Jim DeMint is a Blithering Imbecile

Jim DeMint, a former legislator turned think-tank president, may or may not be the most hated man in Washington.  (The competition is fierce.) He is, however, an embarrassment to Christ Church Episcopal School, Wade Hampton High, the University of Tennessee and Clemson University.  DeMint has studied at all those doubtlessly fine institutions, holds degrees from at least three of them, and nonetheless lacks the most fundamental grasp of American history.

Or, if we are mistaken about that, he is a big fat liar whose pants are perpetually on fire.

DeMint recently displayed his ignorance -- or mendacity -- on a radio program hosted by one Jerry Newcombe, in which this exchange took place:

Newcombe: What if somebody, let’s say you’re talking with a liberal person and they were to turn around and say, ‘that Founding Fathers thing worked out really well, look at that Civil War we had eighty years later.’

DeMint: Well the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution, it was like the conscience of the American people. Unfortunately there were some court decisions like Dred Scott and others that defined some people as property, but the Constitution kept calling us back to ‘all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights’ in the minds of God. 

But a lot of the move to free the slaves came from the people, it did not come from the federal government. It came from a growing movement among the people, particularly people of faith, that this was wrong. People like Wilberforce who persisted for years because of his faith and because of his love for people. So no liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves. In fact, it was Abraham Lincoln, the very first Republican, who took this on as a cause and a lot of it was based on a love in his heart that comes from God.

(Quoted at Right Wing Watch) 

Well.  Let's think about this, shall we?

Obviously, DeMint is mistaken.  The important question is why he makes this particular mistake.

Let's start with how bad DeMint's history is.   As even a schoolboy can tell you (assuming he went to a public school and not, let us say, the Jimmie Hokey Christian Academy of Jesus), the federal government was precisely what freed the slaves.  Southern secession was a reaction against what the Confederacy saw, correctly, as Washington's plan to limit and ultimately eliminate the "peculiar institution."  Lincoln was reviled as a "tyrant" in much the way Obama is reviled as a "Socialist."  But the actual liberation of slaves, when it occurred, took place first at the hands of the United States Army acting under the authorization of a presidential proclamation, then under the direct supervision of the executive branch -- "Presidential Reconstruction" -- and ultimately in the form of a Constitutional amendment ratified in part by Reconstruction-mandated state legislatures.

The Constitution, in its original form, not only permitted slavery but rewarded it, by granting slave owners (or at least their states) extra representation in national affairs, according to the number of slaves they possessed.  Only a shocking display of leadership by two successive presidents was able to change that.

So what is DeMint up to here?

Obviously, he is trying to argue that "people of faith" -- he means Christians, although he might grudgingly admit some Jews as well -- were integral to the end of slavery.  This is incontestably true; the movement for abolition was largely an expression of Christian religious conviction.  Two things need to be added:  (1) Christianity was also invoked by the supporters of slavery, because this was the mid-19th century; and (2) it was not churches that actually freed the slaves.  It was the federal government.

DeMint's reference to William Wilberforce is telling.  Wilberforce is a "safe" abolitionist to speak about with DeMint's political base, both because he was a committed Evangelical and because he worked to free slaves through the legislative organs of another country.  Prominent American abolitionists, from the fanatical John Brown to the philandering Henry Ward Beecher, are less safe.  A few, like Brown, were what we would call today call domestic terrorists.  Many more held religious views of which American Evangelicals are suspicious -- Quaker, Unitarian, what have you.  And most, by a large margin, were what are in some circles still quaintly called "damn Yankees."  They lived in Pennsylvania, New York and New England, regions that remain deeply suspect in the minds of many Southerners.

So here is political calculation expressed as rhetoric.  DeMint's power base consists, in part, of a community in which the most enlightened and liberal members are those who can acknowledge that slavery was, indeed, wrong.  Even these bright lights are nonetheless possessed of a visceral distaste for  Northerners and the Federal government, as well as people whose religion does not closely resemble their own.  For them, DeMint has created -- or really subscribed to, since it is not original to him-- a mythology in which the abolition of slavery was not in fact driven by accomplished by just those forces.

Some people actually believe this codswallop.  We have also heard French people claim, in utter sincerity, that the Resistance was on the verge of defeating Hitler by itself.

Now, part of this phoney mythos -- in fact, its sacred writ -- is a phoney vision of the US Constitution.  Occasionally, America's Constitution-worshipping righties see it as Antonin Scalia claims to, as a comparatively narrow document which can be read only according to letter and in accord with the the worldview of its authors:

"Did the Eighth Amendment bar the death penalty?" [Scalia asked a crowd at the Brooklyn Academy of Music recently]. "Not a hard question." The people who wrote the Eighth Amendment practiced the death penalty, ergo its prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishments" could not possibly exclude capital punishment. 

Apply this argument to slavery and see what you get.  Whatever reservations Jefferson & Co. may have had about their slaves, they certainly bequeathed us a document which preserved slavery as a legal practice.  It is hard to argue that this document was the "conscience" of our nation before the Civil War.

No, DeMint and his audience have staked out a significantly crazier position than Scalia's.  They disregard both the bare text of the document and its history, preferring instead to see in it a Platonic ideal of American society, expressed not in the letter but in the supposed spirit of the Founders.  Note, for example, that DeMint attributes to the Constitution ideas about the general equality of human beings which are explicit rather in the Declaration of Independence.  It does not matter what the Constitution says to this crowd, but only what it means -- or what they chose to believe it means.

Slate's Jamelle Bouie has a good take on the "Constitutional conservatism" espoused by people like Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint.  He mistakenly resents it as a part of religious fundamentalism rather than a secular analogue, but he quite correctly observes that the heyday of small-government, states-rights philosophy came under the Articles of Confederation -- a rule of government so bad it was abolished by many of its own creators.

