God and Politics

If you want to feel good about being a Democrat, just watch the kind of debate held in Florida last night among the GOP’s presidential hopefuls.  To be sure, the candidates were not in control of the questions, which CNN selected from citizen U-Tube submitted clips.  That said, it’s fair to assume that those asked reflected the perceived core interests of the candidates and their Republican primary voters.  No healthcare, economy, environment and scant little about education came to the fore as the eight white men scrambled instead to claim who best could protect us from illegal immigrants, abortion and taxes, not to mention insure our well stocked gun closets.  As to Iraq, John McCain and Fred Thompson (more tepidly) proclaimed we’re “winning”.  McCain let us know (repeatedly) that he shared Thanksgiving with the troops  and the former Law & Order DA that he was tired of our defeatism.  Rudy and Mitt led the charge on immigration accusing each of harboring illegals and defending their own toughness.   The focus on immigration shows how important this issue has become, along with it an unmistakable xenophobic undertone.  Romney’s defense -- it was his contractors who brought illegals to the Governor’s Mansion – included reference to someone with a “funny accent”, assumably Hispanic.  I wonder how it made members of that fast growing community feel to have the way they talk characterized as “funny”?

God was a big presence at the Republican debate.  Again, CNN chose the questions but at times one would think that those on stage were competing for leadership of a church rather than a secular democracy.  Indeed, being not merely God-fearing but Christian seemed to be a core qualification for the presidency.  Do you believe in the Bible (a leather bound copy of which was put forward by the questioner)?  Then followed a series of answers that included professed belief in divine revelation, “God’s word” as Romney put it.  Mike Huckabee was fast to remind us of his special qualifications being an ordained minister and student of theology, an obvious edge for any aspiring President.  What would Jesus’ position be on the death penalty also came into play giving the former Arkansas Governor one of his now trademark laugh lines.  Among the many subtexts of the evening was the question, not asked but implied, as to whether a Mormon has the proper bone fides to steer the Christian ship of State.

Mitt Romney is considering addressing the issue of his faith much as did Jack Kennedy during his primary battle against Hubert Humphrey in 1960.  Then as now there is the question of whether their respective authoritarian churches would allow for independent governance.  Ironically both served Massachusetts (where separation is fiercely respected), each with a track record of unfettered public service.   As such, the whole religion issue is somewhat of a red herring, and a very disturbing one at that.  In the case of Romney it is particularly so because the questions raised seem to revolve around whether he is a “real” Christian.  Taken at its face value, what does that, and last night’s debate, say about potential Jewish, Moslem, Hindu or, dare I suggest, atheist candidates for public office?

The religious issue raised in JFK’s campaign was put to rest and he did become the first Roman Catholic President.  The Pope did not rule the land as had been suggested.  This year, half of the Democratic candidates are Catholics, which, in light of 1960, is good news.  Of course, none is a front-runner and Kennedy remains the only Catholic to have held the office, which may say something as well.  As to Mormons, Republicans seem to be concerned about their relationship with Christ and the New Testament neither of which should have anything to do with leadership of our democracy.  If there is any concern, it should rather be directed at the theocratic tendencies of LDS Church seen in the role it plays in Utah where the line between church and state is sometimes wafer thin.  That said, being a Mormon doesn’t seem to stand in the way of Republican Orin Hatch or Democrat Harry Reid in carrying out their duties in the US Senate.

The large shadow cast by religion on our presidential campaign, and it extends to both parties, is the legacy of the past decades of social conservative dominance.  Among the most important byproducts of the US Attorney scandal was the revelation that 150 graduates of Liberty University’s fledgling law school “committed to academic and professional excellence in the context of the Christian intellectual tradition” now serve the Bush Administration.  What we’ve seen over the last years is not so much America’s turn toward God, but a systematic effort on the part of the theocratically minded to effectually gain appointive or elective power at all levels of government.  It is an effort so chillingly detailed in Michelle Goldberg’s book, Kingdom Coming.  This past October, both Frank Rich (in his column) and David Kirkpatrick (in The Times Magazine) wrote about the waning power of, and changes in priorities for, the Evangelical movement.  Perhaps so, but the damage is done and what they have wrought won’t soon disappear.  They have left an indelible impression on our public square, one that is largely religiously exclusive.  If you want high office in America today you’d better get God on your side and don’t even consider expressing the slightest doubt that there is a God, because your candidacy will be dead on announcement.

