It is fifty years since these speeches were delivered.

With the kind of legislation being passed right now in this and other states I see racial prejudice arising again. It goes under other names such as “illegal immigrants” and “the 47%” but it is racist at its root. I don’t think there’s much difference between Sheriff Arpaio of Phoenix and “Bull” Conner of Birmingham, Alabama. Some are trying to undo the Voting Rights Act and in our state the governor will probably sign onto the end of the Racial Justice Act.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/LH8F_0Mzv0e6Ro1yEm74Ng.aspx

This morning’s T-N reports that the defense budget bill includes barring the closure of any domestic military base including Gitmo. It disallows further nuclear weapon reductions. In general it continues the blank check for the Pentagon. Still under debate is an issue involving sexual assaults and how they will be handled within the system of military justice (those under military authority are under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and  do not have the same rights the rest of us have). Listening to Kennedy’s speech in 1963 I cannot help but feel that here too we are going backward.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/BWC7I4C9QUmLG9J6I8oy8w.aspx

In June, 1963, when these two speeches were delivered I had just graduated from high school and was filled with idealism. JFK was then a ray of light in a very dark world. I am fully aware of his weaknesses and mistakes, but he was a true leader for this country, praising what is good and calling for repairing what was wrong. I see very little of that today from either party. Obama is probably the most eloquent President we’ve had since JFK but there is some distance between what he says and does.

It is up to those of us who are not in and of the government to work nonviolently for change.

Last weekend I visited a congregation as a guest rabbi.  The last activity of the Shabbat was a study session which was kind of hijacked by someone who insisted that, if there are authoritative Muslims who condemn terrorism, it would be front-page news.  I get that a lot.

My response was and is that most of our news media refuse to publish stories on this.  I believe that is because our news media are owned by a handful of corporations that also have an interest in keeping the Pentagon’s budget bloated.  This is justified by a never-ending state of war.  That war used to be against Communism and is now against “Terror.”  It is easier to let people think all Muslims are potential terrorists than to tell the truth, which is that the Muslim fundamentalists who engage in terrorism represent neither Islam nor Muslims except themselves.

I did a little research and would like to share the results with my blog readers.  These are a few of the items I found on the Web including several sources you can refer to.  If you are truly interested in the subject, some of the sites have email subscriptions.

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This goes under the “what did you think would happen” category.  If you under-staff Administration agencies and prevent appointment of officials to lead them you, will get inefficient government.  I am not a big fan of bureaucracy but bureaucracy is essential to the functions of government.  All three of the current controversies POTUS is facing are due, in one way or another, to the intentional weakening of government that seems to be the top priority of today’s conservatives.  None rise to the level of scandals despite the comparisons GOP mouthpieces are making to Watergate and Iran-Contra.

On the AP scandal I am rooting for AP.  If a government agency has a leak, they need to fix it.  They should not go after the press which is only doing what a free society needs for it to do.  I find it very interesting that conservative pundits seem troubled by this one.  They are the ones who say security is the highest priority and that government in DC should fix leaks.  Some seem forced to sympathize with Obama on this one.  The press did its job, government did not and government violated the rights of a free press rather than fix the problem in their agency.

The Benghazi scandal is a tempest in a teapot.  Someone screwed up, but it is hard to tell whether it was State or the military or even Chris Stephens himself (Why was he in an under-protected facility in the most violent city in Libya on 9/11?  If that is so his mistake robbed us of one of our best foreign service people.).  It seems to me that perhaps the problem is lack of funds to provide the personnel required.  In any case it goes beyond irony all the way to Chutzpah for the GOP to complain about the possibility that the administration misled the American public.  This is the same party (and many of the same people) that was in power when we suffered two outrageous intelligence failures: 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  Both the Administration and Congress, as well as several government agencies, had plenty of warnings concerning what occurred on 9/11.  The intelligence for invasion of Iraq was cooked and, based on a desire to invade that pre-dates 9/11, was based on misinformation from two sources who turned out to be Irani agents (Ahmed Chalabi and Curveball).  It is easy to see in hindsight that the major beneficiary of the Iraq war is Iran.  Compared to those and compared to Watergate and Iran-Contra (as well as Gulf of Tonkin) Benghazi is a fixed parking ticket.

