Salt

Top Ten Worst Americans

All things beautiful - a website I've not seen before, asks, "who are the ten worst Americans?"

Not an easy list....  Are we talking about the status of one's soul?  Or that one mistake that creates lots and lots of other mistakes? 

It's all comparative, and sometimes good appears accidentally....  A few of these people have done just one or two things that are so awful, God have mercy on their souls.  And others barely deserve mercy, I think.  Fortunately, it is not me making this decision.

Harry J. Anslinger: Our current prohibition.
Alfred P. Sloan: destroyed trolley system and enslaved us to the car.
Henry Kissinger: Biafra, anyone?
Chief Justice Roger Taney;
Allen Welsh Dulles;
Edward Teller;
Irenee du Pont, [Nazi sympathizer, and anti-Roosevelt Conspirator]
Captain John Mason, who led the massacre of 600-700 Pequots.
Wayne B. Wheeler, [anti-Saloon league]
J.C. Bancroft Davis [corporations are people, too}

And J. Edgar Hoover.  Of course.
I'm sure there are people personally nastier.  Except, perhaps, for Kissinger.

Collaborating with UUs

My closest colleague in the pastor's league here in Babylon is the UU minister.  Theologically orthodox people shouldn't be that surprised I would do such a thing.  But we went to the same college, an academically oriented liberal-arts (very liberal) school in Ohio in the Perfectionist tradition of evangelical Christianity, and share similar ideas about politics.  She asked me to officiate a memorial service.  She said, "whatever you are comfortable with.  The family are Unitarians, but the mother wasn't."

Her friend's mother was an Episcopalian, one that never went to church, yet possessed a very God-punishing cosmology.  In respect, they wanted a service with an Episcopal flavor, which is the best way to describe the service.  There wasn't going to be a lot of theology.  The pastor said, "well, she'd appreciate that you are a man," for she never approved of women pastors.   I admit, I was honored by being asked, although I was a little confused.  I think of myself as a Christian and find it difficult NOT to use Christian vocabulary, for it is through Jesus that I know God.  There was one candle as the object of attention.

So we celebrated a very short service with a few Anglican prayers, a couple psalms and traditional hymns, although we toned down the "afterlife" bit.  I officiated the service andsaid a couple general words, coming at death from a particularly Christian perspective:  that our lives aren't complete without God; that our sin finds redemption in Love; and that salvation means that our own hearts become open to God.    I figured that even using such words as "sin", "redemption" and "salvation," would be sufficiently novel.  In the unedited service, it was clear that the effort to be intellectually credible came at the expense of religious faith and language.  So I crossed off anything that tried to describe God in too willowy a fashion.  Christian language has integrity, when used properly.

I'm completely comfortable with demythologizing the "afterlife" bit, although I was once chastized, after a lecture I gave on the subject, by my advisor, Paul Griffiths.   I don't believe souls have individual consciousness after death, but I do think that we are always to live lives that are joyful, and as if we have a future forever.  But the future, finally, is God's. 

Anyway, later that evening the family invited me out for the Christmas show of Prairie Home Companion. 

Christmas Sermon

Greetings friends.

You know, we do this every Sunday.  ;)

Have you wrapped your gifts? Purchased everything for the persons on your list?
I suggest to use the entire 12 days of Christmas to offer gifts, rather than participate in the cultural rush and madness that makes the entire season seem like a blur. I give you permission to give gifts until January 6^th.

I make this offer every year.

Many people are purchasing gift cards and certificates, more and more. Perhaps we should just get ourselves gifts and have a show and tell on Christmas morning. “Hey honey, this is what I bought myself.

“With your money. Thank you.”

That would be much easier.

I am glad you all are here. Some of you are friends, family and many of you are strangers.

And both are wonderful.

I love having strangers here. You see us, after all, when we’re decked out.
We’ve got a nice little creche here, which we actually don’t have all the time.
The place smells of Christmas trees, or at least Christmas tree chemicals.
We’ve got lots of candles, and for some, religion is really about candles, lots of them.
So you who aren’t here all that often, we’re now at our best.
That’s why I love strangers. You can be at your best with them.

Friends and families don’t always see us at our best.
Families don’t think we’re brilliant, or wonderful, always.
We’re our parent’s kids, and this never really changes.
Our relatives remember all the mistakes we make, and have made and can predict the ones we will.
Our brothers and sisters know how to tease us and make us feel just a little bit worse, and you can’t fool them when you’ve got a new suit or fragrance on, because they know who you are, and that a new suit won’t hide those extra pounds.

 

Most People Wrong About Heaven

According to a study, 60% of americans think that BOTH Christians and non-Christians will go to heaven.  Twenty-one percent believe that ONLY Christians will go.