It is this atmosphere that accounts for the display of unseemly pandering done by Republican candidates at the recent “values” conference.  It also mandated that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama inject professions of faith into their campaigns.  It is the very same phenomenon that produced the sickening embrace of Rudy and Pat Robertson.  Mr. 9/11 Mayor now linked with the good reverend who agreed (with Jerry Falwell) that the towers had fallen as retribution of ungodly acts of abortionists, gays and the ACLU.  Pardon me, but even in writing about it, I feel compelled to go out and wash my hands.  Yes religion is front and center even seen in Rudy’s complaint, “You had a Democratic debate and not a single one of those Democratic candidates used the word Islamic terrorism.”  While the brunt of his message decried painting Islam with one brush, the continued insistence by Republicans of using terms like Islamo-Fascism is yet another symptom of this holy war, us vs. them, syndrome employing guns over there and ballots over here.

If you had any doubt about the urgent need to reassert the separation of church and state, then watch the unfolding Republican campaign and debates.  I neither question their heartfelt faith or that religion enriches their personal lives.  But don’t bring it to the office, and don’t impose it on my home.  They may claim that faith is essential to public service and to us as a nation, that it provides a moral compass.  The record doesn’t necessarily support their assertion.  The deeply religious Mitt Romney couldn’t bring himself to disavow waterboarding last night any more than could the Orthodox Jew Michael Dukasey at his confirmation hearings.  Perhaps God wants global peace and a good meal on all of our tables, but getting either will depend on us.  There is a lot to do in a world that, among others, men professing a religion they want to foist on us have mucked up.  Taking that or any religion out of the mix is an essential first step if we are to right the ship of state.  I wish one cold be optimistic that we’re on that course, but at least I haven’t lost my capacity to dream.

Rebellious Roots

Alex Haley had it right – where we come from informs who we are.  Nowhere is that root influence more evident or direct than from our parents.  I was most fortunate in that regard.  Ours was a home of nurturing, love, intellectual stimulation and, above all else, mutual respect.  We also always understood that we were different, in large measure because the father who was such a constant and immediate presence in our lives had a public persona.  At home and outside, he was a larger than life presence always dominating the room whether the nook where we breakfasted or the two thousand seat synagogue in which he preached.  No one had a greater influence in my life.  Sometime in the 1970s he began to commit his life’s story to paper. “This story”, he wrote in his introduction, “ is neither terribly exciting nor terribly boring. It will contain a great many matters which deal with my very personal and intimate life, but also with the fact that I have lived through periods of great historic importance, and at times I was permitted to play some role in them.”  He began writing his memoir late in life, a process cut short by the diminished strength of his last years.  Consequently, it only carried his story to the mid-point.  After my mother’s death, I converted the manuscript into electronic form but with scant hope that it would reach its deserved audience.   Memoirs like this are often consigned to that dustbin known as the family attic.  That could have happened here were it not for the efforts of our friend Clifford Kulwin who now occupies his former pulpit.  The result of his forwarding it to the eminent scholar Michael A. Meyer is the just published Joachim Prinz, Rebellious Rabbi, deftly edited and greatly enhanced by the historian’s insightful introduction.

Having someone tinker with your father’s words can be tricky, but from the start we were confident that Professor Meyer was absolutely the right person to undertake this project.  Like my siblings and I, he is the son of Jewish parents who escaped the horrors of Nazi Germany.  We gave him a free hand and he more than lived up to that trust.  Michael Meyer read my father’s story and, from the start, he got it.  Nothing is more symbolic of that than his choice of the title he shared with me before passing it on to the publisher.  “Rebellious”, that says it all and, in so many profound ways, it is the legacy that I cherish most.   Joachim Prinz, from his early rejection of his father’s prosaic disengaged lifestyle through the last days of his life was an unabashed rebel.  In different ways at different times he found himself entering doors of comfortable opportunity but chose always to go against the grain, to provoke rather than to sooth.  He repeatedly paid the price for being the infant terrible.  He held a series of prestigious positions – rabbi of the stodgy Berlin Jewish Community and of a large American Congregation, President of the American Jewish Congress and leader of other organizations – but he never was totally comfortable in those establishment roles.  In fact, being such an anti-organization man with no sense or stomach for the necessary political machinations, it’s remarkable that he got so far.  That he did, can be attributed only to his enormous talent and charismatic force. 

He could do just what most others could not, or at the very least do it better.  With no text before him, he could frame words, first in German and then in English, which would capture and transcend the moment.  His oratorical style moved the listener and countless numbers were drawn in just to hear the cadence of his powerful voice.  He was not in the pantheon of great scholars, but could communicate great ideas in language that even the untutored could easily understand while never courting what he often described as the “lowest common denominator”.  He respected those to whom he was most close, but equally his audience whose intelligence he consistently refused to insult.  He was, like one of his many compatriots in the struggle Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of peace.  He never picked up arms and was a proponent of “Peace Now” in Israel/Palestine long before it became fashionable.  But, like King, he was an obsessed protester who fiercely raised his voice, often risking life and limb to say what he thought was right, regardless of the circumstances.  He was by nature always suspicious of authority and never intimidated by wealth, power or position.

