The Right Wing War Against The Future

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" – Statute of Liberty

For the past two years the Republicans, the tea-partiers, and the other wing-nuts have been waging war, but despite the prognosticators on cable and the talking heads they are not at war with President Obama, the Muslims, or the Latinos. These folks are not upset about health-care reform, deficits, or bail-outs. This war is not about secret Muslim terrorist’s plots, socialist takeovers, or gangster governments. What we are witnessing is the historic battle between those who cling to a false sense of history against what they see as an uncertain and frightening future. A future that is frightening because it is looking darker and more foreign.

For all of the talk about the promise that is America the truth is that there is and always has been a large segment of our society that has sought to prevent the inevitable movement into tomorrow. The one constant in life is change and those cultures that have resisted change have done so at their own demise. It’s not like we don’t have thousands of years of human history to study and learn from. But let's not forget that the Flat Earth Society still meets annually. All we have to do is look at our own brief history to witness the lengths that some will go to prevent the march of time. Our history is filled with anti-immigrant, anti-religion, and racial prejudice all under the same pretense of maintaining someone’s version of their America that didn’t include the unfortunate groups who were targeted.

It is mind boggling to me how those who sought change, tolerance, and what appeared to be an embracing of the future by electing our current president could so easily be frightened by the rhetoric of those who for personal gain are willing to stoke the fears of so many. I believe that America is schizophrenic. On the one hand we want to be perceived as this nation of tolerance and equal opportunity and on the other hand we cling to this desire to maintain the status quo. Change is great so long as nothing really changes or change is what other people need to do. I believe that there is a deep seated fear within all of us that we try to keep hidden. A fear that dates back to the beginning of human time that if fed or left to fester can lead to unspeakable horrors in the human soul.

We all at some point have had to face this fear of the others. Some of us have been able to confront these fears and overcome them and are better people for it. However, there is also a segment of the population who has chosen not to confront these fears and instead have chosen to allow innuendo and stereotypes to reinforce their worst fears about their fellow citizens. I guess it just goes to show that if you repeat something often enough and loud enough some people will eventually begin to believe it. What is troubling to me about this current state of political discourse is that the further we get into the term of this president the more people begin to question his religion, his right to be president, and even his Americaness.

What the wing-nuts don’t seem to understand is that in a republic form of democracy the representatives govern by the agreement of the governed. Once you delegitimize the government then anarchy and chaos are sure to follow. You can’t throw gas on the conspiracy crowd by calling the government illegitimate and unlawful and then expect them to recognize it for the rhetoric that it is. I don’t think there is any serious person who would argue that our government is broken, but those who have for years worked to break it should not be rewarded for their efforts.
We have a choice in America as we’ve always had. We can cling to our fear of the future and each other choosing to try and go backwards. The problem with that strategy is that you can never go backwards because the world you are trying to recapture never truly existed. Or we can continue on the path we have embarked on choosing rather than fearing change we embrace it and rationally direct it.

The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected. – Justice William O. Douglas

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From One War Zone To Another

This is the story of a mother who had to make the desperate choice of sending her son from one war zone (the mean streets of America) to another war zone (the streets of Liberia) in order to try and save his life. It is the choice no mother should ever have to make, but unfortunately it is a choice many black mothers have had to make over the years. Maybe it wasn’t the civil war of Liberia, but it could have been Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Many a black parent has sent a child off to war so they might escape the killing fields of urban America.

She had made up the lies that coaxed him on the plane, and arranged for her brother to take him into his household. She did this knowing much of what her Americanized son would face there: the empty belly, the threat of public whippings, the cramped sense of possibility.

Yet she was equally sure of this: He would be better off there than in Park Hill, the Staten Island neighborhood where she was bringing up two sons and two daughters.

