is not a discussion about how and whether religious viewpoints should dictate legal norms in American society.

Religious viewpoints can't do that.  Not in a bona fide secular democracy.  Not in a pluralistic society normed by foundational documents that enshrine democratic principles in those normative documents.  

This is a debate about equality.  It's a debate about the full inclusion in our democratic society of a group of citizens stigmatized by prejudice, who continue to be excluded from the social mainstream by legalized discrimination that impedes their ability to contribute, to pursue their careers, to raise families, and so forth. 

What on earth does any Christian church imagine it's doing, defending the exclusion of some members of the human community from the social mainstream, solely because a church wants to envisage those human beings as less than human?  And in what way does the attack on those stigmatized human beings by leaders of any religious community--in Minnesota, notably the state's Catholic bishops--contribute to a healthy society that respects human rights?

These are questions that aren't going go to away anywhere in the United States anytime soon--anywhere including Minnesota.  No matter how much Catholic leaders shout to the rest of us that they're defending human rights by denying them to gay and lesbian people.

The Current State of American Democracy, Core Challenges: A Selection of Recent Resources

If you care about the future of democracy in the U.S. (more precisely: if you care about whether democracy has a future in the U.S.), Rachel Maddow's analysis of the role the Koch brothers are playing all over the country "in every scummy political scandal" that pops up anywhere is must-see viewing.  The video clip is at the end of the Alternet article to which I've just linked.

Also must-see footage for anyone who cares about the current state and future of American democracy: Michael Moore speaking at the Wisconsin state capitol on 5 March, noting that 400 Americans now have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

For valuable charts breaking down the mind-boggling inequity in distribution of wealth with which we're now living, post-Bush (and with no substantial help from Mr. Obama), see David Gilson and Carolyn Perot's recent article at Mother Jones.

On the role that the Chamber of Commerce has been playing (and intends to keep playing) in assuring that the system which is bleeding working- and middle-class Americans dry to keep the filthy rich rich remains in place, see Bill McKibben recently at Huffington Post.

And as we cope with what the current maldistribution of wealth in the nation is doing to our democratic structures, here's the Republican plan to solve our problems, per MoveOn.org.

As I say, a set of must-read, must-listen articles/videos for those who care about the state and future of democracy in the U.S., which I've been saving away for a number of days now, and mulling over as I do my own version of starting the long journey to Easter today, by way of the Cross.

Commentary on Proposed Changes in U.K. Marriage Laws Permitting Religious Celebration of Same-Sex Unions

  

And a selection of interesting commentary on the proposed change in laws in the United Kingdom (and here) that would permit same-sex couples to solemnize unions or marriages in a religious context, if a faith community agrees to such an arrangement:

Riazat Butt reports in the Guardian that the Catholic archbishop of Southwark (England) Peter Smith has condemned the proposed revision of the law as unnecessary and undesirable.  And how does Smith handle the fact that some faith communities actually do wish to bless gay unions, and consider it discriminatory for the government to restrict their religious freedom as they choose to take this step?

Smith's argument: marriage does not belong to either a religion or society.  It is a "fundamental human institution rooted in human nature."  It is what it is.  No one can change it.

And so any faith community wishing to bless a gay marriage is asking for permission to change what is, what is natural.  What is pre-ordained, given by God to nature.  Smith concludes that the religious freedom of Catholics and others who oppose same-sex marriage will be constrained if Catholics and others who oppose same-sex marriage are not permitted to block the religious freedom of Quakers and other religious communities who do wish to celebrate gay marriages.

Something like that.

At the Telegraph, Damian Thompson, a Catholic commentator, frankly admits that Archbishop Smith's argument for religious freedom boils down to an argument for the "right" of Catholics to block the religious freedom of other religious communities that consider it discriminatory to bar gay couples from religious unions.  But he wonders why the bishops aren't being more media-savvy and aggressive in sharing this message with the public at large.  And why they won't face the public and discuss their stand on this important issue in a way that permits media questions and public analysis.

Anglican Judith Maltby has a different perspective at the Guardian.  Her take on the debate?  There's enough of God to go around.  Why would any religious group want to restrict God and dole out tiny pieces of God only to an approved group of people, to straight people and not gays?  As Maltby notes, we've been here before, in the Christian churches, when, prior to Luther, marriage was considered a second-class vocation for Christians, an option for the spiritual "also rans" who couldn't quite live up to the seriousness of the Christian calling by entering monastic life.  And then as now, the churches seemed unable to regard one form of marriage (in the past, the marriage of lay Christians) as equal to that of another, more highly regarded form of marriage (in the past, the marriage of a vowed religious to Christ).  We seem to have great difficulty in imagining God as big enough to go around--for all.

Finally, from across the pond, an interesting Catholic perspective on the Obama administration's decision that some aspects of DOMA do not meet the test of constitutionality.  This is from William Oddie writing in the English Catholic Herald .  Oddie's conclusion: Barack Obama is perhaps the most anti-Catholic president in living memory.  Oddie notes that the U.S. Catholic bishops have argued, as Archbishop Smith in England does,  that marriage is marriage.  It is what it is.  It has always been what it is now, and it must always remain what it is now, since it is given by nature and nature is given by God.  (Never mind that our own sacred scriptures show our fathers and mothers in faith practicing polygamy for centuries upon centuries.)

And, though we deplore discrimination, we can't change what is, simply to permit you who are gay or lesbian to feel included and validated.  To feel that there's enough of God to go around.

We certainly don't intend to discriminate.  But we don't make the rules and we can't change them.  It's the rules doing the discriminating, for goodness's sake!

And so any president who doesn't agree with us is the most anti-Catholic president we can ever remember: so sayeth Mr. Oddie.

Interesting, isn't it, to see people twist words like "freedom" and "non-discrimination" (not to mention "love," if they ever get around to talking about it) into something that means the very opposite of what the words actually mean, even while claiming that they are the ones whose freedom is being curtailed, and they are the ones being discriminated against?  And if you ask them to support these twisted ideas in a rational conversation in the public square of a pluralistic, democratic societies, you are an enemy.

An enemy who is attacking them, the holy men of God.

Paul Krugman on the Wisconsin Situation: The Pertinence of Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine"

 

I like Paul Krugman's analysis in today's New York Times of some of the parallels between what's happening in Wisconsin now and what has been happening in the Middle East.  After I blogged glancingly about that topic recently, I saw a segment of Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" in which Stewart did a take-down of the idea that the Wisconsin demonstrations in any way parallel what has been happening in Egypt, Libya, and Iran.