We will concede that DeMint may not be a blithering imbecile, nor even an ignoramus.  It is entirely possible that high public-school education included competent instruction in both history and civics.  If that that be the case, though, we must conclude that he is a sleazy opportunist, pandering to the ignorance and prejudice of the masses while cynically using them to gain power in the nation's capital.

John Boehner Enrolled in Obamacare

Yes, that's right.  Speaker of the House John Boehner, who personally and single-handedly shut down the government (by refusing to bring a clean CR up for a vote) in an effort to sabotage the Obamacare has now signed up for ... Obamacare.

Apparently, Boehner -- who actually has a government health plan, and didn't really need to take up any bandwidth on this -- went shopping for on the DC exchange in order to demonstrate that it would be a difficult and frustrating experience.  (Speaking of which, let's talk about switching plans with Portico recently, a difficult and frustrating experience in its own way.)

He thought that he had succeeded in, um, failing to enroll, and blogged about it.

And then he discovered that he had in fact enrolled.  Meaning that he failed to fail, which seems about like the way Boehner's year is going.

Per the guy at Salon, Boehner probably got a pretty good deal, too.  Probably not as good as his government plan, but still pretty good for private insurance.

GOP Push to Repeal 19th Amendment

Well, not exactly.  But close.

Having worked overtime to disenfranchise poor and black voters in 2012, and lost the White House anyway, the Republican Party is trying to figure out who else it can prevent from voting in the future.

The answer is easy:  women.

And the place is urgent:  Texas, where pro-choice heroine Wendy Davis stands a reasonable chance of success in her run for governor.

The strategy is simple:  adjust voting laws so that votes must produce a photo ID with their current leal name.  This reasonable-sounding rule in fact disenfranchises a surprising number of women -- as many as 34% of them.  Young women, apparently, don't rush to update their driver's licenses after they are married.

Jean Anne Esselink, writing at The New Civil Rights Movement, sums it up:

You have to hand it to Texas. Abortion politics threaten to drive the election for governor, so they have figured out a way to discourage a large group of women who are likely have a personal interest in the issue of choice: married women of child-bearing age. Women who might favor Wendy Davis.

Yeah.  We actually think it's that simple.

Republicans Getting High, Having Bunny Sex

"Are you high," Anderson Cooper recently asked GOP strategist Alex Castellanos.

"I wish I were," Castellanos replied, with surprising frankness.  Who in the political world, and especially the Republican hemisphere, has not recently wished for the sweet Coleridgean release of some drowsy syrup?

Nonetheless, the apparently sober Castellanos went on to provide a unique theory explaining the recent, and seemingly self-destructive, behavior of Senator Ted Cruz.

He's having bunny sex.

As Castellanos said:

[T]he snowshoe hare — I thought it’s a marvelous explanation — every ten years, multiplies six fold. Bunnies like sex apparently. But the boom produces a bust. They press their food supply, they invite predators. Right now, Ted Cruz, what’s he’s doing, feels good; he’s growing his supporters. It’s leading the Republican Party, I think, into a bust.

Well.  Now we know.

Is the GOP Shutting Down?

Time has not permitted us to blog about the current clusterboff in the nation's capital (and, specifically, its capitol).  This does not mean we aren't following it all with interest.

We serve a congregation filled with government employees and contractors, many of them directly and personally affected by the shutdown.  We also serve in what is said to be one of the most deeply Republican counties in the state -- although a party leader has confessed to some concern that the Democrats are gaining ground recently.  We can only imagine that this trend is about to accelerate.

Because who, being in their right mind and not obsessed by ideology, would ever vote for a Republican again?

The GOP has long been perceived to be running out of time, as its core constituency of old, white men gradually loses its hegemony in American culture.  Periodic efforts to broaden its base have been half-hearted and unsuccessful.

Now, Republicans in the House have allowed themselves to be driven by their extreme fringe -- driven, that is, right over a cliff.  A month before an election, the party and its leaders have made themselves immensely unpopular. Their poll numbers have never been lower, while the President's are up ever so slightly.  Although it appears that the extremists themselves are largely safe from re-election challenges, it is hard to imagine that the party will not lose some of its clout next month, and more in the Novembers to come.

Losing favor with the electorate is bad.  What may be worse for Republicans is the possibility of losing favor with their sugar daddies in the world of business.  A recent BusinessWeek article described the growing distance between the fiery ideologues and the practical minds of the business world:

If Republican lawmakers were as responsive to business concerns as they once were, the chance of a prolonged shutdown would be slim. But that’s no longer the case. “Republicans are not the party of business anymore,” says Robert Shapiro, chairman of the economic advisory firm Sonecon. “They’re the party of antigovernment.”

 A Times article yesterday revealed just how angry the business lobby is about the shutdown.  They are losing money, and lots of it, with no end in sight.  This is, to put it cynically, not the government they paid for.

And they do put it cynically.  Here's the money quote:

“We ask them to carry our water all the time,” said one corporate sector lobbyist, who demanded anonymity in order to speak frankly about the relationship with Republicans. “But we don’t necessarily support them 100 percent of the time. And what has happened is the rise of an ideological wing that is now willing to stand up to business interests.”

It is hard to know whom to hate more in a situation like this one:  the corporate fat cats or their Congressional water-boys, who chose the wrong time to show a rebellious streak.

In a sense, America's corporate oligarchs are a little like the House of Saud.  They have sponsored the raving of ideological extremists (Tea Party, Wahabists, whatever) as a way to distract the masses from their own corruption -- and now they have to face the fact that these radicals may actually believe their own nutty rhetoric.  Worse, they are willing to act on their belief in ways that threaten to bring down their masters' cushy palaces -- along with the rest of a the country.

The GOP is divided against itself, and in danger of losing its connection to both mainstream voters and corporate money.  Meanwhile, its core constituency continues to dwindle.  How long can this go on?

