Posted inPolitics: National

Conservative history

Reading about "conservative" efforts to change history textbooks, one is reminded of many good quotes. George Orwell, once a hero of conservatives, said, "He who controls the past controls the future. He who
controls the present controls the past." Napoleon: "What is history but a fable agreed upon?" Or, more alarmingly, Hitler, who in one of his many formulations on the topic, said, "Give me the youth…let me control the textbooks, and I will
control the state." On the other hand, I remember high school, and, although I loved history, my mind was consistently on only one thing, and the only historical reasoning involved was "today's miniskirt is even better than yesterday's!" A good and timeless quote, too.

The move in Texas, one of the largest buyers of textbooks and in theory influential nationally, is less about history than propaganda. Thus we get the failure of Jamestown as "socialism" long before such a political-economic formulation existed. As Dick Armey would have it, starvation in the colony was because of those hippy-dippy libs, rather than a variety of complex factors, including that the English noblemen in the party (the class equivalent to what Armey represents today) didn't want to work to grow food, thinking it beneath them. Similarly, Jefferson is to be erased because he advocated separation between church and state (as did virtually all the founders) — a messy inconvenience for those advocating theocracy. We know who they are. We know the power they lust after. This is one more path to it.

My bigger worry is summed up in the fuller quote from Alexander Pope: "A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring." We don't really teach history in most of our schools and haven't for decades, it being subsumed in "social studies," and now sidelined by teaching-to-the-test and indoctrinating young people to be good worker bees. This latter is alarmingly true even at universities, where students are funneled into business schools and vocational training, not the "universal education" including the humanities. And such necessary study for a self-governing society is virtually non-existent at the for-profit "universities" once called business colleges.

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Posted inPolitics: National

‘A Christian thing’

Of all the detail that emerged about the Michigan so-called militia, which hoped to start an uprising against the government by killing a police officer and then bombing the funeral, two stand out. One was when a neighbor, asked about such groups, their heavy armament and violent beliefs, responded that it was "no big deal" around there. Another came from the ex-wife of the accused ring leader, who told the Associated Press, "It started out as a Christian thing. You go to church. You pray. You take care of
your family. I think David started to take it a little too far."

Ya think?

As a Christian, it's painful to hear the media incessantly describe this as a "Christian militia." Being a Christian is about far more than going to church, praying and taking care of your family. It's not about premeditated murder. It's not about revolution against the government, for Christianity in practice is revolutionary enough (e.g., love our enemies, such as Osama bin Laden). It is about helping the least, the last and the lost. It is about social justice, and forgiveness, and grace. Jesus ministered to the poor, ate with sinners and didn't deny healing based on pre-existing conditions. The faith is, in other words, about many things that American right-wing Christianity despises — a Christianity not merely preached in snake-handling backwoods outposts but in some of the largest mega-churches. Better to pick highly selectively from the Old Testament: keep women down, stone gays, smite and slay mercilessly in the name of the Lord, overthrow the government (of the Antichrist!) and establish a theocracy. So in Holy Week, these so-called Christians would have Jesus suffer yet again.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Job One for America

As America faces its worst run of job losses since the Great Depression with no end in sight, one thing should be clear. Our federal government is being run by a coalition of the financial sector, lobbyists for entrenched interests and a disciplined Republican opposition of dubious loyalty. Barack Obama is not only very close to being a failed president, he could be on track to be a one-termer if the GOP snags an opponent such as Gen. David Petraeus or even a rehabbed Mitt Romney. (The Nobel will only hurt Obama without substantive achievements for average Americans).

Perhaps the problem is centered on Obama and the cowardly Democrats in Congress (Memo to Blue Dogs: You'll lose anyway, so do the right thing and maybe you can pull a Harry Truman; oh, wait, Truman wasn't getting millions from the moneyed interests and hoping to get a job with them after politics). Could Hillary have done better? Or is this just the latest evidence of a quiet coup and no individual can change America's trajectory to self-immolation. Read Jeff Sharlet's The Family and David Wessel's In Fed We Trust (and throw in Maggie Mahar's Money Driven Medicine) and you begin to see the financialized theocracy we have become. One facing unsustainability on every front, including in a military whose quiet evangelization by the Christian right should raise alarms never before heard in America (were it covered by the media).

As for unemployment, the best Washington can do is become aroused over a tax credit for job creation. This won't work — it's not tied to real demand. And it will lower tax revenues, adding to the deficit. It's a stunning sign of America's enervation and institutional corruption that President Obama is not rolling out a crash program to modernize our rail system. It could be done now. It would create huge numbers of jobs, not only for construction but also for operating and maintenance. Real jobs that would last. And an infrastructure whose benefits would repay the Treasury many times over.

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