And, of course, he's right in some ways.  People aren't dying in Wisconsin.  Even so, as Krugman points out, there are some clear parallels, and they deserve attention--particularly if we want to understand the underlying causes of the Wisconsin situation.

As Krugman notes, the conditions for much of the upheaval in the Middle East were actually created by Bush-generation right-wing American ideologues who were determined to impose right-wing ideological political and economic ideas and structures on nations in the Middle East (and elsewhere), no matter how badly the ideology being imposed fit the situations on which the ideology was imposed.  Krugman notes that Naomi Klein explored this pattern brilliantly in her book The Shock Doctrine.

And in Krugman's view, Klein's analysis of how the conditions that have ultimately resulted in democratic revolution in the Middle East were created, ironically, by rigid right-wing ideologues definitely does fit the situation in Wisconsin in key respects.  As we all know by now, we're being lied to when we're told that breaking the unions in that state (or anywhere else) is a necessary precondition to balancing the state budget.

Here's Krugman's take: 

What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.

For example, the bill includes language that would allow officials appointed by the governor to make sweeping cuts in health coverage for low-income families without having to go through the normal legislative process.

A power grab.  Deliberately exploiting a fiscal crisis created by the political right in order to ram through an economic and political agenda of the political right that is at the very base of the economic crisis this ploy is purportedly designed to resolve.  As I keep insisting, we really need to educate ourselves as much as possible about what's going on right now in our country, vis-a-vis the democratic structures of our society, or it may soon be too late.

What's going on in Wisconsin is, I think, a hopeful sign that when more and more Americans become aware of how a filthy rich elite is trying to buy our democracy lock, stock, and barrel, we citizens will begin to push back--as citizens of the Middle East are doing, as well.  Against forces that in some respects are not entirely different from those eliciting the pushback now in Wisconsin.

Snapshots of the Soul of American Democracy, 2011: Three Disturbing Takes

 

This is one of those news-commentary compendium postings I do every now and then, when several articles that seem to me to connect dots appear around the same time.  What strikes me with the following three articles is that they seem to be connecting the same dots from different vantage points.

All three articles address the underlying reasons that we see such a sudden proliferation of initiatives in state legislatures across the U.S. and at the federal level to pit one group of Americans against another: to pit the "Christian" nation against Muslims with spurious anti-Sharia laws; to pit citizens against so-called illegal immigrants with mind-boggling laws like one under consideration now in my state legislature which would require anyone using public services to have a notarized copy of a birth certificate in order to qualify for a service like an emergency room; and to pit "traditional" families against gay and lesbian people.

Each of these articles suggests to me that this flurry of pending legislation has, at least in part, a diversionary intent.  It's designed to keep us fighting as further inroads are made into our democratic system by a wealthy elite of corporate owners who want to have total control of the political process.  And to undermine our democratic system.

Here's Robert Reich's perspective in a recent Huffington Post article.

The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class -- pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don't believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.

By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.

And here's George Lakoff on the patriarchal mindset being used to justify this grab at power by corporate elites: 

The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.

The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women's rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting, and on and on.  . . .

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.

And, finally, here's Jim Hightower commenting on the role that the judicial branch of government has been playing and continues to play in the corporate takeover of our democracy:

Forget modesty and humility, an aloof and arrogant judicial branch of government has arisen and become openly political. Federal judges across the country are flagrantly abusing their authority and public trust by rigging America's economic and political rules for the further enrichment of already powerful and privileged corporations. The 'umpires' have taken sides against us, and it's time to call them out.

Progressives, along with honest conservatives, must focus more on this corporate takeover of the judiciary and directly challenge the judges' service to the moneyed elites. Let me be blunt: John Roberts, the leader of the pack, has turned into an autocratic, unelected national lawmaker, imposing his political vision as the law of our land. He is doing major structural damage to America's unifying sense of fairness and justice. We can't allow him to keep hiding behind the judicial robe while he mugs us and our democratic ideals. He should be impeached.

We are living through a moment of unprecedented peril for American democracy.  Unless we inform ourselves about what is happening and why it is happening, and unless we organize to fight back--as people in Wisconsin are now doing--it may soon be too late to recover the democratic structures we've built painfully and all too imperfectly since the beginning of the nation.

Comparing Egypt-Iran with Wisconsin

 

Quick note: I find it fascinating that some of the centrist websites that can't get enough of the democratic revolution in the Middle East have been absolutely silent about what's happening in Wisconsin.  And when they approach the latter democratic uprising, they are bound and determined to present "all sides" of the story.

The revolution in the Middle East apparently demonstrates (so they imagine) that the obsessive hawklike focus of the American right and center on the Islamic threat has been right on target.  But the uprising in Wisconsin proves inconvenient for the dominant narrative of the right and center, with its constant nattering on about the free market and balanced budgets--

Which are always free markets only for the grossly rich elite controlling our economic life, and which are always budgets balanced on the backs of the poor and middle classes.

Just saying.

P.S. (later in the day): I'm just now seeing this great article by Medea Benjamin at Common Dreams drawing the parallels between Egypt and Wisconsin, thanks to Michael Bayly of the wonderful Wild Reed blog (which is linked to the Bilgrimage homepage).  And I discover in Benjamin's article that the graphic I had chosen for this posting is a picture of Egyptian engineer Muhammad Saladin Nusair holding a sign in Tahrir Square saying "Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers—One World, One Pain."

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on President Obama's Response to Egypt: Failure to Lead

A brief postscript to my two previous postings about the Egyptian revolution--the first reflecting on the inconsistent way in which the American government approaches the aspirations of people to democratic self-governance in different parts of the globe, the second on Nicholas Kristof's appeal to President Obama to speak out forcefully to condemn the violence in Egypt:

I agree with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's analysis of Obama's behavior during the Egyptian crisis as not in the least praiseworthy--specifically, as a failure to lead.  Boteach: 

Obama was supposed to be a transformational president. An African-American had risen to the highest office in the land and the most powerful post on earth. Surely, even more than President George W. Bush -- a son of privilege and wealth -- he would emerge as a champion of freedom and democracy. Surely such unmatched eloquence would be employed in the cause of human liberty.