The New Republic is fantasizing when it offers up a headline about "the death throes of the Republican Party."  Outright collapse, represented by a prolonged period of political impotence, seems as unlikely as Karl Rove's dream of a "durable Republican majority" ever did.  For better or worse, America is deeply in love with its two-party system, even if it does not love the parties themselves.  Voters will simply switch back and forth until they arrive at the balance that they want.  These two parties have dominated the landscape for 150 years, and it is hard to imagine they they will stop dominating it any time soon.

Of course, somebody might have said that about the dinosaurs.

Where We Live Now

For many years, our parish paper was The New York Times, affectionately known as "The Old Gray Lady" or, in our grandfather's house, "that Communist rag."  (When we asked why he read it every morning, he responded with a sly grin, "You have to know the enemy to defeat him.")

Anyway.  We've moved, to a rather different part of the country.  How different, you ask?  This different:

In 1905, the local paper was named the Democrat.  After a 1989 merger, it was renamed the Times-Democrat.  Last week, it announced a name change, to reflect shifting political realities.  It is now just the Times.

See what they did there?

Guns Vs. Cars

Firearms and automobiles are, obviously enough, different varieties of device.  One is made to kill, the other to transport.  It is important to keep this teleological distinction clear in our minds, because the discussion that follows may tend to muddy it up a bit.

A few weeks ago, we mentioned stumbling across some writing by a gun enthusiast which misrepresented official data concerning the number of deaths caused by firearms each year.  We've found another example here, unsurprisingly, at Breitbart.com.  A guy named Awr Hawkins writes that

According to the federal government, the number of people killed in automobile-related deaths annually is approximately three times higher than the number of people killed by all gun-related deaths combined -- handgun, shotgun, and rifle.

Yet there is, to my knowledge, no concerted effort to ban automobiles. 

Wow.  Zinger, right? We first came across this claim not in Hawkins' original piece, but in an online exchange with somebody who had clearly read this, or read something like it.  Our interlocutor -- let's call him Skippy -- argued that "America pays too much attention to gun deaths, when drunk drivers kill so many more people."

It's a strange argument, when you think about it, like saying that we worry about Al Qaeda when cigarettes are so deadly.  But set that aside for a moment.  The real question is whether cars really do kill three times as many people as guns.

They don't.

Legit numbers can be had from three sources:  the FBI, the CDC, and the Century Council.   They vary from year to year, although the general outlines remain consistent.  And here is what, for example, 2010 looked like:

Firearms deaths:              31,672 (10.3/100,000)

Motor vehicle traffic deaths: 33,687 (10.9/100,000)

Basically, guns and cars kill the same number of Americans most years, although cars are indeed a little bit ahead.  So where does Hawkins get his "three times the number"?  Easy:  he's talking about homicides, which represent a quarter to a third of all gun deaths.  But, conveniently enough, DUI deaths represent about a third of all motor vehicle deaths.  Voila, 2010 again:

Firearms homicides:  8,874

DUI deaths:         10,228

So it is absolutely true that cars kill more people than guns, and DUI accidents kill more people than gun murders.  But the numbers are fairly close, meaning that these are comparable threats to public safety.

Now, when we pushed him on the numbers, Skippy claimed that "most of these gun deaths are suicide," which is another half-truth.  Guns are used for suicide more often than they are used for homicide -- in 2010, there were 19,392 firearms suicides in the US.  That's colossal and terrifying, and deserves all the attention we can give it.  But, obviously, the numbers we have compared above don't include suicide.  Year in and year out, over the last few years, guns and cars have killed almost the same number of people, as have gun murders and DUI crashes.

But there is one enormous difference.  Since 1980, the number of drunk-driving deaths has dropped by 52%.  The  number of gun murders has dropped by about 10%, depending on the year.

When Skippy said that "we don't pay enough attention to drunk driving," he may have been forgetting that, for the past thirty years, Americans have put enormous energy into the campaign against drunk driving.  Think about the hundreds of PSAs and billboards you have seen -- the wine glasses smashing into each other, the reminder that "friends don't let friends," and so forth.  Add to that the lectures in school, and the stern warnings required by most states as part of the licensing process.  Add to that the random stops instituted by some jurisdictions, at least on holidays.  Add to that the invention of the breathalyzer.

On top of all that, of course, is the fact that automobiles are regulated in a way that guns are not.  Both cars and drivers are examined and licensed.  Changes of ownership are carefully tracked.  These are things that the gun lobby is reluctant even to let legislators consider.  Safety belts and airbags are required by law, where mandatory trigger locks remain deeply controversial and the idea that every handgun owner should also be required to posses a biometric gun safe will no doubt be dismissed as "Nanny- State Thinking."

The weak link in the chain seems to be judges, who are still reluctant to take a drunk driver's license away permanently.  Nonetheless, 52% is a big drop.

As a society, we have put a lot of pressure on the drunk driving problem, and we have seen remarkable results.  Now it is time to put the same sort of pressure on the problem of gun violence.

Freakout Update

We spent a ton of time yesterday speculating on the service at St. John's Episcopal Church, where the Obamas worshiped on Easter Sunday.  We should have saved ourselves the effort, and waited for Brian Schoeneman.

Schoeneman is a long-time Republican lawyer and activist; he is also a member of St. John's.  Writing at Bearing Drift, "Virginia's Conservative Voice," he describes the service and the sermon

Luis was preaching on our Gospel lesson for the day, which came from John 20: 11-18, where Mary Magdalene sees Christ for the first time since he rose from the dead.  She refers to him as “rabbouni” (teacher) and he tells her she must not cling to him.  Luis explained that passage by talking about the dangers of nostalgia, and how Christ was explaining to Mary that she must not live in the past because we cannot go back to the past, no matter how much we may want to.  Christ knew that because he came, died for our sins and was resurrected, nothing would ever be the same again.  Mary and the disciples needed to understand that, and she did – when she tells the disciples of what she saw, she tells them “I saw the Lord” not “I saw our rabbi.”  His sermon was a message of hope, not hate, that he was delivering to our congregation.