I had NO idea there were so many heretics.  Eighty-six percent of Americans think they are going to heaven, but by this data, clearly at the most only 21% are destined, at least if we are being judged on theology.

The study by ABC is here. 

Prayers, etc, for

Chuck Currie has been one of the most persistent and faithful organizers of the blogging, Christian, left.  His fortitude has been remarkable.  Keep him in your prayers as he undergoes surgery for a tumor.  Lord, be with the doctors, nurses and his families, and work in his body to bring him healing.

A few things I wanted to mention.  First, I did support the Transit strike in NYC, although I probably would have done things a bit differently.  I think that the MTA leaders were arrogant and disrespectful, generally, and this contributed to the strike.  Workers do not want to go on strike.  But in a city where class divisions run deeper than anywhere else in the country, courtesy and respect of workers goes a long way.  From an institutional psychology perspective, it was fascinating to note the way people handled their authority and postured to get the best position. 

The news about the survelliance indicates a couple things.  It again indicates Bush's incompetence.  There is already a sufficient structure to monitor terrorists.  The executive branch has plenty of authority - I believe that judges have rejected the executive requests less than six times since the institutions to fast track such requests were put in place.  This is merley an example of Bush thinking that he can do whatever he wants, fuckall.  He is the PRESIDENT.  If he were a bit smarter, and a bit more collaborative, he coud do everything he wants, much more easily. 

It also indicates how obsequious the media truly is.  How long did it take the NYT to report this case?  Liberal media, my ass.  Soon, it will disappear. 

Well, church is rolling along.   My darts teammate got angry at me for saying that Rudolf didn't exist.  "How dare you!" He said.  "You obviously don't have any children."  I said, "look, flying reindeer I can handle.  Reindeer with a flashing clown nose, that's a problem. 

"Besides, My grandma got run over by one." 

"You shouldn't say such things in public," he said.  I was, it seemed, destroying his faith. 

I was feeling Randy.  I said, "and the Easter Bunny was crucified for our sins."

I think he wanted to kill me.   do I feel bad?  Not really.  The week before he was telling me about his best friend's wife, who he had seduced.  Gleefully. 

Why People Become Terrorists

An interesting study by an Israeli professor at UCSD [where I almost went to graduate school in Poli Sci]

Throughout history, people willing to join groups far outside the mainstream, and to take their own lives and the lives of others in service of those groups, have been thought of as irrational, motivated only by extreme hate or abstract ideas of rewards in the afterlife.

Berman, in a series of papers dating to the late 1990s, has challenged that assumption. He instead offers a theory stating these people may be motivated as much by economic self-interest as they are by the holy texts.

He further argues that the success of groups such as Hamas and al-Qaeda are more due to the advantages of their organizational structures than their theology.

"I'm not saying theology is not important," said the 45-year-old professor in his small, sparsely appointed office in the UCSD economics building.

"(But) if you put theology aside for a moment, and just apply the usual tools of empirical economics, quantifying people's choices, and analyzing them statistically, we can understand a lot about these communities that we can't understand otherwise."

Libertarians are Anti-Social Bastards

"Of course, these politics are possible only while we have a state capable of picking up the pieces. If there were not a massive hidden subsidy for private transport, those who decry the nannying bureaucrats couldn't afford to leave their drives. Speed cameras, according to the government's study, now save the country £258m in annual medical bills: a fraction of the billions in health costs inflicted by Clarkson's chums. Just as the leftwing movements of the 1970s, in the geographer David Harvey's words, "failed to recognise or confront ... the inherent tension between the quest for individual freedoms and social justice", the new libertarians fail to recognise the extent to which their freedoms depend on an enabling state. They hate the institution that allows them to believe that they can live without institutions."  Read the entire comment by George Monbiot.

Loose Women

Where are all those loose women my pastor keeps talking about?

"Pastor says they've got a whole lot of them in the big city, and you can bet that when I went there for the national Youth League conference last fall, I was watching for them like a hawk. But most of the city women I saw were just riding the bus and staring straight ahead with blank looks on their faces. The last thing they seemed interested in was luring me into the sordid back alleys of vice and hedonism. I mean, they didn't even make eye contact with me, to tell the truth."

The Budget

I'm angry.

The budget passed is cruel, and criminal to all those with any kind of empathy towards the poor.

The message:  the elites are not responsible for this country from which they derive their legal and social benefits.

For Bush's military extravagance, fewer hardworking people will be able to go to college; there will be less for the poor and the elderly.  Any sense of giving people a hand will be sacrificed under the guise of "fiscal responsibility."  In the end, it is the poor that pay.

The Once Mighty Tigers

Princeton Basketball was a family obsession, mainly because of our family history.  Every Christmas we would go visit.   My aunt and uncle, formerly faculty before running their own corporation, had season tickets for many years. They're not doing that well this year, sadly.