But we were all given pause when Obama, in the first months of his presidency, embraced dictator Hugo Chavez with a wide grin and bowed to the tyrant-king of Saudi Arabia. Chavez had called George Bush 'the devil' from the rostrum of the United Nations and has singled-handedly dismantled democracy in Venezuela, throwing his political opponents in jail. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia presides over a regime so ruthless that women are imprisoned and lashed simply for being in a closed space with a man who is not their husband and can't even drive a car. Perhaps these were just glitches. Perhaps Obama really did have a freedom agenda tucked away that he would finally pull out.

But from there it only got worse, with Obama's foreign policy repudiating most of President Bush's democracy-building gestures and opting instead for Kissingerian realpolitik, with America prepared to do business with almost any kind of dictator so long as it served our interests. Obama even won a Nobel Peace Prize simply for not being George Bush. We thought Obama's lauding of tyrants reached its zenith with Obama holding only his second State dinner last month to honor the President of China, one of the most oppressive regimes on earth. It's one thing to do business with China. But to honor its brutal leadership?

Now with Egypt the circle is complete.

 It's about leadership.  And it's about human rights.  This president has squandered opportunity after opportunity to demonstrate transformative leadership--at a moment when such leadership is imperative if American democracy is to survive--because he has prevaricated again and again on matters of human rights.

And the results for our national economic, political, and cultural life have been disastrous and will continue to be disastrous.  Obama's weakness as a leader and his waffling on issues of human rights have opened the door to a recrudescence of the worst excesses of an emboldened political right.  As we face economic collapse, we must now contend, in state legislature after state legislature and in D.C., with challenge upon challenge to women's rights, to the new health care program, to the human rights of immigrants, to gay and lesbian rights, and so forth.

These enervating culture-war debates siphon off much-needed energy to address our dire economic problems--which have to be addressed effectively if we expect our democratic system of governance to thrive again.  And none of this need have happened, had the leader we thought we were electing--with his clear pre-election vision of human rights--seized the opportunity to lead that he was given with a large popular mandate in the last elections.

I am ashamed at which this promising president has made of his presidency.  His response to the Egyptian situation only deepens my shame.  As Nicholas Kristof notes, the Obama administration desperately needs to "learn the future tense" if we expect the future to be bright either for the United States or the rest of the world.

Reporters Being Rounded up in Egypt

Situation not looking at all good now in Egypt.  Anderson Cooper was attacked again today, and reporters being rounded up.  Nicholas Kristof wonders what the government is staging, that it wants to hide from reporters.

News Reports Stress Role of Women in Egyptian Demonstrations, Kristof Calls on Obama to Condemn Violence

As I read Nicholas Kristof's on-the-spot account today in the New York Times, re: the attack of peaceful protesters in Cairo by government thugs wielding razors and clubs, I'm struck by a subtext of the story of revolution in Egypt that seems to be cropping up in several news stories.  This is the courageous, important role Egyptian women are taking in opposing Mubarak's oppression and in supporting the call for a new form of government.  

Kristof's report notes the calm, commanding way in which two "ordinary" Egyptian women, sisters named Amal and Minna, dealt with one gang of the thugs Wednesday--thugs who happen to be, surprise!, all armed young men.  He watched these two unarmed women stand down a gang of these young men with weapons, forcing them to slink away.  Amal and Minna backed  down the thugs threatening them and other peaceful protesters simply by asserting their right to speak out on behalf of democracy.

In a piece posted at Huffington Post last evening, Jake Bialer also stresses the significant role women are playing in the Cairo protests.  Bialer notes, "In these demonstrations, which have already led to Mubarak agreeing not to run for re-election, women have taken an active role: promoting them, leading crowds, and providing aid to harmed protesters."

Given the pluck and determination being displayed by countless Egyptian citizens even in the face of ugly government-organized violence that has taken the lives of quite a few people (no one yet has a complete fix on the numbers), I agree wholeheartedly with Nicholas Kristof, as he concludes his essay with a strong appeal to Mr. Obama to speak out far more forcefully to condemn the violence Mubarak has unleashed against protesters in Egypt: 

Chinese and Iranian leaders were widely condemned for those atrocities, so shouldn’t Mr. Mubarak merit the same broad condemnation? Come on, President Obama. You owe the democracy protesters being attacked here, and our own history and values, a much more forceful statement deploring this crackdown.

It should be increasingly evident that Mr. Mubarak is not the remedy for the instability in Egypt; he is its cause. The road to stability in Egypt requires Mr. Mubarak’s departure, immediately.

But for me, when I remember this sickening and bloody day, I’ll conjure not only the brutality that Mr. Mubarak seems to have sponsored but also the courage and grace of those Egyptians who risked their lives as they sought to reclaim their country. And incredibly, the democracy protesters held their ground all day at Tahrir Square despite this armed onslaught. Above all, I’ll be inspired by those two sisters standing up to Mr. Mubarak’s hoodlums. If they, armed only with their principles, can stand up to Mr. Mubarak’s thuggery, can’t we all do the same? 

As I've repeated over and over on this blog, the current administration has undermined its credibility and weakened its effectiveness from the outset by waffling on issues of human rights and evading discourse affirming human rights at almost any juncture at which there has been occasion to employ that discourse.  What's happening in Egypt gives Mr. Obama a chance to retrieve some integrity for his administration by standing, for once, unambiguously on the side of human rights in a situation in which there is hardly any ambiguity about which side now carries the human rights banner.

Thinking Through the Egyptian Situation: Tell Old Pharaoh

I do have some thoughts about what’s going on in Egypt, of course.  And I think it’s perhaps incumbent on me to share them here, primarily because this blog pretends to follow current events, particularly ones with religious application, with interest.

But I share my thoughts with some trepidation, since I’m by no means an expert on political matters, and I am not confident that any of us is getting a complete picture of what’s going on in Egypt, particularly in the U.S., where Al-Jazeera’s English coverage is blacked out by cable networks through wide swaths of the nation.  And where we have to rely on very partial and very managed coverage by other networks.

And so what interests me perhaps more than anything right now—in addition to the excitement that anyone committed to democracy as a social ideal is bound to feel, watching the coverage on websites like Al-Jazeera’s English site—is how the events in Egypt are being handled by many American media outlets and many American political outlets.  After all, we Americans have long fatuously believed that we have a corner on the democracy market.  And we’ve approached the rest of the world as if it’s a collection of doltish students in a schoolroom called “Trying (But Failing) to Attain Democracy,” and have tried (or so we claim) in every way possible to spread the boons of democracy everywhere in the world.