Then there is the IRS scandal.  This looks to me like a direct result of the lack of leadership and staffing for this agency which is the result of budget-cutting and also the obstructionism of Congress.  There are 68 administration positions that are unfilled, 43 of them for more than a year.  The GOP has employed its abusive use of filibuster to prevent “advise and consent” as required by the Constitution.  I see this as clear evidence that the GOP is quite serious about Norquist’s desire to reduce the power of the federal government until it can be drowned in a bath-tub.

Another aspect of the IRS scandal is Citizens United, which effectively allows certain non-profits (the 501c4) some partisan political activity without restrictions on the use of funds.  I have lived my whole adult life in the world of non-profit organizations.  One absolute no-no is any partisan political involvement.  A house of worship that promotes a party or candidate risks its tax-exempt status as do most NGOs.  The IRS has had to adapt to a new wrinkle in our absurdly complex tax code, which is defining the line that a 501c4 cannot cross if it is to retain its tax-exempt status.  It is evident that the division of the IRS that reviews applications for tax-exempt status was trying to apply the new laws.  They have to deal with several hundred of these applications every year and they are understaffed.  This means that they had to have some way of flagging possible problems.  They went about it in the wrong way, but were actually following a long-standing practice that has long been applied to liberal and progressive groups.  There used to be an attorney-general’s list of organizations that were considered “fellow travelers” of Communism.  This lasted from 1947 until Nixon (?!) abolished it in 1974.  A lot of good people lost jobs and careers and, of course, government security clearance because of that list.  It included mostly progressive organizations but also the extreme right.  It was instrumental in the shameful time of McCarthy and HUAC.  People with progressive politics, war resisters, student organizations, civil rights groups and others were the constant targets of phone taps, FBI studies (my favorite is their investigation of the 60s song “Louie Louie”), placement of undercover agents (who sometimes tried to provoke violence), and trumped up charges (e.g., the Harrisburg Seven case and trial).  Of course they used the IRS against political dissidents.  Please excuse me if I regard the Tea Party’s reaction as whining.  Such attention is evidence that you or your group has gotten the government’s attention, which is one of the main purposes of political and social activism.  They are probably celebrating.

Obama is a disappointment.  I thought that twenty years of community work in Chicago, which meant knowing how to work a political system, was a great preparation for DC.  I guess not.  Far from being the socialist some try to brand him as, he is actually a middle-of-the-road politician who tries to work the system without really trying to change it.

I wish we had our old political parties back.  They had their weaknesses, but they were not prisoners of ideologies or slaves to lobbyists.  There were conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans.   All three branches have managed to grind our Constitutional system to a halt.  The constant scandals now are the result, aided and abetted by news media which are now more devoted to entertainment than to information.   I believe that freedom in America is now an illusion, but that’s a subject for another blog post.

Bigotry among Christian Conservatives

I’m usually very patient talking with people I do not agree with.  However there are two kinds of people and talk I have less patience for – bigots and liars.  Recently I was handed a brochure that just pissed me off.

It was published by a conservative group that claims it follows conservative Christian principles.  I have no problem with that.  Most conservative Christians are following their core beliefs.  My problem with this group is that it is now publishing what I can only describe as hate literature.  That I cannot abide.  The org, Concerned Women for America (CWA), was formed and is run by a well-known Christian conservative, Beverley LaHaye.  Its original purpose was anti-abortion (one of these days I’ll post about why I do not consider most of these people to be, as they call themselves, pro-life), but it has diversified.