Joachim Prinz, Rebellious Rabbi’s pages reflect a memoir freely verbalized rather than prose carefully crafted, which is what it is.  While no doubt putting his editing pen through the draft, for the most part he dictated it to his longtime secretary Elsie Nathan.  It is nonetheless a compelling record of a moment now gone, of a history that should not be forgotten.  The times to which he referred in his introduction began in the relative calm of Germany at the turn of his Century but emerged into the nightmare of National Socialism.  It was the moment when a Jewish community (including our family) that could trace its roots back centuries found itself an outsider in its own land.  It was the period of the Second World War, when a generation of European immigrants had to find their way and carve out a productive place in a new country with a new language.  That required a rebooting and overcoming of great obstacles.  It was the time when, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world somewhat reluctantly, granted the survivors a new chance in their own homeland.  In all of this, he was at the center as he would be in the years that followed, most proudly when he stood with King and addressed the nation at the 1963 March on Washington or painfully when he opposed our intervention in Viet Nam.

What would this rebel think of our world?  He would, I’m convinced, be largely appalled.  The idea that his beloved United States could be in its present tarnished state would have devastated him.  Who would have thought that the home of the brave and the free, the bright beacon on the hill, could be debating torture, much less engaging in it?  Perhaps he wouldn’t be surprised at the sharp right turn taken by the American Jewish establishment including the then progressive organizations he once led, but he wouldn’t like it one bit.  Surely he would have expected peace among Arabs and Jews in a shared land, flowing with milk and honey not littered with the casualties of war and hate.  He would not be happy, but neither would he allow himself even a brief moment of self pity and defeat.  He would be on the stump, the in your face rebel reflected in the pages of his memoir.  I hope you’ll read it because his kind doesn’t come around too often, certainly not where we find ourselves today. 

Joachim Prinz, Rebellious Rabbi may be found at your bookseller or on line at Amazon and other places.  For additional information of his life and other writings check his website.

Agent of Change

Cyril de Grasse Tyson is eighty.  If so fortunate, most of us have encountered truly extraordinary human beings in our travels through life.  It doesn’t happen often and, if the encounter has any substance, the experience never leaves us.  It becomes part of who and why we are.  Cyril Tyson, whose friends simply know him as Ty, is a force of nature who came into my life in the 1960s as we both – he as its first executive director and I as one of its principal officers – gave our heart and soul to Newark’s United Community Corporation.  He was young and fresh from a stint at the groundbreaking Haryou-Act bringing his considerable experience and talents to a city in deep distress and a fledgling (the first funded under the 1994 Equal Opportunity Act) anti-poverty program that desperately needed a powerful jump start.  We bonded instantaneously and I, even younger, found in him not merely a wonderful lifelong friend but a masterful teacher.  Ty is the consummate teacher with a mind that keeps on churning 24/7 spewing profound lessons for anyone who will listen and most importantly hear.

Ty’s message has always at been consistent and constant.  It can best be characterized by the well-worn cliché that if you want to feed people don’t give them food but teach them how to plant a garden.  It was that incendiary philosophy that he brought to the UCC in those infant days of the “War on Poverty”.  He had no interest in philanthropic handouts but in building institutions of change that would empower a generation, many yet unborn, to take hold of their own lives and determine the direction of their community.  The UCC was not merely the administrator of programs, but an incubator for governance.  It was the only place where the powerless of that blighted city, albeit already a numerical majority, would be in control.  The logic of his ideas were unassailable, the execution bound to be bumpy.  Those in control – a combination of corrupt public officials, the business and religious power structure and, not inconsequentially, long entrenched black leaders – were in self-protective mode.  They knew where this grain of authentic democracy was heading.  The powerless were hungry for change and for self-determination, some of their nascent leaders already showing the promise that would one day carry them to public office.

With the now infamous riots that followed so soon afterward, some will suggest that the best we did was to stir the pot adding just another incendiary spark to the combustible dry wood that lay strewn on the streets and alleyways of Newark and other major American inner cities.  They would be wrong and principally so because Ty, unlike most of us in this instant gratification obsessed country, thinks long term.  He assuredly had no illusions about the then present state of things nor, despite his own education and sophistication, was he untouched by the extent and reach of baseless discrimination that frustrated so many of his people.  I remember him telling me of being pulled over by the Newark police who routinely harassed black men behind their wheels not for what they had done (in most cases nothing) but for who they were.  Ty wasn’t looking for overnight miracles nor, more importantly, for the ephemeral tokenism of one-off leadership.  He was demanding fundamental change and willing to wait out the unruly and often ugly process required to make it happen.