That is, when we haven’t tried to do so.  Or when we’ve done so very selectively, targeting Eastern European nations for democracy while collaborating more or less openly and more or less cynically “pragmatically” with anti-democratic movements in places like the Middle East and Latin America.  Except when it has behooved us to nudge along democratic movements in the Middle East that seem to expose the dangers of fundamentalist Islam to the rest of the world.

As a result, we’re now in what my wise elderly aunt calls a “mell of a hess” when it comes to understanding—or even facing—real-life democracy in Egypt when it’s staring us in the face.  We’ve spent so much time preaching about the commodity we’re selling, and glitzing our product up with false advertising claims, that we don’t even know how to recognize the real thing when it’s looking right in our faces.

Looking at us in the aspirations of a long-suffering, long-stepped down group of people to freedom, when cracks finally open in the prison door and those people discover that, by pushing in concert and daring the reprisal of their powerful captors, they may claim freedom.  This is not, you see, what many of us—especially of the right and center in the U.S.—have long intended when we use that word “freedom” as a shining, fetishized object selectively defined down.  Defined down in contemporary American democracy from our foundational documents, which meant something much closer to what the people of Egypt understand by the term right now than any understanding of freedom or democracy for which we contemporary Americans have settled.

For many of us, especially in the political center and right wing of American politics, “freedom” has come to mean the liberty of a tiny sector of Americans, the very rich, to do almost anything they wish with the rest of us and with the resources of our nation, and the liberty of the rest of us to endure the choices of that tiny elite.  And so we go on babbling about liberty and freedom and democracy as ideals for the rest of the world, when we ourselves belie those ideals in our own contemporary political and cultural life.  In the grossest ways possible.

And the very people who talk longest and hardest about freedom and liberty in our nation today are the ones who lie the longest and hardest about what those terms meant when our democratic experiment began.  And what we’ve really made of those terms in our national life today.

And then there’s the liberal wing of the American political establishment today, which has been every bit as much blindsided by what is occurring in Egypt (and, truth be told, all through the Middle East) today.  Because the liberals dominating the institutional life of the Democratic party and therefore much of our federal government today are just as deeply enslaved to indebted to the wealthy elite which now owns our nation and its democracy as the other party, the party of the right and center-right, is.  The only difference between the two flavors of political hemlock purveyed by our two national political parties right now is that one comes with a soupçon  of soft vanilla undertaste while the other prefers its poison neat, with its bitters undisguised.

One party frankly wants all state control of the “free” market eradicated.  The other wants mild, managed control that continues to benefit the haves of our nation (which is to say, the leaders of this party who are pushing this ideology) at the expense of the have nots.  Both continue to crank out glitzy advertisements for the "democratic" “free” market, madly pretending that this system is what Jefferson (who is rolling in his grave at the idea) wanted for our nation.  Or Madison and Washington and Sojourner Truth and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

And so when real democracy is vaulting across our television screens around the world, with all the excitement to be found as downtrodden people in any nation anywhere finally, after long pharaonic suffering, break through to self-determination, we Americans, who were born in a similar experiment with similar excitement, don’t recognize what’s happening around the world.  We can’t recognize what’s happening. 

Because we’ve forgotten what the real thing looks like.  Because our never-completely-realized democratic experiment seems to have come to a gruesome dead end in the hands of Messrs. Koch and Murdoch and many others in their circle, and in the hands of their many sycophants—many of them in bishops’ palaces and pastors’ manses around the nation—who preach Pharaoh's message while claiming they're pointing the way to the Exodus.

And we’re deathly afraid of what democracy might really mean, if it took hold in places like Egypt or Iran or Iraq or anyplace else in the Middle East.  Or in El Salvador or Guatemala.  Or Detroit or D.C.  In Detroit and D.C. (and Atlanta and Albuquerque and Moline and Wenatchee), where we have long since been, in James Baldwin's powerful phrase, “lost, and unable to say what it was that oppressed them” (The Fire Next Time [1962, repr. NY: Random House, 1993]).

Since we've long since lost sense of the ability to tell Pharaoh from the very people in our midst who tell us they are pointing the way to freedom, as they load more bricks on our backs and herd us to building of the latest new palace they'll name with some shining title like Liberty, Democracy, or Pharaoh's ten-bathroom 2000 sq. ft. Temple to Free Enterprise.

National Organization of Marriage's 2009 Tax Returns: Catholic Values Still for Sale?

In the final months of 2010, I spent quite a bit of time reporting on and critiquing the decision of the Catholic bishops of Minnesota to accept what is thought to have been a sizable donation from an unnamed donor or donors, permitting the bishops to produce a video attacking same-sex marriage and to mail that video to every Catholic household in the state.  As my several postings about this event note, there are a number of troubling aspects to this story: these include the decision of a group of bishops to make an issue out of something that had not been raised as a significant issue in the 2010 election in their state; their decision to attack a vulnerable minority for the political benefit of a particular political party; and their willingness to weigh into the election debates in a clearly partisan way.

But most troubling of all in the behavior of the bishops of Minnesota during the 2010 elections was the willingness to accept a large amount of funds from a donor or donors they refused to name in order to pursue these partisan political objectives.  As I noted in a number of postings about this issue, in behaving this way, the Catholic bishops of Minnesota have contributed to what is a growing, and exceedingly dangerous, trend of American political culture at present: they have contributed to the buying and selling of democracy by wealthy hidden donors, who exercise disproportionate influence on the democratic process, often by using tax-exempt faith-based groups like the Catholic church to shield their identities as they wheel and deal behind the scenes in attempts to influence the outcome of elections.

This is a story that is not over with in 2011, by any means.  As Don Hazen reports at Alternet, there is increasing concern in many sectors of American society about the hidden influence of wealthy behind-the-scenes far-right political activists such as the Koch brothers, whose fingerprints are all over the Tea Party movement of the past several years.  This month, the Koch brothers will sponsor a top-secret meeting in Palm Springs of conservative activists--including Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas--to strategize about their right-wing takeover of the American political process.

This story about the Koch brothers and their hidden behind-the-scenes influence on the political process, the story of the Minnesota Catholic bishops in the 2010 elections, and the story of one prominent anti-gay activist group in the U.S. dovetail as stories about the way in which the political life of the U.S. is increasingly controlled by a small group of exceptionally wealthy right-wing donors, whose identities are rarely disclosed, and who sometimes use religious organizations, with their tax-exempt status that shields their financial transactions from public scrutiny, as fronts for their political activity.  The prominent anti-gay activist group of which I'm speaking is the National Organization of Marriage (NOM).