He also takes to task the righttist pundits:

Sunday night, I perused the blogs after an excellent Easter dinner and saw that my pastor – my friend – was being accused of being the next Jeremiah Wright.  They called him a “dunce,” an “oaf,” and a “clown,” even going so far as to say that he’s a “false prophet,” or a “fake Christian” pastor, and that he was preaching “Satan’s deception.”

This isn’t a joke.  This is just the tip of the iceberg of the vile hate and disgusting nonsense that came out of people on Easter because of what they thought my pastor said.  Can you imagine someone saying that about your pastor?

Case closed, Breitbart.

President Goes to Church; Right Wing Freaks Out

On Easter Sunday, President Obama and his family attended St. John's Episcopal Church, in Lafayette Square.  It is, we are told, one of the churches they frequent.  The rector preached a sermon, as you might expect, and then all hell broke loose.

Hate speech!  Preaching politics instead of religion!  Does Obama ever go to a church where they talk about God, or only to the ones where they attack his political enemies?  Does the President personally inspire racist sermons?

It is apparent at a glance that the president's political foes hope, whenever he worships, that they will be able to score the sort of propaganda victory that they did during the 2008 election, when they dug up some poorly-phrased remarks by his then-pastor, Jeremiah Wright.  Have they succeeded -- and if so, have they done so fairly or unfairly?

At the moment, it is nearly impossible to say, because neither a transcript nor an audio file of the entire sermon has been released.  Sermons from St. John's are normally posted on the parish website, and we suppose this one will be as well.  (Click here to check.  By the way, his Laetare sermon is pretty good.) At this writing, however, the only document in circulation consists of notes made by the press pool.  Here it is, as posted by the Washington Times:

Highlights from the Rev. Dr. Luis Leon’s sermon:

Opened with a welcome and a joke about people who came to church just so they could tell their parents or people they’re having lunch with later that they did.

What God wants of every one of us is to believe as much as we can at a given moment … it’s all right to have doubts.

We often want things to go back to the way things used to be, before “work got difficult and faith got confused, and life got more confusing,” but when we dwell on the “if only” of life we forget that “God addresses us in the now.”

As Jesus told Mary not to hold on to the past, “You cannot go back.”

“It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back … for blacks to be back in the back of the bus … for women to be back in the kitchen … for immigrants to be back on their side of the border.”

“The message of Easter is about the power of love over loveless power.”

“Easter vision” will allow you to see the whole world in a different way. “There is no injustice so insidious that there can be no truth … no war so deep that there can be no peace … no enemy so bitter that they can’t become a friend.”

“Easter vision” means recognizing reality in a new and wonderful way.

“May God bless you with Easter vision now and forever.”

The sermon was followed by the prayers of the faithful, led by Rev. Patrick Williams, which included prayers for “Barack, our president,” and for “leaders in Afghanistan, Haiti, and the Middle East.

Next on the program was “The Peace”(during which members of the congregation shake hands and greet each other with “The peace of the Lord be with you,” etc.)

This was followed by the Holy Communion (along with its accompanying collection, hymns, and recitation of The Lord’s Prayer).

Pool was able to catch a glimpse of POTUS and the First Lady taking communion.

The post-communion prayer was “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Pool was ushered out at 12:39, before the dismissal. Now outside the church waiting for the president’s exit.

A correction: It was an error to assume that the Obamas were seated in the first pew. National Journal’s George Condon has pointed out that, according to the church website, it is tradition for the president to sit in pew 54.

The transcript ends there. The pool report was filed early Sunday afternoon by Jenee Desmond-Harris of TheRoot.com, an online magazine.

Obviously, this tells us very little about the service, or about the sermon.  Was the text from Luke or John?  (We gather John, from the reference to noli me tangere, but can we be sure?)  How did Fr. Luis Leon, the preacher, handle the apparent conflicts in the Resurrection narratives?  Did he treat the Resurrection of Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy, an eschatological foreshadowing, or a symbol of the individual soul's mystical journey from sin to forgiveness?  Nobody knows except the people who were present, and then only if they were listening.

(We do have to love this commentary in the HuffPo takeout:

A person who who attended the church service told The Huffington Post there was no audible approval or disapproval from members of the congregation when León made his remarks about the religious right

Well, obviously.  They're Episcopalians.)

In any case, the freakout is entirely concerned with the single paragraph about "captains of the religious right."  Nobody seems to care much about what "Easter vision"might be, or whether Leon danced around the matter of a bodily Resurrection.

 Republicans are, understandably, sensitive about charges of racism these days, since only about 10 African Americans voted for them in the 2012 election, since their election strategy routinely includes suppression of the black and Hispanic vote, and since one of their elders recently spoke nostalgically about the good old days when "wetbacks" picked his tomatoes.  They are sensitive, in other words, because -- despite the presence of Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio among their stars -- they are still old and white to a degree that poses serious questions about their future as a party.

Still, that begs the question of whether their concern in this case is valid.  Was Fr. Leon out of line, and if so, then how far?

To be honest, our own experience of the Religious Right suggests that, although it is home to many strange ideas about the relationship of church and state, Islam, Judiasm, women, science and history, it is not, by the standards of American conservatism, particularly racist at all -- and for good reasons.  Notwithstanding the likes of James Cone, black churches in America lean in a theologically and socially conservative direction that is familiar and congenial to the white nondenominationals.  Both groups like their families traditional, their gays closeted, and their Bible literal.  Among mainline Protestants, it is the Southern Baptists, rather than Lutherans or Episcopalians, who have been most effective at diversifying their own pews.  Racism may be at home on the American right, but the churches are not where it dwells most naturally.

So it seems to us that Fr. Leon might have chosen his words more wisely.  A lot more wisely, and more charitably to boot.  [UPDATE:  Mother A., who was raised in the bosom of the religious right, disagrees with our analysis.  She argues that racism is so deeply ingrained in American culture, and especially the culture of the South, that it is tacitly present in the life and teaching of most right-leaning Bible Belt churches.  We're still unsure, but she does know a lot more about that world than we do.]