In Newark’s case it took almost four decades and a series of highly tarnished black administrations before the bright star of Cory Booker could take hold.  It may take many years more before that young mayor’s dreams morph into a modicum of reality.  But without Ty it never would have happened and, for that matter, without people like Ty who have been at the vanguard of leadership and co-agents of change, it’s unlikely that Barack Obama would stand before us as a viable Presidential candidate.  I’ve often heard actors interviewed by Charlie Rose or James Lipton talk about how significant a role luck has played in their career successes.  Perhaps, but when it comes to the affairs of state luck has nothing to do with it.  It takes vision, work and a great deal of patience.  It takes people like Ty.  They attack the job with purpose and with a doggedness that simple mortals like you and I so often lack.

Ty’s tenure in Newark was intentionally brief.  His objective was to prepare the ground and sow the seeds.  His planned departure was written into the agreement.  His succeeding career, which included high office in the Lindsay administration in New York, continued to be characterized by the same laser focus on empowerment of the disenfranchised and substantive change making.  His good friends, I among them, came to a Westchester hotel last weekend to celebrate his longevity.  The room was filled with people who have walked (or in his early years run) arm and arm with him.  His remarkable wife and three accomplished children paid tribute not merely by what they said but by who they are.  Too few Americans even know the name Cyril de Grasse Tyson, and they are poorer for it.  Many, and not merely African Americans, unknowingly are the beneficiaries of his lifelong work, advances and change that they now take for granted, see as their birthright.  In a world where we prize what was invented here, invented by us, many with Ty’s talents might resent their sense of entitlement, of unacknowledged accomplishment without struggle.  I'm certain that Ty revels in it, that he is satisfied most by what he has done not by the deserved (in my view far too limited) recognition that he has received over the years. Race remains a meaningful unresolved presence in our national room and poverty a cancer whose cure still eludes us, but the train has left the station and Ty remains one of its most distinguished drivers dragging it and us toward the destination that, however far off, lies ahead.

Inevitable is an Unwelcome Word

The Democrats took stage in Philadelphia.  It was billed as the moment when Barack Obama would take Hillary on, finally.  All the pundits are handicapping how he did.  The general conclusion, she survived.  We’re still in the horserace mode and still headed to unprecedented early primaries that will likely give birth to an extended period of two shadow governments (no incumbents in this race) and likely non-stop campaigning or perhaps worse blatant and unproductive posturing.  One only has to hope both Democrats and Republicans won’t be suffering buyer’s remorse by the time their conventions and the election comes around.  This can’t be good for the country, which is already stuck with a highly unpopular administration in limbo, holding its breath that there won’t be some last ditch act of bravado that will cause us incalculable harm.

The Republicans most recent appearance was not a debate but a trip down pandering lane at the Religious Right’s Value Voters Summit.  As pointed out by Frank Rich in last Sunday’s NY Times, it is a group whose leaders have only a faint shadow of their former influence.  Indeed, David Kirkpatrick in the same day’s Magazine section, pointed to the major upheaval within the Evangelical movement that is upending its narrow obsession with abortion and gays in favor of poverty, the environment  and, of all things, life beyond the womb.  Martin King would be pleased to hear it.  But the Republican pretenders didn’t seem tuned into these inconvenient truths.  They were hell bent on showing their true Christian colors.  Sadly that was one of the subtexts of the Values Summit – Jews, Moslems, Hindus and surely Atheists need not apply; having a Mormon present was as much of a big tent as they could muster.

There is one thing upon which both Democratic and Republicans do agree.  George Bush is a nightmare that can’t end too soon.  While the Democrats hammer away at the Bush-Cheney missteps, their opponents seem to have forgotten how to even mouth his name.  They also seem to agree, for the moment, that Hillary Clinton is the target though obviously in a very different way.  I myself still can’t warm up to her and continue to believe that, however good a campaign she has run so far, the country would be better served with someone who carries less baggage, who doesn’t find it necessary to court one and all.  I continue to fear that her underlying world view may not be sufficiently different than that of the current administration.  Her vote on Iran and its rationale speak volumes to that.  The Iraq vote, she contends after the fact, was for further negotiations not war something she repeats almost verbatim this time around, leaving one with an unmistakable and unnerving sense of deja vu.

Regardless of these misgivings, I must say that the Democrats lined up in Philadelphia (including Senator Clinton) were an attractive group.  Perhaps Denis Kucinich remains somewhat of a gadfly (UFOs and all) but there is something refreshingly pure about his straight forward position on both the war and the administration that rings true, however politically impractical it may be.  These candidates, each in their own way, represent a change in course from what we have now and any of them would probably make reasonably good Presidents, vastly better than the travesty we now endure with such pain. 