Even as I write this posting, NOM is dropping major sums of money into Rhode Island to try to block civil marriage for gay citizens in that state.  Because of NOM's influence, because this quasi-religious group works tirelessly around the nation to try to block civil rights for gay and lesbian citizens and to attack gay and lesbian persons, and because its chief spokesperson, Maggie Gallagher, persistently represents NOM's anti-gay positions as Catholic positions on gay and lesbian issues, the question of NOM's funding sources deserves careful attention, particularly by anyone concerned to defend the authentic Catholic tradition of support for universal human rights.  This question deserves particular attention in light of the willingness of many U.S. Catholic bishops, including the bishops of Minnesota in 2010, to ally themselves with and use the resources of this anti-gay political activist group.

But here's the problem: we don't know who funds this exceptionally powerful anti-gay political activist group that claims to represent "the" Catholic position on gay and lesbian issues, any more than we know who gave the Minnesota bishops money to pursue an out-of-the-blue gay-bashing campaign in the 2010 elections--even as some of those same bishops were closing churches and merging parishes due to financial exigency.  We don't know who is funding these quasi-religious crusades against gay and lesbian human beings and their human rights in the U.S., which appeal to the Catholic church for their legitimacy.

As I've reported previously on this blog, NOM is exceptionally secretive about its funding sources, and is even willing to skirt federal and state laws in order to keep the identity of its funders secret.  And this continues: as Luke Johnson reports recently at The American Independent*, after repeated requests to disclose its 2009 IRS tax returns, which have to be disclosed to the public because NOM is a 501(c)(4)organization, NOM has finally released at least a part of its 2009 tax returns.

And though what NOM has made public is still not complete, what the 2009 returns reveal is interesting, indeed.  As Johnson notes, NOM's 2009 tax returns show that 68% of its funds in 2009 came from three unnamed and obviously well-heeled donors.  Two more unnamed donors also gave large sums to NOM, bringing the total of its funding base in 2009 to five unnamed donors, who provided three-quarters of NOM's funding.

A number of points deserve attention here.  As Luke Johnson notes, NOM is fond of representing itself as a grassroots organization whose base of support is the general public--or, at least, a segment of the public energized by its right-wing, anti-gay politics.  But NOM's 2009 tax report belies the organization's representation of itself as a grassroots organization.

When one examines NOM's funding sources, the conclusion one has to reach is this: this influential right-wing anti-gay activist group, which represents itself as a quasi-religious organization with the endorsement of the Catholic church, is funded by a handful of unknown wealthy donors, who exercise disproportionate influence on the American political sphere through this organization--and through the Catholic church, insofar as its leaders continue accepting donations from these hidden donors, and acting as a quasi-religious front for their political activities.  While their identities and their motives are unknown, shielded from public scrutiny, since NOM does not disclose the identities of these donors.

Second, NOM's 2009 tax returns deserve careful attention, because there's reason to believe they still do not tell the whole story--the whole story of NOM's funding base.  For instance, as Luke Johnson points out, Jesse Zwick of the Washington Independent has uncovered a $1.4 million donation to NOM in 2009 by the Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus.  And for some reason, that large donation is not listed in NOM's 2009 tax return.

As I've noted in various Bilgrimage postings for some time now, under the leadership of their current Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson, who began his public career in the Reagan administration and has continued to have an exceptionally cozy relationship with top Republican leaders, the Knights of Columbus have become in the view of many observers an outright political operative group doing the work of the Republican party, and, in particular, bolstering the anti-gay campaign of key Republican leaders.

And the Knights pursue these goals while claiming to represent the Catholic church in their politically oriented anti-gay activities.  Last year, while the Knights gave $3 million to traditional charitable ministries such as feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, they gave $4.7 million to anti-gay groups, to attack gay and lesbian human beings and seek to block the human rights of these human beings.

And yet, with this dishonorable recent history, with his organization's now overt connection to the Republican party (a connection criticized even by some of his fellow Knights), and with the $1+ million that his organization donated to remove the right of civil marriage from gay citizens of California, Mr. Anderson can still say, with a straight face, that he strongly supports the beatification of John Paul II because the Catholic church "stand[s] up for human rights when they are attacked"?!

Standing up for human rights when they are attacked hardly seems to be what either the National Organization of Marriage or the Knights of Columbus, both claiming to represent the Catholic church, are all about.  Nor does it seem to be what the Catholic bishops are about, as they ally themselves with political groups whose primary purpose in attacking a vulnerable minority and blocking the human rights of that minority is to score points for a particular political party.

What many Catholic pastoral leaders are doing these days, vis-a-vis their brothers and sisters who happen to be gay and lesbian, and what the Vatican itself encourages in this regard, radically undercuts the claim of the Catholic church to stand for human rights and against the oppression of stigmatized minorities.  Linking the canonization process of Pope John Paul II to movements that attack the human rights of minority groups--and that's what Carl Anderson is doing here, as he defends John Paul as a champion of human rights while his own Catholic organization fights tooth and nail to remove rights from LGBT persons--calls into question the meaning of John Paul II's sanctity and his canonization process.

And makes one wonder, given the propensity of some of the Catholic groups I've just discussed for accepting huge donations from hidden donors whose identities they shield from public scrutiny, how much money changes hands behind the scenes with a canonization process that is hardly above political manipulation, as it precipitously advances the former pope to sainthood.  If the Catholic church expects its sanctity to be apparent to the world at large, it needs to do a better job at transparency, and at dialogue with contemporary culture.  And it needs to stop trying to strongarm the political process in democratic societies that value open disclosure of information in the public square and the contributions of everyone to dialogues about the Acommon good, while selling itself to wealthy right-wing donors. At the same time it seeks to represent itself as all about compassion and healing the world . . . .

People aren't fools.  They see through the smoke-and-mirrors machinations of this canonization process. Large numbers of people understand that what is going on with this canonization is yet another diversionary spectacle designed to distract our attention from the ongoing, lamentable, and highly publicized failure of top Catholic leaders to manifest core Catholic values in their pastoral leadership at this point in history.

The abusive treatment of gay and lesbian persons by the current regime of Catholic leaders is only one facet of a much larger story, which includes shocking mistreatment of survivors of childhood clerical sexual abuse and of women.  And no amount of ecclesial showmanship--of resplendent scarlet cappae magnae or vials of blood drawn from a dying pope and displayed at retro-medieval shrines--is going to stop many people from wondering just what the Catholic church imagines it's proclaiming to the world today about human rights, as it bashes gays and lesbians, excommunicates religious women who embody mercy in their dealings with people caught in complex moral situations, and trashes survivors of abuse.