The second, and broader, question is whether he should have mentioned politics at all in his Easter sermon.

This is tricky.  In our polarized nation, there is no easier way to divide a congregation than to treat the pulpit as a politician's rostrum, and to take firm positions on hotly disputed questions.  On the other hand, a preacher who looks away from the real world gives a poor testimony to the Incarnation or the Biblical vision of a just and merciful society.

In other words, the dichotomy between talking about God and talking about society is false, because God has quite a bit to say about how society is ordered.  (Related note of over-the-top hypocrisy:  When First Things writers argue that religion and politics don't mix.)

Our own Easter sermon, on "Why seek ye the living," etc., included this passage:

So if you are looking for Jesus, don't stand in the cemetery, reading the gravestones.  They are beautiful and touching, but they are not where Jesus lives.  If you are looking for Jesus, look among the young people held in an Italian prison, look among the victims of war in Afghanistan.  Look for him here on Long Island, among the families that have lost their homes and their savings in a hurricane.  Look for him among migrant workers, exploited because they do not know the law, or worse because the law does not protect them.  Look for Jesus in hospitals and nursing homes and hospices, where people are suffering and struggling and maybe, just maybe, making peace with their Creator and their Judge.  In Sandy Hook or Aurora, Colorado; in the Bronx or Brooklyn, any night of the week.  Anywhere there is pain or fear, injustice or violence, oppression or tyranny; anywhere that people are held captive by their own sin or by the sins of the world around them.  That's where Jesus is, because those are his people; that's where Jesus is, because it is his power, the power of love that leads to new life, that can set them free.

This may not look as "political" as Fr. Leon's sermon,  but it helps to remember that we are preaching in an area notorious for is exploitation and outright criminal abuse of Latino farm workers.  The guilty hear their sin named, while the rest barely notice.  And please do note that we share with Leon an emphasis upon the liberating power of God's love.

And let's be serious.  How many other preachers spent some time on Sunday talking about moral questions that happen also to be matters of political dispute?  We're willing to bet that more than one Roman Catholic mentioned abortion, and that more than one nondenominational mentioned the Second Amendment.  We can't swear to this, but we'd be surprised if it were not true.  For an Episcopal priest to express concern about racism, sexism and the treatment of immigrants is hardly surprising.

Mind you, we're waiting to hear the whole sermon.  We certainly hope that Fr. Leon had more to say about Jesus than the press pool cared to report, and we do wish that his one paragraph about the the backward-looking elements of American society had been phrased more tactfully.  And, for all we know, the rest of his sermon was a rousing call to sacrifice goats to Baal.

But, barring that, it must be said that by gum, our nation has more than its share of people who want black people and women and immigrants to go back to the places they used to have.  And, by further gum, these people are missing the moral mark, and badly.  If it is not a preacher's job to identify the sin, then whose?

"That's Not Bull$#!t, That's the Math"

As a newcomer to  these shores -- we've only been stateside for a month or so -- we haven't had much to say about the coming presidential election.  Apparently, the Democrats are running the same guy they ran last time, which suggests a lack of imagination.  The Republicans, on the other hand, are displaying immense creativity, by running a guy they actively dislike.  We knew that their strategy involved suppressing voter turnout; we just didn't realize that this included their own voters.

Anyway.  Having proven that he will insult our allies abroad, Governor Romney recently set his sights on the enemy at home, meaning the 47% of the electorate which wouldn't vote for him if he were the last 50s TV dad on earth.

We really have nothing to contribute to the discussion which has ensued; we are just relieved that nobody has mentioned the massive tax exemption historically granted to our own employer and its cognate organizations.  It is one thing to lash out at those money-grubbing farmers, deployed soldiers, senior citizens, and milk-addicted schoolchildren.  But it will be a sad day indeed when the GOP's talking heads feel called to lead a charge against America's fat-cat churches.

As we said, though, we are a stranger in these parts, with nothing much to say on the matter.  Perhaps that's just the way these crazy Americans do it, right?  Fortunately, Jon Stewart has no such hesitance.  Here (courtesy of Gawker) are the two parts of his brilliant little video essay, "Chaos on Bull$#!t Mountain."

Part One lays out the defense of Romney by his friends at Fox News -- basically, a combination of "It's true" and "He didn't mean it."  Part Two, the far more brilliant segment, shares both some facts and a heaping spoonful of righteous indignation.  (If time is short, watch Part Two.)

Heroes of Sex

It has been a busy time lately, as the Egg's editorial staff has shuttled hither and yon.  What with exploring the Umbrian hill country, paddling in the Adirondacks and saying a fond farewell to our former offices on the Transylvanian plateau, we haven't had much time to actually, y'know, write anything.

So we've passed up any number of opportunities to snark, comment and snark again.  Among these, the most egregious is no doubt the matter of legitimate rape.  Apparently, new research -- not the kind conducted by scientists, so much as the kind invented by politicians -- reveals that a woman can't get pregnant if her rape was legit, thus mooting the question of abortion (while raising any number of others, such as "what does 'legitimate' mean," and "do these idiots ever hope to win another election"?).

In related news:  the GOP seeks Todd Akin's head on a platter. (No:  literally.)

We've also missed the entire Republican convention, because we don't own a television and our Wifi is spotty.  We will take your word for it that many people said foolish things.  Apparently Clint Eastwood spoke longingly to a chair, a fact which is not nearly as surprising to us as his adoption of the Doc Brown hairstyle.  Is this how Hollywood affects gravitas now, by copying imaginary mad scientists?

But, even if we have no time to do them justice, we do feel compelled to note the passing of two women who have made noteworthy contributions to the world of sex:

1.  Helen Gurley Brown, she of the ironic maiden name.  Despite our many years of reading Cosmopolitan, we're still not sure how we feel about its guiding spirit.  On one hand, she taught repressed Eisenhower-era women that it's okay to embrace their sexuality; on the other she seems sometimes to have hinted that sleeping your way to the top is a legitimate business strategy somehow distinct from the world's oldest profession. Also:  if you put 15 Secrets to a Sizzling Sex Life on every cover, don't you run out of secrets pretty fast?  Or is it just the same fifteen every month? Still, without Helen Gurley Brown, there could be no Joan Holloway -- and that alone makes her a Hero of Sex.