Augustus had been well schooled in the lessons of Park Hill, which has taken in so many waves of refugees over the last 30 years that it is known in some quarters as Little Liberia. By his teenage years, he had adopted a street name (Ghostface) and a gang affiliation (Bloodline) and learned how drugs coursed through the neighborhood into the hands of customers.[1]

It is frightening to believe that a young black man is safer in a civil war in a foreign country than he is at home in America. He is, if that home happens to be in the gang and drug infested streets of the inner city. Our cities are turning into war zones pitting one young black man against another for the limited resources that the drug trade has created. Young men are risking their freedom and their lives to live a lifestyle of false promise and false bravado, leaving their mothers to worry and mourn their early departures. Departures usually brought about by the hand of another black man.

This story highlights the growing disconnect occurring between the youth and the adults of our communities. There is a divergence between the goals and aspirations of the parents and the “reality” of the streets beckoning their sons. For many young black men the streets are offering a better alternative to the hard won lessons of their parents. They watch as their single mothers struggle to make ends meet with the low wage jobs they are forced to take, while at the same time they see the fast money and lifestyle being offered by gangs and the streets. They struggle in an educational system that doesn’t want them and a support system that doesn’t exist. Due to a lack of male guidance they grow up with a distorted sense of manhood and the responsibilities that it brings. They love and at the same time detest their mothers for the lives they have been given.

What does this say about us as a society, that we are willing to let another generation of young black men die or be imprisoned without any effort to integrate them into society? I find it hard to believe that with all of the intellectuals and studies that have been done, we can’t solve this. So the question then becomes, do we want to solve it? For years we read and see story after story of the untimely death of another black youth at the hands of another black youth and yet we do nothing. We can provide hundreds of billions of dollars to destroy a country and yet we can’t find any money to help build our own country? These young men are the by-product of our neglect and of a system that does not value their talents or their imaginations. They are the forgotten children of black men who did not understand or accept that being a father is more than being a “baby’s daddy”, black men who have by the millions placed the burden of raising their children on the woman.

“My mom’s friends, I respect them, but they don’t know about life,” he said, glassy-eyed, as the television flickered in the corner. “My thugs, they know about life, because they were in the struggle, too.”

His friends had seen darkness in the world, Augustus said, just as he had. Some had gotten shot. Some had been arrested. They knew what was up.

“That type of people,” he said, “they got big dreams.”[2]

This situation is wrong on so many levels. This situation is about more than money; money alone will not fix this. The time has come in this nation in general and in the black community specifically to make this situation a priority. We have allowed the myths and the lies of the streets to go unchallenged to our children, they have lost touch with reality and have replaced it with someone else’s false reality. The reality they live in is real only because we allow it to be, we allow them to believe that the dead end life of drug dealing and gang banging is preferable to honest living and work. There is no one to offset the allure of easy money with the reality of its consequences, which is death, prison, and emptiness. There is no one to teach them that being a man is not about smoking dope, making babies, and killing other young men. There is no one to teach them the hard lessons of being man, going to work, raising your kids and loving your wife.

No mother should ever have to choose to send her son to a war to save him, but if things don’t change soon in our communities it very well may be safer than being at home. And that is a tragedy for all of us. The whole world is lessened by the senseless violence that is cutting down our young men before they ever get to live. The whole world is lessened by a system that renders them useless before they reach their teens. We have no idea the contribution these lost young souls could have on the world, what gifts they could bring. Instead we readily accept their destruction and chalk it up to another bad ass kid that gets shot and killed. I hope one of these days they will be recognized as human again and worthy of our support and our anger. All they receive now is our pity and pity is just one step up from contempt.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/nyregion/14liberians.html
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/nyregion/14liberians.html

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The Stop Abortion, Allow War And Torture Party

I recently read an op-ed piece in the NY Times from James Dobson, a conservative Christian Televangelists. While I have grave issues with televangelists period, the statements made in his piece further reinforces my already low opinion. Being a Christian, it is always hard for me to criticize another, but in the case of these guys something must be done about the hypocrisy that they exhibit.

After two hours of deliberation, we voted on a resolution that can be summarized as follows: If neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will join others in voting for a minor-party candidate. Those agreeing with the proposition were invited to stand. The result was almost unanimous.