For many of us, what comes through loud and clear in these actions is not the commitment to embattled human rights of which Supreme Knight Anderson speaks so eloquently (and, obviously, insincerely).  It's precisely the opposite of this commitment.  And this is why Catholics will continue to walk away from the church in ever increasing numbers, as the intellectual elite of the church, its centrist theological caste who keep producing one apologia after another for the indefensible actions of the church's shepherds, continues to babble on about the need for theological pertinence while never engaging these issues in which the church's pertinence is most clearly at stake at this point in history.

*I'm not sure why the link to this report is leading to a blank webpage; I'll keep trying the link to see if the story reappears, and will update the posting and remove this link if it continues not to work. (Later in day: it seems to be working now.)

Andrew Sullivan on Sarah Palin's Reponse to Tucson Events: "Something Menacing"

Andrew Sullivan's conclusion, as he assesses Sarah Palin's gigantic failure to be a leader (or even a decent human being) in response to the Tucson events, is chilling.  And absolutely correct.  

Sullivan writes,

And she has decided that this occasion for introspection is actually an opportunity to double down.

There is something menacing about that.

Indeed.  Menace is the name of the game.  Menace--the intent to menace--is at the very ideological center of right-wing politics in the U.S., and has been firmly in place there from the time that William F. Buckley pronounced that the primary task of American conservatism is to stand athwart history and yell stop.  If anyone has lived through the last several years of political life in the U.S. and still does not see what the political right in the U.S. intends with its use of relentless, fierce, ratcheted-up, menacing and inflammatory rhetoric designed constantly to thwart necessary forward movement in any area of our political and cultural life, recent events ought to be a definitive eye-opener.

In particular, the response of major leaders of one of our two major political parties to the Tucson events and the national conversation that has emerged from those events ought to give sane citizens pause to think.  Rather than decry the climate of violence that is growing at an astonishing rate in our society, those political leaders--and Palin leading the pack--have chosen to double down on the rhetoric of violence.

And to employ it against everyone suggesting that the whole nation ought to take a deep breath and think carefully about what we're rapidly becoming.  If anyone had previously been in doubt that the rhetoric of menace--and any menacing actions that may flow from it--are intentional, are part and parcel of what the conservative movement in the U.S. has made of itself, then he or she ought to have eyes wide open now.

Now that Sarah Palin has responded.  Knowing full well that the belligerence of her response will only win her more support among a sizable minority of citizens for whom the rhetoric of violence, with the actual violence it threatens their enemies, is thrilling.

It is absolutely no accident that a South Carolina gun company is selling semi-automatic rifles with "You lie!" engraved on some of their components.  It is no accident at all that Rep. Giffords' Republican opponent Jesse Kelley sponsored an M-16 shooting event at which he brandished a rifle and invited his supporters to shoot a rifle with him as they tried to help remove Giffords from office.  It is no accident that Sarah Palin built a website with crosshairs hovering menacingly over her political enemies, and that she reinforced the message of that website with rhetoric about locking and loading.

Nor is it an accident that a member of a church pastored by the rabidly anti-gay right-wing Baptist pastor Steve Anderson in Arizona, who has said that gay human beings deserve to be put to death, brought a rifle to a Tea Party rally after Pastor Anderson had prayed for Mr. Obama's death.  The message has been clear all along: when ballots fail, let bullets prevail.  It is a message of menace designed to demonstrate to all  of one's political opponents--and to the majority in our democratic society, if that majority should get out of hand and contravene the wishes of the minority intent on standing athwart history and shouting stop--just how far the political right intends to go in assuring that its will be done.

And what is most astonishing of all about the emergence of such overt, violence-threatening fascism by the contemporary American political right is that it is now normal.  It is now acceptable.  It is impossible to challenge, since the challenge itself only elicits new levels of rhetorical violence and new threats of potential real violence to anyone who questions what the political right is doing to our society.  It is being promoted from the very center of our political process, by one of our two major political parties--by respected leaders of that party such as Ms. Palin, and by an endless train of lying, shouting, bullying talking heads of major media outlets in the U.S. who turn day into night as they invert truth and moral principles in the service of their politics of destruction.

And, shamefully, it is being promoted by elements within the religious communities of our nation that also have the cover of the center--such as the far-right "Catholic" anti-abortion group, one of whose employees continues to plaster this blog with taunting messages about gay folks in the military, while his own organization was, until recently, led by a priest who delighted in using militaristic imagery replete with violent symbols and talk of bloodshed to promote these men's "pro-life" cause.  

In the wake of the Tucson shootings, many commentators have been talking about our current crossroads moment.  In my view, Ms. Palin's response to these shootings is a sober, necessary reminder that we are now long since down the road from any viable crossroads at which we might have chosen some other path for our democracy. 

We are long since down the road that Ms. Palin herself and the party she represents have intended to take us down in recent years.  We are now far down a road whose signposts point to continued, increasing violence in our public square, for anyone who might even think about thwarting the wishes of the fascist minority intent on controlling our democracy through bullets, since their ballots have not prevailed.

More on the Arizona Shootings: Naming the Problem, Facing It Resolutely

Though I haven't blogged today about the shootings in Arizona a day ago, they remain very much on my mind--in particular, the horrendous loss of life that has just taken place.  I'm not entirely what I can add to what I posted yesterday on this subject.  

I am struck, however, by the shocking callousness of a sizable segment of Americans for whom there will be no discussion at all, if they can help it, of the political roots of violent acts such as the ones in Arizona, and of the responsibility that the leaders of one political party, the Republicans, bear disproportionately for normalizing this violence.  We are and always have been a violent society.  We were born in revolution and our revolutionary experiment issued in violence within a century after the formation of our nation, with a bloody civil war.  Violence is as American as mother's milk, in our political rhetoric and political life.

At the same time, in recent years, we've been crossing a line, and it's a very dangerous line to cross.  The line we have crossed is one that makes violent reprisal for certain political stances not only thinkable, but a growing possibility, in the public square in the U.S.  In the past several years, while people have carted guns to political rallies and paraded around holding signs promising bullets if ballots fail, and talking about second-amendment solutions to problems they can't solve otherwise, the party some of whose primary leaders are inciting these violent displays stands aside and does nothing to condemn the violent rhetoric, or to shun the powerful political figures who are inciting violence.