2.  At the other end of the spectrum lies Shulamith Firestone.  As a small boy, we used to hang with our hoodlum friends in the back room of the Hippie Dippie Health Food Store, sucking on dried papaya and breathing in the sweet, sweet aroma of spelt.  There was a small rack of books there, containing any number of mysterious and exotic volumes.  We remember the exciting colors of the various Prabhupada commentaries, surpassed only by the thudding dullness of the contents; the story of a German family that resolved to survive solely on grass from their lawn; and guides to constructing your new home out of mud and empty soda bottles.  But the book that consistently drew our eyes came in a plain white cover; and yet the title was irresistible:  The Dialectic of Sex!  In those tender years, we had no idea what dialectic was; heck, we had barely any idea what sex was.  But the title tantalized us, with its combination of chilly intellectualism and hot-blooded eroticism.  (Not to mention the coolest author's name ever, one so cool that, until reading the obit, we naturally took it for a revolutionary's nom de guerre.)

Indeed, given a well-documented weakness, in our teens and twenties, for women of the schizophrenic, Jewish and intellectual persuasions (not to mention a sturdy tolerance for leftist discourse when we thought it might help us get some action), it seems likely that the very presence of this book on the shelf helped shape our nascent manhood.  This is ironic, since (a) Firestone helped set the tone for the Andrea Dworkin school of man-hating feminism; and (b) we never actually read the thing.  (Here's why.  Try it and see.)

Farewell, ladies.  May flights of really hot-looking (or Marxist) angels sing thee to thy rest.

Support Mitt Romney!

That, you might think, would be the message the GOP was spreading among its faithful.  Right?  Wouldn't you think they'd build up to November by telling us what great guy Romney is:  devoted family man, business whiz, years of government experience, all that sort of thing.  Sure, they might soft-pedal the whole Massachusetts health-care thing, not to mention the dog on the roof rack, but there are lots of other things they could say about Mitt.  Surely more than just, "He won the primaries, so I guess -- ho, hum -- he's our candidate."

Yeah, you'd think.

Instead, when asked by a Republican voter to "make me fall in love" with Romney, John Boehner's answer was "No," adding "I wasn't elected to play God."  Apparently, it would take God to make the Republican base passionate about their presidential candidate.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch tweeted that unless he ditches all his old-time friends and advisors, Romney can't win, and the Wall Street Journal started picking on Romney for talking about the economy.  And for riding jet-skis, which apparently prove he's rich and out-of-touch.

Obviously, we now live in Freaky Funhouse Mirror World, the place where Sinead O'Connor was elected Pope and John Mason Neale used to tour with the Masonettes.  Does nobody remember Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment?

Fortunately, there is Gawker guest columnist "Mobuto Sese Seko," no Republican by any means, who comes rushing to Mitt's defense, reminding us that plenty of rednecks own jet-skis.  Of course, he then proceeds to destroy both Romney and his Republican critics, in one of the funniest attack screeds we've read in a while.  (Bill Kristol is "avidly wrong about things with a compulsion we usually associate with drug addiction;" Romeny himself is "Chauncey Gardiner in reverse ... a smart man who keeps saying profoundly stupid things.")  Still, at least Mobuto's trying to help out.

Anyway: we'd fully expected that, as the election year heated up, Romney would get slapped around a little.  We just thought it wouldn't be by his own team.

Chuck Colson, RI [not too much] P

So Chuck Colson kicked off, at the age of 80.  The guy was living proof that, when F. Scott Fitzgerald said that thing about there being no second acts in American lives, he was full of pretentious malarkey.  (Drinking with Hemingway again, weren't you Scottie?).  Colson's second act was long and influential.

Needless to say, the press was quick to remind us all about the first act, as the guy who volunteered to walk over his own grannie if it would re-elect Nixon, and who served time for same.  And needless to say, our friends at GetReligion were quick to jump on the press for being stuck in the 70s, so deeply enthralled by the glamorous tale of Woodward and Bernstein that it couldn't see past Watergate to admire Colson's second act, as the pious prison reformer, the "towering figure" who "shaped the state" of modern evangelicalism.  Such and injustice!

They actually had us going for a while there.

Fortunately, Gawker just responded with a blistering diatribe by pseudonymous blogger "Mobuto Sese Seko."  It's not really journalism, in the conventional sense of the word; there's no pretense of balance or objectivity.  We can't even call it a think piece or an editorial.  It's pure, snarling, savage catharsis.  And it's just what we needed.

Calling Colson by a name we can't use in a family blog -- okay, fine, twist our arm:  God's Own Ratf*****r -- Seko speaks as much ill of the dead as we have ever seen.  As for the "towering figure" reshaping evangelicalism, he snorts:

His anti-gay, anti-liberal rhetoric—and unscientific and ahistorical demonization and smears—never veered from the toxic and odious, but one could hear it lustily reaffirmed by almost every GOP primary candidate this season. His Manhattan Declaration, that devout Christians should reject laws at odds with the Bible, is merely the most prominent articulation of unconstitutional Dominionist hogwash. Further, this kind of personal rejection of the rule of law is overwhelmed by a current GOP climate where it's been translated into a war on birth control for women, while public officials muse unapologetically about secession and nullification.

So there.

Is Seko reaching when he draws a line from Colson to Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer?  Probably.  Okay, definitely.  But Colson was a key figure in the development of modern conservative politics, as well as of modern politically-active evangelicalism.  So if you aren't wild about either of those things, or the antics of their advocates, consider Seko's curt analysis:

Colson left a snowball on a hill, and there were no shortage of people willing to help push it down.

So ... What'd We Miss?