In many ways Chris Dodd and Joe Biden are the most seasoned, each with a highly commendable and thoughtful record in Congress.  That is also a weakness because their statements almost always have that “and then I wrote” quality conjuring up yesterday, past glories rather than tomorrow.  It’s the kind of experience that suggests pretty well established world views, which isn’t bad per say, but makes one sense an absence of any new and unfettered thinking.  They are excellent and smart public servants, but as Bill Clinton might say, we can do better.  Bill Richardson’s stand on the War is commendable and he is not afraid to voice specifics on the programs he supports, but with all his diplomatic skills, he was (if I remember correctly) somewhat of a go-it-alone lose cannon.

The big question everyone is asking at this point is why Barack Obama isn’t doing better?  He has raised an impressive amount of money from more people than any one else.  He draws huge crowds and his name is always on everyone’s lips.  He is smart and, unusual for a politician, a fine writer.  He delivered one of the most inspiring Keynotes ever heard at a political convention.  The last may not be a good omen – great Keynoters rarely win their party’s nomination; Mario Cuomo and Ann Richards come to mind while Albin Barkley made it only to the Vice Presidency.  If ever there was a time for a fresh face and a dramatic turn in a new direction this is it.  So what’s the problem?

It was the answer to that question that struck me watching the two-hour debate and considering the campaign thus far.  The Presidency is a unique office and the only national one.  Running for President is unlike anything else and the rhythm of a campaign vastly more complicated and demanding than running for Senator or Governor.  The question isn’t only why Obama seems to be lagging thus far, it’s equally why Ms. Clinton seems to be doing so well.  The answer in both cases is the same, and it’s not a matter of who has sufficient experience to be President, but who has been on the road more often.  This is her third national campaign and his first.  True she wasn’t the candidate the first two times around, but perhaps that in itself is an advantage.  She both participated (gave speeches and shook hands) and was able to watch; to pick up on what worked and what didn’t.  Hillary has been there, done that and it didn’t take long for her to get into a comfortable stride.  Obama, however large the audiences, is still on his learning curve.  The foreshortened schedule is definitely not to his advantage.

To prove the point we only have to look at John Edwards who arguably did somewhat better than Senator Obama in the debate.  He was more aggressive and, with Tim Russert’s help, probably got in the most telling line of the evening.  Edwards has experienced a national campaign, one in which he was a disappointing performer, but then John Kerry didn’t exactly inspire greatness.  Regardless, it has definitely given him a leg up in Philadelphia.  That said, the contrast between the ex-Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Illinois was not that great.  In fact it suggests that Obama is doing pretty well after all, even  that he might hit his stride in the few weeks left before the holiday hibernation and the Iowa Caucus.

One of my problems with Hillary, shared by others (though perhaps not by as many voters as I would think), remains dynasty.  It’s the prospect of potentially twenty-eight (a young lifetime) years of Bush-Clinton.  Some people say that’s unfair and my fears are unfounded.  Perhaps so, but one of the things that bothers me about her campaign, something that may come back to bite her in the end, is an unmistakable sense of entitlement.  Both the candidate and her most ardent supporters see this as “her turn, her due”.  Without question she was a real trouper and loyal helpmate to Bill Clinton, putting her own career on the backburner as it were.  But in fact that may be over done.  She wasn’t, you will remember, back home in the kitchen baking cookies and she parlayed her experience into a best selling book and a Senate seat.  The nomination was Bob Dole’s due in 1996 and you remember what happened to him.  Nobody is due the Presidency.

I was (and remain) a big Clinton fan.  Days after his first election I went to the Caribbean for a vacation and was so excited about him that I pinned a campaign button onto my beach bag just to glow in the victory.  It is conventional wisdom to say he had a flawed character.  Perhaps so, but in the bright light of 24/7 news, some of his predecessors would certainly have fared no better in that regard.  The iconic FDR died with Lucy, not Eleanor, at his side and JFK…well.  Hillary is no Bill and that probably speaks in her favor, but it also reminds us of what’s missing.  There is something juicy about Bill, something almost primordially human.  When saying, “I feel your pain” we truly believe it.  Blood runs through those veins as opposed to Hillary who, while perhaps not feeding her heart with ice water, somehow lacks that natural and comforting connection.  Presidents don’t have to be warm and fuzzy puppies, but we like to think they come from our neighborhood, or at least have spent enough time there to understand who we are and what we need.

Did Hillary get knocked out last night?  No, but perhaps there was the beginning of something.  Is that wishful thinking on my part?  It may well be, but again I’m just not in the mood for replaying the best or least worst of all possible worlds.  We’re in a very big hole and old roads are unlikely to lead us out of it.  Hillary is good.  No doubt about it, but we can and we should do better even if Bill doesn’t admit to it.