And now, when six people lie dead, including a little girl, adherents of that party throughout the U.S. want to shout down any open discussion of these issues--and to shout down this discussion in the most rhetorically violent way possible.  This ought to give anyone still sitting on the fence about these issues in American society serious reason to stop and think about where we're headed.  How many more innocent people have to die before we admit that we are reaching the point of no return?

The future of our democracy does not look bright when some of us court violence as a way to assure that anyone with countervailing political opinions keeps his or her mouth shut and relinquishes the floor to those toting guns.  Nor does it look bright as both political parties remain in a position of craven subservience to those elite financial groups who are pulling the strings as this violence--which is designed to tear apart the body politic and undermine the social state, with its already tenuous bonds--proceeds and becomes ever more prevalent in American political and cultural life.

Violence in Arizona, and the Backdrop of Social and Economic Violence in American Culture: From What Roots Does Violence Spring?

In every era the attempt must be made to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it.  The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist.  Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins and this enemy has not ceased to be victorious (Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt [NY: Shocken, 1969], p. 255).

It is easy to look at the tragic events that occurred in Arizona yesterday and to talk about the increasing normalization of violence in American political (and cultural, and media) discourse.  It's easy to decry the easily discerned trend to make violence ever more thinkable--the random violence that appears to be the act of madmen, but which is ultimately a tool of repression used by those who own the vast majority of the resources of the nation, against those who increasingly lack the necessities of life.

It's easy, I say, to talk about how we Americans need to view what happened in Arizona yesterday as a crossroads moment in our culture, and to eschew yesterday's violence and identify the various cues in our political and media-cultural discourse that made that violence thinkable.  But, as I think about yesterday's events and feel the tug of that too-facile analysis of our problems, I cannot help thinking of a powerful essay I read several days ago, which Elaine McCoy brought to my attention.

This is Henry A. Giroux's "In the Twilight of the Social State: Rethinking Walter Benjamin's Angel of History."  Giroux's essay is at the Truthout website.  Giroux frames the essay by remembering Walter Benjamin's reflections on Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus" painting.  Benjamin notes that the angel of history is transfixed, caught between the tragic wreckage of history itself, with its chain of meaningless violence that piles body upon body, and the storm blowing from Paradise which appears to promise to break the chain of violence by introducing progressive change into the tragic cycle of history . . . 

But which enacts only more meaningless violence in the name of progress itself, pinning the wings of the angel transfixed between the carnage of the past and the promise of future redemption that continues to turn into the nightmare of history in new historical forms.

Giroux uses Benjamin's analysis of Klee's painting in Benjamin's "Thesis on the Philosophy of History" to frame his own discussion of the neoliberal culture of cruelty that we have introduced in the name of progress in this twilight stage of the social state.  In Giroux's view, we have entered on a phase of world history in which those who have ownership--in which the tiny minority of those who own the vast majority of the world's goods--are deliberately intent to dismantle the various social networks of state support for the have-nots of the world.  

We have entered into a phase of history in which the tiny majority of those who own the large bulk of the world's resources are intent on dismantling the idea and promise of democracy itself.  In its place, the intent of the owners of the material wealth of the world is to substitute a culture of consumer-driven radical individualism in which none of us owes any obligation to anyone else, in which one either sinks or swims, and in which the many who will sink because they have no option except to drown, in the absence of life preservers, will be blamed for their own demise.

We have entered an anti-democratic phase of world history in which the economic and political violence of the very rich against the majority of other citizens of the planet--first, the poor, and now increasingly the middle classes--is rapidly being enshrined in a culture of radical atomistic individualism driven by market considerations, in which the market itself is god, and in which the power of the state to mitigate the cruelty is under radical attack by the owning elite that controls the world's wealth.  And there appears to be little that ordinary citizens can do to counteract these trends, which are ineluctable--or which appear ineluctable--given the sheer power of those who own the goods of the world.  And given the planned, deliberate impotence of the social democracies of the developed parts of the world, in face of that power.

And because I think that Giroux is, in general, absolutely correct in this analysis, I wonder what any of us can do, realistically, to curb the kind of violence we saw on display in Arizona yesterday.  I wonder what any of us can do to stop a violence that is now being institutionalized in our culture, precisely as economic and political violence enacted by the extremely rich and powerful against all the rest of us. 

As Giroux notes, part of the problem of the situation in which we find ourselves now in the twilight of the social state is that economic and social suffering are becoming so massive, we are now inured to the suffering.  We imagine that we can do little to stop the suffering, because it is all around us.  In the United States, indicators of poverty have now risen to levels unimaginable even half a century ago, when, prior to Reagan's introduction of the resolute attack of the rich on our social safety networks, the war on poverty made significant inroads on endemic poverty in the U.S. by creating state-sponsored social safety nets for those caught in cyclical poverty.  Massive numbers of Americans today are out of work, with no hope at all of finding meaningful, humane jobs in the near future.

The ruthless practices now employed by many of our workplaces to remove these workers from their jobs, to make them redundant, no longer shock many of us, because they have become commonplace--acceptable, since they are everywhere and being practiced by everyone.  In the face of such massive social displacement of our family members, friends, neighbors--of our middle-class family members, friends, and neighbors, who have worked hard and played by the rules--it is easier simply to shrug our shoulders and be grateful that we are not among the ranks of the unemployed or uninsured.  And to assume that our family members, friends, and neighbors are sinking while we are swimming (but barely so) because they have somehow failed to play the game right, even though to all appearances, they have been model citizens and workers.

Social and economic violence has been normalized in our society to such an extent that it is very difficult any longer to craft meaningful narratives about what this suffering all around us means, why it is in our midst, and what we can do about it.  And as we try to cling to our own individual life rafts and keep swimming, it does little good for any of us to look to most of the communities of faith around us for assistance, for encouragement or protection as we battle to stay alive, since those faith communities have long since succumbed to the dominant philosophy of the obscenely rich that has created the very wreckage amidst which we are now desperately struggling to stay afloat.  Powerful groups within  many of our faith communities--notably, the pastoral leaders of many of our faith communities, including the Catholic bishops of the U.S.--are now willing tools in the hands of the very rich as they dismantle the social state and attack democracy itself.

And it does little good for us to look to the academy, which once spawned significant critiques of the status quo in our culture, or the media, which once acted as a watchdog to alert us to those who were threatening the democratic enterprise on which we counted as a unifying, protective screen against whose backdrop we pursued our family and individual economic lives: as with communities of faith, academics and journalists have long since become willing servants of the very rich, as the rich dismantle the project of democracy with its social networks of protection for the weak and vulnerable.