How was our Lenten break, you ask? Don't ask; we've had better. As we've said so many times before in our life, for so many reasons, Thank God for Easter.

Sadly, the earth refused to stand still around us for forty days; this was a surprise and a disappointment. Though tempted, we blogged not, and although there is no way to catch up, we can at least review a few of the posts that were never posted. Here, in nor particular order, are a couple of things that happened during Lent, upon which we might have been inclined to write, had we not been so busy reciting the Litany:*

1) Breaking our heart, Newt Gingrich failed to sew up the nomination. Seems that Republican voters don't care as much as we had hoped about colonizing the Moon. Instead, they are going to run Mitt Romney, a candidate whom their rabid base despises for his Mormonism, Massachusettsism, and ability to speak French. After an expensive and destructive few months spent denying every reasonable, moderate, good-government impulse he has ever had, Romney will lose to a not-terribly-popular incumbent. And we, it seems, will never found the first Lutheran parish on Moonbase Alpha.

2) Rush Limbaugh said some very bad things about a law student named Sandra Fluke. This is a problem for Rush's advertisers, who scrambled to drop their support for his program. It is a delight for us, though, since it gives new life to our favorite early-90s joke: "Q: What's the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenburg? A: One is a flaming Nazi gasbag, the other is a blimp."**

3) The worst bishop's chair in the world became available when Rowan Williams resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury, beating a retreat back to academia. The second-worst chair also came open, when Pope Shenouda, primate of the embattled Coptic church in Egypt, died. When the body was exposed for public viewing, two of his followers were crushed to death; the transitional government has announced plans to crush the remainder as soon as possible.

4) Trayvon Martin was stalked, beaten, and killed, all for the apparent offenses of walking while black and unlicensed possession of Skittles. The story is appalling to any sensible person, and while it appears that his killer will finally be prosecuted, there is no way the predict an outcome. What the incident brings to light, apart from the familiar questions of race and class and gun ownership, is the very strange phenomenon of "Stand-Your-Ground" laws, which apparently empower any citizen with a gun to use lethal force against anybody who scares them. Frankly, we're astonished that, when it heard about this, the entire GOP establishment didn't lure then-Candidate Gingrich to Florida with evil intent.

5) John Edwards, the wealthy lawyer who cheated on his cancer-stricken wife while running for president as an advocate for the common man, is reported to have visited an expensive prostitute. He denies the report. And heaven knows, we trust John Edwards.

6) This terrorist is afraid other terrorists may hurt him. Poor baby. Funniest part is that he's American. Hope he's not waiting for the cavalry to come save him.

7) Some vast number of atheists marched on Washington, to stand up for ... well, atheism. Richard Dawkins, whose devotion to reason has long since rendered him unreasonable, encouraged them to mock Christians. We've said before that we like and respect many atheists, but it does begin to seem that their militant wing is as eager to create a stable, tolerant, pluralistic society as the Taliban.

8) An American soldier, apparently brain-damaged and probably suffering from PTSD, snuck out of his barracks to murder 17 Afghan civilians, the majority of them children. The damage to US/Afghan relations, and therefore to the battle against Muslim extremism, is likely to be grave. The reflection upon our military's grasp of emotional health matters is grim. What shocked us far more, though, were the responses of some Americans, as reported by a colleague: "They just don't seem to care about what happens to 'the enemy.' " Setting aside the fact that the Afghans are our supposed allies, the very people our soldiers are there to protect, this pitiless response reminded us of what Aquinas says: "The proud are without pity, for they despise others, and think them wicked, so that they account them as suffering deservedly whatever they suffer." (ST 2:2, Q.30, Art. 2)

9) And we stumbled over this tidbit. The Danbury Baptist Association's letter to Jefferson is famous principally for his response, about the wall of separation between church and state. But it might also be remembered on its own merits, for this blessing:

May God strengthen you for the arduous task which providence and the voice of the people have called you - to sustain and support you and your Administration against all the predetermined opposition of those who wish to rise to wealth and importance on the poverty and subjection of the people.

How few are the American Christians, and how pitifully few are the Baptists, who would sign off on such a mission today?

__________________________________________

* Seriously, that's what we were doing with the extra time. Nerdy or what?

** Technically, we are honor-bound to point out that the Hindenburg was in fact a dirigible. The difference is the rigid superstructure.

Komen Foundation: "Shoot 'em Up!" [UPDATE]

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast-cancer charity, doesn't want its name associated with Planned Parenthood anymore. (UPDATE #1: Or anyway, it didn't.) But it doesn't mind being associated with ... handguns.

Pink handguns.

Per Gawker, Komen has teamed up with an outfit called Discount Hand Guns to market a $429.00 weapon called the Walther P-22 Hope Edition. It's slide is coated in pink ceramic.

Can this be real? What sort of Freaky-Friday world-turned-upside down are we living in?

Okay. Deep breath. Let's be honest: Komen says it wants to give money directly to organizations that perform mammograms; this is a perfectly reasonable thing, given its mission. But ... but ... handguns? Do they know those things are designed to kill people? The same thing cancer does, but faster.

And, in the case of a .22, not much less horribly. Sure, it's a ladies' gun. But what happens when it gets stolen from the lady's nightstand or glove box? (And yes, that actually happened to a classmate of ours. Why she was carrying an unlicensed handgun in her glove box is a long story, which can be summed up in one sentence: She came from Florida.)

Street gangs like the .22 because it is usually a fired from a small, easily-concealed and comparatively cheap weapon. But it's a low-velocity bullet, often deflected by bone or stopped by muscle. In other words, it's not especially lethal. Except, that is, when fired at close range into the head, where the bullet lacks the energy to exit, and instead bounces around, and does awful, awful scrambled-egg damage to the brain. So in addition to gang-bangers, it is the preferred weapon of CIA assassins.

Our question, then, is not why Komen declines to support Planned Parenthood, but why it is willing to arm the West Side Kings and the guys who nailed Che.