Dreamland

The Santa Ana winds are fueling wild fires in California.  Draught is threatening to cripple the Southeast.  The Turkish and Iranian boarders with northern Iraq have become a tinderbox where rebel Kurds threaten to throw the only relatively tranquil area of the country into turmoil.  John McCain makes the rounds of talk shows calling for fiscal conservatism and then goes on stage to acclaim Ronald Reagan whose tax cuts and defense spending produced record deficits.  Oil, thanks both to demand and the collapse of the once almighty dollar, has hit $90 a barrel.   It turns out that we have more than twice the armed forces in Iraq than most of us realized, more than half of them hired guns.  The Republican candidates supported by the media have decided on the Democratic Nominee even though not a single ballot has been cast.  Voting machines continue to malfunction calling into question how accurate a tally we can expect in the 2008 election.  Democrats on the Hill, left largely with oversight as a tool for influence, fail to penetrate Blackwater Chief Executive Prince’s veneer of patriotism or to really expose the shadow military that he and other contractors have created with our tax dollars. 

This is but the tip of the iceberg in what appears to be a perfect storm run totally out of control.  But what of ourselves?  We, it would seem, are pretty much conducting our lives untouched by all that is going on.  We sit by happily as an irresponsible Administration aided and abetted by a compliant Congress borrow billions to finance a misguided war while we eagerly await April’s potential tax refunds.  Al Gore wins the Nobel Prize for truth telling, but most of us continue to function as if infinite resources will be at our command.  Our priority is maintaining the lifestyle we see as our entitlement.  SUV sales have come down, but only a bit.  Wal-Mart is committed to selling compact fluorescents, but most Americans hold on to the glow of incandescent light.  Perhaps worst of all, while occasionally thinking about all these things, and telling pollsters that we’re headed in the wrong direction, most of us seem more interested in avoiding inconvenient truths than confronting them.  We don’t want to upset our dinner guests with unpleasant thoughts.  We've added reality to the taboos of talking politics and religion in polite company.

It would be an inaccurate reading of history to suggest that all six million Jews could have been spared Hitler’s gas chambers.  At the same time, there is no question that large numbers, particularly of German Jews, perished because they simply refused to accept the reality of their situation.  With roots planted centuries deep, they saw the increasing compromises in their daily life and diminishment of freedom as a passing episode not inevitable disaster.  Likewise we live the illusion that “it couldn’t happen here.”  I am not suggesting that we are heading for a Holocaust, or that events unfolding before our eyes mirror those faced by my parents and their generation in Berlin of the 1930s.  But make no mistake this is a time when many of the values we take for granted and hold dear are being eroded.  Contemplate, for example, the potential of that huge and growing paramilitary run largely by right wing conservatives at the moment when they decide the country is headed in the wrong direction.

As so often happens, truth emerges more powerfully in the metaphor than in any direct expression.  This struck me as I listened again to that John McCain campaign speech on C-Span.  It’s not the straight talk (often more a slogan than a reality) that keeps McCain in the game, but his compelling life story, which he unabashedly repeats much as Rudy wraps himself in 9/11.  McCain, a third generation military man, proclaimed that we didn’t lose the Viet Nam War on the battlefield, but on the streets of American cities.  We’ve all heard that before from conservative politicians, but think for a moment about what those streets represent.  Yes, something called democracy where civilians, meaning officials elected by us, have control over the military.  To be sure, McCain would deny that he was challenging democracy, but if so he is either deaf to the underlying meaning of his words or he is disingenuous.

Tom Brokaw made a fortune in writing about what he called “the greatest generation”.  I question his premise, because there has been no single greatest generation.  Moreover, it’s hard to claim that those who fought in World War II were any more dedicated or personally courageous than those who fought in Viet Nam or are now in Iraq.  Equally so, the very idea that the conflict  he considered can be characterized as a “good war” is in itself flawed.  Wars can be necessary and fighting them can be noble, but they can never be characterized as good.  To me, the greatest generation of the twentieth century were not those who landed at Omaha beach, but those who marched on our streets in the name of righting America’s wrongs and getting us our of Viet Nam.  People were energized and people power was exercised to change the country’s course were it ending segregation or stopping an ill-conceived conflict.  It is said that our streets today are not filled because we have no draft or because lunchrooms are now integrated.  Perhaps so, but the sad fact is that most of us are simply averting our eyes and hoping it will all go away.  It won’t, and in the end we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves. 

Stuck on the Old Road

The last thing we needed was a dispute about Florida balloting.  How quickly they forget and how shortsighted at the very moment when this critical state is in play thanks the growing disaffection of its large Hispanic community with Republicans.  Leaving aside my recently expressed position that the primary process is far too long, I am solidly with Florida on this one.  Their, and some other states, decision to move up primaries is not an expression of revolt, but raises an appropriate question as to whether the Iowa/New Hampshire axis still makes sense in the 21st Century.  Looking at the reaction of the DCC, one would think that the order of primaries was written into the Constitution, which of course it is not.  Perhaps the idea of giving small states a fair chance at influencing legislation embodied in the creation of the Senate makes sense, but the idea that these small states should play an inordinately disproportional role in selecting party nominees in the digital age is anachronistic at best.  We’re inexplicably stuck on the old road.  If you really want to level the playing field, abolish the Electoral College and make the votes of individual citizens truly equal, regardless of where they live.  One person, one equal vote.