Speaking personally, and not for the organization I represent or the other leaders gathered in Salt Lake City, I firmly believe that the selection of a president should begin with a recommitment to traditional moral values and beliefs. Those include the sanctity of human life, the institution of marriage, and other inviolable pro-family principles. Only after that determination is made can the acceptability of a nominee be assessed.

The other approach, which I find problematic, is to choose a candidate according to the likelihood of electoral success or failure. Polls don’t measure right and wrong; voting according to the possibility of winning or losing can lead directly to the compromise of one’s principles. In the present political climate, it could result in the abandonment of cherished beliefs that conservative Christians have promoted and defended for decades. Winning the presidential election is vitally important, but not at the expense of what we hold most dear.[1]

The piece was entitled, “The Value Test”. Well, Mr. Dobson you and your cohorts have failed the values test. In my humble opinion no group has done more to divide the Church as these evangelicals. Rather than rely on centuries of Church writing and doctrine, these yahoos have decided that God in His infinite wisdom has given them some new revelations for the Western Church and for His favorite country America. They have misinterpreted Scripture to justify everything from nuclear war to raping the environment, but the one thing they agree on is abortion.

Remember these are the same guys who framed the Iraq war in terms of good vs. evil and turned it into a crusade. While I am personally against abortion, I understand that it is a personal decision that some of us have to make. If it were up to me I would choose not to do it, but I am a man so what does that mean? These same people who want to reaffirm the sanctity of life have no trouble dropping nuclear bombs on Muslims or any other group that does not accept their religious teachings. They have no trouble with the lost to sanctity of life for people in other countries from other cultures. These are the same religious leaders who would have had no trouble justifying the genocide of Native Americans so we could accomplish our “Manifest Destiny”.

I will state this once more for those who were not paying attention; GOD DOES NOT HAVE A COUNTRY! He has people and these people live all over the world and God loves them just as much as He loves you even if they look and act differently than you. So I find it interesting that these “religious leaders” have not taken a stand against torture or war. I find it interesting that these same “religious leaders” have not spoken out against greed and gluttony of our corporations and the rich. So some sin is ok, while others are not ok. My understanding of the Bible states that when all is said and done we will stand before our Creator alone to answer for our deeds; there will be no witnesses Mr. Dobson so we will be responsible for our own sins.

As far as the institution of marriage is concerned the biggest threat to it appears to be from heterosexuals. Without help from gays they have managed to raise the divorce rate to about 50%, very good guys keep up the good work, this includes evangelicals by the way. These guys claim to worship God, but the only god they serve is themselves. Where is the unity that the Bible espouses? You shall be of one accord.[2] Their unity is in dividing the people, not in uniting them. They speak of compromise as though it were against the Laws of God, but in fact the opposite is true. We are to bear the weaknesses of one another and lift up those who have fallen, not condemn them and throw stones.

Where were these guys when the country confronted the overt racism of Jena? They were probably in Salt Lake City protecting the civil rights of rich white men. Mr. Dobson there are many other issues confronting this nation and to ignore all the others for the one is failing the stewardship that you were granted. We live in a secular nation, it was designed that way by the framers and no matter what our personal likes or dislikes we must allow for others to express their beliefs, the final arbitrator will not be you and your “pro family” leaders it will be God. I pray that He will have mercy upon you.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/opinion/04dobson.html
[2] Philippians 2:2

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What Happened in Israel in 1967?

Can the turmoil in the Middle East be traced back to the events in 1967? There are many who believe that they can be. It was at that time, 40 years ago that the Israelis were beginning and ending the Six Day war. Some say it was at this moment that the fate of Israel and the Palestinians were both sealed with the fateful decisions made following this war. Have those decisions led to a safer Israel? That is hard to say, but what we do know is that those decisions have fed an ongoing cycle of violence that has no end in sight.

Although there were lots of discussions concerning the disposition of the newly occupied territory, one that is not mentioned in the all the papers is the legality of it. So, either it wasn’t discussed or was removed from the archives. However, there was a legal opinion given which until now has remained secret.