I was handed this brochure at a session of a five-part series on Islam by a man who has been harassing local people with anti-Muslim literature and opinion.  The brochure is entitled “Sharia Law: A Threat to America as We Know It.”  It relies on quotes from several conservative pundits including former Speaker of The House Newt Gingrich.  It strikes me as the height of irony for Gingrich to be speaking out on behalf of women considering his personal history, but let’s put that aside.

This brochure makes no distinction whatever between Islamism (the Muslim extremism represented by the Wahhabi and Salafi movements).  Of course, most likely, these people think they are the only real Christians, so it is understandable that they equate all of Islam with its fundamentalist extremists.  That is a big lie.  Islamic extremists represent only a small percentage of the world’s Muslims and an even tinier percentage of American Muslims.

It cites conditions in Saudi Arabia, which is unique among Muslim states, for its repressive form of Islam. One of the speakers at our program was asked which Muslim nations most truly reflect Muslim tradition in practice.  She answered, “none of the Arab states,” and named the nation with the most Muslims, Indonesia, as the best in these terms.  The CWA brochure makes no distinctions and cites the worst case as a general description of Islam in practice.

Their complaint about Sharia is that it is not a faith but a way of life encompassing every area of life.  To a Jew this is a very nasty implication.  Judaism is a way of life whose laws and teachings cover every aspect of human experience.  There are many civil laws involved but the principle for us is “The Law of The Land is the law.”  The same principle applies to normative Islam.  Muslims living in a non-Muslim state are obligated to live by the laws of that state in all civil matters.  My guess is that the people at CWA want to see our nation run under what they think of as Biblical law (the term for this is Dominionists).  I know no American Muslim, no matter how religious, who wants America ruled by Islamic (let alone Islamist) law.  Nor is there any remote likelihood that any religious legal system will become the law of the land.  This is flagrant fear-mongering.

As for Biblical law, I know a thing or two about that.  One of the points made in the brochure has to do with Sharia-compliant finance (FCS) which is investment funds that honor Muslim moral and ethical principles.  This has become a huge phenomenon since such funds currently control about $400 billion in investments.  I know a little something about this too.  Jewish law has a lot to say about how business is to be conducted in a moral and ethical manner.   I have studied these laws and principles and was once in communication with a Wall Street financier who asked me about how Jewish tradition would set up an investment fund based on moral principles.  His was one of the first of these funds.

Most prominently this involves a prohibition on charging interest.  This is a flatly stated Biblical principle (Exodus 22:15 and Luke 6:30, 35) and several other places).  I have yet to meet a Christian in finance who wants to uphold this principle, but Jewish and Muslim law do.  Yes, we use some interesting ways around this in order to conduct business, but the best form of finance in both traditions involves honoring this principle.  Sharia-compliant also means not investing in alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and several other areas of moral and ethical interest.  Fair conduct in the marketplace are also in Jewish and Muslim rules.  The attack on FSCs is, in a very real sense, a denial of actual Biblical principles.

The bottom line is the assertion that “Sharia is a necessary precondition to Islamicizing a society.”  The “expert” cited is Andrew McCarthy, a conservative pundit who has made a career out of anti-Muslim fear-mongering.

We’ve been here before.  Jews have been accused of similar things for centuries, including in this country.  We were accused of trying to bring down Christianity and Western civilization by Henry Ford and Fr. Coughlin, by Readers’ Digest, and by some who still write these things even now.  This is flat-out bigotry and hate-mongering and is cousin to the Klan and the Christian Identity movement.  It is a misuse and misrepresentation of Christianity.  It is flat out vile.

Next week I will be speaking at the last session of the program on Islam.  This person with his brochures is sure to be there.  He has a sense of mission.  If I were to speak to him today it would be in anger.  That would make him a victim, as would shaming him (shaming a person in public is considered the moral equivalent of bloodshed – an idea I wish could be honored by today’s political commentators).  Somehow, by Wednesday afternoon, I will find a way to address this collection of half-truths, lies, and fabrications.  I pray I will keep my anger in check.

Just to leave my readers with a laugh, here are the lyrics to a song by the Austin Lounge Lizanrds.