Of course, I don’t understand why the Florida thing is even an issue worth discussing.  We have already been informed that the November ’08 will be the equivalent of a subway series – Mr. 9/11 vs. Ms. Dynasty.  This seems to have particular allure to the girls and boys on the press bus and on talk shows.  Has anyone noticed what happened to the Mets in the run-up to the off-season or what seems to be happening to the Yankees at this writing?  The former seemed so certain to be winners this year and the latter are assumed champions by Divine right.  Really?  While you’d never know it from much of the coverage, the Presidential election is not a ball game, or a game at all.  What unnerves me about the prospect of a Rudy-Hillary match-up is that it so totally out of sync with the notion that the country is desperate for change, most especially when it comes to Iraq.  The Republican (who justifies Judith’s curious cell phone calls as a necessary post-9/11 “keeping in touch”) was, is, and will be a hawk.  The Democrat was, claims she isn’t now but remains, I would suggest, hawkish to the core.  Her recent vote to declare Iran’s army a terrorist organization, an unprecedented and highly provocative move, only speaks to that proposition.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Rudy and Hillary are one and the same or that, given such a choice, I wouldn’t pull the lever for the Senator in a heartbeat.  It’s just that the end result may more or less keep us stuck on the old road when we can least afford it.

In the midst of the silly Florida debacle and talk of inevitable nominees, John Murtha and two Congressional colleagues floated a provocative and sensible idea for funding the War.  It was an effectual calling of the cards in the Poker game being played by a fiddling Washington in the face of a world on fire.  What they proposed was a defined and temporary tax levy, a pay as you go plan of fiscal responsibility.  They were, of course, immediately branded “tax and spend” Democrats in what Republicans saw as a great public relations coup.  It was an old and predictable song, but not nearly as painful as the spineless reaction of the Democratic leadership that immediately distanced itself, dismissing it out-of-hand as a legitimate idea for discussion.  What a pity and what a loss of opportunity to have a mature discussion in a city that seems mired in it childish ways.  Consider for a moment what might have been if the vote authorizing this disastrous and unnecessary war would have mandated accompanying enabling taxes?  States with balanced budget requirements face exactly that prospect when authorizing extraordinary expenditures.  But we’re not discussing the Murtha proposal because we’re stuck on the old road.

It is equally disturbing and frustrating that Democrats remain so inept at responding to such Republican charges and the misleading slogans that accompany them.  The question that should have been asked in retort is, what is so bad about “tax and spend”?  Is it not an appropriate and prudent way to approach fiscal matters?  Is it not vastly better and more responsible than the Republican way that can only be described as “borrow and spend”.  Their way now, and during the hallowed Reagan years, has led to historically high huge deficits.  What’s even worse this time around is that it has made us beholden to, of all things, China, as our ultimate banker?  I guess that beats “the Red menace” but doesn’t it also suggest (the relationship not borrowing) the importance of not remaining stuck on old roads? The Republican idea is to cut taxes and then to spend like drunken sailors while shamelessly promoting the myth that the Democrats are the irresponsible lot.  The Democrats idea is to sit back and let themselves be defined, even by the big lie.  Guess who wins that round; guess whose stuck on the old road?

This may well be the election year that even we can’t screw it up.  But wining is not enough.  It has to be the year that leads to substantive and measurable change.  Some will suggest that we’re stuck in Iraq no matter who wins.  I don’t discount that extricating ourselves may take longer than Governor Richardson glibly suggests, but leave we must, sooner rather than later.  In that regard the candidates' records and their underlying intent become critical.  We need someone who tells us how we can move ahead, not why we’re stuck on the old road.  The next President will be confronted by a reputation deficit that pales the economic one in comparison.  A real change in policy and attitude is our only hope to recoup some of our losses, hopefully a substantial portion of them.  History moves on, all the more rapidly so in this nanosecond world.  We’re unlikely to find ourselves in an exclusive "club of one" ever again and this may well not end up as our century.  That doesn’t mean we’re without options or opportunities.  The good old days, such as they were, are gone.  But it seems to me that something better than what we have now may still be in our reach.  Only tomorrow’s leadership in the drivers seat can accomplish that.  Conventional wisdom suggests, to the contrary, that experience is required, but I fear it will too easily rely on the tried and no longer true.  We dare not simply retrace the old roads that essentially lead to some dead end.  Our kids deserve and demand much more than that.