[UPDATE #2: Susan G. Komen for the Cure denies any involvement with Discount Gun Sales, which in turn has taken down the web page that advertised the Hope Special. So is the real story here an unscrupulous gun dealer running some sort of fake-charity scam? Or is there more to it? Stay tuned for details!]

Annals of Hypocrisy: Spanglish Edition

Arizona, surely the state sinking most rapidly into crpyto-fascism, has been in the news this week for more than Gov. Brewer's tarmac finger-wag. Namely, the Attack of the Pedants.

Per the Times, Arizona (like other states -- news to us) has a law requiring office-holders to be "proficient" in English, without quite spelling out what constitutes proficiency. One woman, running for a seat on the governing board of a small city called San Luis, has found her place on the ballot challenged by political opponents.

Indeed, it sounds as though Alejandrina Cabrera does speak English poorly -- "hesitant and heavily accented," the story describes it. We can certainly imagine circumstances under which this might be an impediment to effective governing; on the other hand, especially in a border town, so can a poor command of Spanish.

What astonishes us is that the challenge to Cabrera comes from one of her high school classmates, San Luis mayor Juan Carlos Escamilla. And hear is how Mayor Escamilla describes Cabrera's candidacy:

I do feel this opening a box of Pandora ...

Wait a second. "A box of Pandora?" Yup. That's right: Escamilla doesn't speak English all that well himself, and has said so on TV:

I feel I don’t dominate 100 percent, but I can still get by,” said Mr. Escamilla .... “I can write, read and understand it very well.”

Um, dude: glass houses?

Look, we ourselves live in a country whose predominant language we speak less than fluently. "Hesitant and heavily accented" is a goal we hope someday to achieve; we're still closer to "like a mentally deficient toddler." And we have a fellow expat here whose language skills are far superior to our own, as he lets us know whenever the opportunity arises, in a way which has probably limited the number of invitations he finds in his inbox. He's a smart guy, and seems like a very decent one, but ... we prefer to take our grammar advice from natives.

In the same way, we are inclined to think that (a) Mayor Escamilla is a jerk of the first class, and that (b) his grammatically-challenged remarks about Ms. Cabrera reveal the truth about the political right's passion for English. It's not a matter of not racism or nativism, so much as straightforward gerrymandering. They don't really care about how well a candidate speaks the language, so long as the candidate is from their own party. The "English Only" movement is just another way to weed out people who might vote Democrat.

Should have been obvious that these guys never cared about English proficiency. After all, they elected Bush.

Hailey Barbour Supports Honor Killing

Pastor Joelle says it all, bluntly and concisely.

While honor killings are not, as we understand it, part of Shariah per se, where one leads, the other seems likely to follow. In this case, that means Mississippi, where outgoing Governor Barbour chose to pardon a cluster of men who killed their wives -- crimes passionel, which is to say honor killings.

Meanwhile, he leaves in prison a pair of sisters whose crime was being in the car when some other people stole $11. At least he didn't cut off their hands.

Barbour claims to have done this in the name of "our religion," and no doubt his supporters think he means Christianity. But be warned, reader: the guy is clearly a sleeper agent for the Taliban.

Noonan's "Faith" Turns People Atheist

A reader accused us of treating Peggy Noonan uncharitably the other day, and perhaps we did.

Still, we don't much care for the Pegster. She annoys us. And apparently not us alone; C.T. May is especially annoyed by her writing on religious themes, which May finds "short of common sense and scruples," "dumb about logic [but] clever about manipulation," and ultimately "vile."

Now that's uncharitable.

May's little screed is itself short on charm; the best attempted bon mot is this: "I’m agnostic and proud, but when I read Peggy Noonan on faith I become an atheist until the effect wears off." It doesn't quite work. Trying too hard, maybe?

Nevertheless, we do recognize the sentiment -- there is plenty of writing by Christians, not to mention the faithful of other religions, which urges upon us a certain momentary suspension of allegiance to the Church in particular and theism in general. In any club, there are a few members who make one cast a longing eye upon the neighboring establishment.

Ethical (and Other) Conundrums

What do you say when the op-ed writer you like least on Earth gets in a great line? Do you quote her, thus leading people to believe that she's anything but a crazy old bat still nursing her unrequited jones for Ronald Reagan? Do you quote her without attribution, thus stealing intellectual property?

Or do you assassinate her character, and then quote her?

Ahem. Behold the transient genius of Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, on why Republicans who know Newt Gingrich best are frightened by his rise in the polls:

What they fear is that he will show just enough discipline over the next few months, just enough focus, to win the nomination. And then, in the fall of 2012, once party leaders have come around and the GOP is fully behind him, he will begin baying at the moon. He will start saying wild things and promising that he may bomb Iran but he may send a special SEAL team in at night to secretly dig Iran up, and fly it to Detroit, where we can keep it under guard, and Detroiters can all get jobs as guards, "solving two problems at once." They're afraid he'll start saying, "John Paul was great, but most of that happened after I explained the Gospels to him" ....

Okay, fine. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

(via Gawker)

The Vegetarian Option is Steak

She's out of the running, if indeed she was ever in it, so there's no reason for us to crack wise about ex-Lutheran Michelle Bachmann. But still:

Jane Schmidt, a high school student in Waverly, Iowa, recently asked Michele Bachmann, "Why can't same-sex couples get married?"

"They can get married," Bachmann responded, "but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they're a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they're a man."

(In Iowa, same-sex marriage is the law, at least for now, but never mind that.)

She expanded on this in a response to another student: "Every American citizen has the right to avail themselves to marriage, but they have to follow what the laws are. And the laws are you marry a person of the opposite sex."

Cue the sound of a thousand heads hitting a thousand desks.

The WaPo's Alexandra Petri has a field day with this:

"Why can't Rosa Parks sit at the front of the bus?"

"She can sit," Bachmann would say. "She can sit at the back of the bus."

... "Is there a vegetarian option?"

"The vegetarian option is steak,"

And so forth.