And so Giroux notes:

We no longer live in an age in which history's "winged messengers" bear witness to the suffering endured by millions and the conditions that allow such suffering to continue. Thinking about past and future has collapsed into a presentism in which the delete button, the utter normalization of a punishing inequality and the atomizing pleasures of instant gratification come together to erase both any notion of historical consciousness and any vestige of social and moral responsibility owed as much to future generations as to the dead. The "winged messengers" have been replaced by a less hallowed breed of anti-public intellectuals, academics, journalists and artists who now cater to the demands of the market and further their careers by becoming cheerleaders for neoliberal capitalism. The legacy now left by too many intellectuals has more to do with establishing a corporate-friendly brand name than fighting economic and social injustices, translating private into public issues, or creating genuine public spheres that promote critical thought and collective action. Whatever "winged messengers" do exist are either banished to the margins of the institutions that house them or excluded by the dominant media that have now become a mouthpiece for corporate culture and the new global rich.

And if we think that the current U.S. president is aware of the challenges now facing us and intent on doing something to address those challenges and to assure greater protection of the weak and vulnerable against the ruthless god of the market and the neoliberal culture of cruelty we're crafting as we dismantle the social state, we perhaps need to think again, Giroux proposes:

The collapse of the social state with its state protections, public values and democratic governance can be seen in how the Bush and Obama administrations embraced the logic of the market, and farmed out government responsibilities to private contractors, who undercut the power of the welfare state while waging a war on human dignity, moral compassion, social responsibility and life itself. Everything is up for sale under this form of economic Darwinism, including prisons, schools, military forces and the temporary faculty hired to fill the ranks of a depleted academy. Evidence of such a Darwinian ideology and militaristic mind set is visible in the attack on working people and labor unions, the waging of two unnecessary wars and the destruction of the nation's safety net; it is also well-illustrated in images so cruel and inhuman that they serve as flashpoints signaling not only a rupture from the ideals of democracy, but also an embrace of anti-democratic tendencies that testify to an emerging authoritarianism in the United States.

And because I think that Henry Giroux is absolutely correct in the preceding analysis, I ask myself, as I listen to the ritual condemnations of the violence that now runs everywhere in our political, cultural, and media life, following yesterday's events: will any of this ritual condemnation really do any good at all?  When the violence continues apace, and is woven right into the fabric of our economic and social existence?

And when no one seems to care tremendously about the violence all around us, because it has become "normal"?  And because the system of individualistic justifications for this violence--those who are drowning deserve their fate, because they are not trying hard enough--has become so entrenched in our culture that few of us think any more that our own existences are bound up with the existences of everyone else, and, in particular, with the lives of those most vulnerable?

To root out the endemic violence in our culture, something far more powerful than ritual condemnations following yet another eruption of overt political violence is necessary.  And for what is necessary, I am not sure we have the will.  I am not sure, in particular, that our elected officials, who have more power than anyone else to make substantive changes that might root out the conditions from which violence springs in our society, have any strong will to address the problem.

Since they are, to a great extent, now servants of the god of the market and enablers of the neoliberal culture of cruelty that is responsible for the mind-numbing violence we see all around us as the social state declines and as the promise of democracy (and of the future itself) is dismantled brick by brick by the owners of the world, at this point in our history.

More on the British Political-Economic Situation: Johann Hari on Cameron's Tea Party Government

British journalist Johann Hari first came on my radar screen during the papal visit earlier this year.  I liked his commentary at that time, and find him enlightening now as he talks about the behavior of David Cameron's "tea party" government in cutting social services and jobs, while protecting the assets of the top echelons of British taxpayers.  His essay on these themes yesterday at Huffington Post provides a valuable complement to what I posted the same day here at Bilgrimage re: these matters.

An excerpt:

Cameron's greatest talent turns out to lie in the shifting of blame. On his watch, the people who caused this crisis -- the super-rich and the city -- have been feted and fattened. The bankers are back to paying massive bonuses to themselves for crashing the global economy (with your money and mine). The official investigation into the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland claimed they had done nothing wrong -- and is being kept secret from the taxpayers who footed the bill for these mysterious non-mistakes. Cameron and Osborne's approach to their super-rich friends is best summarized in two headlines from the Financial Times. The first declared: "Tax officials to soften stance on tax avoidance," in which government officials apologized for being "too black and white" in enforcing tax rules on the super-rich. The second announced: "Tax boost for wealthy heirs," in which it was revealed Cameron and Osborne have given huge tax cuts to themselves and the only people they have ever really known.

Meanwhile, the people who did nothing to cause this crisis -- and were farthest from the scene of the crime -- are being punished by Cameron.

These waves of belt-tightening austerity for the poor and middle classes, but total exemption from austerity for the very rich, will, I fear, become the norm in the developed world for the foreseeable future--regardless of what the people in the democratic nations of the developed world want or for whom they vote.  The future of democracy does not look bright to me anywhere.

And as the will of voters is systematically crushed by economic decisions contravening that will, religion will increasingly be invoked as a justification for the oppression--and many key religious figures will be lining up to lend their support to the right-wing government leaders engineering the oppression in the name of God.

John Lewis and Louis Gohmert on Discrimination in the Military: Who Owns the Future of American Democracy?

Another way to put the point about Archbishop Dolan and Bill Donohue: these battles about who owns central Christian symbols are really also about who will ultimately prevail as history moves along, and as a rich, multifaceted tradition like Catholicism moves along with the current of history.  And as the meaning of its central symbols unfolds under the impulse of historical development, as believers appropriate the symbols and apply them to their experience in ever-shifting cultural contexts.

And that's the same battle that's now occurring in American democracy, as Congress debates the eradication of discrimination in the military.  John Lewis's rejoinder to Louis Gohmert is a classic encapsulation of conflicting tendencies within our democracy.  One tendency, rooted in the experience of the founding fathers themselves, has been, from the inception of our democracy, to restrict rights and privileges to white, property-owning males.

Gohmert continues that tradition, which, throughout American history, continuously finds new minority groups to oppose and exclude, from freed slaves to women to immigrants and gays and lesbians. 

John Lewis stands within another tradition in American democracy, which calls on our nation to live according to its better angels, to open wide the door of freedom and opportunity to everyone, and, in particular, to those most in need of a helping hand.  

For my money, one of these tendencies represents the future of American democracy (if we want to have a viable future).  The other doesn't.  I'll leave it to you to decide which is which, and where the moral arc of the universe seems to be pointing.