Letter to the World's "Baptists"

I was thinking again about the sermonic peroration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s UN speech during a run yesterday morning on one of Chapel Hill’s lovely trails.  Realizing it was October 1st, the day on which it was sent in 1801, the letter from a newly elected Thomas Jefferson addressed to the Danbury Baptists came to mind.  Jefferson’s words have had a profound impact on our country, standing as the definitive interpretation of the First Amendment.  “Believing with you that religion is a matter that lies solely between man and his God,” Jefferson wrote, “that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”  With these two things in mind, I was struck by our own and the Iranian President's similarities.  To be sure George W. Bush’s words are tempered by Jefferson’s admonition, but he, like Ahmadinejad, sees his mission coming from God.  While I disagree with both of them on this account, I don’t doubt that either man's belief is heartfelt.  They truly feel they are carrying out God’s will, but which God is that?  And that’s the very question implicit in crafting the Constitution’s insightful line of demarkation, so clearly articulated by our third Chief Executive.

This similarity in outlook, while surely different in ideological content, is characteristic of a world in which it can be argued that religion too often manifests itself as part of the problem and not of the solution.  Going into battle with “God’s blessing”, which clearly is nothing new, virtually mandates a conflict of absolutes and is the inevitable mother of the intractable.  If you really believe that you’re executing God’s will, the perfect and infallible God, then there can be no room for compromise.  It’s a matter of right and wrong.  You or I may have a personal or even collective point of view on this subject or that, but so long as we see ourselves as its source, we are amenable to change.  We may not like giving in or worse being bested in argument by others, but the stakes remain relatively low.  All that changes with God in the mix, because while we are fallible, God is not, certainly not if he is God.  So giving ground means questioning not merely the Ultimate but one’s own faith.  That can’t happen.  It is for precisely that reason that mixing religion and affairs of state is so poisonous and why, however ironic, it makes peacemaking virtually, if not totally, impossible.

What we need today are not sermons at the United Nations or invocations of God’s blessing on our actions, but a forceful letter the world’s “Baptists”.  That may be a quixotic idea, but I really think that much more important than fighting some mythical “War on Terrorism”, we should be focused on removing religion from our conflicts on all sides.  That may not be as unrealistic as it sounds because this imputed religious content is essentially born our of human manipulation, the selective reading of one scripture or another to meet purely self-serving human objectives – as true for Bush as it is for Ahmadinejad.  We’re in Iraq for many reasons, most (and probably all) of them wrong, but the one thing I’m confident didn’t bring us to Baghdad was God.  No I don’t presume to know God’s will better than George Bush does, I simply know that, (assuming God exists), neither of us is in a position to really know it.  The same can be said about a Jihad whether declared by Osama bin Laden or anyone else.  All of these are smokescreens purposefully raised by powerful humans because the reputed work of God brooks no questioning.

If the world is to have any hope for peace, we must collectively erect a wall of separation between our individual religious beliefs and how we interact with one another.  Erecting such a wall suggests no lessening of religion itself or of fervent religious belief; it simply puts religion where it belongs as Jefferson said, something “solely between man and his God”.  His (or her, Mr. Jefferson) God is not necessarily your God or mine, which is the point.  Conflict is between people, and to the best of our knowledge, God has nothing to do with it unless the all-knowing is in the habit of regularly changing sides.  Does God (assuming he’s on our side) support Saddam and the Taliban one day and oppose them the next?  Perhaps this separation will (or can) never happen, but think about its implications for a moment and you’ll come to realize that it may well be the last real hope for humankind.  When Gandhi led the fight against the British his greatest disappointment was the resulting split of the sub-continent along religious lines, leading to a volatile divisiveness that remains until this day.  Much of the intractable dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is equally informed by religiously based “territorial rights”.  None of these serve peace; all bode ill for the future.

Perhaps a letter to the world’s “Baptists” is an unlikely dream.  I fear that to be the case since too many people are vested in the conflicts that use religion as their rallying flag.  But looking at the result, perhaps, as our own Supreme Court embarks upon another term exactly 206 years later to the day, we would all do well to pull out Jefferson’s letter.  The separation of Church and State has been under systematic attack since religious fundamentalists began to influence not merely Republican politics but the country’s conversation.  In pleading for separation, many liberals and even a good number of conservatives, hold fast to the Jeffersonian ideas principally to protect specifics like a woman’s right of reproductive choice or keeping “Intelligent Design” out of the public schools.  I agree with them, vigorously so.  But there is something much more ominous at stake.  When religion and governance mix, violent conflict seems to follow.  That could be the greatest threat to homeland security.   I truly believe that the tranquility of the nation hangs in the balance when we tinker with this basic First Amendment principle.  The record is clear in that regard.  It would be good to send a letter to the world’s “Baptists”, but at the very least we should urgently send one to ourselves.