We’d like to set the record straight by singing of the newt
For newts are open-minded; they are flexible and cute
A newt can breathe in water and a newt can breathe on land
And if you are a different critter newts will understand
Newts are not mean-spirited; they never are unfair
Newts are not underhanded and are not afraid to share
Newts do not have bad haircuts because newts are lacking hair
But the newt called Gingrich drives all true newts to despair
Gingrich the Newt’s a disgrace to the name
When true newts see him they feel so ashamed
He’s the black sheep of the newt family
The one rotten fruit on the newt family tree
Newts don’t prey on other newts; in that they don’t believe
And you will never catch a newt with something up his sleeve
They’re tolerant to different environments and so
They don’t send little newties to the orphanage to grow
What kind of newt wears a suit and a tie
And frightens small children as he rushes by?
But we admit that his suit suits him good
Much more discreet than a sheet and a hood
A newt may be cold-blooded but he won’t go to extremes
And you can trust a newt to be exactly what he seems
Newts are sorry if you’re sad; they’re happy if you’re gay
But Gingrich is perverse, and worse
He’s proud to be that way
Gingrich the Newt is puffed up like a toad
So full of himself that he’s bound to explode
And then we’ll raise up our tails in salute
A fitting tribute
To that horse’s patoot
Gingrich the Newt
Lyrics from <a href=”http://www.elyrics.net”>eLyrics.net</a&gt;

46 Idiots

The Senate defeated a bill supported by 90% of Americans.  This is clear evidence of how truly dysfunctional Congress is today.  Mark Twain wrote, “Suppose you are a member of Congress and suppose you are an idiot – but I repeat myself.”  Back in the Gilded Age the Senate was known as the millionaires club and their guiding star was money.  We are back to just that situation.  The problem is compounded by the reality that it takes a super-majority of 60 to pass a bill; that the GOP says openly it considers its main job to be denying Obama and the Dems anything and everything; and the Citizens United case and the “money is speech” case that have turned DC into bribery central.

Why did these 46 senators vote against universal background checks for gun purchases?  They are concerned that the NRA, which has 4 Million members (85% of whom supported this bill) in a nation of 330 million people, would support and fund opponents and end their political careers, if they voted for the measure.  The NRA wields an inordinate amount of power.  Their face, Wayne LaPierre, who is paid just under a million dollars a year, opposes any or all additional regulations for gun ownership.  This benefits their true sponsors – gun manufacturers who are making money hand over fist by spreading the absurd rumor that the federal government is going to take away all their guns.

That an irresponsible lobbying organization can work against the public interest so successfully is a symptom of a much bigger problem.  The only guiding principle in DC is money.  This is a reversion to the age of Robber Barons.  (An excellent history of that era is Barbara Tuchman’s “The Proud Tower” but I also have Twain’s “The Gilded Age” on my iPad and I plan on reading it soon)  Our news media are now owned by a handful of corporations who seem to go along with the political philosophy of treating the electorate like mushrooms (keep them in the dark and feed them plenty of BS).  The blogosphere and Internet may be our only hope for free expression.  We need a revival of muckraking journalism and the kind of reforms that Teddy Roosevelt achieved.

What can we do?  You do not have to remain silent.  Sign online petitions and encourage your friends to do so.  I have not yet found one in response to that shameful vote, but you can let the White House know you want universal background checks.  There are campaigns n this in several states.  Let your senators know how you feel about the way they voted.  If there is a movement in your state, sign on.  You can request face time with your reps in DC and the state legislatures in their home office in your area.  If you can go to DC or your state capital, ask for face time there.  You might find yourself meeting with a staff member, but that’s okay.  Elected officials figure that if one person takes this trouble there are a lot more like her among the voters.  If you are a gun owner and agree that we need better laws, make sure you tell them that.

I did a lot of this over the past 35 years or so.  One of the reasons for my blog is to make my readers understand how important it is not to act on your beliefs and opinions.  As Gandhi said, be the change you want to see.