“By September, Eshkol was seriously considering settlements in the Golan and Kfar Etzion. He was no doubt influenced by the Khartoum Arab summit which had responded to the Israeli Cabinet's secret offer, agreed within a fortnight of the war, of a negotiated withdrawal from most of the territories, with a resounding "no" to talks. In hindsight, it is possible to see the Khartoum declaration as a heavily coded concession to some form of indirect negotiation on recognition, in return for withdrawal from the territories occupied in the war. But Israel, whose position was anyway hardening, wanted direct negotiations and explicit recognition if it was going to pull back.

In all the debate – within the public and, it appears, in Cabinet – one highly significant aspect of settlement policy was barely, if at all, discussed: whether it was legal. Since then Israel has never accepted the argument, ratified by successive UN resolutions, that civilian settlements violated international law. Which makes it all the more interesting that Theodor Meron, the then-36-year-old legal adviser at the Foreign Ministry, was asked to deliver an opinion on just that issue. Meron, a Holocaust survivor, had been a member of Israel's delegation to the UN during the June war. "It was a very traumatic period because in New York things looked terribly ominous," he recalls today.

But the secret memorandum he wrote three months later – initially only for the eyes of his boss, the Foreign Minister Abba Eban, but then sent to Eshkol's office – was clearsighted and unequivocal. The document, written after the Khartoum summit when he knew settlement in the Golan and the West Bank was very much in the air, was unknown until it was unearthed from the Israel State Archives and brought to light by Gorenberg last year. In it, Meron wrote that "my conclusion is that civilian settlement of the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention." The Convention prohibits deportation or transfer by the occupying power of its own civilian population into the territories it occupies. The official Red Cross commentary explains that this prohibition was "intended to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War by certain Powers, which transferred portions of their own population to occupied territory for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed, to colonise those territories." Meron's crisp recommendation was that the prohibition was "categorical and aimed at preventing colonisation of conquered territory by citizens of the conquering state." That was not all. Even when establishing military posts, Israel, he was clear, had also to respect the 1907 Hague Convention on Laws and Customs of war on land, which stated that "Private Property cannot be confiscated" . This has been little discussed in the Israeli-Palestinian context but its lasting pertinence was underlined last November when Peace Now, on the basis of leaked data from the military's Civil Administration in the West Bank, revealed that 15,000 acres, or 40 per cent of the West Bank settlements, were on privately owned Palestinian land, often by military order.

This could be dismissed as no more than an interesting historical footnote, except for one thing. Theodor Meron, now an American citizen, went on to become one of the world's most eminent international jurists, if not the most eminent. Until 2005 he was president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Moreover, as a law professor at New York University, he published much of the theoretical work which led to the establishment of the tribunal, on which he now sits as an appeals judge, and of the International Criminal Court. The Government was not choosing to ignore the opinion of some obscure legal maverick.”[1]

So, it appears that the Israeli government which has since the war’s end refused to accept international law concerning the occupied territories and settlements, has known from the beginning that the settlements were illegal. So why would they continue to build settlements and occupy the land knowing that it is illegal? The answer lies in the desire of many in the government and religious movements who wanted to see Israel expanded to the Mediterranean Sea. With the ease at which the Arabs were defeated many were heady with the taste of victory and I’m sure had attributed their victory to the Divine Will of God. Hadn’t God promised them this land?

The decisions on the disposition of these lands, has led to 40 years of strife and occupation and have made Israel no safer. Israel has gone from a fledgling democracy supported by most of the international community to a pariah. Because of this occupation they have lost any moral high ground they may have received from the holocaust. That doesn’t stop them though from continuing to portray themselves as the victims in a global anti-Semitism conspiracy. The occupation and settlements of these lands was illegal and wrong then and it still is today. Israel has a right to exist, but so do the Palestinians. It is time to stop the cycle of violence that has fueled the Middle East powder keg for all these years. It is time for all peace loving people to embrace peace. A good place to start is the Saudi peace plan, give peace a chance…

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[1] http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2582180.ece

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